Who Do We Blame For How Well Asians Are Doing?
Josh Zumbrun has this chart in a WSJ piece on US poverty and income equality. Check out how well Asians are doing:
As Zumbrun notes:
The median Asian family earns $14,000 more than the median white family, which earns nearly $18,000 more than the median Hispanic family, which earns about $8,000 more than the median black family.
Don't forget that Asians have been subject to a great deal of discrimination -- and even now, are often judged differently for college, because so many do so well. (There's this notion that we need "diverse" campuses; we can't have all Asian faces. Well, if they earned their way in, why the hell not?)
What to Asian families have that other families don't? Intact families. And then some. From an NBC News piece:
Asian Americans are twice as likely as whites to live in households with at least two adult generations.
From a 2012 Pew survey on "The Rise of Asian Americans":
Asian Americans are the highest-income, best-educated and fastest-growing racial group in the United States. They are more satisfied than the general public with their lives, finances and the direction of the country, and they place more value than other Americans do on marriage, parenthood, hard work and career success, according to a comprehensive new nationwide survey by the Pew Research Center.A century ago, most Asian Americans were low-skilled, low-wage laborers crowded into ethnic enclaves and targets of official discrimination. Today they are the most likely of any major racial or ethnic group in America to live in mixed neighborhoods and to marry across racial lines. When newly minted medical school graduate Priscilla Chan married Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg last month, she joined the 37% of all recent Asian-American brides who wed a non-Asian groom.1
These milestones of economic success and social assimilation have come to a group that is still majority immigrant. Nearly three-quarters (74%) of Asian-American adults were born abroad; of these, about half say they speak English very well and half say they don't.
And also:
Asian Americans have a pervasive belief in the rewards of hard work. Nearly seven-in-ten (69%) say people can get ahead if they are willing to work hard, a view shared by a somewhat smaller share of the American public as a whole (58%). And fully 93% of Asian Americans describe members of their country of origin group as "very hardworking"; just 57% say the same about Americans as a whole.
The solution to this inequality is Anti-Affirmative Action. Have colleges place limits on the numbers of Asians admitted and financial aid. No Asian Studies Departments or dorms or safe spaces. And, since Asians aren't failures, they aren't counted as "People of Color" for diversity purposes in employment, housing or other official publications or press accounts. Further, certainly, don't try (or even talk about) putting one of them on the Supreme Court. With luck, they'll realize they aren't welcome and will go back to where they (or their parents or grandparents) came from, and will take their professional educations and jobs with them.
Wfjag at September 21, 2016 2:54 AM
There already seem to be unfair standards for Asian college admission. I read yesterday somewhere that Asians should not check the box for race on their college application -- which is not all that helpful a bit of advice if your name is "Hsu" or something.
Amy Alkon at September 21, 2016 7:28 AM
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/fear-of-a-college-educated-barista/500792/?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email
Maybe kids and their parents deserve what they ask for.
Bob in Texas at September 21, 2016 8:29 AM
Asians value stable home enviornments, education and hard work; and they have the highest average incomes, Inner city black youth (many from broken homes) denigrate education and hard work as "acting white." They also have the lowest average incomes. Wonder if there could be any connection to the wage disparity?
Probably not. I guess we'll never know the answer.
Jay at September 21, 2016 9:17 AM
SJWs want it to be all about race, but it is really all about culture. And no one can lock in culture. No one can prevent a black person from valuing education, family, or hard work. Of course a ghetto environment can ruin kids before they have a chance to figure this out. Young people of all races end up in gangs or drugged out, and it is hard to recover. Conversely, it is easier when you are 18 to go right when all around you people hold positive values. BUT I know individuals who made a decision to become successful in spite of their race, and they did so. It is NOT beyond control. Blacks are NOT locked in forever to bad outcomes. The doctrine that race is destiny is a very dangerous self-fulfilling ideology. Dump it.
Craig Loehle at September 21, 2016 10:36 AM
Most of mainstream America is unaware and unwilling to hear about any discrimination Asians suffered. That destroys the narrative of America as a country in which a minority group cannot get ahead and rise above mistreatment without massive government assistance.
One cause for the lack of self-flagellation on historic Asian-American racism may be that California was the major abuser of Asian-Americans, so we can't hold them accountable the way we are required to hold the South responsible for abusing African-Americans. Federal and California laws were written to exclude Asians from mainstream American culture. They were restricted in their ability to become US citizens (e.g., Asian-Exclusion laws specifically denied immigrants from Japan citizenship and then we imprisoned them in concentration camps because they were not US citizens).
With the exception of Kung Fu, Bad Day at Black Rock, and Smilla's Sense of Snow, few significant Hollywood productions come to mind that featured as a backdrop the historic and rampant anti-Asian discrimination in our Western states. California can blame someone else for past African-American discrimination (despite the lack of film stars, business leaders, and politicians of a darker hue in California in the past).
Conan the Grammarian at September 21, 2016 3:00 PM
Hell on Wheels did a pretty good job the last two seasons were the murder of Chinese railway workers was at most considered a crime against property, and worthy of reparations.
To the railroad.
I R A Darth Aggie at September 21, 2016 3:58 PM
@Conan,
Hollywood still does that. Turning NuSulu gay is just a progwashed way for pushing the The Asian guy never gets the pretty lady trope.
Sixclaws at September 21, 2016 6:52 PM
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