From the 1960s, Asians in the U.S. have been cultivated and culturally classified as a ‘model minority,’ living proof that non-white people can achieve social mobility and economic success without government reforms like welfare and affirmative action or more radical structural changes.  This is used to refute claims that poverty and racism continue to be rooted in the system, and justifies attacks on other non-whites and their political movements, particularly African Americans, whose problems are explained as based on biology, culture, and/or individual factors rather than structural ones. 

This myth hides the particularities of immigration (selection of the educated) and specific racialization of different groups, as well as the actual racism experienced by South Asian Americans.  It also hides the increased poverty and racism experienced by working-class South Asians whose emigration from various countries (particularly Pakistan and Bangladesh) expanded from the 1980s.