(via Econlog) Those of the any Asian persuasion in the last 10-15 years have probably heard at least one campus activist screaming about the Model Minority Myth. Now, simple yokel that I am, I would have have thought it a good thing to be a model for just about anything (although I suppose I’m still waiting for swashbuckling, studmeister South Indian action hero…).
But, there’s a certain corpus of thought in Leftist politics that strongly believes otherwise. They assert that the Model Minority Myth is perpetrated by The Man for a variety of motives such as the ones summarized at ModelMinority.com –
…Americans reluctant to address the realities of continuing racism and white privilege have consistently portrayed Asian Americans as a “model minority” who have uniformly succeeded by merit.While superficially complimentary to Asian Americans, the real purpose and effect of this portrayal is to celebrate the status quo in race relations. First, by over-emphasizing Asian American success, it de-emphasizes the problems Asian Americans continue to face from racial discrimination in all areas of public and private life. Second, by misrepresenting Asian American success as proof that America provides equal opportunities for those who conform and work hard, it excuses American society from careful scrutiny on issues of race in general, and on the persistence of racism against Asian Americans in particular.
A recent, interesting study conducted by Northwestern U decided to put some of these claims to the test.
It’s the richest, most edumacated, most uppity whites who most strongly subscribe to Myth of the Model MinorityInterestingly, they used many of the same attitudinal studies that “Asian Critical Scholars” have cited in the past to tease out some important findings. Their first step was to identify the basket of “non-Hispanic whites” AsiaPhiles who would most thoroughly subscribe to Model Minority tenets. The results –
20% of non-Hispanic whites rated Asian Americans as more intelligent than whites; and 34% of non-Hispanic whites rated Asian Americans as harder working… 70% ranked Asian Americans as wealthier than other minority groups… 42% as harder working and 33% as more intelligent.
Focusing on these “non-Hispanic whites,” the study authors found that –
… education (highest degree attained), performance on a vocabulary test, individual income, and occupational prestige all correlated positively and strongly with believing that Asian Americans work harder than whites and work harder than other minorities. Such respondants were also more likely to live in the 12 largest metropolitan areas……stereotyping the positive work habits and financial success of Asian Americans rises with education and socioeconomic status…
So it’s the richest, most edumacated, most uppity whites who most strongly subscribe to Myth of the Model Minority. The second issue was that when these folks were queried about specific policy issues, the ill effects of the Model Minority myth become difficult, if not impossible to find in at least a few, pointed policy examples –
We draw three main conclusions from our data. First, generally the data do not confirm the hypothesis that non-Hispanic whites who hold positive model minority-type views fear or hold negative opinions about about Asian Americans or about immigration more generally. Second, the belief among non-Hispanic whites that Asian Americans work harder than other minorities does not usually correlate with increased antagonism toward government assistance for African Americans or opposition to affirmative action. …The data simply do not support the thesis that people who hold model-minority beliefs generally think that all minority groups must pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
Now my personal views when it comes to minority politics tends to be more Thomas Sowell than Al Sharpton so parts of this result don’t sit entirely well with me. For example, when the rubber hits the road, it’s tough to reconcile an argument that Asian achievement is underrecognized with a desire for more college affirmative action. BUT, while I may disagree with the policy prescribed, it’s important to note that this is still a significant departure from the standard Asian Critical Studies narrative – AsiaPhilic whites are the most aggressive in changing the “status quo in race relations”. More specifically, Whites – well, these Whites, at least – are least likely to use Asians to abandon / indict Blacks & Hispanics.
There is one important area where the model minority myth was upheld –
People who think that Asian Americans are smart, hardworking, or rich tend to be less likely to think that Asian Americans are discriminated against.
Color me guilty. As countless developmental economists over the years have discovered, the factors that create wealth are mighty tough to master and notoriously multivariate. Individual stories of discrimination might be easy to come by but their significance needs to be weighed against mighty aggregate data like household income.
My personal observation is that desi’s/brown/razibs sand(ier) niggers are more often discriminated against looked down upon than other ‘asians’.
Yes, I sense “Asian Conflation” here. 🙂
These are the same studies (like Princeton’s) that say that affirmative action, when eliminated, disproportionately benefits Asian Americans. And while this might be semi-true, it also totally neglects the differing socioeconomics and regional variations in the APIA community. I mean, Hmong refugees aren’t doing too well, and very few make it into higher ed. Please, how big is Asia? How many people are Asian or of Asian descent?
These studies also tend to focus on “elite” universities instead of the total college-bound population, and when you start comparing graduate school admissions the story totally flips.
And wasn’t it our own Dinesh D’Souza who posited: Why can’t an African American be more like an Asian?
Alas, the MMM might not be so easily proven or rebuked through through survey data. Anecdotally, my frosh roommate (a well to do WASP) continuously derogated “those hyper-competitive Asians.” She didn’t think they didn’t deserve to be here, but she definitely harbored some pretty racist sentiments. Funnily enough, both her roomates were Asian American, and we used to hear these rants pretty regularly (those Asians, not us Asians, the usual).
‘race’ is a societal construct – why bother
Or to put it in another way, the studies say that affirmative action, as currently implemented, disproportionately discriminate against Asian Americans. 🙂
As far as I am concerned, affirmative action is a scheme where, in order to make up for the actions of racist white elites in the South in the past against black Americans, other elite whites take seats away from Asian Americans and give them to Hispanics, Caribbeans and Africans from Africa.
This reminds me of some racist bullshit the YCT (a conservative students’ organization) pulled at my school last year. They held an “Affirmative Action Bakesale” where they sold the same cookies to whites for 75 cents & to blacks and Hispanics for 25 cents. In parentheses at the bottom of their sign they wrote “Asians: $1.25.” As wrong as the bakesale was, I found it funny that even many wasp-y conservatives recognize Asians are being harmed by aa more than whites.
Oh yeah, my freshman year roommate complained to her other wasp friend that the Indian kids in engineering were too cutthroat when she thought I wasn’t in the room.
from the new jews by matthew yglesias: All of the major departures from a strict academic meritocracy — affirmative action, legacy preferences, athletic recruitment, emphasis on extracurricular activities, geographical diversity, etc. — just so happen to cut against Asian applicants. As a result, just as with Jews back in the day, the Asian-Americans who wind up admitted have substantially better test scores and other academic qualifications than do the non-Asians. Karabel notes all this near the end of the book, but doesn’t really draw any conclusions. Nor do I, really, have any conclusions to draw either since strict meritocracy doesn’t seem to me to actually be a particularly worthy social ideal.
deal with it yellow-skin!
p.s. asian-americans tend to have more variance than many groups because of heterogeneity. even ‘model minority’ groups like chinese exhibit a higher than normal frequency bias toward welfare dependence, but that is because many older people don’t have financial resources.
also, one of my friends in college was the vice president of the asian pacific american student union. a chinese american, he’d always talk to me about two things when white boyz weren’t around:
1) he wanted to tap some brown (patel) ass (i wasn’t in the place to aid him in his quest)
2) he always had these bizarre stories of asian americans getting pulled out of cars getting ‘rodney kinged.’ he REALLY, REALLY wanted to oppressed 🙂 he & the rest of APASU had plenty of talking points why asians weren’t model minorities. can’t a brother can a get little white skin privilege and oppression?
As wrong as the bakesale was, I found it funny that even many wasp-y conservatives recognize Asians are being harmed by aa more than whites.
can someone define ‘waspy’ or ‘wasp’ here, the terms have been in circulation a lot these past days, i’m curious if there is a set prototypical definition.
well gee, maybe immigration policies that have historically discriminated against many types of asians, not to mention the $$$ it takes to travel this far, might also go a way in explaining the seeming success and “hard work” of many asian americans in our society. though as some have pointed out, there are also many under-recognized working class azn ams. but i guess it’s in our best interest to downplay all these facts because there’s nothing better than being given props by educated uppity white folks!
As far as I am concerned, affirmative action is a scheme where, in order to make up for the actions of racist white elites in the South in the past against black Americans, other elite whites take seats away from Asian Americans and give them to Hispanics, Caribbeans and Africans from Africa.
things to consider
1) very few people go to elite schools 2) it is probably more salient in terms of scholarship money (i.e., we’ve all known white-ass ‘native americans’ who suck the indigenous scholarship money dry) 3) affirmative action includes a whole umbrella of programs. one of them is gov. contracts, which asians benefit from (though i recall in san francisco about 10 years ago chinese americans tried to increase their share of the pie by defining browns out of asian americanness) 4) there are hardly any elite schools in the south. a the ones there are attract a disproportionate number of northerners, tulane, duke and emory. so i don’t think it is that. the problem happens to be that ‘underrepresented’ minorities don’t represent on standardized tests and GPA, and you need a black, latino and amerindian face, etc. etc. at harvard for diversity sake. from what i gather, though there is some affirmative action, the big thing that happens is harvard and yale, etc. consume many of the top rank underrrepresented minorities, and it is high elite, but not THE elite, places where affirmative starts to show discrepancies because there aren’t that many people ‘on the bench.’ consider this from the end of racism (page 303): In 1994, only 493 African Americans in the United States scored about 700 on the math sections of the test, and only 148 African Americans scored that high on the verbal section. These figures compare with 11,000 Asians who exceeded 700 on the math sections and 1,800 who did so on the verbal section. These figures are especially astonishing considering that only 80,000 Asians compared with 100,000 blacks took the test.
As a WASP myself, I figured I’d offer a definition to “razib_the_atheist”: WASP stands for “White Ango-Saxon Protestant (Christian).” However, it is often used as a derogatory term, basically meaning “elite white person who is completely out of touch with the rest of the world.” I hope I’m not a WASP in THAT sense of the word, but I’m certainly white, anglo-saxon and Protestant… and I often use the word in a more derogatory sense to complain about the lack of diversity or lack of AWARENESS of differences among many people in my home state of South Carolina.
As a WASP myself, I figured I’d offer a definition to “razib_the_atheist”: WASP stands for “White Ango-Saxon Protestant (Christian).” However, it is often used as a derogatory term, basically meaning “elite white person who is completely out of touch with the rest of the world.”
yes, i know what it officially stands for, but it seems to me it is pretty obviously being used in a racist/ethnicist sense by some here. i.e., if someone was white as snow, they are WASP, even if they are irish catholic. at least that’s what i suspect. i just wanted our pigeon-holes to be precise, or at least my perceptions of the pigeon hole.
And wasn’t it our own Dinesh D’Souza who posited: Why can’t an African American be more like an Asian?
This is interesting – Parsis (Zoroastrians) are considered the model minority in India. Right-wing hindu leaders often say: Why can’t the Muslims be more like the Parsis? Actually, the muslims are similar to the Parsis in one way – they are not eligible for the affirmative action programs in India either.
Here is a great definition of “WASP,” a term of course coined by a UPenn sociologist in the 1960s. The wiki entry is actually pretty good, imo.
Has anyone read The Chosen yet? Not the book by Chaim Potok, but the new book on the history of admissions policies at elite universities? I’ve heard it’s quite good.
Razib, I think you bring up a really good point about how APIA activists often try to find a place between their “common oppression” by trying to emulate the oppression that other folks face as opposed to acknowledging their own individual privilege[s] (which of course, vary dramatically).
There’s also an interesting econ. history analysis of the impact of the GI Bill in the South vs. North and its historic impact on the educational attainment of other Blacks pre and post the “Great Migration.” I’ll try to dig up the link this weekend, but I think it’s on JStor.
As far as I understand, ‘model minority’ is one of those quaintly colonial techniques aimed at dividing and conquer melanined Americans into two camps – Black/Hispanic vs. Asian.
It seems fair to say that changes to American immigration policies of the 1960s are to blame for this model mythology. Hellz, if a country permits mostly engineers and doctors from a particular continent to cross its borders, then the ‘sample’ is inherently skewed towards highly educated, driven people. Who tend to raise highly educated, driven kids.
Had the U.S. instead elected to entice African or Latino engineers/doctors to come to the U.S. (in order to fill the science void created by sending so many thousands of young men off to fight a pointless war), perhaps ‘model minority’ adherants would understand the fallacy (and inherent racism) of this theory.
Well, Muslims are not eligible for affirmative action because just 2 hundred years ago they constituted the ruling class. Dont compare the muslim situation with African american affirmative action in the US. Its apples and oranges.
We have black skin and we look like the arabs they see on TV.
I think a certain amount of egalitarianism is a positive thing in society. The decendends of black slaves and native americans should get affirmative action.
But its stupid when you start extending it to include Nigerian, Somali and Mexican imigrants.
razib, those differences in test scores are astounding. 443 to 11,000 in scoring over 700 on the math sections? Wow.
*Why on earth do people feel okay bad-mouthing all whites? What is this WASP-y business? I know plenty of WASPs that are more open-minded than some of the desis I know. See? See how I do that? I use the weasel word ‘some’ in front of desi so that I can claim I’m not pigeon-holing inaccurately, as razib so nicely put it.
**hey, desi-males. How about reparations to the desi-females for the historical injustices against women? I can set up a paypal account….. (predictable jokes starting here: what’s alimony?, etc, etc, etc).
Rats. I ruined my own little joke by writing all in front of white….
Oh, well.
*I’m still open to any ideas about female reparations….
*Why on earth do people feel okay bad-mouthing all whites?
The same reason why minorities and Scheduled Castes in India critique Hindus, particularly upper caste Hindus. And the critique varies from inchoate badmouthing to nuanced analyses of privilege. Anyone who has the majority of wealth and political power is going to be subjected to critque in a democracy. Thats just the way it goes.
Why on earth do people feel okay bad-mouthing all whites? –
The same reason why minorities and Scheduled Castes in India critique Hindus, particularly upper caste Hindus
Lower castes in India have been oppressed for centuries. We have no such excuse in the US. Prejudice and some discrimination is not the same as oppression. I personally believe, whites on the average are more tolerant and open minded than other races including desis.
So what you are saying is that its ok to criticize privilaged groups based on oppression commited by their ancestors possibly through no direct fault of their own.
But its not ok to criticize privilaged groups based on present day prejudice and intolarance for which they may be directly responsible.
Thanks, Vinod, for writing this article.
I think that too many times the Asian community (and especially the desis) don’t recognize the folly of accepting the Model Minority Myth as a compliment. I know that I suffered because of it.
I was one of those desi teenagers who just wasn’t good at math and science and was extremely good at liberal arts subjects. My math and science teachers were always giving me weird looks and “I’m disappointed in you” speeches when I didn’t get As in their classes–they thought that all Asians naturally excelled at math and science, and I wasn’t doing well because I was “lazy”. And my English Literature teachers always seemed to resent it when I did well in their classes, because after all, we all know that only white kids are good at English Literature.
Because of their prejudices, high school was hell for me.
Because people of color have not been oppressed for centuries in the US? You may have to tell Blacks, Native Americans, Mexicans/Mexican Americans, Pilipinos/Pil-Ams, Japanese Americans and Chinese Americans and South Asian Americans about that.
And, not in defense of bad mouthing all whites, but you can’t look at discrimination or prejudice in a vacuum. There are complex hierarchies of power, and ultimately in the U.S. many of these hierarchies are based on the premise of white supremacy. I think a lot of comments that criticize whites as a homogenous group are proxy for criticisms of white power.
As far as I understand, ‘model minority’ is one of those quaintly colonial techniques aimed at dividing and conquer melanined Americans into two camps – Black/Hispanic vs. Asian.
It seems fair to say that changes to American immigration policies of the 1960s are to blame for this model mythology.
no. the model minority ‘myth’ was generated in the 1960s, when there weren’t many latinos, and the 1965 immigration reform hadn’t hit home. it was used to contrast blacks and japanese & chinese americans, the latter of whom had been through discrimination since they arrived around 1880-1910. it was pointed out that japanese americans in particular did really well, which seemed an apropos observation seeing as that they went through hell during WW II.
*Why on earth do people feel okay bad-mouthing all whites?
The same reason why minorities and Scheduled Castes in India critique Hindus, particularly upper caste Hindus. And the critique varies from inchoate badmouthing to nuanced analyses of privilege. Anyone who has the majority of wealth and political power is going to be subjected to critque in a democracy. Thats just the way it goes.
the people here often bad mouth white trash and red necks. these aren’t people who have the ‘majority of wealth and power.’ if you believe that SES is not totally fluid and chaotic between generations, a substantial minority of american whites have been part of the underclass for 2 centuries. these are the scotch-irish of the applachian region. these people came as ‘crackers’ and they remained as crackers. the fact that they are white protestants actually means now the average white catholic has slighter higher educational and income levels than “WASPs.” the WASPs people make fun of here are NOT the high & mighty, they are the lower class, who yes, are likely to be the ones who make threats and attack you physically. when blacks attack us, i’m sure most of you, being open minded people, chalk it up to SES. but when white lower class people attack, it is ‘ignorance,’ not their long standing SES. realize that brown americans are the wealthiest (income) group in the USA. we showed up in large numbers after 1965, and many of our parents had postgraduate educations. the first gen was often the local town doctor, or a professor at a small college. one the one hand, they were curiosities, but might not they have incurred resentment from old timers who had worked in blue collar industries and watch them collapse in the 1970s and 80s?
i’m not justifying, but i’m explaining it. i don’t condone it, but it seems unseemly to focus so much opprobrium at a group who is the low end of the SES of the ‘group of privilege.’ i see far less attacks on the WASP elite of conneticut or masshachuttes here.
Because people of color have not been oppressed for centuries in the US? You may have to tell Blacks, Native Americans, Mexicans/Mexican Americans, Pilipinos/Pil-Ams, Japanese Americans and Chinese Americans and South Asian Americans about that.
but many groups were discriminated against within whites. that is a common thesis, that white ethnics only became white recently. if you are going to appeal to history, then you need to correct for that reality. whatever the present is today, there was a day when the jew was a kike and the irish was a mickey.
I would say that 1st gen desis are happy to do this on their own, because of their own attitudes of superiority.
I’m not saying that “ethnic whites” didn’t face discrimination or oppression through a variety of societal and legal barriers, I was taking issue with the idea that people of color in the US have not faced any historic oppression. Depending on your regionality within the US, Jews are still kikes and the Irish are still mickeys.
Props on the SES analysis re: poor whites, though. It was really right on, and it’s true that poor whites get the shaft/blame for policies that they have little to no agency in creating. What’s been interesting is the homogenization of all these white subgroups (kind of like a huge “whiting out” of their histories and experiences), and how that’s impacted political action.
yourbloodyvalentine – that’s hilarious! And, sadly, often true.
razib – as usual you make the most salient point. Perhaps we need a checklist of opression, per se. You get a certain number of negative points for brown skin color, a certain number of positive points for education and socioeconomic class, a certain number of positive or negative points depending on what region of the country you come from, etc, etc. Oh, wait. Universities already do this and this is what Vinod is talking about, right?
Here’s how I rate:
Brown – apparently a negative.
Parents math and science types – apparently a positive.
Education – sciences (apparently a positive, but ah, in Iowa? Is that a plus or a minus? I’ll tell you after I get promoted, if I get promoted…..)
Female – apparently a negative
Personality – been told that’s a negative, but I strongly disagree….
Yes. It so hard being brown-middle-class-educated-female-and-irritating. Yes. So very, very hard. Oh wait! That’s it. That’s my perfect intro to the biodata line…..
Yes. It so hard being brown-middle-class-educated-female-and-irritating. Yes. So very, very hard. Oh wait! That’s it. That’s my perfect intro to the biodata line…..
MD, you are a pathologist right? someone with a medical postgraduate degree, and, i suspect a more than middle class income 🙂 you are exhibiting your class privilege right there, renorming what ‘middle class’ is! remember, the average middle class american has a few years of college and is the manager in a dept. of walmart or sells insurance.
point well taken, razib, although when it comes to the income thing, remember, I’m an academic pathologist. The academic payscale is quite something else….
ok, kidding. Yes, clearly that should read upper middle class. Even better to prove my bona fides as a card-carrying member of the republican party.
*I prefer to register with one party, and vote out of it if I don’t like the candidates than to be an independent. So wishy-washy. So, ugh, m-o-d-e-r-a-t-e. I said I was irritating, right? Don’t be afraid to pick a side! Have some courage, I say…..
i’m registered republican too MD. though i voted for kerry last time around. so i’m with you. i find politics a bore now….
oh, and i brought up renormalization because when i was in HS a friend who took some standardized test we all had to take was joking to me about how he thought it was funny how ppl fucked with it by saying that their parents had graduate degrees, and asked if i’d done it too. of course, well, my father does have a graduate degree, and i hadn’t thought to reflect that this might be weird. i don’t think i’m the only brown american who has had this type of experience, and i think it speaks to the fact that mapping over paradigms that are prefab and apply to blacks in their relationship to white americans are not particularly congruent with the reality of america today. the reality is that blacks were brought as slaves and treated like chattel and lived through an america where they were assumed to be beasts and treated like such. we browns arrived with many of our parents having the self-confidence of having been ‘winners’ in the educational and occupational rat race, arriving with the experience of having grown up at the pinnacle of the privilege pyramid in their nations of origin, and experiencing an america where anti-racism is normative (even if anti-ignorance was not). i am personally someone who likes to systemetize and generalize broad trends and phenomena, and am one who is averse to the tendency to characterize all aspects of cultural and social life as sui generis. but, i feel that too many whites and non-whites in america are stuck on a bipolar racial model appropriate to 1950, when a large number of americans in many parts of the country simply do not have experiences which that model is predicated upon. the social prescriptions promoted by many on the left half of the political spectrum are predicated on this model, so i have seen a tendency for many folks of liberal inclination to engage in hypodescent thinking (i.e., one drop of non-whiteness = non-white), and attempting to retrofit the history of all non-whites to fit the black experience of extreme deprivation and denigration, or recast all non-whites as victims (i.e., i have seen many asian american activists proudly hold aloft the difficulties of the hmong refugees as exemplars typical of asian american experience because their lives are characterized by relative powerlessness. similarly, i have seen brown people who seem to want to portray the overworked taxi cab driver as the typical brown american). this is not to deny the reality of racism, but when we tote up debits and credits of the society to us, i don’t think that it is useful anymore to simply say ‘white’ vs. ‘non-white.’ economically oriented thinkers have always asserted that this ignores substructure within the white population (poor white vs. middle and upper class), but i think students of demography and social clustering have to admit that non-whites simply do not fit into one box in terms of how they relate to whites and each other, especially in light of the fact that simple deterministic heuristics implied by gov. legal sanctions do not really apply any longer, at least in the negative form (affirmative action and positive discrimation does sometimes lump and clumb in ways that cause problems, i.e., the southeast asians in california have complained that it is not appropriate to cluster them with other asian americans in university admissions where there is strong suspicion of positive discrimination against asians because they are not a privileged group and so are suffering because of their assocations).
md and razib, you’re like in a totally different world from me to hear people admit to what both of you admitted to. i mean that without any kind of ill, but just as an observation…
about asians and asian americans…i kind of see south asian and east asians as sharing a common experience, but different as well. as a second gen immigrant’s kid, we can bond with a czech second gen immigrant kid b/c we share some pretty awesome similiar life experiences. we can share a bond with latino second gen/third gen/first gen peeps bc we share some pretty awesome life experiences. same with asian americans, and african americans. and wasp americans. (we both shop at A&F…kidding!)
so thats how i see it, we’re different but share awesome life experiences (and some not awesome). i agree with the observation about cultivating a hard knock life past some of us never had. its just easier for us to allude to some color-based oppression. sometimes our own life experience just offered either more mundane but still valid obstacles to overcome, or, we weren’t really adept at seeing our situations as desis.
i knoew this filipino kid who started to cry one day bc he realized that in the midst of opposing the discrimination of other groups, he had not really understood his own legacy. and that hurt. i think it continues to be something we as desis have to do ourselves, bc no one else is really doing it. that being said, there’s plenty of allies in that cause. and then, we do have to allow the debt that many of us have toward african americans. without the civil rights struggle, and the language of freedom struggle given to us often by african americans, we as desis would be poorer for it; legally, culturally, socially
peace out yo
JM: an interesting point from earlier. Many eons ago when I was applying to colleges, I was semi-coerced into applying at Yale. I went to the initial interview at a local alum’s house, and he asked me very candidly from the seat of his exercycle whether I was planning to apply as a minority? Because my 1320 on my SAT didn’t really qualify me. But as a “minority” I could apply with an 1100. He used “minority” the way his father probably said, “colored,” or grandfather said, “negrah.”
I didn’t pursue Yale any further (and no offense to anyone else who did…this is just anecdotal). I went to another school entirely, and enjoyed myself immensely while learning a huge freakin’ trunkload of random information, and making some of the lowest passing grades of anyone I know.
I suppose my point is, race in America is a hopelessly muddled and occasionally irretrievably damaged concept. As JM pointed out, it doesn’t make any real biological sense, either. And as the species gets wiser, our assumptions and prejudices become terribly muddled*. Busing, separate-but-equal, ghettos, the politics of English vs. Spanish, drive-bys, Russians who watch Bollywood, Latinos in New England, and a million other weird cultural amalgamations (like desis who act ghetto, or Sasha Cohen)…it’s all too much. Give up! Enjoy it all for the spectacle. It’s like gladiator fights at the Colosseum, only with no guards, lions, or rules, and the whole crowd gets vote collectively with their thumbs. It’s great!
Wolf-nipple chips! Ram’s bladder cup! Getcher wolf nipple chips!
*Except that Asian women make horrible drivers. THAT one holds up under all kinds of scrutiny.
So many people who subscribe to the model-minority myth (including Asians) fail to recognize that a disproportionate number of Asians come/came to America as college students and professionals. Just look at how many of our parents are doctors and engineers. Most of them come from upper class/caste families, so it’s not like they were underprivileged to begin with. And if our parents aren’t professionals or highly educated, we are greatly influenced by other members of our ethnic community or family who are. Many African Americans and Latinos don’t have these role models.
I wish you guys knew what african americans are. africam american = 1 african + white , one of or an amalgamation of european races and most likly native american.there are only 38 million of us ,and we are unique.Regular well ajusted “white” people don’t feel about us the way that some Desi do .one tenth of one percent of the sub continent are here in the U.S. , they are the best of a billion people. 30 thousand is about the equivalent.Do you not think there are 30 thousand of us worth a salt. It’s just so sad you think so little of us in some cases . what’s stranger yet is I’m some part welsh and native american. My grand father had blue eyes and red hair, so says my mother,who’s hair was completely white when she was a child and was never ashamed to be called black.whithin the U.S. racial construct there are black’s with blond hair and blue eyes .We say black to defy convention . Why hide it ,I’m also not going to hide the fact that many european men fathered children by black women and all the while preaching separation for the sake of money power and privilege. Think of the late senator thermond.They did these things to garner power , telling powereless people that atleast they were better than the lowly servants. Befor we were negros we were anglo/africans.One of the first black owned news papers in the U.S. was something like the anglo african gazette.1/3 of U.S. people who self identify as white have traces ,negligible traces of african ancestry,so watch out Desi it still might just get you.In the past people who could pass for white sometimes did,the rules of hypo decent are always in play yes,but you must self identify. But passing was a gutless cowards way out to economic freedom.That ment you would turn your back on your entire family, and not very christian at all.Being some what or all african is not the worst thing that one can be,a coward who ostracizes others for cheeply gained advantage beacause of peer pressure,who say’s someone is terrible looking when they know they are not,that dates a white woman simply because she is white and blond,rather than because she is a nice girl who likes you not for your money but because of who you are inside.And people are attractive because because they are attractive,not because they are white or this or that, or because they are not dark.Looking good is a matter of mathematical ratios,rather than this pointed feature or this flat feature.The whole world has been cultured to want to be the people in the american movies.I like white people but I don’t worship them .obviously some of my family are are white.And I fell sorry for the poor white women. If you are arouond someone and they are nice and an attraction sparks o.k but to target someone you dont know just because they are white .White people are my compatriots for 300 years on this contenet.You seem to know only the bad side of our relationship .A husban may speak harshly of a wife,yet he sleeps with her at night and dose not leav her; he may be angry then make up,we are the same.It’s natural for us to talk to them ,we may be related and honest people always admit that. It’s like the treatment you give your black cousin in INDIA just because you are lighter.But when people do that in america in every since of the true american ethos they know you are dead wrong be they black or white there is no escaping conscience or GOD.It’s just like a man with an illegitimate son ,or if you will son of a second wife,who if he were rightous would say to him self this is my son also,I will treat him the sam as my other and give him a portion of the inheritance.Why don’t you know who we are. I wish love you also desi