That's funny--as a member of the group under discussion, I didn't feel particularly degraded. Nor, for that matter, did I feel proud; rather, having always felt that the curious facts mentioned in the article deserved scientific study, I was glad that this was getting some attention in the mainstream press. Maybe this will prompt some research into the cultural factors in my community and how they translate into the observed behavior. I have anecdotal explanations, as does everyone else, for why my people prefer certain professions, but that's not science, and it doesn't answer why the effect is so strong, even in comparison to other Asian groups.
As the article says, "Most Americans know only one thing about Indians--they are really good at spelling bees." I'd much rather be labeled than ignored :-)
Do you really think it's something about Indians, or just the large numbers of candidates and the selection process?
In my experience Indians are a lot more willing to commit to long-term, difficult projects at the urgings of elders. But they share that with other Asian cultures. This also helps explain the spelling bee thing; Indian families are used to the idea of rote education being very important, and even participating in the education of their child that way. Really, almost anybody can get that good at spelling, it's just that more European-American parents would tend to see it as pointless.
The one thing I do find interesting is how the gender split works. Asian minorities (in the American sense: China, Japan, SE Asia) seem to have very different expectations of boys versus girls. But modern Indian families, from the castes that are likely to produce US-bound immigrants, seem to encourage their daughters to go for technology jobs. For me at least, almost 100% of the female engineers I've worked with in the Valley were Indian-born.
And the other thing I've always found strange: the QA departments of many companies in the Valley are dominated by Indian-born women.
Uh, I have? Also, I am half Indian, half mix-of-all-European-countries-Canadian, so I know what North American families are like as well as Indian immigrant families.
In Indian families, children obey and rely on their parents well into adulthood. At pretty much all levels of society. I am a committed Western-style individualist, so I actually think this is a very bad thing.
So you're right that not everyone is a careerist, and that immigrants are self-selected for ambition. But, the thing I was drawing attention to was that an Indian parent can and will suggest a long-term career like going to medical school, and many Indian kids actually do it just because their parents said so.
This is changing -- today, Indian kids assert their own choices more and more -- but it is amazing to me that there are Indian bachelors I know in their 30s, even some living in North America, who still expect mummy and daddy to find them a bride.
"Maybe this will prompt some research into the cultural factors in my community and how they translate into the observed behavior. "
I think it is not good to jump ahead in these conclusions.
what you missing is that the way filters are set up, a major part of indian immigrants that came here are the white collar types. Plus just by sheer numbers (there is one billion+ indians) there is more likely to produce a larger amount of smart/capable people, from a country with lests say 200million people.
When you look at the whole indian society, I would not call it a model. The caste system is still alive, and most indians live in slummy conditions (by european standards anyways).
As the article says, "Most Americans know only one thing about Indians--they are really good at spelling bees." I'd much rather be labeled than ignored :-)