A Journey Into The Mind of Watts

[alice wellintown]

Why are Asian American called the "model minorities"?  The model
minority tag was officially created by William Petersen, a sociologist
who commended Japanese Americans in a 1966 article in the New York
Times Magazine for their assimilation and economic success. That’s
where he first used the term, “model minority.” Later the same year,
an article in U.S. News and World Report praised the success of
Chinese Americans. Why did the profile of Asian Americans get raised
to lofty heights in the mid-’60s? Because they were being used as
social counterweight to the "not-so-model minority,"  the African
Americans, who had rioted in Watts in 1964, and were the focus of the
government’s “Great Society” social programs to fight poverty.

Against the turbulent rise of the civil rights movement, Asian
Americans seemingly offered a backdrop of calm and served as role
models of how to play the American game.

see Amy Tan, Rules of the Game

Also see Peter Kwong, "The First Multicultural Riots", in Don Hazen
(ed.), Inside the L.A. Riots: What really happened - and why it will
happen again, Institute for Alternative Journalism, 1992, p. 89.

see Andrew Pepper The Contemporary American Crime Novel: Race,
Ethnicity, Gender, Class