For Asian Americans, racial mobility has not meant full incorporation or equal status in US society.

Approval for interracial marriages in US society has increased drastically in the past 25 years, and Asians are at the forefront of this trend; one third of Asian marriages in the US are interracial. Jennifer Lee writes that because of the selectivity of Asian immigrants towards the highly educated, Asians as a group have gone from being denied basic rights such as citizenship and the right to marry, to being perceived as desirable marriage partners. She argues that this shift should not be mistaken for true equality with White Americans; Asian Americans are racialized as a ‘model minority’, and the shift towards their perception as ‘marriageable’ only covers Asian women – reflecting how this group is exoticised and stereotyped in gender-traditional ways.