Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T16:54:24.742Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE BLACK MODEL MINORITY

Slavery, Settlement, and the Genealogy of the Model Minority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2021

Bayley J. Marquez
Bayley J. Marquez*
Affiliation:
Department of American Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
*
Corresponding Author: Bayley J. Marquez, Department of American Studies, University of Maryland, 1328 Tawes Hall, 7751 Alumni Drive, College Park, MD20742. E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper interrogates the fundamental anti-Blackness of model minority discourses and how they are embedded in structures of anti-Blackness and settler colonialism through a genealogical examination of the contradictory history of the “Black model minority” within the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute’s Indian Program. This program educated both Black and Indigenous students throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and purposefully made racialized comparisons between groups. I read this history through present day scholarship on the model minority myth in relation to anti-Blackness and settler colonialism. I argue that the “Black model minority” at Hampton was predicated on upholding slavery through defining it as an educational project and that slavery and settler colonialism are intimately linked through pedagogy. This narrative of the Black model minority demonstrates that slavery and land dispossession were framed as pedagogic by industrial education institutions. Ultimately, this work questions the idea of “valuing education,” which is present in model minority discourses across many contexts, and how it is complicated by this history.

Keywords

Model MinorityAnti-BlacknessSettler ColonialismEducationSlavery
Type
State of the Art
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , Spring 2022 , pp. 129 - 145
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hutchins Center for African and African American Research

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abad, Miguel N. (2021). ‘I’m Picking a Side’: Thick Solidarity, Anti-Blackness, and the Grammar of the Model Minority. Race Ethnicity and Education, 24(3): 303–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, James D. (1988). The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ang, Sze Wei (2011). The Politics of Victimization and the Model Minority. CR: The New Centennial Review, 11(3): 119–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armstrong, Samuel Chapman (1880). Indian Education in the East. The Southern Workman, 9(11): 114. Hampton University Archives.Google Scholar
Armstrong, W. N. (1894). A Letter from Hawaii: Framing the Constitutional Problem in Political Evolution, Monarchy, and Witchcraft. General Armstrong Remembered on Decoration Day. A Baby Craft and Crew. How the Asiatics Occupy the Land. The Southern Workman, 12(9): 158.Google Scholar
Barker, Joanne (2005). For Whom Sovereignty Matters. In Barker, Joanne (Ed.), Sovereignty Matters: Locations of Contestation and Possibility in Indigenous Struggles for Self-determination, pp. 1–31. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Bascara, Victor (2006). Model-Minority Imperialism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowles, Samuel, and Gintis, Herbert (1976). Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.Google Scholar
Caldwell, Dan (1971). The Negroization of the Chinese Stereotype in California. Southern California Quarterly, 53(2): 123–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carter, Prudence L. (2005). Keepin’ It Real: School Success Beyond Black and White. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chow, Kat (2017). ‘Model Minority’ Myth Again Used as a Racial Wedge Between Asians And Blacks. NPR.org, April 19. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/04/19/524571669/model-minority-myth-again-used-as-a-racial-wedge-between-asians-and-blacks (accessed August 4, 2021).Google Scholar
Curtin, Philip D. (1998). The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Day, Iyko (2016). Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Dumas, Michael J. (2016). Against the Dark: Antiblackness in Education Policy and Discourse. Theory Into Practice, 55(1): 11–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engs, Robert Francis (1999). Educating the Disfranchised and Disinherited: Samuel Chapman Armstrong and Hampton Institute, 1839-1893. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press.Google Scholar
Frissell, Hollis Burke (n.d.). The Attitude of the Indian to White Civilization. Box 1, Hollis Burke Frissell Papers, Hampton University Archives.Google Scholar
Fujikane, Candace, and Okamura, Jonathan Y. (2008). Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in Hawaii. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glaude, Eddie S. Jr. (2000). Exodus!: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Glenn, Evelyn Nakano (2015). Settler Colonialism as Structure: A Framework for Comparative Studies of U.S. Race and Gender Formation. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 1(1): 68–69. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649214560440.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hampton Institute (1880). Incidents in Indian Life at Hampton: Magnanimity of the Negro Towards the Indian. The Southern Workman, 11(6): 103. Hampton University Archives.Google Scholar
Hampton Institute (1903). The Negro as a Peasant Farmer. The Southern Workman, 34(1): 8. Hampton University Archives.Google Scholar
Hartman, Saidiya (2007). Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.Google Scholar
Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks (1993). Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hixson, Walter L. (2013). American Settler Colonialism: A History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hsu, Madeline Y. (2015). The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Junn, Jane (2007). From Coolie to Model Minority: U.S. Immigration Policy and the Construction of Racial Identity. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 4(2): 355–373. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X07070208 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaba, Amadu Jacky (2008). Race, Gender, and Progress: Are Black American Women the New Model Minority? Journal of African American Studies, 12(4): 309–335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karuka, Manu (2019). Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
King, Tiffany J. (2013). In the Clearing: Black Female Bodies, Space, and Settler Colonial Landscapes. PhD Dissertation, Department of American Studies, University of Maryland.Google Scholar
King, Tiffany Lethabo (2019). The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Kim, Claire Jean (2018). Are Asians the New Blacks?: Affirmative Action, Anti-blackness, and the ‘Sociometry’ of Race. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 15(2): 217–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Janine Young (1999). Are Asians Black?: The Asian-American Civil Rights Agenda and the Contemporary Significance of the Black/White Paradigm. The Yale Law Journal, 108(8): 2385–2412. https://doi.org/10.2307/797390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Konishi, Shino (2019). First Nations Scholars, Settler Colonial Studies, and Indigenous History. Australian Historical Studies, 50(3): 285–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
la paperson (2017). A Third University is Possible. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Fred (2016). Fantasies of Asian American Kinship Disrupted: Identification and Disidentification in Michael Kang’s The Motel. Critical Philosophy of Race, 4(1): 6–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Stacey J. (1994). Behind the Model‐Minority Stereotype: Voices of High‐ and Low‐Achieving Asian American Students. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 25(4): 413–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindsey, Donal F. (1995). Indians at Hampton Institute, 1877–1923. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Lopenzina, Drew (2010). What to the American Indian Is the Fourth of July?: Moving Beyond Abolitionist Rhetoric in William Apess’s Eulogy on King Philip. American Literature, 82(4): 673–699.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowe, Lisa (2015). The Intimacies of Four Continents. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Marquez, Bayley J. (2019). Settler Pedagogy: The Hampton Institute and Schooling in Indian Country, the Black South, and Colonial Hawaii, 1840–1923. PhD Dissertation, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Moynihan, Daniel P. (1965). The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. Washington, DC: Office of Policy Planning and Research, U.S. Department of Labor.Google Scholar
Myrdal, Gunnar (1944). An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, Volume 1. New York: Harper and Rowe.Google Scholar
Okihiro, Gary Y. (2014) Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Osajima, Keith (2005). Asian Americans as the Model Minority: An Analysis of the Popular Press Image in the 1960s and 1980s. A Companion to Asian American Studies, 1(1): 215–225.Google Scholar
Panelli, Ruth (2008). Social Geographies: Encounters with Indigenous and More-than-White/Anglo Geographies. Progress in Human Geography, 32(6): 801–811. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132507088031.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perez, Monforti J. L. (2002). A Model Minority: The Paradox of Cuban American Political Participation Regarding Official Language Policy in Miami-Dade County, Florida. PhD Dissertation, Ohio State University.Google Scholar
Peterson, William (1966). Success Story, Japanese-American Style. The New York Times, January 9, 20–43. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.Google Scholar
Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell (1929). Life and Labor in the Old South. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Pratt, Richard Henry (1964). Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867–1904. Edited by Utley, Robert. M.. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Puar, Jasbir K., and Rai, Amit (2004). The Remaking of a Model Minority: Perverse Projectiles Under the Specter of (Counter) Terrorism. Social Text, 22(3): 75–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saito, Natsu Taylor (1997). Model Minority, Yellow Peril: Functions of Foreignness in the Construction of Asian American Legal Identity. Asian American Law Journal, 4(1): 71–96.Google Scholar
Samuel Chapman Armstrong Correspondence, Hampton University Archives.Google Scholar
Saranillio, Dean Itsuji (2013). Why Asian Settler Colonialism Matters: A Thought Piece on Critiques, Debates, and Indigenous Difference. Settler Colonial Studies, 3(3): 280–294, https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2013.810697.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheth, Falguni A. (2014). Interstitiality: Making Space for Migration, Diaspora, and Racial Complexity. Hypatia, 29(1): 75–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spivey, Donald (1978).  Schooling for the New Slavery: Black Industrial Education, 1868–1915 . Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Stone, Theresa Amalia (2019). Emplacing White Possessive Logics: Socializing Latinx Youth into Relations with Land, Community, and Success. PhD dissertation, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Trask, Haunani-Kay (1996). Feminism and Indigenous Hawaiian Nationalism. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 21(4): 906–916.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuck, Eve, and Yang, K. Wayne (2012). Decolonization is Not a Metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society, 1(1): 1–40.Google Scholar
U.S. News & World Report (1966). Success Story of One Minority Group in the U.S. December 26, 73–76.Google Scholar
Veracini, Lorenzo (2010). Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watkins, William Henry (2001).  The White Architects of Black Education: Ideology and Power in America, 1865–1954 . New York: Teachers College Press.Google Scholar
Warren, Donald (2005). Slavery as an American Educational Institution: Historiographical Inquiries. Journal of Thought, 40(4): 41–54.Google Scholar
Washington, Booker T., and Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt (1907). The Negro in the South, His Economic Progress in Relation to His Moral and Religious Development: Being the William Levi Bull Lectures for the Year. Philadelphia, PA: George W. Jacobs & Company.Google Scholar
Wu, Ellen D. (2015). The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wu, Frank H. (2002). Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar