"I hate my own race. The teachers just always think we're smart": Re-conceptualizing the model minority stereotype as a racial epithet

The chapter examines how Asian American female youth resist the Model Minority Stereotype (MMS). The author reports findings on the identity struggles of three youth who are raced as the "smart Chinese girls," gendered as "the Chinese sorority sitting in the back of the room," and classed as "low-income kids at a ghetto school in Chicago." The findings discuss how teacher-student relationships impact youth identity formation, and how youth desire cultural identities free from racist discourse perpetuated through "racial epithet" (Embrick & Henricks, 2013). Reconceptualizing the MMS as a "racial epithet" challenges educators to disrupt racialized discourses.