The Model Minority Myth — which, let us remember, is a myth — was invented for this explicit purpose: its first appearance in the American political zeitgeist was in a 1960’s New York Times Magazine article (“Success story: Japanese American style”) as a reference to Japanese American immigrants who overcame discrimination through alleged “perseverance”, in stated contrast to African Americans who were focused on overcoming discrimination through political action (i.e. the Civil Rights Movement). In other words, the Model Minority Myth has always been a fiction invented by Whiteness and has always been used as a cudgel to denigrate, belittle, or dismiss African American efforts to agitate for political equality, while simultaneously appropriating and limiting the roles that Asian Americans can politically inhabit.
Imagine being born a women into a traditionalist culture which assigns many sex-specific duties and obligations that determine what you can do and how you must act, becoming an athlete who broke sports and social boundaries with her stellar performances and then being banned from competing after reaching majority age because your body was deemed to possess too many male characteristics or hormones. This happened to India’s 
