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The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

#11

Post by scythe »

It has to be noted that Asian people still drastically out-earn black people and are roughly "equal" with white people by city. Really the data shows that discrimination is more anti-black than it is pro-white (I think it would be helpful if Hispanics could be stratified by generation).

It's also revealing of the author's personal biases that he considers living in expensive coastal cities to be a disadvantage. In nearly every other context it's considered an advantage, despite the cost of living; imported goods and travel are cheaper, and infrastructure is nicer. The education system also tends to be better in rich cities, although it is worse in California due to Proposition 13. Having tenure in growing cities (and therefore owning property) is also a significant advantage in terms of wealth. Someone who bought a $200,000 house in Indianapolis in 1980 is doing a lot worse than someone who bought a $200,000 house in LA in 1980.

Of course the really old money everywhere is dominated by white people, but most white people don't have access to that.

Re: The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

#12

Post by paganel »

> It's easy and cheap to virtue-signal your care for this difficult problem, but the elephants in the room here are IQ and culture

I don't care about IQ, but supposedly you can't tell black people to just open a book (or two, or three) and to spend more time on studying because that's racist. It is their culture to sing and care only about Italian hyper-cars and jewels (we've come a long way since the days of Public Enemy) and that's about it. Doing anything else as a black person supposedly means that you're "acting white".

Re: The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

#13

Post by [deleted] »

themgt wrote: post #9

This is such incredibly poor agenda-driven "journalism", with cherry-picked data used to (poorly) attack a sort of straw man argument: Asian Americans seem to offer proof that minorities can prosper — and even leapfrog whites — if they work hard and jump through the right hoops. For that reason, Asian Americans have often been invoked as a way to excuse the income gaps between whites and blacks or whites and Hispanic…

[deleted]

Re: The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

#14

Post by BookmarkSaver »

themgt wrote: post #9

This is such incredibly poor agenda-driven "journalism", with cherry-picked data used to (poorly) attack a sort of straw man argument: Asian Americans seem to offer proof that minorities can prosper — and even leapfrog whites — if they work hard and jump through the right hoops. For that reason, Asian Americans have often been invoked as a way to excuse the income gaps between whites and blacks or whites and Hispanic…

There is also this, by the same author: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/19/the-r...

Basically, when you control for education level, Asians come out just behind whites while black and Hispanic minorities still get shafted. And that this didn't used to be the case, that Asians used to have a similar gap, which indicates that Americans have simply gotten less racist towards them. Presumably on such a large scale there shouldn't be a significant discrepancy of income for the same level of education.

Re: The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

#15

Post by RoboticFoot »

scythe wrote: post #11

It has to be noted that Asian people still drastically out-earn black people and are roughly "equal" with white people by city. Really the data shows that discrimination is more anti-black than it is pro-white (I think it would be helpful if Hispanics could be stratified by generation). It's also revealing of the author's personal biases that he considers living in expensive coastal cities to be a disadvantage. In ne…

> Really the data shows that discrimination is more anti-black than it is pro-white

Or it shows that there is something about the statistically average black person that makes them less successful than the statistically average asian person. I don't claim to know what the difference is, but this is a fairly obvious inference to make. I'd actually say this is, a priori, a lot more likely than "everyone coincidentally discriminates against these particular racial groups but not any of these other ones".

My suspicion (not based on any hard evidence) is that much of this difference is accounted for by the vast and obvious cultural differences between the average asian person in the US and the average black person in the US. Most Asian (South or East) immigrant cultures in the US aggressively push for educational and professional success. Black culture in the US doesn't.

Re: The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

#16

Post by Spooky23 »

tristanj wrote: post #7

This article has a glaring logic flaw. After COLA, Asians and Whites show roughly the same median household income. But among minorities, Asians still have higher median household incomes than their Black and Hispanic counterparts. The author barely makes an attempt explain why this is the case. Doesn't the data just reinforce the perception that Asians are the model minority? So what the article should have said, is…

The problem is that those racial categories aren't very well aligned with anything. In 1816, this article would talk about how the Irish were a bunch of turds.

If you look at "asians" you're looking at mostly confuscian based cultures and various Indian ethnicities, mostly admitted for residency for work purposes.

"Hispanic" in particular is any of a dozen different distinct cultures. Statistically, hispanics are an overlay grafted on top of whatever other category you're bickered in -- sort of like how Jewish culture transcends nationality. A consultant from Spain and a mestizo immigrant from Guatemala picking tomatoes are the same, but have little to do with each other at all.

I would assert that if you dig deeper into data you'd find that Asian ethnic groups are pulling ahead as a cohort in many ways in the same manner that the white ethnic societies did for white immigrant groups 100 years ago. The old boys club is shifting.

Re: The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

#18

Post by politician »

paganel wrote: post #12

> It's easy and cheap to virtue-signal your care for this difficult problem, but the elephants in the room here are IQ and culture I don't care about IQ, but supposedly you can't tell black people to just open a book (or two, or three) and to spend more time on studying because that's racist. It is their culture to sing and care only about Italian hyper-cars and jewels (we've come a long way since the days of Public…

It's unlikely that simply formatting your comment as "we can't say X about group Y because it's politically dangerous" is enough to prevent this comment from being flagged as intrinsically bigoted/racist, so you might want to self-moderate.

Re: The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

#19

Post by jedmeyers »

paganel wrote: post #12

> It's easy and cheap to virtue-signal your care for this difficult problem, but the elephants in the room here are IQ and culture I don't care about IQ, but supposedly you can't tell black people to just open a book (or two, or three) and to spend more time on studying because that's racist. It is their culture to sing and care only about Italian hyper-cars and jewels (we've come a long way since the days of Public…

It's not just studying. I think the author of the original comment meant there might be genetic and/or cultural factors that affect the inteliigence level. And intelligence level usually correlates with income level, although a lot of the related studies might be just measuring "mean temperature in the hospital" which does not provide much of a valuable insight.

Re: The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

#20

Post by gph »

simonsarris wrote: post #8

Jeff Guo at the Washington Post seems to be making some odd conclusions lately. For the study, Upward Mobility and Discrimination: The Case of Asian Americans , compare his reporting: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/29/the-r... To Marginal Revolution's reporting: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/11/upw... It's like they read totally different papers. Or Guo is just gonna talk…

Sounds like someone reads SSC :)
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