This is all good news — both for Asian Americans and the United States — but the Jewish comparison has a dark side. Once the cheering over this study, titled "The Rise of Asian America," has subsided, we might remember it as the dawn of a new era of anti-Asian bias.
Americans tend to view race and ethnic relations as a linear progression. The triumphant narrative of the civil rights movement has us convinced that things get better over time: Economic status rises as prejudice decreases, and vice versa. We also like to tell ourselves that bias is always targeted downward, at the weakest and the most vulnerable in society.
