For the longest time, I couldn’t articulate why this was such a transformative experience. I had been in rooms full of brown people before – I had a big family and frequently attended South Asian community events – but nothing had ever felt the way that affinity group did. Years after the fact, I came across a post shared by writer Blair Imani that made it all click: “Having shared identities doesn’t automatically create community. Shared values are key.” The people in that space weren’t just South Asian; they were South Asians I had met at a youth leadership conference, who were all committed to creating positive social change. 

However, the clarity that realization provided was fleeting. Almost as soon as I found my answer to that initial question, another question arose: If the secret to community was shared values, why was it so difficult for me to find other South Asians who shared my values? Why, when I joined social justice-focused student organizations at my university, did I rarely see people who looked like me? Why, after so many years, had I not been able to find the same sense of belonging I had experienced in 2018? 

As the sociology student that I was, I turned to the literature for answers. Knee-deep in a research journal, I came across an article that deconstructed the relationship between the model minority myth and Asian American activism. I had known about the myth through lived experience, but my sociology education had helped me to understand that it was much more pernicious than the “Asians are smart” stereotype might initially suggest. As I had learned, this was a narrative intentionally invented and pushed by white supremacists in the wake of civil rights movement, and its purpose was to dismiss systemic racism by making an example of a select group of academically and financially successful Asian Americans. The myth fed the argument that upward mobility was achievable for all through hard work and falsely suggested that racial disparities were a product of individual failures, rather than systemic barriers.

The article I found deepened my understanding of the model minority myth as it pertains to Asian American involvement in social justice efforts. It perpetuates, among other things, “the monolithic image of Asian Americans as successful in society and thus unaffected by racial oppression and uninterested in activism” (Yi & Todd 2024). With this given, it began to make sense to me that internalization of the myth – which occurs when Asian Americans believe the stereotypes associated with the model minority image – may manifest in decreased engagement with social justice efforts. Given the ubiquity of those stereotypes, I had observed internalization of the myth to be a common phenomenon. 

As I conducted interviews for my own senior thesis research, a qualitative study that explored South Asian American identity within the context of the model minority myth, I came across participants who similarly struggled with finding community. One interviewee shared her journey in finding “South Asian friends who are also activists” after growing up around brown people who she described as unengaged in advocacy (Patel 2024). 

Given everything I had learned from my research and from my lived experiences, it became clear to me that building community would require finding South Asians who actively resisted the model minority myth, and felt a deep necessity to create positive social change. When I received the offer to become an FAO Schwarz Fellow at Reading Partners in New York City, little did I know that the move would lead me to find exactly that. Both within and outside of work, I’ve met people who exist at the intersection of my identity and values. From the folks I’ve met in the AAPI affinity space at Reading Partners to those I’ve gotten to know through my weekly yoga class at Saratoga Park, one of the best things to happen since moving to NYC has been finding people who have helped to recreate the feeling I first experienced seven years ago.