It has another harmful effect: it posits Asian Americans as effete bookworms, and become the stereotype of doctor/scientist/engineer.

It also posits Asian Americans as somehow "other" - not really a "real" part of the race debate that is taking place in much of the United States. At least in national politics (and state politics here in Michigan), the idea of "Asian Americans" as a political group that might have interests in the immigration debate are just ... ignored, even though one of the greatest immigrant groups are Asians; the focus is almost entirely on the Southern border and almost entirely about Latinos.

Similarly, it gives a free pass to local politicians - recall Hoekstra's racist ad that featured during the 2012 Super Bowl - who only view race politics as (still) a "black and white" topic; nothing else is racist. (I recall seeing many comments in the days after Hoekstra's ad went viral that it wasn't racist, because it was talking about Asians, or that it wasn't really that bad, because it wasn't about black people.)

Speaking more generally (and tying it back to the conceptualization of Asian Americans as effete bookworms), we have this really strange expectation in the US that Asian Americans aren't good athletes. It's one of the reasons why Jeremy Lin was such a sensation. (What.... a tall Asian who can play basketball?) Sure, there was Yao Ming, but he could be seen as an exception to the rule; also he was recruited from China, and wasn't a homeboy.

If there weren't any social roadblocks, we should expect there to be far more Asian Americans in very visible positions, including sports, film, and media. However, roadblocks exist, both within Asian American communities and within the general populace.

Having grown up abroad, and never having liked many "Asian-esque" films that came out of Hollywood, it was refreshing to hear the interview from director of the latest Fast and Furious - Justin Lin - discuss how he had to fight to change Tokyo Drift into something that wasn't some Hollywood myopic wet dream of what Tokyo was.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/05/24/186169488/Director-Lin-Shifts-The-Identity-Of-Fast-Furious
What he says at the end of the story is - I believe - good insight into some of the roadblocks that exist, "thanks" to allowing for the continuance of the positive stereotyping that has happened (relatively recently) to Asian Americans:

As for what Lin is searching for, it's complicated. He wants Hollywood to avoid stereotyping Asians. But he doesn't want that fight to define him.

"As an Asian immigrant coming in, for the longest time I still had problems getting in the lot because they're just not used to seeing someone like me who's directing these films," Lin said. "I do think ultimately there's a point where we can kind of just shed that label and become filmmakers. ... Sometimes, I think it's important to be a filmmaker first and be able to talk about whatever you want to after that."

One thing I've noticed is that this stereotype makes it difficult to take the challenges Asian-American students have seriously. Their success in school and in turn in their careers makes it far too easy to turn a blind eye to any problems students and their communities might be facing.

... and - of course - it's really annoying when the assumption of such new immigration hangs around Asian Americans means that many non-Asians make no distinction between foreign nationals (i.e., citizens of Japan, South Korea, and China) and Asian Americans from the same ethnicity (i.e., US citizens of Japanese, Korean, or Chinese ethnicity).

Humorously, this tendency was explicitly countered:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWynJkN5HbQ

Associated with this is a feeling outside of Asian American cultures that all East and Southeast Asian ethnicities are effectively interchangeable. A Korean American and a Thai American are treated as being Chinese Americans, but even the references to Chinese culture are mixed with those from other cultures. This allowance of complete interchangeability between East Asian ethnicities (even nations) was recently seen on that (admittedly selected) agglomeration of (admittedly hyper-ignorant) tweets: Public Shaming, where (in addition to associating all Muslims with Arabs), a number of people associated the Boston Bombing with North Korea, and got angry at North Korea for attacking Pearl Harbor, called Koreans "Chinks" and "gooks".

Dr. Lee also wrote a great paper here on TSP called "Asian American Exceptionalism and "Stereotype Promise" -- certainly worth the read! http://thesocietypages.org/papers/asian-american-exceptionalism-and-stereotype-promise/

not too happy with the ads appearing at the bottom of this page

> She also notes that Asian Americans are often disadvantaged in college
admissions because of an assumption that a school can have “too many”
Asians and, accordingly, accept only students with the most
extraordinary academic credentials.

Aren't colleges either taking steps to conceal all racially identifying information from people who are making admissions decisions or establishing quotas which may very well account for the fact that they have too many Asians and they need to admit fewer in order to be fair? It's trivial to modify an existing admissions process to become purely merit-based.

So, we could improve the success of other races by promoting stereotype promise for them too?

(actually, isn't that what the self-esteem movement was all about: helping kids succeed by telling them they're really great? Did that work?)

It's an interesting hypothesis, but it's not exactly parsimonious. How did this extraordinary 'conspiracy' get of the ground, everywhere at the same time?

Higher than average general intelligence in these populations through human evolution is less far-fetched.