Oh you should be so proud - you're not like how most other dark skinned people are! So smart and able to succeed!
As the article says, "Most Americans know only one thing about Indians--they are really good at spelling bees." I'd much rather be labeled than ignored :-)
I think it is not good to jump ahead in these conclusions.
what you missing is that the way filters are set up, a major part of indian immigrants that came here are the white collar types. Plus just by sheer numbers (there is one billion+ indians) there is more likely to produce a larger amount of smart/capable people, from a country with lests say 200million people.
When you look at the whole indian society, I would not call it a model. The caste system is still alive, and most indians live in slummy conditions (by european standards anyways).
In my experience Indians are a lot more willing to commit to long-term, difficult projects at the urgings of elders. But they share that with other Asian cultures. This also helps explain the spelling bee thing; Indian families are used to the idea of rote education being very important, and even participating in the education of their child that way. Really, almost anybody can get that good at spelling, it's just that more European-American parents would tend to see it as pointless.
The one thing I do find interesting is how the gender split works. Asian minorities (in the American sense: China, Japan, SE Asia) seem to have very different expectations of boys versus girls. But modern Indian families, from the castes that are likely to produce US-bound immigrants, seem to encourage their daughters to go for technology jobs. For me at least, almost 100% of the female engineers I've worked with in the Valley were Indian-born.
And the other thing I've always found strange: the QA departments of many companies in the Valley are dominated by Indian-born women.
Oh my god dude. You mean all the people from Asia who came to the US for the explicit reason to bust their ass and get rich.
Go to Asia, if you've never been (I'm guessing not). You're going to find plenty of lazy people who aren't that smart.
In Indian families, children obey and rely on their parents well into adulthood. At pretty much all levels of society. I am a committed Western-style individualist, so I actually think this is a very bad thing.
So you're right that not everyone is a careerist, and that immigrants are self-selected for ambition. But, the thing I was drawing attention to was that an Indian parent can and will suggest a long-term career like going to medical school, and many Indian kids actually do it just because their parents said so.
This is changing -- today, Indian kids assert their own choices more and more -- but it is amazing to me that there are Indian bachelors I know in their 30s, even some living in North America, who still expect mummy and daddy to find them a bride.
Also, once a minority is a "model minority" things such as affirmative action can be changed to only apply to struggling minorities.
> Oh you should be so proud - you're not like how most other dark skinned people are!
Aren't most "model minorities" in the USA far more successful than white people?
The reason the "model minority" label is bad is that it's designed to help the human mind draw racist conclusions. Like the one that you appear to have just drawn.
The logic seems to go something like this:
A. The average Indian-American in the United States is more successful than the average member of Group X.
B. Therefore, smartness and success must have something to do with being from India.
C. Therefore, if a person is from India, we should give them a preferred immigration status over someone from another country.
But C is explicitly racist. It discriminates against (e.g.) a smart and potentially successful African, or Mexican-American, or American Indian by holding him or her responsible for the "average" success and test scores of an entire U.S. ethnic group. (As if the woman standing before you were somehow responsible for the test scores of every other U.S. resident who looks like her!) And it ignores a very, very obvious alternative theory: That Indian-Americans living in the United States are successful "on average" because the "average" person of Indian descent lives in India and can't afford to move to the United States.
Another problem with the "model minority" label is: Who designs this "model"? The editors of Forbes? I note that, this week, winning a spelling bee in English is a "model" behavior, whereas hairstyling, short-order cooking, psychological counseling in non-English languages, installing ceramic tile, picking strawberries for minimum wage, or volunteering to serve in the military are absent from the list of American civic virtues.
I'm getting kinda sick of all accusations of racism. It is like a proverbial universal stick with which you can hit everyone with (even with just an accusation).
> B. Therefore, smartness and success must have something to do with being from India.
The smartness have to do with culture. People coming from a fairly poor country will work harder and will generally be more driven to achieve than a privileged person (in some countries your status is determined by the position you work in).
Also – the education level of most countries differ widely. It is no secret that the education (both at tertiary and other levels) in Africa is a giant step behind other developing nations (such as China or Brazil). So it would make sense to allow immigration from countries which have a good education system.
> C. Therefore, if a person is from India, we should give them a preferred immigration status over someone from another country.
If other immigrants from a country integrates well and is successful they should be given preference over another country - it is simply common sense. The immigration services of the USA should act in the interest of American citizens – thus it should select people that have the highest probability of making a positive contribution.
Also, people coming from countries where English is widely spoken has a much better change of integrating (e.g. common wealth countries).
> That Indian-Americans living in the United States are successful "on average" because the "average" person of Indian descent lives in India and can't afford to move to the United States.
Several countries work on a quota system. In this, the immigration quotas are designated for each country. It only makes sense to make the immigration quotas larger for groups who more easily integrate into the country – whether they are more successful based on work home education systems, work ethic, culture, etc..
> Another problem with the "model minority" label is: Who designs this "model"?
As far as I know most of the “model” minority is ascribed based on positive outcomes (e.g. university admission, SAT scores, unemployment rate, income) and negative outcomes (incarceration rate, welfare dependency, etc...)
I'm not accusing you of racism. I am pointing out that one of your statements is racist. Those aren't the same thing at all. I invite you to read point one of this interesting essay that went round the other day:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/03/12/mary-ann-mohanraj-gets...
That’s a starting assumption for me — the world is racist, the culture I grew up in is racist, I’ve internalized and carry around a hell of a lot of racist baggage, and on some deep level, many of my basic assumptions are racist. So are yours. That sucks. But I also don’t feel particularly guilty about it, and neither should you. It’s something you’ve inherited, living in this world. The onus now on you isn’t to wallow in guilt — it’s to be aware of these deep-buried attitudes, and consciously try to avoid letting them dictate your choices in life.
All of us draw racist conclusions from time to time. I've done it more than once, and doubtlessly will do so again. If nobody bothers to point this out I'll just keep making the same mistakes forever.
As for whether or not a statement like this is overtly racist:
If other immigrants from a country integrates well and is successful they should be given preference over another country
Here's the deal: When someone says "people who work hard tend to succeed", that is not overtly racist. If someone says "people who speak English tend to succeed", that is not overtly racist. When someone says "people who win math competitions succeed", or "people with a family history of entrepreneurship succeed", or "people who can afford to pay an immigration tax succeed", these statements are not overtly racist. (Though, obviously, people might disagree with them, or dispute their relevance to immigration policy.)
But when I read "people from Culture X tend to succeed; therefore we should give them a preference" what can I call that statement but racist? You're generalizing about people based on their race. It's an unfair generalization -- unfair to the millions of people who work hard, learn fast, and integrate, but who are unfortunate enough to have a less-marketable ethnic background.
I listened to this speech a couple hundred times before it dawned on me: I was having those blasphemous thoughts because my Sunday school teacher was, in fact, full of baloney, and that speech was his way of preempting my critical thinking.
If you know an idea is false, you don't have to work to suppress it. Your brain is good at doing that for you. I think as a rule, if someone tells you to suppress an idea, you should do the opposite and follow it further. Even if it shocks you.
Firstly, culture is not equal to race - it has nothing to do with race. The criticism against racism is usually because it is immutable (a person can not change his race) and race does not have any bearing on how a person acts (i.e. your personality is effected by the environment) or his intelligence.
Culture is the opposite of race - culture will determine how a person will react in certain situations. Culture can also be changed. People of all creeds can have “western” culture – i.e. democracy and respect for human rights. Other cultures have aspects that is undoubtedly perpendicular to western cultures (e.g. in its treatment of women). To each his own.
Not allowing someone to enter the US (which undoubtedly have a western culture) because he will not fit in (based on his own culture) is doing both the USA and the particular individual a favour.