BU Today: “Asian Americans and the Model Minority Dilemma”

In an article published by BU Today, BU School of Social professor Hyeouk Chris Hahm shares her personal experience with anti-Asian racism during COVID-19 and results from her recent study on the impact of discrimination on mental health. 

School of Social Work Professor Hyeouk Chris Hahm says that almost 70 percent of young Asians who responded to a survey said they or their family members had been exposed to some violence or microaggression, and 15 percent said they were exposed to verbal or physical assaults.

Many Asian Americans live their daily lives with a baseline unease that most white Americans rarely experience. They feel stereotyped as a model minority—smart in math and science, but poor in sports, and rarely in need of mental health resources.

That unease, says Hyeouk Chris Hahm, a School of Social Work professor and chair of social research, ratcheted up last year after then-President Trump branded COVID-19 “the China virus,” a repeated reference that has been blamed for a 150 percent increase in crimes against Asian Americans in 16 American cities in 2020. “We all felt it,” says Hahm, who is Korean-American. “I live in Newton, which is a nice community, but even in Newton, there were incidents. My Asian friends were yelled at: “Go back to your country!”