The myth that “Black failure and Asian success cannot be explained by inequities and racism...allows a segment of white America to avoid any responsibility for addressing racism or the damage it continues to inflict.” https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/04/19/524571669/model-minority-myth-again-used-as-a-racial-wedge-between-asians-and-blacks

"During World War II, the media created the idea that the Japanese were rising up out of the ashes [after being held in incarceration camps] & proving that they had the right cultural stuff...Now why weren't black people making it, but Asians were?"

“Racism that Asian-Americans have experienced is not what black people have experienced...Asians have faced various forms of discrimination, but never the systematic dehumanization that black people have faced during slavery and continue to face today.”

This myth was strategically generated. The Citizens Committee to Repeal Chinese Exclusion “strategically recast Chinese in its promotional materials as 'law-abiding, peace-loving, courteous people living quietly among us'" instead of the ‘yellow peril' coolie hordes.’”

A popular 1966 New York Times story “solidified a prevailing stereotype of Asians as industrious & rule-abiding that would stand in direct contrast to African-Americans, who were still struggling against bigotry, poverty & a history rooted in slavery.”

”The heart of arguments of racial advancement is...’racial resentment’...a moral feeling that blacks violate such traditional American values as individualism & self reliance...[It] is a tool that people use to absolve themselves from dealing with the complexities of racism.”

“Few people want to be [racist], even as they're inclined to believe the measurable disadvantages blacks face are caused by something other than structural racism. Framing blacks as deficient & pathological rather than inferior offers [an] out for those caught in [a] mental maze.

The articulation of this myth is critical for White people who have friends and family who are, when it comes down to it, implicit and explicit White supremacists. “Racist” is a buzz term that people shy away from, but at the end of the day, the belief in this myth IS racist.