Yeah, more to the point, there's about 500 million asians in rural inland China who will fail the hell out of a math exam (or often a literacy exam). Meanwhile, there's a few million (citation needed) asians in America who share the trait of having parents with the smarts/resources to move halfway across the world, along with a few million in Singapore living in a first world city-state and another billion or so in developed China / Japan / South Korea / Taiwan / etc.
Looking across those examples, parental income and access to good schools seems to be a more powerful indicator than ethnicity. It just so happens that the 2 are correlated in America.
Meanwhile, there's a few million (citation needed) asians in America who share the trait of having parents with the smarts/resources to move halfway across the world,...
...or at least an employer willing to ship them across the ocean in return for indentured servitude as manual laborers in the 1850-1900 era. And it's not so much parents as great great great grandparents.
Asians got to the US the same way as Italians and Irish, and pretty much at the same time.
I haven't conducted a scientific study on the matter but 85% of the Asians I've met are 1st or at most 2nd generation, with another 10% recent immigrants, and not many descendants of the guys who built the railroad. Maybe it's a little different out west.
Especially look at the section called "Long-Term Results". I haven't studied this personally, but my history professor in college claimed that this act is essentially responsible for the fact that America has the ethnic diversity it does today.
Basically, before 1965 only a very small number of non-white people were allowed to come to the United States. (Partly because of immigration restrictions, partly because of the Gentleman's Agreement of 1907 in which Japan agreed to restrict immigration for us.) After 1965, the quotas were much more equal for different regions of the world.
Looking across those examples, parental income and access to good schools seems to be a more powerful indicator than ethnicity. It just so happens that the 2 are correlated in America.