Spelling Otherness

In the last 15 years, as many as 11 young Americans of Indian descent have won the Scripps National Spelling Bee. This pattern of one small community's dominance in academic competitions has been seen not just in the spelling bee but also in geography bees, math competitions, and science Olympiads. This has led mainstream media to resurrect the notion of the “Model Minority,” with Indian Americans becoming the new holders of this eponym. This chapter analyzes the discursive construction of Indian Americans as racial emblems in media reports and online message boards. Using Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's notion of “color-blind racism” and Edward Said's theory of Orientalism, the chapter discusses how these children have become exemplars of racial assimilation even as they are indelibly marked as “forever foreign,” and why Indian-Americans feel the compulsion to attempt to conquer “the master's tools.”