The Whitening of Asian America: Are Asian Americans White?
August 24, 2007
The phrase “back to school” has been rendered somewhat meaningless with year-round school districts and some kids heading back in early August.
Sadly, there’s no longer a clear dividing line between the end of summer’s joy and the start of the drudgery that is public education.
Fortunately we still have the annual release of California’s student reading and math scores right at this time to remind us of how bad our schools are.
This year the state’s scores are more alarming than ever. Not only do the tests continue to expose the learning gap that exists between some students of color and whites, they also expose the gap that exists among the wealthiest families.
Turns out that monetary success is neither the great equalizer nor a guarantee of student achievement. Bank deposits are meaningless compared to what gets deposited in your brain. Rich kids from some ethnic families are being out-pointed by poor whites. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is losing out to Gomer Pyle.
But I’m not sure what’s more offensive: the states’ report or the media’s reporting of the report.
RICH MINORITY, POOR MINORITY, DUMB MINORITY?
There are some reasons to be concerned here. For starters, the test information provides an opportunity for nuts to revive long debunked ideas that suggest links between race and inferiority.
Let’s head them off at the pass. Bad scores aren’t about kids’ race; it’s a condemnation of the whole learning process and a lack of educational accountability that goes from principal to teachers to students to parents. And there’s the state superintendent like the cherry on top.
More troubling to me is how the reporting of the current results tries to position Asian Americans. We aren’t grouped with other students of color.
Here’s how the Sacramento Bee, the big monopoly paper in the state’s capital, reported the story: “Whether they are poor or white, white students are scoring higher than their African American and Latino classmates on the state’s standardized tests, results released Wednesday (Aug.15) show. And in some cases, the poorest white students are doing better than Latino and black students who come from middle class or wealthy families.”
APAs don’t appear until the bottom of the tenth paragraph: “Even though students are doing better than five years ago — when 35 percent were proficient in math and English — the achievement gap between racial groups has remained constant, with white and Asian American students scoring higher than their Latino and African American peers.”
It took the tenth graph to mention us, specifically. Asian Americans, roughly 4.5 million in the state, the third most numerous group after whites and Latinos, deserve a little better treatment than that.
You don’t leave our concerns to the tenth graph unless the “minorities are dumb, whites are achievers” rubric makes sense to you. Then you just lump us in with whites and hope nobody calls you on it.
The San Francisco Chronicle was almost as offensive. It mentioned Asian Americans in its lead paragraph. But the article’s headline was a bit general and confusing: “Children of Color Being Left Behind.”
Oh yeah, except for us Asian Americans. Unless, of course, we suddenly aren’t “of color.” Does our success make us white?
Let me issue this news flash to my colleagues in the mainstream media: Asian Americans are still not white.
I’d have no qualms if the story was reported that Asian Americans led students of color in state testing and how, despite that good news, achievement levels among students of color were still under par. That’s a story derived from the same facts. But that’s not as sexy as a fresh-spun story that’s decidedly more polarizing and divisive on all fronts. Not to mention one that turns us white in the process.
It’s certainly been the mentality of the right-wing think tanks that have used us as pawns in their fight against affirmative action. Asian Americans have too often been trotted out as the plaintiffs of choice to show an aggrieved minority willing to break the unity on civil rights initiatives in education. It’s been done enough times, maybe the thinking is taking hold.
In the end, only diversity leads us to the truth. We know a broad brush can’t be taken to our community. Are we just one big happy group of success-oriented people? And what of the economically disadvantaged Southeast Asian refugees? Or the large number of newly arrived immigrants with poor English skills? All conveniently forgotten.
The whitening of Asian Americans is just the maturation of the “model minority myth,” where our achievement is taken for granted and held out as a standard for others.
Don’t fall for it. It only masks the truth.
emil@amok.com
Comments
33 Responses to “The Whitening of Asian America: Are Asian Americans White?”
Got something to say?
As usual, I find myself in near-total agreement with Emil, even if he isn’t a Yalie.
But, I must append the added thought that what almost EVERYone forgets is that ALL of us, EVERYone living and breathing the air of these benighted states of Amurrika, is part and parcel of the so-called Mainstream ambiance, you know, the colorations and imprecations of contemporary “culture” or lack of same.
Education? Whadat? Stanford-Binet? How about arm- or mud-wrestling?
Establishment “standards.” forget “quotas,” have NOTHING to do with either “intelligence” OR abilities, only with their continuing dominance, well, make that “hegemony,” which used to be one of the anathemas nailed to those hordes of Mainland slanteyes.
Tune to establish, well, at least recognize, OTHER values.
And, sadly, I humbly acknowledge mine own totally, well, as much as evident, “assimilated” state.
Truth to tell, the facts of life and existence are ALWAYS several steps ahead of awareness.
It ain’t “whites” or coloreds who stink up this planet, it’s the assholes of any and all colors of which there are far too many.
Frank Eng
P.S.: Aside to my betters: college degrees confer some degree of earnings improvements, but they guarantee almost nothing else.
My response is in my column. Asians aren’t white. We perform BETTER than whites. And there’s a reason for that.
O.K. Arthur Hu, I’ll take the bait. Why precisely do you assert (wrongly) that Asians do “better than whites?” I guess you’re another Asian supremecist like Kenneth Eng. So here’s my query: Have Asian supremecists seized the mantle from the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan?
Having graduated from a New York City school that was almost exactly 1/3 Hispanic, 1/3 black and 1/3 white, let me offer the most obvious and simple reason for the results of the study: Doing well in school is “acting white.” Minority kids, especially African Americans, are mercilessly tortured by their peers if they show interest in school subjects or enthusiasm for learning.
Anyone who has had experience as a student in a diverse school will agree with this. It’s a reality of today’s culture and it’s disgusting.
As for your gripes about Asians being “included” among whites, Emil, your complaint has more to do with the press write-ups of the story than the actual research itself. Asian-Americans are still considered seperately in the statistics. If they weren’t, the resulting news stories wouldn’t be able to distinguish their results from the scores of the other groups.
And if I were you, I’d take some time off from bitching about tiny little slights to put people like Mr. Arthur Hu on blast. The difference between racists of other groups and Asian racists seems to be this: Asian racists are up-front, unapologetic and bold with their racism. You need to do some in-house cleaning, Mr. Guillermo.
I object to the broad characteriation of Asian Americans to include Asian ethnic groups who could benefit from programs that target minority groups but are denied because they are considered Asian Americans and are not considered people of color.
Except for the black people, I can see that every other race or ethnic can be called “white” in visual respect. The “legal whiteness” in America is mere intentionally and socially constructed and have engaged with the majority European peolpe for their privileges. It has no scientific foundation. So foolish to say doing great is “becoming white”, or “acting like white”.
I can point many East Asians are “whiter” than many of “Caucasian descents”.
Asians do better than whites in schools and universities but their professional achievements in areas of business (CEOs etc.) are not commensurate with their achievements, due to racism.
Why are so many non whites obsessed with becoming white? Asians are not white, but many wish they were and therefore desire white mates and HAPA babies.
I agree Many first and second generation Asians ARE obssessed with becoming white. On college campus and among the young professionals today, you see the split between those who prefer Asian friends only or prefer whites and these people hate each other.
What is really unfortunte is that many American-born Asians can easily fake to be culturally aware, and not seen as a possible racist. Many won’t admit that they only speak one lanugage….most consider themselves speaking an Asian language ( but can barely function when it comes to speaking it).
Many Caucasians today have become much more sensitive to races and diversity..and tend to be open to make friends of different ethnic groups. Unfortunately Asians only talk to Asians or whites. Look who is the most most racist, ignorant group of people in the US? Many of my friends who are Africans( not African Americans) will agree with me that Asians are probably more racist today than whites and many are white wannabes.
Where is the Asian Identity and how can we raise awareness of Asian Heritage?
Some websites about this issue:
http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/revicontent_whoiswhite.htm
http://www.scientificblogging.com/news/will_latinos_become_white
In the future, Latinos and Asian Americans soon become “white” - a socially contructed term. They are exactly passing the process just like what Irish, Italians, Greeks, Spaniards or European Jews, who were “non-white” at the early period of American history, had experienced.
Perhaps there are reasons why some Asians seem obsessed with becoming white. Sometimes it’s just circumstances that change how you choose your friends and how you prefer to live. Yes, I’m a first-generation born Asian who has no Asian friends, let’s say Chinese friends since I’m Chinese-American, but I don’t see anything wrong with that.
Anyway, growing up, I lived in NYC, but not in Chinatown. Nor near other large populations of Chinese in Brooklyn or Queens. I tried to make some Chinese friends at school, but in school, they’d all hang out and speak Cantonese. I didn’t understand them and they wouldn’t stop speaking in Cantonese. I just felt uncomfortable and excluded from the other Chinese kids. Even joining a Chinese culture club in high school was no help. It was just the same bunch of kids who sat together in the school cafeteria and spoke in Cantonese. It wasn’t really learning about Chinese culture, though they’d do the parties for Autumn Moon Festival and Chinese New Year’s. They were just there to party, play mahjong, and watch Cantonese videos. It was just no fun for me. Sometimes I felt like I was wearing a Chinese skin, but had nothing in common with other Chinese kids.
In addition to that, every time I went to Chinatown to shop for groceries or ordered from a Chinese restaurant, I felt apprehensive and awful. To this day, I still get Chinese shopkeepers who suddenly can’t understand English and can’t understand simple numbers in Cantonese or Mandarin. For example, once a butcher bagged 6 pieces of chicken instead of the two that I asked for. On that occasion, protesting and holding up 2 fingers didn’t even help. He just added 6 more to the bag. Or, for instance, when I tried to learn some Chinese words by asking for the name of items in Chinese, I’d get the blank stare or they’d repeat the name in English even though I repeated said, no, what is it in Chinese. Trying to order in a Chinese restaurant can be just that, trying. I can’t believe that all of these people are actually that obtuse, so I’ve concluded that it’s deliberate. They were humiliating experiences. Over the years, it just felt like a betrayal by my own people. It’s not that I didn’t get the “Ching Chong Charlie” taunts and the goofy faces with the pulled back corner of the eyes from the non-Asian kids (and sometimes immature adults) when I was growing up, but that happened long ago and very, very infrequently now. It’s much worse when it’s your supposedly own people who cause you to feel like shit.
I meet Chinese-Americans in the workplace now and it’s fine, we’re friendly. We might get lunch together or do the company outing thing, but no I don’t want to hang out with them after work or on the weekends, nor do they or I ask if we’d want to.
Anyway, that kind of alienation while growing up is one of the main reasons why my friends are not Chinese. My disconnection to what is supposed to be my people and culture all stems from those experiences. I’m sure I’m missing out sometimes, but I’ve learned to live with it. So you see, it’s not always an obsession to become white, but sometimes it’s just circumstances that make a person disconnect from their original background.
Perhaps there are reasons why some Asians seem obsessed with becoming white. Sometimes it’s just circumstances that change how you choose your friends and how you prefer to live. Yes, I’m a first-generation born Asian who has no Asian friends, let’s say Chinese friends since I’m Chinese-American, but I don’t see anything wrong with that.
Anyway, growing up, I lived in NYC, but not in Chinatown. Nor near other large populations of Chinese in Brooklyn or Queens. I tried to make some Chinese friends at school, but in school, they’d all hang out and speak Cantonese. I didn’t understand them and they wouldn’t stop speaking in Cantonese. I just felt uncomfortable and excluded from the other Chinese kids. Even joining a Chinese culture club in high school was no help. It was just the same bunch of kids who sat together in the school cafeteria and spoke in Cantonese. It wasn’t really learning about Chinese culture, though they’d do the parties for Autumn Moon Festival and Chinese New Year’s, etc. They were just there to party, hang out, play mahjong, and watch Cantonese videos. It was just no fun for me. Sometimes I felt like I was wearing a Chinese skin, but had nothing in common with other Chinese kids.
In addition to that, every time I went to Chinatown to shop for groceries or ordered from a Chinese restaurant, I felt apprehensive and awful. To this day, I still get Chinese shopkeepers who suddenly can’t understand simple English and can’t understand simple numbers in Cantonese or Mandarin. For example, once a butcher bagged 6 pieces of chicken instead of the two that I asked for. On that occasion, protesting and holding up 2 fingers didn’t even help. He just added 6 more to the bag. Or, for instance, when I tried to learn some Chinese words by asking for the name of items in Chinese, I’d get the blank stare or they’d repeat the name in English even though I repeated said, no, what is it in Chinese. Trying to order in a Chinese restaurant can be just that, trying. I can’t believe that all of these people are actually that obtuse, so I’ve concluded that it’s deliberate. They were humiliating experiences for me. Over the years, it just felt like a betrayal by my own people. It’s not that I didn’t get the “Ching Chong Charlie” taunts and the goofy faces with the pulled back corner of the eyes from the non-Asian kids (and sometimes immature adults) when I was growing up, but that happened long ago and very, very infrequently now. It’s much worse when it’s your supposedly own people who cause you to feel like shit.
I meet Chinese-Americans in the workplace now and it’s fine, we’re friendly. We might get lunch together or all go to the company outings, but no I don’t want to hang out with them after work or on the weekends, nor do they or I ask if we’d want to.
Anyway, that feeling of alienation while growing up is one of the main reasons why my friends are not Chinese. My disconnection to what is supposed to be my people and culture all stems from those experiences. I’m sure I’m missing out sometimes, but I’ve learned to live with it. So you see, it’s not always an obsession to become white, but sometimes it’s just circumstances that make a person disconnect from their original background.
I think “disconnected”’s story does not make any relation to the social “white”. It’s just about the obsessed feeling of fading ethnicity and culture, melting or isolating, which is much common in East Asian descents. Indeed, becoming white or not does not make one distant from his original background, because all what he owes - phenotype, customs, or viewpoints - does tell which community he belongs to.
I don’t think that articles or people who point out how Asians do better than other minorities are calling Asians white or think of Asians as white. I think they simply don’t think of Asians as minorities, but, rather, as a race in limbo, i.e. Asians have moved away from being comparable to minorities but haven’t reached whiteness…yet. As always, Asians are being ignored here until they can serve to demonstrate what’s wrong with other races.
I know that people often tend to think that if it is not a genetic different that results in higher test scores for Asian-Americans, then it must be a cultural one. But then we get into the messy business of cultural superiority which is just as bad as the whole genetic superiority argument.
An important question to ask regarding these results is: What are the tests really measuring? Anyone who knows anything (important) about IQ tests or standardized assessments will tell you that there’s a lot of controversy over what they actually measure. From what I’ve read in terms of research and discourse about the topic, I think the bottom line is that although there are probably some basic cognitive states/processes measured by those tests, a single person’s cognition can change and vary so much in different situations and tasks over time that it’s really hard to say what it really means when a kid correctly answers 3 out of 8 multiple choice comprehension questions. To make things more complicated, we have to evaluate what are the underlying value judgements in the content, execution, and interpretations of those tests. If I think being able to answer multiple choice questions correctly is a low level cognitive skill, then high scores on those tests won’t be that impressive to me.
I think as Asian-Americans we should stop arguing that it’s our culture that allows us to score so high because really what you’re saying to people of other cultures is that our culture is superior to theirs. That’s not fair and it’s simply not true. I often hear API people say, “We do well at school because our parents expect more out of us.” To test this statement, my college thesis was a simple survey measuring parental expectations across different ethnic groups and statistically (yes, I used the magic word) there was no significant correlation between college ambitions and parental expectations across ethnic groups. Though I wouldn’t tout my undergraduate research as definitive evidence, I think it does show that we need to watch what we say and look at the bigger and vastly more complicated picture of reality. For example, after understanding the nature of the (in)famous Chinese Lian Kao (National Examination) and its popular imitation all around Asia, it made sense to me that historically, Asians have probably had more experiences with standardized, written assessments which has transfered in multiple ways to us Asian-American hybrids.
At the very least, let’s get rid of this common statement in the API community: “Asian/Asian-American parents care more about their children’s education.” I’ve watched a community of non-Asian immigrant parents who work 15 hour days take their children on public transportation an extra hour or two every day just so that they can attend a Spanish-English bilingual charter school. It’s both heartbreaking and inspiring to see them persist and struggle to pull their children out of abject poverty. At the same time, I’ve also heard affluent Asian-American housewives complain about having to drive their children around to tutoring and piano and soccer in their luxury cars. Try remembering these images whenever someone says Asian parents care more than other parents about their children’s education. Again, that statement is not fair and it’s simply not true.
Regardless of how media spins our API identity or what the standardized test results are, I think as Americans and world citizens, we should keep in mind that our ultimate goal as a society is opportunities and guided growth for ALL CHILDREN. It is NOT high scores on standardized tests.
Fourteen years ago, the Boston Globe ran a story on the discrepancy of the Police Academy Entrance Test scores among the “Majority” vs. the “Minority”. The graph illustration showed a huge discrepancy on the test scores between these two groups. However, under the “Majority” test score, there were fine prints that stated Whites/Asians. And under the “Minority” test score, it was Blacks/Latinos. As I believe the Asian Americans who took that test probably represented less than 0.65% of the test takers. And the Asian American populations in the greater Boston area was probably only about 5% back then. It was amazing that some “researchers” shamelessly link Asians American with Whites to skew the results further and promote the polarization of the racial difference between White and Blacks/Latinos.
My response is in my column. Asians aren’t white. We perform BETTER than whites. And there’s a reason for that.
–Arthur Hu on Aug 27, 2007
Hey Arthur Hu, aka Asian supremacist, you obviously never heard of people called the JEWS.
The JEWS own you pathetic East Asians in academics and Wall Street. All you East Asians are ever good for is fetching paper for your Jew boss.
XOXO
HTFH
Bravo !, Tina Tsai.
And, c’mon Arthur Hu, if you’re not joking, you should be. Or, rather, you ARE. A joke, that is.
As for friend Anthony Ciolli, he sounds like a vitriolic “Christian” on other kite strings.
Which reminds me of Robert Novak and his “company,” literally, of “Swift Boaters.”
They borrowed a page out of Tsun-tze?, spreading disinformation and provoking divisions among those already “divided” by sundry little regionalisms and specifics of pereceived “self-interest.”
Hey!, Anthony Ciolli, IDENTIFY
Yeah, Anthony Ciolli, IDENTIFY yourself.
Just exactly who ARE you.
More to the point, WHO employs you?
And if your hateful, baiting, beliefs as stated are indeed your own, then I think you are in serious need of professional help, but, from your tone, likely, beyond help.
At least you spelt supremacist with an “a” and “Christian” didn’t.
Which leads me to wonder if you both spring from the identical key-stroke of a computer licensed to professional haters/baiters funded by Rovian swiftboaters of ill repute and authentically “evil” intent and purpose.
Frank Eng
P.S.: I am proud to profess myself a “Chinese” “Jew.”
Oh, American at that. And sans hyphen.
Maybe we need to redefine the terms. Instead of white we should characterize the high achievers as polar or temperate origin communities (Polars or Tempies?) and the low achievers as Tropicals. That way we get rid of the color names.
Either way, the kids whose ancestors came from the temperate regions of the world do better than those whose ancestors came from the tropics, regardless of the income of their parents. So what? The cream rises to the top. Just remember, Jews test out higher than any other group. And achieve more in life too. Go figure.
Dear Hannah Katz:
A dear friend/associate named Gita Katz was a hardworking and accomplished “modern dancer,” and I have no idea what score she achieved on the kind of “tests” you seem to be referring to.
On which score I am asking:
Testing for what?
In what references?
Personally, my own experience with human “intelligences” or lack of same points to the individual rather than the “race” or “creed” or “color.”
And I still believe there are several “kinds” of “intelligence,” none of which our so-called “intelligence” agencies, all 27? of them, appear to call on.
Indeed, in this regard, “intelligence” is a one-word, four-syllable oxymoron.
Frank Eng
P.S.: But I DO find your temperate/intemperate syllogism intriguing. And, oh, “achieve” more of what?
More war? Smarter bombs? More oppressions?
More hubris???
Dear Hannah Katz:
A dear friend/associate named Gita Katz was a hardworking and accomplished “modern dancer,” and I have no idea what score she achieved on the kind of “tests” you seem to be referring to.
On which score I am asking:
Testing for what?
In what references?
Personally, my own experience with human “intelligences” or lack of same points to the individual rather than the “race” or “creed” or “color.”
And I still believe there are several “kinds” of “intelligence,” none of which our so-called “intelligence” agencies, all 27? of them, appear to call on.
Indeed, in this regard, “intelligence” is a one-word, four-syllable oxymoron.
Frank Eng
P.S.: But I DO find your temperate/intemperate syllogism intriguing. And, oh, “achieve” more of what?
More war? Smarter bombs? More oppressions?
More hubris???
[…] And Emil Guillermo asks in AsianWeek about the growing perception that the APA community is “turning white.” Additionally, the Washington Post reports on Jenny Tsai, whose honors thesis concludes that […]
Hey guys,
I am a student at USC, and I am of European descent.
I take my education very seriously, as most others do. After reading through all your comments I would like to offer an outsiders perspective.
Here at USC, about 80% of the students are White, or Asian. This does not matter though because in my advanced classes, there are students of African, Middle-Eastern, and all other descents.
I agree that there are many differences between all of us who have gotten to this point of higher education, but from my own experience what everyone has said really doesn’t matter.
Students who come from rich families, have extra resources, but often times students from poor families have the drive and passion that rich kids lack.
I came from a somewhat upper-middle class area of Orange County myself, and most of my AP classmates were Asian or White, but I didn’t see this as a superiority situation. Like someone said, “Some Hispanic and Black students have the passion and the resources to achieve academic success”, yet sometimes their friends make fun of them for being “white-washed” or “too smart to hang with them”. I see this situation, and it sucks, but it is not limited to minority groups.
I was on the football team, which had every race represented, and I got a lot of flak for not hanging out after practice because I had to study, and mainly from my best friend Justin, who just happens to be Asian, yet he didn’t really care to much about his grades. In the locker room you were expected to be a man, not a scholar, and so it shows that in many social situations people feel like it is not their place to take their educations serious. This could be a limiting factor for Black and Hispanic students, and it also could not, the extent of this social influence is really impossible to measure.
What I am getting at I guess is that after all my interacting with diverse students from within the US, and from throughout the World is that someone is more likely to perform better if your parents instilled a desire to perform well in your academic careers, as well the extent to which each student takes their education serious, and well as their personal goals.
Most of my Asian classmates had the same parental influences I did. My mother is from Germany, and I know that if I ever brought home a B, she would be disappointed and know that I could have done better and I would have suffered some punishment. Ill admit she was a little scary about grades, but maybe that instilled in me a pride in getting good grades. I feel that this is probably what happened in most households with disciplinary parents.
Performing well in academics, and performing well on standardized tests should not be seen as being “white”. It should be considered understanding the social situation in the United States and being “successful”. Whether students are successful, and whether they are a member of some race does not matter. If Asians are doing better, than good for them. A good education is important, and if certain social groups discourage their friends from performing well, then we should let all parents know that they should try and not have their students affiliate with these groups, or support them through it making sure they still perform well.
Growing up, I definately had my racial biases. I thought that Asians were probably best at memorizing information and following rules, while Whites were all about business, and creativity, while Blacks and Hispanics had elements of both but really were into modern culture and music.
I WAS COMPLETELY IGNORANT. Then, at USC I had to work in multi-racial groups for all of my classes and I realized that people of every color and race proved me wrong. I met the most creative Asians, and the most retarded whites, I met every combination of talents and race that I could meet.
I learned that no matter who I work with, that what they look like is just a unique shell to the beautiful complexity of intelligence that lies beneath.
I think all of you have good points, yet since we as a society have been moving against characterizing groups for certain traits or talents the past few decades, lets continue to do so and realize that in the United States we must make sure that everyone has equality of opportunity to succeed, and as long as we work to get to this point, we will see that all people are capable, in every skill, and every trade regardless of their culture, and race.
Closing remark ( I promise, hah ):
To those who think Asians are superior to all: I see that you have a point if you are drawing this conclusion from test scores. I do not know the statistics but it could very well be true. I think you need to be careful. There is a fine line between being proud of your ancestry, which you should be, and being outright racist to non-Asians. I am proud of my ancestry as an American of European descent, but I am also disappointed with what my race has done to set up a pathetic world view that some races are better than others. History has proved that the emergence of the European political dominance in many regions was sheer luck at the timing of getting advanced travel, and fighting technology. Had the Chinese done this during the height of their empirical history, I am positive that we would have seen a East-Asian dominance over world affairs first, and I might be on this web sight defending my rights as a minority.
I have said too much, but either way, if we respect each other, help each other out, we can make this world a better place for everyone. (cliché but true)
First off, Americans need to drop the hyphen when referring to their ethnic makeup. Regardless of our ancestors’ origins, we are all Americans. Period. Mainstream American culture (neo-European) seems to be the deciding factor in success, so it’s just a matter of those students/individuals who have the greatest mastery of the standardized language used in America (English) that do well. If another language (Spanish, French, Chinese, etc.) were used to create the ORIGINAL test documents, you’d see higher scores for those native speakers/writers, regardless of their background. Certain concepts are lost in translation, and it’s no wonder that those who didn’t grow up speaking standard English (no pidgins, ebonics, etc.) don’t do well, when the tests can’t be fully understood by those students.
Bravo !, Holden S:
And for most of the rest of you, why are you so, like, totally, focussed on the “pragmatics” of “education”?
By which I mean, is it only position, prestige, salary level AND the “power” deriving therefrom, that matters to you?
If so, I commiserate. It’s not smelling the roses OR valuing either “esthetic” OR “spiritual” paramaters, it is, very simply, the dumbing down of those senses that are NOT related to the meretricious in this self-vaunted society of unequals.
.
Some east asians are “whiter” then European caucasians because they do everything they can to keep their skin fair; from pills to bleaching creams to cloaking up every time they leave the house. Naturally though most east asians I’ve seen are significantly darker then the average european.
Also, why is it so hard for people to accept that there are differences between variation populations of humans. If personal experiences in everyday life doesn’t isn’t enough to convince you then how come every crime report, test scores, IQ scores, and even the well being of their homelands doesn’t confirm it to people then I don’t know what will. I’m amazed at how people will disregard the truth staring at them straight in the face.
Check out the “SAT Stars” Hu’s on First about SAT scores. Having Asian parents who go crazy at B+ beats out being rich. And the new SAT writing test hammers other minorities, but Asians write just as well as the white students, at least on average. (that might mean lots of students who write well balanced by a bunch who are awful)
I don’t really get the issue in the title. The concept of “white” is very glib and inappropriate for a discussion on the dynamics of the Asian demographic. It would make sense to use “European-American”, and if you rephrase the question now as “Are Asian-Americans European-Americans?” the answer is obviously “no”. It’s important to note that this whole concept of “white” as apposed to “colored” is rooted in the racialized ideologies that the founders of this country used to rationalize such controversial acts as the slave trade and the driving out of Native American Tribes from their homelands. Later European immigrants still faced racialized treatment but were able to assimilate because of the common physical characteristics of settled European descendants. That said, racial nepotism is still rife in certain sectors of US American society. People still seem to hire employees based on dinner-table ethics that value the ability to “relate” to potential employees and coworkers over their documented qualifications and potential “job-fit”. Racial thought often governs an individuals perception of how well a candidate will work within an organization. Often companies and their upper administrations are merely elitist clubs in disguise. Where money and power are at stake it is only human nature to preserve this for those of a privileged class which is quite transparent in the ranking of our American universities. The ties to traditions that formed during racially segregated times have slow down our progress towards an ideal meritocracy. Progressive attitudes and the resulting diversification of the “elite class” due to affirmative action are slowly leading us forward towards a de-racialized class structure. Unfortunately, the search and reliance on tradition, ethnicity, religion, identity, culture, and nationality to define self-values has ran against the meritocratic progression. While none of these are inherently bad and should still be consider they often open the forum to the racial scapegoating many of us resort to when trying to explain our respective places on the grade/income stratum. However the reality is that race and class are separate and far from universally correlated. As a society we should lean towards one versus the other. If the ultimate goal is an ideal meritocracy, then racial thought must be actively avoided. While this is a process that requires much care, attention, contrivance, and sacrifice, ultimately the closer we get to a de-racialized merit-based class system, the more successful this country will be for all it’s citizens and residents.
Yes, Asian-Americans are becoming Whites, being assimilating at an amazing rate something French sociologist Emmanel Todd alraedy considered a decade ago in his book “The destiny of immigrants”.
The level of intermarriage is so high with white men marrying almost 40% of fourth generatio Asian-American women that yes, Asian-Americans are just becoming whites.
The first Eurasians are not sure…but once their dougther marry whites they are just like any other white american, becoming part of Mainstream America, with English name and usually blond hair…
Phil,
Don’t think of “White” as a skin color. It is a way of thinking/living/being. This White thinking is based in unilateral/binary thinking. eg “Go West Young Man” or “I think therefore I am”, “My way or the highway”.
This thinking manifests itself in modernity - man’s attempt to control the earth and the world which is most apparent in current American philosophical undrpinnings which represent themselves as “the white man’s burden” to modernize/educate/democratize/convert non-Whites to the White way of thinking.
This is fundamentally different from an Asian way of thinking. For example, China calls itself the middle kingdom - that automatically indicates multi-directional movement moving out from the center (as opposed to a White definition of progress - go west young man!) Or think of Native Americans and how their culture was tied to the earth.
Places used to be named after animals or geographical markers. Since the White man took over, most places are now named after a person - Washington, Virginia (the Virgin Queen), even San Francisco.
People like Condy Rice and Frances Fukayama are White in this regard - they think that the end of history comes when the White man’s responsibility of spreading democracy/modernity is finished.
You realize some of this yourself when you refer to “dinner-table ethics” and “the ability to “relate””. If people of color only follow these same White ways of thinking and being, then these people of color become
White too.
We need more multiplistic and less unilateral thinking. We need to think in terms of multiple colors - not just white and black. See Ron Takaki’s interview on AsianWeek.com - this is typical White either/or binary thinking that creates the black/white binary. when there are so many different colors and different shades of colors.
I
Oh Hell no I hope not, cuz put it like this I’m full black with asian descent on my mother side. My 4th generation grandparents are immigrintess from taiwan.