A significant amount of my work revolves around the issues of perception, and communication, both with the self and our cultural counterparts. I’ve written entire chapters about the ways our bias in favor of our own people groups and cultures affect our behaviors towards perceived “others” and how that translates into fundamental attribution errors and mistreatment towards anyone we perceive as NOT “our people.”

The “model minority” myth is but only a chapter in the book of white supremacy. The thesis of the book we’ve written over time is “whiter is better.” In this article, I’ll write about how the “model minority” belief of today is simply a more covert version of the “overseer” system of the North American Slave trade.

A Pseudo-science is born!

The “whiter is better” belief system began around 1550. The “white” skin of European women who did not labor outside, was a socioeconomic marker of wealth. In the 1700’s the classification of the “races” or “human species” was created by Linnaeus and Blumenbach. Even before the North American Slave Trade was codified into the colonial governments, the “whiter is better” line of thinking was deeply embedded in European imagination as a “scientific” notion by Darwin’s protégé, Blumenbach and others eager to get in on the infant process of gaining objective understanding.  This method of gaining certain knowledge was the genesis of what is now called “science.”

It was Blumenbach, Linnaeus, and other researchers of that era who first proposed the idea that humans of different skin hues, facial, hair, and body features were humans in different stages of evolution. Blumenbach and his contemporaries thought the women of their region were the most beautiful in the world, thus European humans were at the top of the human hierarchy they devised, and all other people groups fell somewhere beneath the beauty, intelligence, and civilization developments of “Caucasian” people who originated in Europe. It is worth noting that most of their information about non-European people was gained from the perceptions and accounts of slave traders.

If we look at the “Order of Human Geography” developed by Blumenbach (pictured in this article), we can easily see the “whiter is better” cultural perception demonstrated by the lightest-skinned ethnic groups being at the top of his pyramid, and those with the most melanin being at the base of the structure, meaning people groups of color were least “evolved.”

Would it surprise you to know that Blumenbach and the other scientists in this burgeoning new thing of the 1700s called “science” were also Europeans?  Blumenbach himself lived in the Caucasus Mountain region of Europe (modern-day Georgia, formerly part of Russia).  They gave Europeans the scientific categorization title of “causation” named after their favorite place and people. Blumenbach thought his own people group to be the pinnacle of humanity; white/light-skinned people. 

Blumenbach’s Geography of Human Order has since been utterly rejected and labeled “pseudo-science” by every work of modern peer-approved genetic or DNA research.

Now that we understand how the manmade construct of “race” developed let us turn to understand how that newborn pseudo-science, which emboldened pseudo-theology, has come to misinform our present way of thinking and moving about our lives as cultural beings with our own ethnocentric biases.

Pseudo-Science Becomes Theology:

Faith leaders of Europe and the “New World” embraced the novice research community’s findings even though it was contrary to the Bible. Old, and especially New Testament scriptures clearly dismantle the heresy that God created different species of human beings.  Scripture is clear throughout that God created Adam & Eve and from them, all of humanity descended.  Then after the flood, the children of Noah and their wives who were also descendants of Adam and Eve repopulated the earth. “The curse of Ham” was a doctrine developed based on the compromise of New World preachers with government leaders and wealthy landholders who needed divine justification for atrocities necessary to maintain the free labor of enslaved people.

People who accepted Biblical accounts of humanity being created by God rationalized that “others” were not fully human. Simply put, colonists believed what served their biases and economic goals despite the abundance of scriptures to the contrary. However, a “middleman” was needed to maintain the system.  Light-skinned brown people and impoverished European descendants served as a buffer between white economic and social power and Black freedom. 

Enslavers positioned light-skinned African descendants to create a buffer zone of domestic workers and overseers to manage the discontent of enslaved people who labored in the fields. They also created loyalty through trauma bonds and fear with victims and the mothers of children who were a product of rape.  Similarly, the creation of a “model minority” served as a system where the inequality between Europeans and African descendants could be maintained with the aid of people of color because of the threats that were promised to the uncooperative.

The dominant European culture has always expected quiet obedience, hard work, in support of their system, and compliance.  Asian Americans have been considered the “model minority” based on the profitable standard of “white is right, and the lighter the better.”  The bias within humans throws up a red flag when we perceive any person to be a “stranger” or “outsider.”  The model minority strategy of European Americans is a game where only Europeans and those who cooperate fully can win.

It is part of our human “fallen nature” to yield easily to the temptation to put oneself at the top of the hierarchy (as Lucifer attempted). However, being on top is not part of the plan of salvation or redemption. European Americans need to abandon the overseer mentality and all its tools.

We created an idol of ourselves and our cultural constructs.

We have worshipped our own creation of culture more than the creator.

We, like Blumenbach, have positioned ourselves as the pinnacle of human achievement when, in fact, we are in need of deep repentance and reformation.

Get more resources on Amazon: Loving Our Neighbors addresses the human construct of “other” from a Biblical perspective. 5 Blinders to Seeing Color* is a good primer to conversations and uses corporate terminology. Both books help gain the understanding and language you need to examine your own experiences, culture, and biases.