They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us

by Prachi Gupta

White America crafted a tempting story to explain the ascent of Asian Americans—“an important racial minority pulling itself up from hardship and discrimination to become a model of self-respect

respect and achievement,”

as a 1966 article in U.S. News & World Report described Chinese Americans. Those once seen as “Yellow Peril” and “Dusky Peril” became a “model minority,” creating a new racial category: Asians were those who could assimilate into whiteness but maintain a distinct cultural identity. In America, riches await, and with a little grit, anyone can reap them. The story tempered the racial progress of...

As a girl, I did not know that the story built around the upward mobility of families like ours was used to represent how far immigrants can go in this country if they are determined. I did not know that

the way I understood and related to the world was through a myth carefully constructed by those in power to keep Black people locked into low-wage labor to build white wealth.

The belief that we were exceptional protected us. Until it didn’t. Because stories designed to uphold hierarchies protect only one group—those at the very top. Myths imbue the ordinary and mundane with celestial meaning. But this is also what makes them so dangerous: They do not reveal truths. Rather, they obscure any part of our realities that do not conform to the fantastical narrative. The myth creates a strict role to play: Those who project the right image are more likely to be tolerated. Anyone who fails to meet the expectations set forth by white America risks being ignored, overlooked, dismissed, forgotten, abandoned.

It is not hard to see how the myth reinforces America’s existing social and racial order, then, seducing its adherents with the promise of belonging in a country where their position remains tenuous and their acceptance is always in question.

Rather than fostering solidarity over the ways in which white America disenfranchises those who look unlike them, the myth sows division among Asian ethnic communities. The myth encourages those at the top of the economic ladder to reinforce it, pushing those at the bottom further down. The privilege of the few sets constraints upon the many.

The myth erases the legacy of racial exclusion from America’s collective consciousness while perpetuating racial exclusion. The myth creates cognitive dissonance and then tells us that this dissonance does not exist. The myth splits our psyches, then calls this violence peace. The myth forces our min...

But the risks of not saying anything are far greater. We abide by their story because we think that is how we gain acceptance in America. But we cannibalize our bodies, our spirits, and our minds to feed a hunger that never abates. We struggle under a weight that the world tells us does not exist. We serve a story that will never serve us, and I fear that the next generation will seek to do the same.

The world we live in, which demands perfection and achievement, teaches us we cannot love ourselves as we are. The myth teaches us to think greatness always resides outside us instead of within us. We must become stronger, taller, richer, thinner, smarter, prettier—and perhaps then, we think, we may be worthy of love.

In a capitalist society, the measure of wellness isn’t a person’s actual health or happiness but how far one can rise or how much wealth one can accumulate.

I began to think of success not as a job title, wealth, prestige, or social network but as the ability to be myself in the world.

a man who forces you to prove your worth is a man incapable of seeing it.

The truth is, society doesn’t raise people to aspire to be kind or compassionate or happy. It pressures adults to achieve and accomplish. It teaches people that what matters more than their character or how they treat others or how they feel about themselves is how much money they can hoard, who they know, how famous they can get, and how much power they wield over others. Emotions have no basis in this framework. They are a nuisance, a hindrance, a distraction, a weakness.