In the spirit of growth and learning, I’d like to revisit the topic, this time with the help of journalist Melissa Pandika, and writer and host of the podcast MigrAsians, Nisha Mody. I also failed to include voices from Asian American perspectives outside of my own Chinese American experience. A discussion of our privilege must include this fact. In particular, the model minority myth misleads average Asian Americans into believing that we’ve earned these privileges through the virtue of work ethic, when in fact, this stereotype was designed to form a racial wedge between Black and Asian communities. We can only work toward a more equitable society if we first acknowledge and examine the privileges we’ve been granted through a system made by and for white colonizers.
![asian mochi asian mochi](https://fthmb.tqn.com/PSiyvGWTVtuYrr57vStaLjM2zV0=/3155x3159/filters:fill(auto,1)/170998449-5696c9825f9b58eba49e381e.jpg)
In “Is There Such a Thing as Asian Privilege?”, I focused on statistics to illustrate the disparity among Asian communities, disproving the parallelism between “Asian privilege” and white privilege yet I failed to acknowledge the privilege Asian Americans do have over other Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) groups.
![asian mochi asian mochi](https://images.prismic.io/tokyotreat/bee74277-a871-410a-90e4-bafec3911e84_image_0b1d83a7f55f1aca_lg.jpg)
In a piece published in 2018, I wrote about the concept of Asian privilege, but now see what I included there as falling short. We at Mochi have also been thinking about how we can improve our understanding and coverage of racial issues in America. In this time of racial reckoning, many organizations in Asian American communities have paused to make solidarity statements, organize and facilitate workshops that build awareness, and re-examine the words they’ve used.