
The Real Secret to Asian American Success Wasn't Education - DarkContinent
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/19/the-real-secret-to-asian-american-success-was-not-education/
======
edblarney
This is some really dubious logic and it's terrible that this should be
considered valid research.

To exclude the fact that some groups work harder, have completely different
attitudes towards self preservation, who might have skills passed down from
generation to generation, who might actually be more intelligent (contentious,
I know, but it could be true).

It's ridiculous.

I grew up with a lot of Asian kids, and enough Black kids, and they were
definitely different ethnic groups, in so many ways. It's crazy to think that
'only societies attitudes towards them' made the difference.

~~~
a_w
I really hate these comments which imply that black (african) people are
intellectually inferior. If so, how do you explain the fact that African
immigrants and their children have consistently been the most successful group
in terms of educational and income achievement?

Just do a little research before insinuating that africans/blacks are less
intelligent. Data says otherwise.

[0]
[http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=2014101...](http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=2014101521150498)
[1] [http://atlantablackstar.com/2012/10/06/obama-education-
initi...](http://atlantablackstar.com/2012/10/06/obama-education-initiative-
sparks-debate-on-black-immigrants-and-achievement/) [2]
[http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2007-03-18/news/070318034...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2007-03-18/news/0703180344_1_black-
immigrants-high-achieving-immigrants-biracial-couples)

~~~
a_w
Here is an even more extensive study on the academic achievements of African
immigrants and their descendants in the U.S. and U.K. [0]

If anything, the research demonstrates that the Igbo from Nigeria are
exceptionally successful - more high achieving than Chinese and Indians:

"Africans speaking Luganda and Krio did better than the Chinese students in
2011. The igbo were even more impressive given their much bigger numbers (and
their consistently high performance over the years, gaining a 100 percent pass
rate in 2009!). The superior Igbo achievement on GCSEs is not new and has been
noted in studies that came before the recent media discovery of African
performance. A 2007 report on “case study” model schools in Lambeth also
included a rare disclosure of specified Igbo performance (recorded as Ibo in
the table below) and it confirms that Igbos have been performing exceptionally
well for a long time (5 + A*-C GCSEs); in fact, it is difficult to find a time
when they ever performed below British whites."

[0] [http://www.unz.com/article/the-iq-gap-is-no-longer-a-
black-a...](http://www.unz.com/article/the-iq-gap-is-no-longer-a-black-and-
white-issue/)

~~~
edblarney
What you are doing is proving that there is a strong difference in behaviour
among ethnic groups and that racism doesn't really account for (assuming
'Black people' face the same degree of racism wherever they are from).

Your articles say nothing about the possibility of variance in intelligence
among different groups.

~~~
a_w
I don't know. I have personally been told by good meaning friends that 'but
you are different from African Americans' by other ethnic groups when I was in
Engineering grad school.

Also on your point regarding variance in intelligence among ethnic groups,
African Americans mainly came from west Africa, and according to the article I
linked above, west African immigrants in the US and UK are the highest
achievers, so genes don't seem to be the issue.

So, what is left, culture? If so, the culture of the African American people
is molded by racism, both personal and institutional racism.

All I am asking of you really is to not lightly dismiss racism as a
contributing, if not the main factor in the achievement gap. It would be easy
for me to say that if I can go to school and do well, why can't they do it
too? But even though I grew up in a poor, war torn African country,
fortunately I was never told on a daily basis that I was inferior because I
happened to be black. And I am enormously thankful for that.

------
guns
> But the greatest thing that ever happened to them wasn't that they studied
> hard, or that they benefited from tiger moms or Confucian values. It's that
> other Americans started treating them with a little more respect.

It seems strange to ignore the possibility that one led to the other.

~~~
gbersac
Had the same idea while reading this post. It tries to prove that "all myths
are rooted in truth", is wrong because asian american succeded, not because
they worked better, but because they benefitted from better popularity.

My interpretation is : asian worked harder (as a group) it was noticed and it
improved their reputation. Thanks to this, they got better wages.

------
userbinator
_Instead, his research suggests that society simply became less racist toward
Asians._

I think some more interesting questions are why that happened, and why the
same didn't happen with blacks.

~~~
backtoyoujim
US law.

~~~
plaidturtle
Law itself has very little power without change in social norm. Look into
Foucault's modern philosophy of power.

------
pcbro141
There certainly does appear to be a white supremacist fixation on black
people. I was thinking the other day how odd it is that "white supremacists"
(in America ) seem to spend a majority of their time talking about blacks when
Asians are on average performing better in every metric. Life expectancy,
earnings, education. I thought white supremacists would see Asian American
success as a threat to their ideology (that whites are genetically superior
and should be performing better than all races).

I only asked this question once on a YouTube race thread to self proclaimed
white supremacists, and the response I got was that Asians don't commit crime
or cause trouble so it's alright if they're performing better.

Which makes me believe a more accurate term for most white supremacists (in
America at least) would be "anti-black".

~~~
CarpetBench
Interesting response.

Really interesting given that white supremacists also tend to be anti-semitic,
and most of the same tropes about Asians also apply to the Jewish community:
Focus on education, low rates of crime, etc.

Maybe that's just a factor of how modern white supremacy came to be, though
(i.e. Nazis).

------
belovedeagle
So was it that

> Journalists were praising Asians for being hard workers who kept their heads
> down, cherished education and didn’t complain

? Or maybe it was just that

> Asians [were] being hard workers who kept their heads down, cherished
> education and didn’t complain.

I'll go further than another top-level comment and say that embracing the
first sentence unironically is being _intentionally_ obtuse, given that one
literally has to write the second sentence to get there.

But it's the unsurprising consequence of a worldview that "hard work never
gets anyone anywhere". Note that you don't have to reject the idea of
privilege entirely in order to acknowledge that hard work is also a path to
success; and this article goes to show that hard work and success is also a
path to privilege, not [just] the other way around.

------
dpc59
The Irish and Italians used to be considered non-white. I wonder if one day
society will consider Asians as "white".

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
Disproportionately successful minorities such as East Asian and Indian
immigrants are considered functionally white for propaganda purposes, as their
success in modern institutions is significant evidence that these institutions
are not discriminating based on anything other than ability.

------
tzs
I'd like to see a similar look at how and why attitudes changed towards
Italian-americans, Irish-americans, and Jews. These groups were all
discriminated against and considered undesirable by the majority for a long
time, and now are mostly accepted.

I have suggested in jest before that what determines whether or not a minority
will gain acceptance in the US is their food. Americans like Asian, Italian,
and Jewish food, and Irish drinking culture, so ethnic restaurants from those
groups became popular, and acceptance of the people behind the food followed.
We like Mexican food, and Hispanics seem on track for mainstream acceptance.

Black food is too similar to general Southern food for the mainstream to see
it as a separate cuisine, so acceptance has been harder for blacks.

------
lifeisstillgood
I suspect that the "them and us" mentality of our inner chimp is binary not
n-ary so if society is really anti-black our minds cannot easily handle also
being anti-"something else". So Asians simply became "honouray white" in order
to make room for racism elsewhere.

It's something similar to the waves of immigrants hitting Londons docklands
for generations - each wave suffers then moves outwards to the suburbs and the
newest wave becomes the focus of ire.

Just a thought - depressingly maybe we always need a "them"

------
rokosbasilisk
It was their family unit.

------
vvilliam
what a load of racist bullshit. So a $8,000 difference in wages in young men
is proof that Asians got to where they are today because white people allowed
them to?

so other people's respect will put money in my pocket? Damn why did I bother
going to college?

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
Whole lot of 'race realism' in this thread even for hacker news.

