AAC Fellow Jigna Desai: Model Minority as Racial Ableism

AAC Fellow Dr. Jigna Desai will be presenting Model Minority as Racial Ableism on Monday, November 11th in the Stone Center Hitchcock Room. Pre-reception will be at 5:30pm followed by the talk at 6pm.

Registration: go.unc.edu/AACjigna

Abstract:

Historically, Asian Americans have often been pathologized through narratives of disease, disability, and contagion, particularly in the context of immigration and xenophobia from the 19th century onward. Yet, paradoxically, they have also been idealized for their intellectual, cognitive, and spiritual capabilities, a positioning deeply rooted in racial capitalism and racial neural citizenship. The 1965 Immigration Act, which prioritized highly skilled and educated migrants from Asia, further entrenched this duality. The professional and educational privileges of these migrants embedded in racial capitalism have been naturalized and reframed as inherent intellectual and cognitive superiority, rendering Asian Americans the “ideal” techno-laborers, medical practitioners, and professionals, ones who do not experience the debility associated with capitalist extraction and neuro-nationalism. Building on this framework, this presentation explores the potential to reconceptualize the “model minority” stereotype from the perspectives of disability studies and neurodiversity. It also examines how mobilizing around “mental health,” while necessary, doesn’t address the root causes of our situations. Through a reading of Sanjena Sathian’s speculative novel Gold Diggers, I argue that ableist biopolitics have constructed (South) Asian Americans as paragons of racialized intellectual labor and how racial ableism is slowly killing us.