The Model Minority Never Went Away

Comments

1. Yet more Asian supremecist rhetoric within the pages of Asian Week. Is Kenneth Eng now writing entire issues under pseudonyms? This article reaffirms the racist stereotype of the hyper-competitive Asian student, who is streets ahead of his/her non-Asian counterparts academically, keeps his/her nose to the grindstone and respects his/her teachers as paragons of authority. The reality is rather more complex (and interesting). Asian children are just as prone to act out as their non-Asian counterparts. The proliferation of violent gangs composed of Southeast Asian kids bears testament to this. Where’s their much-vaunted humility, their recognition of authority, their commitment to the community, all of which are projected as prototypical Asian attributes? Drop the model race rhetoric!

   –Christian on Aug 28, 2007

2. My point is that Asian hypercompetitiveness is hurting us more than than the whites who just go elsewhere, or the minorities who have affirmative action.
   Race activism is precisely what an Asian supremacist would have devised to keep the Asians studying and everybody else on ridiculous government programs like desgregation and ethnic studies which have zero effect on how many kids can solve 3x + 2 = 13. Marxists and their think-alikes always do precisely the opposite of what it takes to make everyone academically and economically proficient, and discouraging people who study very hard, or make lots of money.

   –Arthur Hu on Aug 28, 2007

3. Christian, it’s worth mentioning that it was white people who placed that model minority tag on Asians. We never asked for any tags. We just came to this country to work hard and study hard, and as a result, have been scrutinized, labeled, and ridiculed. Despite the adversity, prejudice, and negative stereotypes, Asians have managed to succeed.

   Those Southeast Asian kids you are referring to initially do have humility and respect instilled in them by their culture and parents, but this American society strips it from them and instills everything that’s bad about this society. It’s hard to act with humility when you grow up in rough neighborhoods and you’re taunted and assaulted everyday. Recent reports have stated that assaults on Asian youths by non-Asian youths have increased over the past decade. And then you wonder why there is an increase in Asian youth gangs? These kids, even though disadvantaged, are unfortunately discriminated against by college admissions boards who set higher entrance standards for them. Even then, many of them eventually succeed. It’s no wonder the Model Minority title seems to stick.

   –Dave on Aug 30, 2007

4. Dave, your comments that some Southeast Asian youth wind up in gangs because living in the U.S. strips them of their humility, respect for authority etc. is complete rubbish. It echoes the Asian supremecist sentiments, i.e. that whites are “barbarians” and that Asians are racially superior not only to Caucasians, but also blacks, Latinos/Chicanos, etc. If those are your feelings, why do you live in this country? Given its ostensible purity, perhaps you should think about repatriating to your nation of origin, especially if you find living in this country so onerous.

   –Christian on Aug 30, 2007

5. How did I imply that Asians were superior and that non-Asians are barbarians? You are now finagling others’ thoughts and creating all these false innuendos; at the same time, cloaking non-cogent statements in semantics in order to substantiate them. It seems as if you’re the supremacist and you have a deep-seated hatred for Asians.

   I didn’t say stripping one of their humility causes them to join gangs. The rough environments that kids live in cause them to create and join gangs. There was never a direct connection between loss of humility and an increased proclivity of gang membership. I just stated both were the case, often concurrently, with Asian kids growing up in this country.

   Why would I or any other Asian raised in this country or born here want to go to a country they really do not know much about? And as if there wouldn’t be hardships there? In any case, many Asians do go back to Asia. I really can’t imagine doing it at this point of my life because I’m so rooted in this country. I really don’t know too much about the country of my parents’ origin. Besides, I’m a contributing citizen of this country, just as much as you are, if not more so. I never said I hated this country. I was merely providing you with the situation that Asians find themselves in this country.

   I seriously think you’re adamantly anti-Asian. That’s probably why you’re on this site to begin with.

   –Dave on Aug 30, 2007

6. Arthur Hu has got it right. His article 10 years ago hit the nail on the head and is still true today.

   http://www.nationalreview.com/15sept97/hu091597.html

   AMERICA’S SCHOOLS

   E D U C A T I O NA N DR A C E

   The performance of minority students in affluent areas refutes the prevailing educational shibboleths.

   ARTHUR HU Mr. Hu is a writer living in Kirkland, Washington..

   DESEGREGATION is at a crossroads. As many analysts are declaring the integration experiment a failure, Harvard’s desegregation guru, Gary Orfield, keeps telling us that minority education could be fixed if only we desegregated more. Educators and the media routinely slam city schools for poor minority performance while holding up affluent suburban districts as models because of their better test scores. Yet, if Orfield is right that segregated districts don’t produce equal outcomes, no one has answered the more important question, which is whether “integrated” districts produce equal outcomes.

   Oddly, while the courts have used inequality as the justification for busing, Orfield himself notes in his 1991 book The Closing Door that there isn’t much direct evidence that busing creates more equality. Almost as a footnote, he concedes that you would have to examine data broken down by race within mixed districts to prove that busing actually resulted in better performance for minorities.

   After some cursory research — a few phone calls to local school districts, a ride on the Internet — I tracked down reports that do chart test scores and grades against race, not only in the worst but also in the best districts. The reason that people like Gary Orfield don’t have the numbers is that it’s safer to uphold the myth that minorities will perform as well as their white peers in good suburban schools than to expose the reality that the racial gap exists even in the best suburbs.

   Test scores and grades for blacks in integrated urban neighborhoods aren’t any better than those in predominantly minority ghetto areas. Some affluent suburbs did no better than nearby urban areas, and even at the best suburban schools blacks on average lagged behind their white classmates. But a bigger secret is that even the poorest Asians tended to get better grades — if not test scores — than more affluent whites. Asians from poorer suburbs consistently outscored Euro-Americans in nearby more affluent suburbs. For all the talk about the superiority of schools in Japan or Korea, Asian-Americans are also nearly two years ahead in math, just as far ahead of their classmates as students in their ancestral lands are, even when they go to the same schools that fail other American minorities.

   In short, predominantly minority schools have low test scores because minorities have lower test scores regardless of the segregation factor, not the other way around. And American schools would match Asian schools if they were dominated by Asian students. Perhaps that chilling reality is the reason that every newspaper I have contacted has chosen to ignore these data.

   California’s 1994 CLAS (California Learning Assessment System) test introduced massive multiculturalism and had several questions for which more than one answer was counted as correct. Yet nobody noticed that elementary-school blacks and Hispanics did just as poorly in predominantly minority areas of Oakland, East Palo Alto, and Alum Rock as in legally integrated San Francisco. At Grade 10, only 10 to 15 per cent of black students got 3 or better in math whether they went to integrated San Francisco, the segregated communities of Contra Costa County, Oakland, or Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara County. Asians continue to stampede into Cupertino, home of the founders of Apple Computers, because of its excellent schools. But US News (April 21, 1997) highlighted the poor performance of blacks there, and they lagged the state average on the CLAS.

   Meanwhile, the Asians of the Chinatown ghettos in San Francisco scored as well as children of affluent engineers in Santa Clara County. Asians in Santa Clara County scored as well as whites in posh San Ramon Valley or Cupertino. Asians in Cupertino scored as well as whites in Palo Alto, the best district in the Bay Area. Blacks in San Ramon Valley scored no better than state average for all races, while Asians there outscored every other race and community.

   The Seattle Times annually slams Seattle’s math scores (just the 50th-percentile for Washington as a whole) compared to suburban Bellevue’s 67th-percentile performance, and highlights the race gap as an urban problem. But broken down by race, whites score at about 67 in either city, but blacks score worse in Bellevue, at 34 compared to 40 for Seattle. Seattle has an “African-American Academy,” but its test scores are virtually indistinguishable from the city average. Suburban inequality is much the same at nearby Issaquah (41) and Redmond (35), even though there are no minority ghettos in the suburbs, and there has never been any news coverage of racial differences in performance there.

   Seattle is one of the few cities where Asians are so poor and white parents so highly educated that white students score better even in math. But Asians still have the highest grade-point average in the city. In the suburbs, Asian 8th-graders score 74 in 59th-percentile blue-collar Renton, hopping rungs over whites in 67th-percentile Bellevue. Asians in Bellevue score 82, equal to top-ranked Mercer Island’s 83. Asians in Mercer Island score an astounding 90, not far below the average at the best Lakeside private school.

   Meanwhile, nobody ever asks in print why fourth-graders in nearly all-white (but poor) Edmonds or Mukilteo scored only 34 to 44, as badly as Seattle’s blacks. Nobody ever demanded that they be bused into richer school districts to remedy this inequity.

   The Boston Globe also offered no explanation why black students who entered the Metco voluntary busing program from Boston with 50th-percentile scores didn’t score as well as their new suburban classmates in 88th-percentile Newton. Yet the whites from working-class Revere or Brockton have an SAT average of 411 — near the national black average. No Italian-American Revere youth dripping with gold chains and roaring upon his ‘82 firebird could expect that sending him to Newton for four years would turn him into Ivy League material. Yet the Harvard gurus remain mystified.

   Fairfax County near Washington, D.C., has a 569 (1996) SAT math average, good enough for the University of California at Riverside. But Fairfax’s black average of 465 isn’t any better than “Can’t we just get along” Los Angeles. The black suburb of Prince George’s County is among the top 30 per cent of U.S. counties in average household income. The school district proudly claims that its black students perform as well as their “counterparts” throughout the state — but that’s only their black counterparts. Measured by Maryland’s MSPAP (Maryland School Performance Assessment Program) test, it ranks as 22 of 24 districts in the state.

   It is widely accepted that test scores increase with family income. However, SAT breakdowns for 1995 show that even the most affluent blacks, from families with incomes over $70,000, have average scores of 426, lagging behind whites or Asians from families with incomes under $10,000. But Asians from families with incomes under $10,000 have average scores of 482, ranking them with whites from families making $40,000. And it is not just test scores. Oakland’s poor school system highlighted its low 1.8 black GPA to justify Ebonics. But GPAs aren’t any better in integrated Seattle or San Francisco.

   Data books and health surveys all show that even in cities like Seattle, Boston, and San Francisco where the per-capita incomes of Asians are no higher than that of blacks, it is Asians, not whites, who have the best outcomes. The omission of Asians from the local news stories is probably deliberate because their statistics don’t support the thesis that racism and poverty are the reasons for poor outcomes. As much as the activists continue to deplore the model-minority “myth,” except in the most distressed Asian refugee communities, Asians generally have the best grades and test scores; the lowest rates of special and remedial education, dropouts, and expulsion; the highest rates of attendance; and the lowest rates of arrest, teen pregnancy, AIDS, and substance abuse.

   If civil rights can be measured by affirmative action, multiculturalism, and desegregation, then they have massively succeeded in almost every urban school district in the country. Compared with Asians, blacks in California are at or near parity among teacher hires, college faculty, staff, and principals, and they are twice as well represented among superintendents. American history books now look like African-American history books, even casting revolutionary sailors as blacks, while Asians are all but completely absent from indexes. Yet these nifty educational strategies have utterly failed to raise black grades and test scores.

   Last year, with little fanfare, Lawrence Steinberg, B. Bradford Brown, and Sanford Dornbusch released a new book, Beyond the Classroom that offered a very different explanation from the standard “racism and poverty” for why different groups perform differently in school. “Of all the demographic factors we studied in relation to school performance, ethnicity is the most important . . . In terms of school achievement, it is more advantageous to be Asian than to be wealthy, to have non-divorced parents, or to have a mother who is able to stay at home full time.” They found that no matter which school they looked at, Asians got the best grades and test scores, and blacks and Hispanics the worst. The problem was not the schools, but the attitudes and habits of the students themselves. The underachievers didn’t fear failure, didn’t study as hard, skipped class more often, and blamed their failures on racism. The overachievers didn’t tolerate failure, hung out with overachievers, spent the most time studying, and attributed their success to individual effort.

   IRONICALLY, it is an even darker secret that blacks and Hispanics can succeed solely on the basis of merit. Brian D. Ray, President of the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) did a study that shows that minority home-schoolers are in the 80th- to 85th-percentile of home-schooling students.

   There are formal schools where blacks and Hispanics do well, too. The December 2, 1995, Economist highlights the Barclay Elementary School in Baltimore. It adopted a severe prep-school curriculum and zero-tolerance approach toward spelling mistakes to get suburban-level 60th-percentile scores in a city where failure is the norm. Seattle’s Zion private school boasts test scores above average with a largely black student body. The story of how Jaime Escalante fashioned a class of Advanced Placement calculus whiz kids out of a barrio school was made into a movie.

   Whitney Young Magnet High in Chicago rivals many suburban schools. With a student body that is mostly black or Hispanic, it ranks above the 99th percentile among state high schools in 8th- and 10th-grade math and writing, and has ACT (American College Testing) averages that make it the equal of Asian-dominated Lowell in San Francisco. The best SAT scores in Georgia aren’t in a rich white suburb, but at Davidson Fine Arts Magnet in Richmond with a 42 per cent black student body, near an Army Signal Corps base.

   At the college level, Martin Vaern Bosangue of Mt. San Antonio Community College near Los Angeles found that black and Hispanic students who took a calculus workshop and studied more hours than whites and Asians who started with higher SAT math scores wound up getting better grades than even the Asians.

   Economic and race-based interventions have never been shown to achieve the equality that was set as their justification in the first place. After all, the numbers that matter are not the percentage of blacks on the staff or in the classroom, but grade point average, reading and math test scores, and hours spent on homework and attendance. As Thomas Sowell and Lawrence Steinberg observe, if students of all races worked equally hard, their disparate rates of success and failure would plausibly lead to explanations based on, on the one hand, racism and poverty, or, on the other hand, innate superiority or inferiority. When they differ on every measure of effort, what else would you expect?

   –Ed on Sep 01, 2007

7. Christian,

   You are obviously very ignorant about the facts of
   Asian academic performance. Even in the Central Valley, the Hmongs ourperform their Hispanic classmates. Why do you want the Southeast Asians to be on the same level
   as the Hispanic students? What is wrong with studying hard and doing your homework? Even Lincoln High school (HEAVILY cHINESE)in San Francisco sends as many graduates to the UC system as private St. Ignatius High school in the same city. St. Ignatius High school has greater advantages than Lincoln , it is a private high school and chooses students from all over the Bay Area while Lincoln is confined to choosing students from its designated geographical area in San Francisco. Why do you belittle the work of the children of these immigrants. Hispanics and blacks should instead copy the hard work of these Chinese immigrants. Why is that something politically incorrect to say? and something very unpopular with the SF Board of Education, Emil Guillermo, the Ethnic studies dept. at Berkeley and with rabid leftists like the NAACP, The Equal Justice Society of Eve Patterson and Bill Kidder?

   –leo cruz on Sep 01, 2007

8. Hi biaknabato, or Leo Cruz

   I agree with you.

   1. SOCIO-ECONOMIC BASED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION WILL NOT WORK TO INCREASE THE NUMBERS OF BLACKS.

   2. THE ONLY WAY TO INCREASE BLACK REPRESENTATION IS TO BETTER PREPARE THEM AT THE K-12 LEVEL OF EDUCATION BY FIXING THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM.

   I personally favor socio-economic AA and a race and ethnic group BLIND admissions process. However, even socio-economic AA will not solve the problem for increasing the small numbers of blacks in elite schools, because the poorest Asians/whites from families with annual incomes under the poverty line and parents with only a high school education or less, OUTPERFORM on objective measures (SATs, testing, academic achievement, etc..) the richest blacks from families with annual incomes of over $70K or more and parents with college degrees. Therefore, if one is to use socio-economic factors, without the use of race, black numbers will still be low.

   So, what is one to do? Obviously, the applicant, regardless of race, should be better prepared at the k-12 level before entering the Ivies/Elites. This is the only way to solve the problem. The causes for the underperformance of rich and affluent blacks, despite their abundance of financial and academic resources, are unknown and more research needs to be done to find the causes. These causes may include the “culture” of blacks in general, but for one to suggest cultural differences between different racial and ethnic groups as a cause will most certainly elicit charges of racism from the race preferentialists and pro race based AA advocates. Even for one to ask blacks and others to change their cultures is politically incorrect and don’t even think of suggesting “innate differences” between the groups.

   Elite college admissions are not only decided upon with the use of the SAT I and II tests, but also with the holistic approach. You must ask the question, “Why are higher performing and academically more proficient dirt-poor Asian Americans denied in favor of lower performing rich affluent blacks/Latinos in admissions?” This was the case when the “Comprehensive Review Admissions Policy” was examined at UCLA. This policy is similar to the one used at the Ivies.

   The use of holistic factors and other “soft factors” in admissions is biased against Asian Americans, mainly because of the stereotypes used against them by the admissions committees, with no basis in truth. These schools will tell you that better academically prepared Asians are not as well rounded or cannot write a better essay, have less outstanding extra-curricular activities, and are less passionate and motivated, and possess less character than less academically prepared, race-preferred black or Latino applicants, and EVEN white applicants who are less qualified by objective measures in their biased opinions. This, of course, is an outright lie due mainly to racist stereotyping and cultural bias against Asian American applicants. Also, the outcomes of the students who are better academically prepared graduate at a much higher rate than the less prepared. The less prepared, if they graduate at all, will graduate at bottom of the class, taking the least rigorous courses of study. The Asian/white FAILURE TO GRADUATE rates are 1/2 the black FAILURE TO GRADUATE rates. The Asian graduation rate is even higher than the white graduation rate. This is generally true in the Ivies/Elites and even in the US service academies, such as the US Naval Academy.

   –Ed on Sep 02, 2007

9. Leo Cruz, characterizing Black and Latino students as uninterested in their studies, and Asians as academics par excellance, is throughly and utterly racist. Some Asian-Americans constantly boast about their dilligent, studious and well-behaved children, but my own experience has demonstrated that they’re just as likely to act out as their non-Asian peers. While the racist assault committed upon a group of Chinese-American children in the Richmond attracted a fair amount of media coverage a couple of years ago, the violent attack of a gang of Chinese-American kids on a homeless man recently did not even register as a blip upon the proverbial radar. And while it may be true that some Asian students do well in math, their performance in English is often less than stellar. Your Asian supremecist dogma is deeply disturbing.

   –Christian on Sep 17, 2007

10. Christian,

    I have no way of verifying your claims about racial assaults from the newspapers. There is nothing racist in pointing out about the superior academic performance of Asian kids versus whites and Hispanics or is that too politically incorrect for people like you and the the Ethnic Studies Dept. at Berkeley or the Civil Rights Project of Gary Orfield and Chris Edley? BTW, Asians who are born in this country and wealthy Asians even outperform whites in the English portion of the SAT, now is that racist and indicative of a supremacist nature too?
    Gary Orfield recently reported that Asians now are the least segregated of all the races in the public schools. Why is that? is it becasue Asians can be found in the schools in the wealthy suburbs and also in poor inner school districts like Oakland? And be it either in a wealthy suburb like Cupertino or in an inner city like Oakland , they outperform every race? Is it criminal or racist for one race to outperform another ? Shall we condermn the Chinese for outperforming whites, blacks and Hispanics? You simply do no know as to what you are talking about

    –leo cruz on Sep 24, 2007

11. http://www.lsacnet.org/Research/LSAT-Performance-with-Regional-Gender-and-Racial-Ethnic-Breakdowns-1997%E2%80%931998-Through-2003%E2%80%932004-Testing-Years.pdf

    LSAT Performance with Regional, Gender, and
    Racial/Ethnic Breakdowns: 1997–1998 Through
    2003–2004 Testing Years

    =================================

    To Christian, and Leo Cruz.

    I hope the link above works, since the ones previously posted did not work. Please read the report.

    –Ed on Sep 25, 2007

12. Maybe we should remember we are looking at two very different populations.

    Most Asian Americans who have immigrated in the last 15-20 were college or at least high school educated and did not usually come with no resources (on average).

    We know that many Hispanics come here as low skill labor with poor educational backgrounds in their own country and often come from the poorest regions.

    We know the history of African Americans.

    To compare a self selected population to one that is not is somewhat disingenuous.

    If you want to compare blacks and Hispanics to anyone you would subdivide Asian Americans and compare Southeast Asians (especially refugee Cambodian, Hmong, Vietnamese) populations who on average do not fair anywhere nearly as well as their East Asian (Chinese, Korean, and Japan) counterparts.

    Pacific Islanders (most of hmm are in Cali and Hawaii) do not do very well either.

    These numbers are hidden because they are a minority when compared to Chinese, Koreans (and to less extent) Filipinos who do well.

    “For example, as shown in the tables in the Socioeconomic Statistics & Demographics article, Vietnamese Americans only have a college degree attainment rate of 20%, less than half the rate for other Asian American ethnic groups. The rates for Laotians, Cambodians, and Khmer are even lower at less than 10%.”

    This is from an Asian American site:

    http://www.asian-nation.org/model-minority.shtml

    This too:

    “As another example, in California, almost 40% of all Vietnamese refugees are on public assistance and in Minnesota and Wisconsin, an equal number of Cambodians, Hmong, and Laotians also receive public assistance. Another example is that of many Korean immigrants who come to the U.S. with very high levels of education. But for various reasons (i.e., not being fluent in English), many are not able to get decent jobs that pay well. Therefore, they are forced to to work as janitors, waiters, busboys, or go into business for themselves to survive. The only reason why many Korean small business owners are able to make a small profit is that they have no paid employees and work 20 hours a day.”

    http://www.asian-nation.org/mode…- minority.shtml

    In fact less than 10% of blacks are on welfare…can’t speak for Hispanics, despite the fact the unemployment rate is about 12%.

    http://www.jbhe.com/news_views/ 4…reducation.html

    My point is not to trash anyone, but to point out that Asians (more than any other racial group in this country) are not a monolith, and some of them are in desperate situations but they get ignored or covered up by other groups who are more successful in the Asian American community.

    I would still say that on average, at least according to the DOJ (anyone can look up their statistic sites) Christian is wrong…Asians have the lowest crime rate of any racial/cultural group…I believe this is because they have the lowest out of wedlock birth rate and the lowest divorce rate.

    These things correlate for a reason. Most fathers who live in a home and take an active part in their children’s lives are not going to let their son’s run the street. I do not believe that the average single parent female is always equipped to handle a teen boy.

    Divorce:
    http://www.divorcereform.org/ mel…vorceblack.html

    blacks = 36%
    Asians = 4.2%

    To cite my sources…check:

    [B]2006[/B]

    http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus06.pdf#010

    pg 162/559

    white 29.4%
    black 68.2%
    Asian 15%
    Hispanic 45%

    [B]2004[/B]

    http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr55/nvsr55_01.pdf

    You can see that not much has changed in 11 years.
    Marriage rate:

    http://www.acf.hhs.gov/healthyma…e/pdf/ aahmi.pdf

    http://www.acf.hhs.gov/healthyma…e/pdf/ aahmi.pdf

    blacks = 42%
    Asians = 67.4

    –Dragon Horse on Sep 26, 2007

13. Leo Cruz is just some Asian supremacist who believes that Asians are the best and should rule the world and that he thinks Blacks and Hispanics should be second class citizens.

    Way to go Asian supremacist. Heil Berkeley!

    –Anthony Ciolli on Sep 27, 2007

14. you’re right, i’m just a racist prick who thinks Asians are the best. i enjoy putting down blacks and hispanics because it makes me feel better.

    Asian people are the best. we love to play the race card and cry racism while we like to act like racial supremacists and stereotype blacks and hispanics as being both dumb and poor.

    Indeed, i love to flash my Harvard degree like it were bling bling. To Chinese people, a Harvard degree is more powerful than the Bible.

    –Leo Cruz on Sep 27, 2007

15. ARE UCLA AND UC BERKELEY BREAKING THE LAW BY TAKING RACE INTO ACCOUNT IN ADMISSIONS AGAIN??

    THE RISE IN LOW-INCOME BLACK STUDENTS WAS ACCOMPANIED BY A FALL IN LOW-INCOME ASIAN STUDENTS, BUT NOT A DECLINE IN WELL-OFF STUDENTS. Why????

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/magazine/30affirmative-t.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all

    The New Affirmative Action

    –Ed on Sep 28, 2007

16. First of all Mr. Ciolli, I never claimed that Asians are
    are better than anybody including Italians like you. You are the one who is espousing racist and supremacist ideas. Asians now according to the latest report are the least segregated racial group attending public schools. Do you understand what that means in practical terms? It means Asians are more likely than whites to have a black or a Hispanic classmate, it also means that Asians are more likely than blacks or Hispanics to have a white classmate. The outcome is still the same irregardless of the racial mix, Asians outperform their black , Hispanic and white classmates in school. Middle class Asians outperform whites, rich Asians ourperform rich whites in cluding Italians like you Mr. Ciolli. And poor Asians outperform poor and middle class blacks and Hispanics.
    What is racist and supremacist about that? There are blacks who outperform whites and get into the dean’s list all the time. Is there something racist or supremacist about it?. There is nothing racist or supremacist about intellectual excellence. And Leo Cruz certainly did not graduate from harvard or whatever that school is. It is the intolerant left like the Ethnic Studies program of Berkeley or people like Chris Edley, Connie Rice etc. who refuse to discuss this disparity in academic performances between races just to fuel their own racist agenda. Let me offer a few comments about the NYT article offered by ED or hero. The article says for example that the number of poor students that were admitted into UC system increased after Prop. 209 was passed. Very likely , they were poor Asian students and perhaps some whites at the expense of marginal wealthy, middle class and poor blacks or Hispanics. The use of 2 readers to read every
    admissions application is just like a job interview, it is not objective at all because of all the subjective factors involved. We can have a long discussion about this matter. Perhaps a hint of the bumps along the road was already laid bare when one of the readers said that there had been an increase in the mention of race by the applicants. That is a subtle attempt on the part of the applicants to the reader to take their race into consideration for admittance. The decrease in the number of poor Asian admittees at UCLA can be explained by the fact that they are easier targets politically than middle class or wealthy black admittees.
    Poor Asian admittees at UCLA have lower average SAT scores than wealthy or middle class ASian admittees but have higher average SAT scores than poor , middle class or rich black admitees. The admissions committee at UCLA was faced with a severe problem. If they tried to decrease the number of wealthy and middle class blacks
    at UCLA, it would devalue the or lower down the entering SAT average of blacks in the freshman class since middle class and rich blacks have a higher SAT average than poor blacks. If they tried to decrease the number of wealthy and middle class whites to increase the number of blacks at UCLA would prove to be a higher political hurdle because of the wider academic academic gap between poor blacks and rich whites, if they tried to decrease the number of rich Asians at UCLA that would even look more awkward since rich Asians perform better than rich whites in the SAT. So the natural target for diminuition or decrease would then be poor Asians who are the least politically connected and who would raise the least outcry.

    –leo cruz on Sep 28, 2007

17. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/us/30philadelphia.html

    Blacks Mull Call for 10,000 to Curb Violence

    By JON HURDLE
    Published: September 30, 2007

    PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 29 — The men on the corner of 16th and Page in North Philadelphia say they know what their neighborhood needs to stem the violence that has killed 306 people citywide so far this year, and that does not include putting 10,000 men on the street, as some black community leaders have proposed.

    Amid the weed-strewn lots and boarded-up buildings of North Philadelphia, one of the city’s toughest neighborhoods, the six men who gathered to talk, drink and play cards say the young people who pull guns and deal drugs need jobs, recreation centers, after-school programs and, most of all, parents who care for them.

    “It’s just going to be useless,” said one, Robert Mosley Jr., 42. “As soon as those 10,000 guys go home, the drug dealers are going back out there, doing the same thing.

    –Ed on Sep 30, 2007

18. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/opinion/30patterson.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

    ORLANDO PATTERSON
    Quote:

    “But there is another equally important cause: the simple fact that young black men commit a disproportionate number of crimes, especially violent crimes, which cannot be attributed to judicial bias, racism or economic hardships. The rate at which blacks commit homicides is seven times that of whites.”

    –Ed on Sep 30, 2007

19. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/opinion/30patterson.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

    September 30, 2007
    Op-Ed Contributor
    Jena, O. J. and the Jailing of Black America
    By ORLANDO PATTERSON

    Cambridge, Mass.

    Quote:

    “Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other leaders of the Jena demonstration who view events there, and the racial horror of our prisons, as solely the result of white racism are living not just in the past but in a state of denial. Even after removing racial bias in our judicial and prison system — as we should and must do — disproportionate numbers of young black men will continue to be incarcerated.”

    –Ed on Sep 30, 2007

20. Orlando Patterson is a professor of sociology at Harvard and the author of “The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America’s ‘Racial’ Crisis.”

    –Ed on Oct 01, 2007

21. Yeah, I think that bragging about Asians have intellectual excellence above all ethnicities is a perfect example of Asian supremacism.

    Heil Berkeley!

    –Anthony Ciolli on Oct 02, 2007

22. To Anthony Ciolli

    The authors of these studies are not Asian Americans and they are not “bragging” about Asians. There is no need to brag about Asians, since these writers are non-Asian Americans. In fact, the editor of the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education is WHITE!!

    The race or ethnicity of the writers of these studies are totally irrelevant to the discussion. This includes the OP, Arthur Hu, who is Chinese American.

    Again, Arthur Hu said it ten years ago, and it still rings true TODAY!

    http://www.nationalreview.com/15sept97/hu091597.html

    AMERICA’S SCHOOLS

    E D U C A T I O N A N D R A C E

    The performance of minority students in affluent areas refutes the prevailing educational shibboleths.

    Quote:

    [Last year, with little fanfare, Lawrence Steinberg, B. Bradford Brown, and Sanford Dornbusch released a new book, Beyond the Classroom that offered a very different explanation from the standard “racism and poverty” for why different groups perform differently in school. “Of all the demographic factors we studied in relation to school performance, ethnicity is the most important . . . In terms of school achievement, it is more advantageous to be Asian than to be wealthy, to have non-divorced parents, or to have a mother who is able to stay at home full time.” They found that no matter which school they looked at, Asians got the best grades and test scores, and blacks and Hispanics the worst. The problem was not the schools, but the attitudes and habits of the students themselves. The underachievers didn’t fear failure, didn’t study as hard, skipped class more often, and blamed their failures on racism. The overachievers didn’t tolerate failure, hung out with overachievers, spent the most time studying, and attributed their success to individual effort.]

    Lawrence Steinberg, who is a NON-ASIAN , was not bragging about Asian Americans, but merely stating the facts with research. Obviously, the ignorants and the racists deny the facts.

    –Ed on Oct 02, 2007

23. Please also click on:
    http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/testing.htm
    STANDARDIZED TESTS: THE INTERPRETATION OF RACIAL AND ETHNIC GAPS

    1. Black children from the wealthiest families have mean SAT scores lower than white children from families below the poverty line.

    2. Black children of parents with graduate degrees have lower SAT scores than white children of parents with a high-school diploma or less.

    3. More SAT data may be found in Appendix B. There, you will discover that Asians mostly sit on top of the heap; that whites, Mexican Americans and blacks follow in that order. Some details prove interesting. For example, whites enjoy a verbal advantage over Asians that disappears at high levels of income and social advantage. Regrettably, the College Board no longer discloses these data. In 1996, they stopped publishing performance by income and parental education disaggregated by race and ethnicity.

    –Ed on Oct 03, 2007

24. To Anthony Ciolli

    The of author of the following is non-Asian, stating the facts with his research.

    Please also click on:
    http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/testing.htm
    STANDARDIZED TESTS: THE INTERPRETATION OF RACIAL AND ETHNIC GAPS

    1. Black children from the wealthiest families have mean SAT scores lower than white children from families below the poverty line.

    2. Black children of parents with graduate degrees have lower SAT scores than white children of parents with a high-school diploma or less.

    3. More SAT data may be found in Appendix B. There, you will discover that Asians mostly sit on top of the heap; that whites, Mexican Americans and blacks follow in that order. Some details prove interesting. For example, whites enjoy a verbal advantage over Asians that disappears at high levels of income and social advantage. Regrettably, the College Board no longer discloses these data. In 1996, they stopped publishing performance by income and parental education disaggregated by race and ethnicity.

    –Ed on Oct 03, 2007

25. Re: Racial Quotas at UCLA (and Berkeley) today which are ILLEGAL after Prop 209 bannining the use of race in admissions:

    Please click on:

    VDARE.COM - http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070930_quotas.htm

    September 30, 2007

    NYT’S Leonhardt Misses The Real UCLA Quotas Story
    By Steve Sailer

    –Ed on Oct 03, 2007

26. To Anthony

    Please also click on:
    http://www.jbhe.com/features/49_college_admissions-test.html

    Journal of Blacks in Higher Education

    “The Widening Racial Scoring Gap on the SAT College Admissions Test”

    Explaining the Black-White SAT Gap

    There are a number of reasons that are being advanced to explain the continuing and growing black-white SAT scoring gap. Sharp differences in family incomes are a major factor. Always there has been a direct correlation between family income and SAT scores. For both blacks and whites, as income goes up, so do test scores. In 2005, 28 percent of all black SAT test takers were from families with annual incomes below $20,000. Only 5 percent of white test takers were from families with incomes below $20,000. At the other extreme, 7 percent of all black test takers were from families with incomes of more than $100,000. The comparable figure for white test takers is 27 percent.

    But there is a major flaw in the thesis that income differences explain the racial gap. Consider these three observable facts from The College Board’s 2005 data on the SAT:

    • Whites from families with incomes of less than $10,000 had a mean SAT score of 993. This is 129 points higher than the national mean for all blacks.

    • Whites from families with incomes below $10,000 had a mean SAT test score that was 61 points higher than blacks whose families had incomes of between $80,000 and $100,000.

    • Blacks from families with incomes of more than $100,000 had a mean SAT score that was 85 points below the mean score for whites from all income levels, 139 points below the mean score of whites from families at the same income level, and 10 points below the average score of white students from families whose income was less than $10,000.

    Please read the entire article.

    –Ed on Oct 03, 2007

27. As you can see the evidence is stacked against you Mr. Ciolli, what will improve black academic performnace is the change in the culture of black people. As I had been telling you , Asians are now the most desegregrated students in the public schools. They are now more likely to have black classmates than whites. They are also more likely to have white classmates than black or Hispanic students. Yet they they still outperform in school all other races including Italians like you. I guess that is racist is it not Mr. Ciolli?

    –leo cruz on Oct 04, 2007

28. To Anthony and Leo.

    I agree with Leo, but Tony is spewing FLUFF and he is in a state of denial.

    Obviously, the applicant, regardless of his race, should be better prepared at the k-12 level before entering the Ivies/Elites. This is the only way to solve the problem. The causes for the underperformance of rich and affluent blacks, despite their abundance of financial and academic resources, are unknown and more research needs to be done to find the causes. These causes may include the “culture” of blacks in general, but for one to suggest cultural differences between different racial and ethnic groups as a cause will most certainly elicit charges of racism from the race preferentialists and pro race based AA advocates. Even for one to ask blacks and others to change their cultures is politically incorrect and don’t even think of suggesting “innate differences” between the groups.

    So, what is one to do? Obviously, the applicant, regardless of race, should be better prepared at the k-12 level before entering the Ivies/Elites. This is the only way to solve the problem. The causes for the underperformance of rich and affluent blacks, despite their abundance of financial and academic resources, are unknown and more research needs to be done to find the causes. These causes may include the “culture” of blacks in general, but for one to suggest cultural differences between different racial and ethnic groups as a cause will most certainly elicit charges of racism from the race preferentialists and pro race based AA advocates. Even for one to ask blacks and others to change their cultures is politically incorrect and don’t even think of suggesting “innate differences” between the groups.

    Elite college admissions are not only decided upon with the use of the SAT I and II tests, but also with the holistic approach. You must ask the question, “Why are higher performing and academically more proficient dirt-poor Asian Americans denied in favor of lower performing rich affluent blacks/Latinos in admissions?” This was the case when the “Comprehensive Review Admissions Policy” was examined at UCLA. This policy is similar to the one used at the Ivies.

    –Ed on Oct 05, 2007

29. THE RISE IN LOW-INCOME BLACK STUDENTS WAS ACCOMPANIED BY A FALL IN LOW-INCOME ASIAN STUDENTS, BUT NOT A DECLINE IN WELL-OFF STUDENTS. Why????

    *QUOTES FROM “The New Affirmative Action”:*

    *You can make an argument, in fact, that the single most impressive university in the country today is U.C.L.A. It receives more freshman applications than any other — 50,744 this year — and, unlike many of its peers, it can legitimately claim to be an engine of opportunity. About 90 percent of its students, whether they enter as freshmen or transfers, eventually graduate. What City College of New York was to the 20th century, U.C.L.A. is to the 21st.*

    *This outsourcing was the second part of the task force’s two-pronged strategy. The group also urged U.C.L.A.’s faculty senate last year to alter the admissions process. In the past, the admissions office divided every application between two readers: one evaluated a student’s academic record, the other looked at extracurricular activities and “life challenges.” Berkeley, by contrast, had taken a more holistic approach, with a single reader judging an entire application, and Berkeley was attracting more black students than U.C.L.A. Why? Maybe the holistic approach takes better account of the subtle obstacles that black students face — or maybe the readers, when looking at a full application, ended up practicing a little under-the-table affirmative action.*

    *The big question that hangs over U.C.L.A.’s success, of course, is whether the university broke the law. Looking at the numbers, it’s hard not to conclude that race was a factor in this year’s admissions decisions. The average SAT score for admitted African-American students fell 45 points this year, to 1,738. For Asian, Latino and white students, the averages were much more stable. “I’m quite confident that U.C. factors race in, in various ways,” said Sander, the U.C.L.A. law professor and affirmative-action critic. “There is no way to explain the disparities otherwise.” He has filed a public-information request that would allow him to examine the data more closely.*

    *In particular, U.C.L.A.’s experience suggests that some tension between race and class in the admissions process may be inevitable. Even as the number of low-income black freshmen soared this year, the overall number of low-income freshmen fell somewhat. The rise in low-income black students was accompanied by a fall in low-income Asian students — not a decline in well-off students. U.C.L.A. administrators say they don’t fully understand why.*

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/magazine/30affirmative-t.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all

    The New Affirmative Action

    –Ed on Oct 05, 2007

30. My honest observation is this: Asians tend to emphasize going to name schools and getting a degree from a prestigious university. Asians put more emphasis on prestige and educational pedigree. They have a reason for this: Asians feel that the only way they can get ahead in life and get respect from “mainstream” (read: white) society is to attend a prestigious university. If you look at all the prominent Asian Americans in society, almost all of them (with few exceptions, e.g. John Liu of the NYC Council) have degrees from Ivy League schools or similar (e.g., Duke, Stanford, etc.). Practically all the wealthy, affluent, and important Asian Americans who have contributed to society and are in the upper echelons have earned their degrees from elite institutions.

    Hell, even most Asian American actors or media figures have degrees from prestigious universities. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the leading Asian American media celebrities have Ivy League or similar credentials.

    Examples:
    William Hung - UC Berkeley
    Masi Oka - Brown University
    Ken Jeong - Duke University
    David Henry Hwang - Stanford and Yale
    Will Yun Lee - UC Berkeley
    Yul Kwon - Stanford and Yale
    Daniel Dae Kim - NYU
    John Cho - UC Berkeley
    CS Lee - Yale

    and the list goes on and on…

    On the other hand, Blacks tend to emphasize less on prestige and more on finding a college that’s a “good fit.” Blacks emphasize getting an education for the sake of getting an education and not trying to impress people or get ahead (I mean getting ahead in a cutthroat competition way). It is this reason (Blacks emphasizing the overall “fit” of the college rather than the prestige/reputation of the school) that has allowed HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities) to thrive.

    Nowadays, things have changed. Blacks are finally beginning to wake up and realize that prestige is the only way you’ll get respect in society. Asians are indeed smarter than Blacks; they are especially smart because they knew from the get go that going to an elite university is the only way to gain power in this country. Asians know that white people don’t respect them, but once high numbers of Asians attend elite univerisities, they can move up in society and take over from within. The Asians are trying to dominate the upper echelons of society the same way the Jews have done for the past several decades. And the only way to dominate is through an Ivy League degree.

    In a recent article (I think it is CNN), many HBCUs have expressed concern that they are losing their best and brightest to elite institutions. It’s about time Blacks finally wake up. Blacks should’ve known what Asians knew all along: that attending an elite university is the only way to gain wealth and power in a white dominated society.

    –Charles Shu on Oct 08, 2007

31. I didn’t know Asians were just as racist as whites! I am shocked and saddened.

    –Brown_Eyed_Girl on Nov 11, 2007

32. This publication is fascinating in that the Asian population, doing so well in the higher educational arena is actually given a voice. I will touch upon quite a bit in this rant, but I hope you will follow it.
    All rhetoric regarding the education of poor Asians, Blacks and Hispanics could end, with one simple solution. Make education equal, from the gate, for all citizens. America is class based and White based, and the structure of our educational system, historically follows. I am not a socialist but let’s face it, America is more socialist than free enterprise. Everyone is feasting, in some form or fashion, at the public troughs, so since that is the case, we might as well close the gaps and fund everyone equally.

    Black colleges were founded due to segregation and yes, whites will always resist integration. They brought in the minorities after the civil rights movement so they’d not have to work side-by-side with what they will always deem their inferiors. They used HUD money to create suburbs on the one hand and high rise ghetto housing on the other, and all was race based. Now that all of these minorities are in the country, now that they imperialized around the world with a moral superiority complex, they have to address the unforeseen problems of falling behind Asians. And they will. As a Black American I know they will.

    They have a built in entitlement mentality amongst themselves, according to the FBI website. Entitled to all America has to offer, from entertainment jobs over talent, methadone clinics instead of prison, jobs for one another based on being white, education at any cost.

    But keeping a class based system of education, meting out real learning to some citizens and having low expectations for others is the ultimate and costly mistake in this country. It is real simple. Unlink education to property values, wealth, privilege and give everyone the same education, regardless of which neighborhood they were born into, or which city, or which state. I believe all other discussions and solutions are moot and designed to hurl around money to cronies. I was around before the federal government stuck their noses and feet into the American system and disparaged the school systems with their precursors of no child left behind, which leaves children behind, intentionally in my opinion. Blacks did well in school before integration and the numbers have been slipping ever since, as black middle class flight left the ghettos defenseless against a hostile America. The Asian, Hispanic and Black poor are even more disparate in that the former 2 groups have countries behind them and intact cultures to speak up and organize on their behalf. Black Americans, like Canada in New York and other strong leaders only prosper because the government can no longer openly attack them like they did so many other black efforts to elevate the race, like Marcus Garvey’s Oceanic Shipping Company and Black Wall street in Tulsa Oklahoma. The feds collect billions for education but make sure disparities exist and that is wrong. Black Americans need a country, even if it is a virtual one. Hispanics and Asians that make it need to reach back and down to those who are less fortunate and make sure they make it too. Hispanics and Asians need to link with their home countries to create film industries for the Americanized descendants so everyone has a job and a voice in this failing American experiment. Finally, everyone needs a reality check with respect to superiority complexes.

    The bottom line: if you have to get up in the morning and fight traffic, you are in the same boat as those doing the same thing. You can profess superiority but the tax man has you just like the commuter next to you, regardless of your race.

    –Diane on Nov 11, 2007

33. Christian, please be reasonable. Leo had posted a number of figures not trying to convince you into any Asian superiority but to let you know about the fact that in general, Asian youth study harder and get better grades. Statistics don’t lie; if you can not live with that, in my opinion, the above discussion never exist.

    –Sheila on Nov 11, 2007

34. Looking at all of the comments above, I will not even chime in on the racism card because racism is fostered by those who feel that they are either losing something or might lose something. I don’t find asians in general to be racist (except perhaps the first generation and that is reflected in them wanting their children to marry one of their own or hanging out with their own kind, but hell, all of the first generation immigrants do). All I know is, my parents did not have college degrees (father was blue-collar), but all six of their children do. From first grade, we all knew we were going to college, there was no doubt and no dissent from us. We were taught that we are supposed to do better than our parents and only education would provide that. As the oldest sibling, I was told to set an example for the ones below and each sibling sets an example for the ones he/she. Did we drive our parents up the wall? Did we even, dare I say it, drive some of our teachers up the wall? Did we break the law (we were not saints)? Sure we did that, but there was always an implicit eye-on-the-prize. We went to fully segregated schools and we didn’t hang with other asians because there weren’t any so we hung around whites, blacks, & hispanics (that is perhaps why none of us married asians). We were raised as christians, but the first commandment was always, Honor they Father and Mother. Sometimes there is too much analysis placed on your economic class, cultural environment or blah-blah-blah can affect you, but it always comes down to simple values. What did your parent(s) teach you?

    –Izumi on Nov 13, 2007

35. How did this become a black thing.
    YOU PEOPLE THINK YOU ARE SO MUCH BETTER!!!
    keep us out of this GOD!!! we have enough problem with out asian talking about us TOO!!

    –Allise on Nov 27, 2007

36. The Model Students- Nicholas Kristof Op-Ed Columnist- NYTimes
    http://select.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/opinion/14kristof.html?pagewanted=print

    –Ed on Nov 29, 2007

37. When will people begin to recognize the fact that there are more facets to “intelligence” than Establishment parameters in “education” and System-rigged “tests” and starched-collar pomposities?
    Sure, there is a direct correlation between the latter and jobs and incomes, but the fact of the “intelligence” matter is that, all too often, the doctorate with the Phi Beta key dangling from his vest is the idiot in the drawing-room of human commerce, which is to say, social smarts.
    The day society begins to understand and value the “intelligence” of non”intellectual” perceptiveness, then so shall society begin to understand the full range of its capabilities.

    frank Eng
    P.S.: It might also help if society began to acknowledge, rather than fear, its own, and “natural,” range of sexuality. And studying it may help lead to less violence to ourselves, whether bodily or socioculturally.

    –Frank Eng on Nov 29, 2007

38. While I think that there have been many great points from all who have commented, I have one question for Ed: What’s with the black-bashing? Can’t you make your point without picking out one group and putting them down? I don’t see what those articles had to do with the subject at hand.
    Unfortunately, it’s behavior like Ed’s that makes people believe that articles like this are “Asian supremacist.”

    –Monty on Dec 30, 2007

39. Monty said,

    [While I think that there have been many great points from all who have commented, I have one question for Ed: What’s with the black-bashing? Can’t you make your point without picking out one group and putting them down? I don’t see what those articles had to do with the subject at hand.
    Unfortunately, it’s behavior like Ed’s that makes people believe that articles like this are “Asian supremacist.]

    Hey Monty, no one is “picking on” any one group. What was posted was the FACTS.

    Please read the book:

    http://www.brookings.edu/press/Books/1998/blckwhit.aspx

    The Black-White Test Score Gap

    Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips, eds., Brookings Institution Press 1998 c. 536pp.

    Full Text Online

    T[he test score gap between blacks and whites—on vocabulary, reading, and math tests, as well as on tests that claim to measure scholastic aptitude and intelligence—is large enough to have far-reaching social and economic consequences. In their introduction to this book, Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips argue that eliminating the disparity would dramatically reduce economic and educational inequality between blacks and whites. Indeed, they think that closing the gap would do more to promote racial equality than any other strategy now under serious discussion. The book offers a comprehensive look at the factors that contribute to the test score gap and discusses options for substantially reducing it.]

    [Although significant attempts have been made over the past three decades to shrink the test score gap, including increased funding for predominantly black schools, desegregation of southern schools, and programs to alleviate poverty, the median black American still scores below 75 percent of American whites (and Asians also) on most standardized tests. The book brings together recent evidence on some of the most controversial and puzzling aspects of the test score debate, including the role of test bias, heredity, and family background. It also looks at how and why the gap has changed over the past generation, reviews the educational, psychological, and cultural explanations for the gap, and analyzes its educational and economic consequences.]

    [The authors demonstrate that traditional explanations account for only a small part of the black-white test score gap. They argue that this is partly because traditional explanations have put too much emphasis on racial disparities in economic resources, both in homes and in schools, and on demographic factors like family structure. They say that successful theories will put more emphasis on psychological and cultural factors, such as the way black and white parents teach their children to deal with things they do not know or understand, and the way black and white children respond to the same classroom experiences. Finally, they call for large-scale experiments to determine the effects of schools’ racial mix, class size, ability grouping, and other policies.]

    Again, WHAT DO YOU EXPECT, Monty???

    There should be no great mystery about Asian achievement. It has to do with hard work and dedication to higher education, and belonging to a culture that stresses professional success.

    –Ed on Jan 03, 2008

40. Actually, if you look in wikipedia, you will see that racist tendencies decrease with higher intelligence. Asians would therefore be less racist.

    –Jamie on Jan 22, 2008

41. LOL. Someone listed William Hung as a “celebrity”???

    Oh man.

    –Jamie on Jan 22, 2008

42. re:
    The Model Students- Nicholas Kristof Op-Ed Columnist- NYTimes
    http://select.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/opinion/14kristof.html?pagewanted=print
    –Ed on Nov 29, 2007

    Interesting take on Asian superiority, one thing I might cover later is that relative to when Asians were nearly non-existent when I grew up, it was relatively easy to imagine that just being Asian gave you a leg up. Funny thing is that I don’t think Asians are much more dominant now than back then even though there are oodles of more people, and Asians should have absolutely taken over elite universities by now if the ratios then were still valid now, but they haven’t. I think it may be a combination of new immigrants being somewhat less elite than the tiny numbers of people that were here 40 years ago, but also the other Americans may have picked up on our little game and raised the stakes for everybody. It is much harder for a student to qualify to get into a state university such as the Univ of Washington now. When I played violin, it was easy to get into the 1st section of the Seattle Youth Symphony, now a student who plays as well as I did is in the 2nd section, and the quality of middle and high school orchestras in my neighborhood are orders of magnitude higher than in my days. The sheer number of African Americans graduating from high school and getting into college now is probably even with whites when I went to high school, and the number who graduate from high school has already closed to virtually the same as whites ten years ago. The gap remains wide, but it’s now a matter of lower SAT scores and numbers at Harvard, not an entire category of people who only have a 10th grade education or less like it was 50 years ago. (or still is for many elderly Asians, or Hispanics)

    –arthur hu on Feb 20, 2008

43. LOL. Someone listed William Hung as a “celebrity”???

    - The man is a celebrity because he is a walking stereotype, but he’s still a celebrity. See my next column coming up on claiming our own stereotypes instead of running away from them.

    –Arthur Hu on Feb 20, 2008

44. The model minority may be asian but who gets the job?
    lets count how many “model minority asians” are CEO or president of fortune 500 or even fortune 1000. my guess
    is 5 if best

    –jay on Feb 20, 2008

45. Who got a job making $50,000 a year just to sit on the board of Treetop, and then had to quit because her husband started attacking WalMart? Or quit a $50,000 lawyer job to make $80,000 as community outreach official for U Chicago, then triple to $275,000 and promoted to Vice Presidnet after her husband was elected to state senate? (it’s not that unusual, that hospital has 14 other vice presidents who work just as hard and paid just as much, though some wonder if that has anything to do with the high cost of health care) Why can’t Asians get on a track like that? Admissions to Harvard Law School in the 80s were pretty much proportional by race, some of them evidently do very well after graduation. It’s unfair that us Asians just have to work hard and study to get ahead, isn’t it?

    –Arthur Hu on Mar 07, 2008

46. What the heck is all these hullabaloo ?
    Resentful, angry and hatred of all those “Asians” in elite schools ? The fundamentalist Christian whites spent too much time to read the Bible and failed their aptitude tests ?
    All those years of “invisible Americans”, “permanent aliens” suddenly became very visible on Ivy League campus, academic awards in the last decade or two. The ones feel most outrageious are the whites who felt that they are the “real” owners of this place. The blacks and Latinos felt less envy as they know better themselves that they are mostly not cut out to study so intensely and would never be able to manage the discipline required to achieve high scores.
    One of the motivations of all those “bright” kids to study so hard is exactly because of wide-spread, deep-rooted racial prejudices existing in the country. It is not politically correct to speak about it, but it shows everywhere, in the hostile or dismissing eyes, in body gestures, by actual actions, what have you. Let’s not try to deny or hide it. C’est la vie Americaine, mon amis.
    They therefore study harder in order to excel themselves somehow.
    But of course, some of the Asian gangs are another example of reactions. They followed the Mafia example to seek their outlets in the underworld, since they cannot study, to make a living and ‘get even’ with the society at large as well as showing their anger and desperation.

    Americans should abandon their racial labelling habits or mindsets. Asian-Americans should also not to isolate themselves or too proud to feel that they are indeed more “superior” than others. There are also many dumb and lazy Asians as well.

    –Bagasama on Mar 28, 2008

47. Bagasama, thanks for the comment. My point is that although protests and beating the press over the head over the model minority stereotype hasn’t changed the statistical fact that Asian Americans are still outpacing everybody else, just more quietly. This will eventually have to be incorporated into affirmative action models because the current “blacks and hispanics equal to population” quotas still results in Asians (and other over-minorities) being better represented than other groups, while there are no quotas to protect under-represented white groups. In the end we’ll have to chose between quotas for everybody on everything, or just let groups compete freely no matter how many Asians or how few African Americans it might get us, that’s the hard truth those on the left will never admit to.

    –Arthurhu on Mar 31, 2008

48. We really should clarify some things.

    In terms of superiority - asians are not superior to any other ethnicity. Being one of them, I know that asians -like ALL the ethnicities I have come across - have prejudiced views, are capable of making the same dumb mistakes as anyone else and are stumbling through this life trying to make the best of it.

    However, people do have to recognize that there are differences in cultural traits. Some of these cultural traits determine a person’s educational and financial success. Traits like short/long term perspectives and goals, work ethic, value for education, acceptance of divorce and integrity of the family, respect for elders and authority, expectations for children, among others - all lead to financial sucess. These traits are not monopolized by sucessful ethnic or socioeconomic groups but they are more commonly found there.

    Certain cultural traits are superior to others in my opinion. I view the treatment of females as second class humans as an inferior cultural trait. I also view having a high value for education as a superior cultural trait.

    We have to get beyond ethnic superiority and have a better understanding of superior cultural traits.

    –Tinman on Apr 11, 2008

49. Wow, somebody dug up my old National View article and even knows about that mysterious Lagriffe guy, the only guy who applies more math than in do in comparing ethnic groups. I used to think it was just culture too, but you know, I think culture may well be determined by a chemical disposition, in which case, culture may serve to magnify differences in basic disposition. However, when we can see some African Americans who study like Asians, some Asians who sing and dance like blacks, and certainly Asians who assimilate very similarly to whites, culture could well be used to equalize outcomes between groups. But blaming all differences, such as a recent UK study, on structural racism, will likely result in very little actual changing. How much time do Asian parents spend on smashing racism vs. nagging their kids to study harder and drive them to cram schools? African American parents? If Rev Wright spent all his time nagging his congregation to push their kids harder, we’d be seeing loops of that on YouTube instead of God Dang America.

    –awarthurhu on Apr 17, 2008

50. Here’s the common wisdom on the academic gap - it’s because of racism. How to fix it? Fix racism. If you ask me, you can smash racism now until the cows come home, and Asian will still outscore whites, who will outscore the other minorities as long as that all you try to fix the “problem”. Anybody want to guess where Chinese rank in British test scores? (Hint, their english is better than the English)

    Institutional racism, the report claims, is the most destructive element in the education of black children.

    The report: Ensuring the Attainment of Black Pupils: Management guide, was produced for the Department for Children, Schools and Families by Capita Strategic Children’s Services.

    Closing the gap - in terms of both exclusions and attainment - is a question of changing attitudes and values
    National Strategies report
    …
    Racial inequalities among pupils who do not get free school meals are “stark”, it says, and argues that there may be an “ethnic penalty” in the education system.
    …

    It also highlights the high exclusion rate among black pupils and how many more are classed as having emotional and behavioural difficulties.

    “Closing the gap - in terms of both exclusions and attainment - is a question of changing attitudes and values,” it says.

    It urges head teachers to debate and challenge how institutional racism has an impact on the attainment of black pupils.

    But it also says that as “black pupils need to make faster rates of progress” than their peers to narrow the attainment gap, “additional support” is needed.

    ….

    Head teachers and department heads should monitor the progress of black pupils very closely and identify those that are not making the expected advances.

    They should keep a close watch on how many black pupils are on their gifted and talented registers

    Teachers also need to ensure black culture, history and experience is reflected in what is taught in schools, the report said.

    And schools should look at the ethnicity of their governing body.
    …

    “Our new focus on the progression of individuals, with tailored support for children’s specific needs, will help every pupil to reach their full potential. This is all about closing the attainment gap.”

    Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/education/7349262.stm

    –awarthurhu on Apr 17, 2008

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