OT: Patim,
Actually, you might want to look at a group like the Koreans, most of whom arrived within the last 20-30 years, without language skills or money (they were only permitted to take $3000 with them), and see how they've done, or rather how their children have done. No group could have been more clearly different looking or, linguistically speaking, "differently abled." They started out, invariably, up to their necks in debt, working as laborers at the various fruit stands around the east coast cities. Eventually, they would save enough cash and borrow enough to buy a business in a marginal area (say, Brooklyn, or Jersey City). More hard work, 18 hour days, 6 day weeks, employing husband, wife, children no matter what age, inlaws, cousins. Eventually (they're not fools, you can't keep that work up more than 8 years or so) they sell out to the next family, buy a couple of dry cleaners in Tenafly and keep working. In the end, they own, free and clear, a 600K house, 2 or 3 businesses, have interest producing loans extended to other Koreans, and have sent their 3 or 4 kids to Harvard, Princeton or Brown.
I've seen it too many times.
Why? Is the U.S. system stacked in their favor? Did someone come up and hand them an estate worth 4 million pistoles? Did someone favor them because their "Engrishi" was so fluent?
No, they just delayed personal gratification and worked like dogs.
Look at Harvard. This country might be 0.04 percent (that is, 0.0003) Korean by ethnicity, but Harvard has to be 2 or 3 percent Korean, or at least it was in the 1980's. That's right, the Koreans outperform their "affirmative action percentage allotment" by perhaps 80 times.
As to the question of IQ--only the naive believe that IQ is some native intelligence quotient. So much of IQ, or SAT tests, or school grades, depends on the family, what they discuss over the dinner table, whether they read to their kids, what is permitted on the television, what kind of supervision takes/does not take place, attention to diet and sleep, care in permitting the children to play in the neighborhood. To look at one group, say the Koreans, and see that they score much better on IQ tests is NOT to say that they are racially superior, that their genes are somehow more intelligent than, say, Scots Irish Americans. But it DOES say that when the parents produce a caring, nurturing, intelligent environment, which is buttressed by moral values and a high emphasis on education, then THAT PARENTING (a sort of cultural software, if you will) will produce children of superior IQ, according to all standard tests.
And, if you're still convinced this is a racist country (rather that white folk are racist), then check out the enormous numbers of white people who, through adoption agencies founded and run by white people, routinely, every day, spend inordinate amounts of money to adopt children of all races and all abilities/disabilities. Then, try to find out how many "people of color" either here or anywhere else in the world, adopt even their own abandoned children. Check out the status of orphans in China, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, South America, Africa, India.
As you might imagine, I have an opinion on this matter, and your rather shallow analysis (If such and such condition exists then the only possible explanation is ...) is clearly unsatisfactory. What do the struggling Korean families do on Saturday evenings? They work. They delay gratification, they save. They are not down at the dance club in the latest fashion, break dancing or putting on the Ritz, or cruising East L.A. in cars with hydraulic lifts. You can choose the latter, but it won't result in a high net worth when it comes time to retire. Get my point?
Look to the cultural software the ethnic group is using on its own, look to the cultural values, imprinting, sociological damage that the inner city subculture and the west coast Hispanic subculture imposes on its own. See if there is a penalty for a young person getting good grades, taking ballet lessons, playing the violin, a penalty imposed by his/her peers for "acting white" or "playing the gringo."
You will benefit from the analysis, I'm sure. |
