Prompt: How (in what specific ways) does the dominant society/culture of the U.S. represent Asians, and why does it represent them in those particular ways?
Your answer must be in the form of a well-organized essay that revolves around a thesis that is clearly stated, clearly identifiable, and directly addresses the core issue(s) of the question. In support of its thesis, the essay must present a logical and compelling argument based on strong, accurate, and relevant claims grounded in the relevant course materials, meaning that the essay supports its claims with references to specific people, ideas, events, and information, drawn from all of the relevant readings, lectures, class discussions, and films. Make sure that your essay addresses all parts and all implications of the question and considers alternative perspectives where appropriate.
from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.
New York Times
Opinion: The Asian Advantage
By Nicholas Kristof
Oct. 10, 2015
Columbia University’s commencement in 2005. Asian-Americans have higher educational attainment than any other
group in the United States, including whites. Credit…Peter Turnley/Corbis
THIS is an awkward question, but here goes: Why are Asian-Americans so successful in
America?
It’s no secret that Asian-Americans are disproportionately stars in American schools, and even in
American society as a whole. Census data show that Americans of Asian heritage earn more than
other groups, including whites. Asian-Americans also have higher educational attainment than
any other group.
I wrote a series of columns last year, “When Whites Just Don’t Get It,” about racial inequity, and
one of the most common responses from angry whites was along these lines: This stuff about
white privilege is nonsense, and if blacks lag, the reason lies in the black community itself. Just
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look at Asian-Americans. Those Koreans and Chinese make it in America because they work
hard. All people can succeed here if they just stop whining and start working.
Let’s confront the argument head-on. Does the success of Asian-Americans suggest that the age
of discrimination is behind us?
A new scholarly book, “The Asian American Achievement Paradox,” by Jennifer Lee and Min
Zhou, notes that Asian-American immigrants in recent decades have started with one advantage:
They are highly educated, more so even than the average American. These immigrants are
disproportionately doctors, research scientists and other highly educated professionals.
It’s not surprising that the children of Asian-American doctors would flourish in the United
States. But Lee and Zhou note that kids of working-class Asian-Americans often also thrive,
showing remarkable upward mobility.
And let’s just get one notion out of the way: The difference does not seem to be driven by
differences in intelligence.
Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology who has written an excellent book about intelligence,
cites a study that followed a pool of Chinese-American children and a pool of white children into
adulthood. The two groups started out with the same scores on I.Q. tests, but in the end 55
percent of the Asian-Americans entered high-status occupations, compared with one-third of the
whites. To succeed as a manager, whites needed an I.Q. of 100, while Chinese-Americans
needed an I.Q. of only 93.
So the Asian advantage, Nisbett argues, isn’t intellectual firepower as such, but how it is
harnessed.
Some disagree, but I’m pretty sure that one factor is East Asia’s long Confucian emphasis on
education. Likewise, a focus on education also helps explain the success of Jews, who are said to
have had universal male literacy 1,700 years before any other group.
Immigrant East Asians often try particularly hard to get into good school districts, or make other
sacrifices for children’s education, such as giving prime space in the home to kids to study.
There’s also evidence that Americans believe that A’s go to smart kids, while Asians are more
likely to think that they go to hard workers. The truth is probably somewhere in between, but the
result is that Asian-American kids are allowed no excuse for getting B’s — or even an A-. The
joke is that an A- is an “Asian F.”
Strong two-parent families are a factor, too. Divorce rates are much lower for many AsianAmerican communities than for Americans as a whole, and there’s evidence that two-parent
households are less likely to sink into poverty and also have better outcomes for boys in
particular.
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Teachers’ expectations can also play a role. This idea was explored in a famous experiment in
the 1960s by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson.
After conducting I.Q. tests of students at a California school, the experimenters told the teachers
the names of one-fifth of the children who they said were special, and expected to soar. These
special students in first and second grades improved dramatically. A year later, 47 percent of
them had gained 20 or more I.Q. points.
Yet in truth, the special students were chosen at random. This “Pygmalion effect” was a case of
self-fulfilling expectations. Teachers had higher expectations for the special students and made
them feel capable — and so that’s what they became.
Lee and Zhou, for their part, think that positive stereotyping may be part of an explanation for
the success of Asian-Americans in school.
“They’re like, ‘Oh, you’re Chinese and you’re good in math,’” the book quotes a girl called
Angela as saying. “It’s advantageous when they think that.”
(Of course, positive stereotypes create their own burden, with sometimes tremendous stress on
children to earn those A’s, at the cost of enjoying childhood. And it can be hard on AsianAmerican kids whose comparative advantage isn’t in science or math but in theater or punk rock.
Among Asians, there’s sometimes concern that there’s too much focus on memorization, not
enough on creativity.)
Another factor in Asian scholastic success may be the interaction of social stereotypes and selfconfidence. Scholars like Claude Steele have found that blacks sometimes suffer from
“stereotype threat”: Anxiety from negative stereotypes impairs performance. Lee and Zhou argue
that Asian-Americans sometimes ride on the opposite of “stereotype threat,” a “stereotype
promise” that they will be smart and hard-working.
Lee and Zhou also say the success of Asian-Americans, far from revealing a lack of
discrimination, is in part a testament to it. They say Asian-Americans work hard to succeed in
areas with clear metrics like math and science in part as a protection against bias — and in any
case, many Asians still perceive a “bamboo ceiling” that is hard to break through.
To me, the success of Asian-Americans is a tribute to hard work, strong families and passion for
education. Bravo! Ditto for the success of Jews, West Indians and other groups that have shown
that upward mobility is possible, but let’s not exaggerate the lessons here.
Why should the success of the children of Asian doctors, nurtured by teachers, be reassuring to a
black boy in Baltimore who is raised by a struggling single mom, whom society regards as a
potential menace? Disadvantage and marginalization are complex, often deeply rooted in social
structures and unconscious biases, sometimes compounded by hopelessness and self-destructive
behaviors, and because one group can access the American dream does not mean that all groups
can.
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So, sure, let’s celebrate the success of Asian-Americans, and emulate the respect for education
and strong families. But let’s not use the success of Asians to pat ourselves on the back and
pretend that discrimination is history.
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 11, 2015, Section SR, Page 1 of the New York
edition with the headline: The Asian Advantage . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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