Blood Debt

Scholars have long criticized the model minority myth as harmful to Asian Americans and rooted in anti-Blackness. Fewer scholars, however, have analyzed whether and to what extent the contemporary Asian American identity emerged from and depends on the model minority myth and with it, anti-Blackness.Even fewer have done so using a Vietnamese-American vantage point. This Article does both.This Article elevates Vietnamese American voices to disrupt anti-Black narratives in the model minority myth and casts doubt on the usefulness of the very concept of Asian American racial identity. The model minority myth is so intertwined with the Asian American identity that any deconstruction of the myth must also deconstruct the Asian American identity.This Article builds on two preexisting critiques of the model minority myth—flattening and anti-Blackness—from a uniquely Vietnamese American vantage point by elevating the disruptive narratives of Vietnamese Americans and Viet-Black coalition building. By adopting this vantage point, this Article builds on a tradition of narrative in critical legal scholarship and women-of-color feminist coalitional politics to dismantle the model minority myth, elevate Viet experiences, and demonstrate the promise of solidarity.