Model Majority: How Racism Became Raceless in an Empire of Color

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Abstract

Can a non-white colonial empire operate its racialized “rule of difference” (Chatterjee 1993) in a perceived same-race colony? While the “rule of difference” in colonial societies has been systematically theorized by sociologists, the “rule of sameness,” and how it sustains colonialism as much as racism, remains undertheorized. This paper proposes a new theory, “model majority,” to explain why the “rule of sameness” is as indispensable as the “rule of difference” for non-white and non-Western colonialism to operate. Critically addressing the Western-centric framework in existing sociological theories, including the global color line (Du Bois 1903), model minority (Chou and Feagin 2015; Lee, Wong, and Alvarez 2008; Suzuki 1977), and colonial modernity (Barlow 1997), the “model majority” theory demonstrates how an “empire of color,” Japan, learned, modified, and established its racialized colonial rule in its first Asian colony, Taiwan. Empirically grounded in the colonial archives from 1895 to 1945, this paper shows that the Han Taiwanese functioned as the “model majority” who vied for their status as the modelized colonial subject, thereby reinforcing the settler raciology designed for their own subjugation. This “model majority” theory contains two key pillars: (1) the “visible-politicized” bedrocks; (2) the “invisible-depoliticized” conduits. Over time, this colonial tactic “model majority” transformed the “rule of sameness” into an apolitical, voluntary, and personal choice, rendering racism seemingly “raceless” in an empire of color. The case of colonial Taiwan demonstrates how raceless racism operated with even greater efficacy in an empire of color and calls for a non-Western, non-white paradigm for sociological theories of global color line, colonialism, and empires.

Author

• Yen-Yu Lin, DePauw University