Cinderella Ed,
Well thought out and well written. I only have one comment, and that is that far too little attention is spent on the culture's or subculture's own "software," which is the set of values, morals, mores and beliefs imprinted on the young members of a group or subgroup and which not only determines generalized results on standardized tests, but also social and economic success.
When Chinese or Korean kids see another of their own lugging a viola to school, they don't pull him into the side alley and pound the crap out of him or her for "acting white." The same Asian ethnic groups do not have music videos (or attendance at the MTV Awards, the Emmys) where their role models appear half undressed or in violent, gangsta outfits promoting sex, violence and the drug culture to impressionable 13 and 14 year olds. (This may change, of course, but for now it's generally true.)
The dominant weekend activity of Asian immigrant kids is studying, practicing music and attending the Korean Church of Peoria or the Chinese Presbyrterian Church of Phoenix (activities which are also generally economically cheap and which are done at home). Theirs is not the inheritance of Saturday nights at a speakeasy with "Gimme a pigfoot and a bottle of beer" on the jukebox.
Economic success in this country has very little to do with race, there are no groups of white folk holding down people of color, no matter what Jesse Jackson says. In fact, it's the opposite, as I illustrated in the interracial adoption statistics, charitable giving by whites to various organizations which donate huge grants to other ethnic groups, etc. Economic success, like the ability of this computer to function in its tasks, has to do with the software the particular individual has imbibed at his/her domestic locale, from parents, peers, teachers, etc. It has to do with expectations internalized and procedures mastered. Of course little Hiroyuki does all his homework and gets straight A's in school, as does Kwangsun and Chia-jin, whatever else would they do? It's a given.
And, with that, it's also a given that 12 years from now they will be attending Stanford or Yale, and 17 years from now they'll be in medical school or law school.
(What do you call an Asian American failure story? Someone who only graduated from a state university, say University of Michigan, magna cum laude, rather than summa (:^o).)
It's in the software. |
