Adapting to American culture as a Chinese student

However black Americans have had the weird status of being majority in some states with a unique subculture and history while also being a tiny minority across the entire country. Now mix in relatively recent interstate migration and race mixing and their subculture has an interesting problem where if they integrate, its always better for every individual, but then their unique culture and history as a group will be annihilated. White people and "americans in general" have a variety of social signalling goals they share and the black folk in cultural self preservation mode will self police to maintain their unique non-white non-american-in-general accent, views about education, work, religion, food, criminality, even down to card games and sports. See also the culturally sensitive area of insults like "acting white" and the concept of being an uncle tom.

Meanwhile for the majority locals, all of us came from groups that immigrated and integrated and created our own shared mythologies about all kinds of ridiculous stuff. Someone who insists on being an unintegrated Polish patriot, for a random example, is seen as inadequate to integrate or too dumb to successfully socialize or at best misguided, but either way is going to get a really low social status from the integrated americans. There is some "slap in the face" animosity, what we're not good enough for you?

So you can see the source of the stress in this unique situation. If they integrate and become Americans, that's likely extremely good for them on an individual level, but then their culture would literally be annihilated from the planet because there is no reservoir of afro-american culture other than the state of Mississippi. If they don't integrate, intentionally or by failure, they'll be seen as extremely low social status by descendants of those who successfully integrated. So we end up with a crazy love hate relationship can't live together, can't live apart, tons of drama.

The final cultural lesson is everyone already involved kinda knows of this uncomfortable situation so its hopelessly socially inappropriate to discuss outside some hollywood comedy or drama movies. There's a lot of pressure from both sides and the pressure is worst on those least capable of handling pressure, that being young folks full of hormones and lacking in wisdom, patience, and logic. Meanwhile other folks think the problem exists solely so they can get into social media holiness signalling spirals which doesn't really help anyone on any side. And there's plenty of racists on both sides with varying ratios of liking their own folks and hating the other folks egging things on. So the map drawn for foreigners has "here be dragons" for good reason.

For example, say you're black/Hispanic/Asian and you marry into a white American family. To the extent you encounter any racism it'll be the individual kind. But the assumptions people make about you as an Asian are very likely to be the most benign. Likewise, consider the reaction of a typical Asian American community to a young Asian woman dating a white man versus a black man. Among the (cosmopolitan, upper middle class) Asians I grew up around, the former would be pretty non remarkable. The latter would still be kind of a scandal.

That's why it's socially acceptable to make fun of Asian stereotypes but not black (and to a lesser extent Hispanic) stereotypes.

If they're from a foreign culture or country then they've already given up on socializing with their own people by becoming exchange students. Theoretically they could learn or gain something from local kids, if kids had anything useful to teach them, and if they planned on staying after graduation. But if they don't plan on staying, then no matter how much or how little socializing they do, they'll just get one line on the resume or a checkbox at job time so over-investing in socializing won't help their future. So they may as well at least get something out of the classes, by learning as much as possible from the profs. Which they need to do, if a GPA of 2.0 and the right local friends is as useful in the job market back home, as a GPA of 4.0 from some foreign school and no local friends because they were at the foreign school.

From their point of view, maxing out their GPA is far more useful than getting drunk with people who won't matter to them in a couple short years, and being kids, have nothing to teach them anyway.