From Middleman to Model Minority : Japanese Americans Facing Barriers

Today’s Japanese Americans are perceived as a rather successful minority group in the U.S. They are lauded for their acculturation speed, higher educational attainment, upward mobility into the mainstream society. It is true that Japanese Americans are better off than other Asian Americans, it does not follow they are free from prejudice. When Japanese Americans were treated as the “middleman minority,” which has negative connotations and refers to intermediary positions between Whites and Blacks, discrimination was rather manifest and discernible. Today, on the other hand, barriers placed on Japanese Americans as the “model minority” are subtler but hard to reveal. Even if they successfully make inroads into Whitedominant environments, they often meet obstacles such as admission ceilings in higher education and glass ceilings at work. The aim of this paper is to uncover such actual barriers Japanese Americans have been facing and to examine changes the way they have been treated both in the past and the present.