Posted on 11/30/2016 9:36:52 AM PST by ErikJohnsky
Between 1940 and 1970, something remarkable happened to Asian Americans. Not only did they surpass African Americans in average household earnings, but they also closed the wage gap with whites.
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[The real secret to Asian American success was not education]
How did that happen? About the same time that Asian Americans were climbing the socioeconomic ladder, they also experienced a major shift in their public image. At the outset of the 20th century, Asian Americans had often been portrayed as threatening, exotic and degenerate. But by the 1950s and 1960s, the idea of the model minority had begun to take root. Newspapers often glorified Asian Americans as industrious, law-abiding citizens who kept their heads down and never complained.
Some people think that racism toward Asians diminished because Asians “proved themselves” through their actions. But that is only a sliver of the truth. Then, as now, the stories of successful Asians were elevated, while the stories of less successful Asians were diminished. As historian Ellen Wu explains in her book, “The Color of Success,” the model minority stereotype has a fascinating origin story, one that’s tangled up in geopolitics, the Cold War and the civil rights movement.
I think also the popularity of Asian dramas, especially KDramas, has had an impact.
In the mid 80s I worked with a fellow in Toronto Canada who was one of the so called 'boat people' from Cambodia. He was the last survivor of his family of 10. Arrived as a refuge, learned how to code, got a job. Nice guy. I'm sure he did well and raised a good family.
Maybe the fact that we almost never seem to get robbed or raped by Asian-Americans had a little something to do with it, eh?
They also don't have boomboxes blaring out rap or mariachi music.
They were on their shop rooftops with AR's during Watts riots.
“I want one of those PLO military mole girls who work in take out Chinese restaurants and scream orders at guys in the kitchen.”
Hehe, one of the few fat asian women I’ve ever seen in my life was one of those who worked the register at a Chinese restaurant. I guess she was taking advantage of the employee discount.
LOL. At my age there's no choosy. Besides, don't knock if you ain't tried it.
Just STFU about ‘racism’.
Whites are no more or no less ‘racist’ than any other race.
I have watched several Chinese and other Asians try to keep there children speaking their own language. But often they loose the battle. The parents speak Chinese at home but as the children get older they start to only hear Chinese but speak back to their parents in English. If the parents work in an English office they become fluent as well, but often with a heavy accent. The kids lose their accent or not depending on their school friends (and number of siblings). If their school friends all have similar backgrounds they can keep their native tongue longer. But if not they lose their accent and soon lose their ability to speak the language well, even if they can understand it.
I’m guessing your wife was in a Chinese community here. With Chinese friends at school and maybe Chinese Sunday School. The large family helps keep the language and if the mother works in an environment that only speaks Chinese she will be less tolerant of English spoken in the home.
Anyway the Chinese will separate your wife as not being one of them. Go to Shanghai or Xian. Banana, twinkie, ABC are all the same meaning. As much as we will still hear the accent and some of the old ways. Those back in China will know she is different. Besides her accent, she will have more confidence but she will be less competitive. She will be more likely to small talk and laugh. And the next generation really will be every bit American as anyone from Europe or anywhere else.
The experience on an American school playground and the entertainment media here often put a defining mark on a child as American.
Yellow fever—Asian women are attractive?
Could that be the reason?
At a general level, interracial children IQs are about half way between their parents' IQs. That's evidence the higher Asian IQs are genetic rather than environmental.
Oh, we're well aware of that! Sometimes I think my wife acts racist, the way she acts towards FOBs (Fresh-Off-the-Boat or Chinese from Asia). She hates foreign Chinese not born here in the USA. And it goes both ways, the FOB Chinese show disrespect towards Chinese-Americans born here. Different culture, she thinks the FOBs are rude. Anyway, she was born in San Francisco's Chinatown, and her parents moved to a white neighborhood in SF when she was young, maybe 4. They only spoke Chinese at home, even though her dad had been here since he was a kid and was even in the US Army during WWII fighting in Europe for the USA, spoke English outside the home.
My wife was an IT manager of a large data center, and had some conflicts with Chinese employees. Because of culture differences, they couldn't stand working for a woman. One Chinese guy she fired did a lawsuit against her and the company claiming racial discrimination. The lawsuit went forward a while because my wife uses her married name (mine), then when lawyers found out she is Chinese the guy's lawsuit fell apart! Guy had to be dragged out of the offices by SFPD when my wife fired him. She became known as the Dragon Lady Boss because of that. She had white, black, hispanic and Asian employees under her, treating them all the same, although she disliked the Chinese guys and their anti-woman boss bias.
I've seen similar stuff in my job sites. One of the toughest managers was a Chinese-American gal from Texas, she took no crap from Chinese male employees and had them cowering in fear of her. I liked seeing her do that! On a different note, I've had many bosses over the years, and some of the most incompetent ones were either Chinese men or Black (both genders). Maybe I was just unfortunate, but I had better success with white bosses, again I'm generalizing about my experience.
Just my view of things. I ran a software company for 30 years. I had lots of foreign, mostly Asian employees and most of them are now citizens. When it came to the Chinese, they look at themselves as one in a billion. Those who get here have done it by testing into the top 1% and working very hard and having a great deal of gumption or in some cases they are the spouse of those people. When they meet your wife, because she looks Chinese, they are still competing with her. Its not too fair. Your wife knows all the rules. They don’t. Your wife understands America and Americans and users and bosses and laws.
But I don’t think its so much sexism that makes her have a problem with the Chinese men. There is cast in China. The two peaks of which are University of Shanghai and the true Shanghai accent. I watched one of my best Chinese male programmers cower to a Chinese women who went to The University of Shanghia. She wasn’t smarter, or better in any other way, but she was the creme de la creme in her own eyes. And the others seemed to agree that she was superior. I also ran into a Chinese guy who people would not eat with. They explained to me, he was a farmer. So of course they would not eat with him. The fact that he also had a PhD in Mathematics did not matter to them. We in America have sexism and racism but they have lots of isms that we have not dreamed of. From the south, from the country, from a lessor city, part of the government, dark skin, are all reasons for them to feel superior to another Chinese person. The interesting thing is that your children and theirs will happily play together with all those issues left behind.
So true! (I am enjoying our back and forth on this.) My wife and her siblings were raised here in the USA. So many differences from what her relatives endured in China. Her mom was born into a wealthy family in China. My wife's grandfather on her mom's side had three wives. Because the first two bore no sons. Third wife bore a daughter (my wife's mom); the guy went and adopted a son the same day she was born, paying lots of cash. That adopted son inherited everything, the real daughter (my wife's mom) got nothing. My wife's mom had an arranged marriage by the family, married off to my wife's dad without meeting him, he traveling from the USA to pick her up in China. (Soon after, the communists took over and the adopted son lost everything to the communists, boo-hoo!) Anyway, my wife's mom would send money to the adopted son! Even though she got cheated out of everything. Again, cultural differences. Women are expected to cater to the men, one of those "isms". My wife says hell no, she would never put up with that.
i’ll just throw in maybe its cuzz the Babes are Hot!
Hate and stupid is a bad combo and the asians are neither.
In 1983 “Steve” stepped off the boat from Vietnam speaking no English. I met him in 1985 at a computer technical school where we learned computer programming. He spoke good English. In 1986 we crossed paths again, this time in a major US corporation. He probably owns one now!
One of our classmates at computer school was a young Chinese woman. She became a bit embarrassed when she won acclaim as Wonder Woman. She finished overnight any assignment that took any mere mortal a week to finish. The instructor apologized to her that the course could not keep her more busy. I often wonder what happened to her.
Because everyone looks great when compared to Africans.
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