
Rise of the Tiger Nation: Asian-American Success - azth
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204076204578076613986930932.html
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colmvp
'Success'

As an Asian male, even though I might be highly educated, make a comfortable
amount of money, own properties, be a productive citizen (blah blah blah),
nothing softens the blow of hearing women (both Asian and non-Asian) saying
they'd never date an Asian guy or saying Asian guys aren't attractive. Or
seeing advertisements/movies that always show mixed couples as White male -
Asian female. Or watching 21st century American movies/TV shows that still
typecast Asian men as asexual action stars / comedic relief.

If I had to choose between either this 'success' or being a white male with
less success, I'd easily choose the latter.

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starpilot
According to one online dating study [1], asian men can compensate with income
to appeal to a white woman. An asian guy must make $247,000 _more_ than a
white guy for them to have the same appeal to a white woman.

[1] page 49, <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=895442>

~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
Or you know... just compensate in old good personality:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64Ixzp94ksw> (Asian guy in weelchair doing
pretty good)

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starpilot
Physical disabilities garner sympathy, being non-white does not.

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jQueryIsAwesome
They were not even mad when he stood up to reveal he is not actually disabled;
and there are another bunch of videos when they dress as ridicule as possible
and still get away with it.

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nostrademons
I wonder how much of this is because American immigration policy is basically
a high-pass filter for Asians. When my dad came over in 1959, pretty much the
only way you could immigrate to the U.S. was to be highly educated and work
your ass off to impress some organization that would sponsor you. Nowadays
it's much the same thing with the H1-B system: one of the largest categories
of Asian visas is specifically to bring in highly-educated tech workers. It's
no wonder that they and their kids tend to do well; they wouldn't be able to
come here if they couldn't.

~~~
kamaal
Your statement reminds of some colleges here in India which admit only the
best students and then claim to produce the best results.

The fact is you can build a hub where the best can gather and produce the best
results. You can then claim that you will take in the best, because the
results or so. This can go on in a never ending cycle.

~~~
mamal
@kamaal, it's the same story everywhere. I think you haven't understood it at
all.

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kamaal
Do Indians count as 'Asians' in the American vocabulary? If yes then I can
shed some light on why they become so successful.

The people who immigrate to the US are basically as somebody mentioned in this
thread can pass the 'American high pass filter'. This is true. For a long time
here in India, the only employment arena's were civil services(government
jobs) where there was absolutely to growth, Medicine, Or Engineering. But
either way you had to depend working on a public sector company, which are
basically massive bureaucracies whose whole intention was to run a massive
payroll for to provide people with jobs. So you had only a few options in your
career as an Indian.

Obviously those Indians when they immigrated to the US prospered, there is a
big reason for that. Starved for opportunities, growth and wealth here they
pounced on anything and everything they got and made very good use of it. Its
called 'milking the opportunity', however most people I know have told me
although they got what they wanted, 'It was not worth it'- any Indian
immigrating to the US is basically immigrating for his kids. His whole life is
likely to go towards building that platform for his kids so that they can lead
a better life. He has to start from a scratch, he needs to build a family,
connections, social circles etc. Nearly everything you can ever imagine has to
start from the scratch. And that is difficult you are likely to go into your
late forties to early fifties doing that.

That scenario is rapidly changing today. Besides, most of the 'developing
countries' you can talk of are doing very well today. Recently a relative of
mine who has immigrated to US had to fly down due to a family medical
emergency. He was shocked and surprised to how much Bangalore has changed just
in 12-15 years. He even admitted that reasons why people left India to go the
US are quickly drying out.

Indian is seeing a unique period in its growth, I mean the youth even a decade
back used to look our growth story as a momentary spur and 'Nothing much is
going to happen in this country' attitude. That is rapidly changing. More and
more people I've met are confident about things here. There are start ups
coming up all over the place, People are more open to taking risks. Basically
the Indian economy and country as a whole is maturing rather rapidly.
Infrastructure development is massive, and I can tell you in another 15-20
years India would have prospered so much it will make current day immigration
decisions look bad.

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eshvk
> Do Indians count as 'Asians' in the American vocabulary? If yes then I can
> shed some light on why they become so successful. No. Asians refers to
> people from East Asia. The terminology is different in England, I believe.

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confluence
You mean small selective sampling mixed with faulty reasoning.

Immigrants are usually self-selected hard working, smart and relatively rich
(otherwise you can't afford to emigrate), risk taking people - because you'd
otherwise have a lot of trouble surviving in America. Stating "Asian-American"
success, is like stating "Harvard-American" success - your sample is already
biased.

Reversion to the mean always kicks in. Give immigrant Asians 30 more years -
and you'll see them well integrated and achieving the same as average
Americans.

People centric exceptionalism is vastly overrated - what's more important is
the wind at their backs (cheap resources/labour/stable society/technology
convergence) and the benefits they receive when they are born
(rich/schooling/health/connections).

~~~
barry-cotter
_Reversion to the mean always kicks in. Give immigrant Asians 30 more years
-and you'll see them well integrated and achieving the same as average
Americans_

Yeah, just like Americans of Jewish ancestry! A group that came over most poor
and not speaking the language very well and with low social capital and mostly
did very well, and whose children did very well will revert all the way to
average.

~~~
confluence
The vast majority of that can be explained by randomness, the extreme variance
of small samples and inappropriate use of the fundamental attribution error.

Minorities live or die not because of anything intrinsic - but merely because
of prevailing environmental forces. The "Jewish-success", like the article's
"Asian-success", is merely a statistical fluke, just as is the failure of
other oppressed minorities throughout the world.

No group of people is better or worse than any other. They merely inhabit
different environments. Thinking otherwise leads to fundamentally faulty
thinking, inappropriate cultural stereotyping and general stupidity. Humans as
a species are highly homogenous and population variances can usually be
explained through environmental factors and random genetic mutation than by
any inherent ability.

> _Long and Kittles show that indeed, African populations contain about 100%
> of human genetic diversity, whereas in populations outside of Africa
> diversity is much reduced, for example in their population from New Guinea
> only about 70% of human variation is captured._

\-- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation>

> _While biologists sometimes use the concept of race to make distinctions
> among fuzzy sets of traits, others in the scientific community suggest that
> the idea of race is often used in a naive or simplistic way, i.e. that among
> humans, race has no taxonomic significance: all living humans belong to the
> same species, Homo sapiens. Social conceptions and groupings of races vary
> over time, involving folk taxonomies that define essential types of
> individuals based on perceived traits. Scientists consider biological
> essentialism obsolete, and generally discourage racial explanations for
> collective differentiation in both physical and behavioral traits._

\--
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(classification_of_human_b...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_\(classification_of_human_beings\))

So I call bullshit on biologically derived differentiation across human
populations by people with poor statistical and genetic understanding.

There are ~2 billion Asians - reversion to the mean works highly effectively
in these cases as immigration pressures stabilise.

Race violates my rule that if it's vague, it's bullshit.

Hence racial/cultural/fuzzy explanations for differentiating phenomena are
discarded for the crap that they are.

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lalwat
I find this as interesting as Katy Perry voting for Obama. There are about 4.2
billion (60%) people living in Asia. If they weren't affecting the U.S. —
something would be very odd. I am not surprised that they're doing well as
they are not forced to emigrate.

EDIT: 'Katy', apparently.

~~~
antidaily
Katy.

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smugengineer69
Typical WSJ red scare claptrap. This paper is seriously still caught in the
McCarthy era, especially when it comes to anything at all related to Asia.
Sure this article seems positive on the surface, but underneath it all is a
deep, abiding, white fear of being overtaken as the dominant racial group.

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rubashov
The debate around the original asian exclusion acts is kind of interesting to
read. A lot of articles from the time are reproduced online. The common
sentiment was that white americans didn't want to compete with people willing
to work 16 hour days. The fear was a generally compromised quality of life. Of
course all this nuance gets boiled down to mere "toxic racism" by the NYT. I
mean it's not like large numbers of asians willing to study huge numbers of
hours a week have had any affect on quality of life or opportunities for
today's students...

~~~
subsystem
The important word being "compete". As far as I know Americans are fine with
poor people working multiple jobs for minimum wage. In fact the sentiment
often seems to be that they are not working hard enough. If you want to avoid
a "race to the bottom" you raise the bottom.

