The Other Story of Model Minorities

An essay titled The “Other” Story of Model Minorities examines how socioeconomic backgrounds, resources, and social capital influenced the scholastic aspirations and success of Korean American adolescents. A student at Rutgers University–Newark by the name of Jamie Lew wrote this paper. This essay will explore the reasons behind the wide range of educational experiences among young Korean Americans. Additionally, Lew’s piece will serve as the foundation for the paper’s justifications. There is a varied range of educational experience mid the Korean American youth due to the fact that there was limited social capital in the form of enterprise, local churches, and coethnic networks. Social capital was very imperative since it could to the provision of economic and social resources which could be very beneficial to the society that was living there. This means that the youths had limited opportunities since they were poor and they lived in isolated neighborhoods that needed the protection of the robust émigré coethnic networks to attain educationally.

Additionally, those children that grew up in families that had been employed also attended the nearby urban high schools that were populated with the poor minorities and the migrants. As a result of low socioeconomic backgrounds, partial coethnic network sustenance and little urban schools the Korean American youths faced several structural barriers at school, at home and within their cultural societies (“Burden of Acting” 340). These contribute positively to explaining why there is a broad range of educational experience among the Korean American youth. In a nutshell, the limited social capital was the core reason as to why there is a difference in educational experience amid the Korean American youth since it led to the low socioeconomic background, partial coethnic network sustenance and meager urban schools that had negative impacts on the youth.

Works Cited

Lew, Jamie. “Burden of Acting Neither White nor Black: Asian American Identities and Achievement in Urban Schools.” The Urban Review, vol. 38, no. 5, 2006, pp. 335-352.

---. “The ”Other“ Story of Model Minorities: Korean American High School Dropouts in an Urban Context.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 3, 2004, pp. 303-323.