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“It’s true — no Americans of Indian origin in sports at all...”

Pretty much the case, but it goes MUCH, MUCH, deeper than that.

For starters, with very few exceptions, it’s much more the parents than the kids who are responsible for the success of the kids. Of course it doesn’t ‘look’ that way because the parents aren’t the ones winning the competitions, it’s the kids. But consider the following:

1) Divorce is very rare in that culture - So if you’re an Indian kid, you’ll have two parents to deal with and they won’t be competing against each other for your affection. In other words, the kids are where kids should be in pecking order of a functional family, at the bottom.

2) Often the wife doesn’t work - although I don’t have the numbers, I strongly suspect that Indian parents value their kids’ futures more than their boats. That means that there are much fewer latch-key kids. The kids are tracked and watched.

3) Continuing on the above, several Indian families that I knew had Tiger-Mom like rules that basically meant that the only times the kids were with other, non-Indian, kids, was either at school or under direct parental supervision. No overnight sleepovers, and even no “going to Mike’s house” after school. After school, straight home. Seems as if Indian parents, like many other Asian parents, understand just how rotten our culture is, and they want to protect their children from it.

4) Education OUTSIDE our school system - Again, Indians (and other Asians) seem to know MUCH BETTER than American parents that our educational system is so compromised that it now exists to HOLD BACK kids, particularly white boys. That is why Kumon, Sylvan, and numerous private (and community) after-school learning centers exist. While Indians will send their kids to public schools (or mainstream private schools, if they can afford it), the know that the ONLY WAY to truly provide for the education of their kids is by doing it outside of this ‘system’, because ‘the system’ is hopelessly broken. That’s also the model that I’ve used, and my kids were years ahead of their peers and are doing just fine now...it works, and public schools made it much easier for my kids by pulling down the competition level so low that it’s a joke.

5) Priorities - Again it’s the parents, and I guess math comes naturally to them, but not so quickly to Americans. I told my kids that while anyone in this country can make it big time, from any background, it’s all a probability game. The extremes being a doctor versus a professional basketball player. If you get the education and pass the exams, you will get a job being a doctor (unless you’re a slub) - and if you get into medical school, you will probably go all the way. In basketball, even if you make it to the college level, you still have only a 2% (or so) chance of making it to the NBA - there simply is a lot more colleges than NBA teams. So if you set your hopes on being a doctor and make it through the preliminary gates, there’s a good chance you will wind up being a doctor - but if you set your hopes on being a basketball player, and make it through the preliminary gates, the odds are still against you, big time. That’s an extreme comparison - but for Indian parents, it’s more often like going to college to be an Art History major, versus an engineer...clear choice for them. But American parents seem to be hands-off, which is why their 30 year olds are still living in the basement, rather than raising their 4 kids in a successful marriage.

As to the kids themselves, who knows. It’s difficult to measure intelligence when parents already educate their kids at such early ages and, even if you can, it’s even more difficult to compare intelligence between races, due to politics...so who knows.