Tiger Child's View Paper Tigers What happens to all the Asian-American overachievers

Parent Cafe
61

<p>Regarding the “beneath you” comments:</p>

<p>Condescending people of any race or culture are offensive. </p>

<p>Pointing to someone else and saying that they are also sometimes condescending does not mean it should be okay. It is not okay. People without a degree or working blue collar jobs are certainly not beneath a white collar upper middle class person, just as a top-scoring test taker who attends an elite university is not above an average test taker from a local university if their ideas or contributions are equal or better.</p>

<p>If someone chooses to write a condescending essay or act superior to people in a school or workplace, whether it is because of a cultural or personal bias, it is likely that people don’t want to be around them. It is not up to others to accept their condescension as okay.</p>

62

<p>Spoken language does contribute a lot to assimilation but the changes in policies in China in terms of what is allowed in the last 20 years has made them more open to question things and be aggressive which was nt the trait for the people who came over 20 years ago (you dont want to be noticed was the attitude in the past?).</p>

63

<p>

</p>

<p>The above is an Amy Chua quote from the article, but it resonated with me because in my personal experience, being skeptical, being questioning, caring intellectually about the topic at hand because it’s interesting to wrestle with (not just to go get an A) are some of the characteristics that are associated with successful people. The successful person IS skeptical and says, “How can we make it better?” The successful person says “Instead of going down the path we have been going down, what new paths are there?”</p>

64

<p>And hugcheck picked up on Yang’s disdain for Americans as evidenced by his description of our mannerisms. His word choice would seem to indicate he thinks that our culture’s custom of frequent smiling is indicative of a lesser or impaired intellect, hence the “sh<strong>-faced” adjective. When is one “sh</strong>-faced,” after all? </p>

<p>Americans aren’t perfect, the USA isn’t perfect. No doubt prejudice exists here, as it is does in every single country of the world. But foreigners need to look themselves in the mirror too. Frankly, the Indians around my area have a reputation for being prejudiced toward Americans. They think Amerians are morally loose and academically lazy, and elementary-aged kids say things to that effect in school–that their parents don’t let them play with Americans or go to their houses because they think American kids aren’t good students, etc. A teacher friend told me that bragging about test grades among this population had gotten so out of control that she instituted a rule that if you brag about your grade, you lose x number of points on that test. She was sick of the kids implying that they were better because they got a higher grade.</p>

65

<p>

</p>

<p>D2 probably has one of the highest GPA in her grade and she is new to her school this year. D2´s white, Harvard graduated TOK teacher blurted out to D2, in front of the whole class, “You got an A on your paper, it´s one of the best papers.” D2 was thinking to herself, “hey, that wasn´t necessary, way to help me make friends and influence people here.”</p>

<p>D2 is half Asian, always got good grades in school, but managed to keep it under the radar. I actually called up her counselor to let her know that I didn´t think it was appropriate to disclose student´s grades in class.</p>

<p>Just a bit of FYI - in some culture, it is perfectly acceptable to discuss one´s salary (or grade). I used to have a large Chinese staff at work, and they discussed their pay with each other. I had to ask them to stop doing it because of company policy. In Mexico, people also openly discuss their pay with each other. We may think it is showing off, but they may not think so.</p>

66

<p>GFG - Are you saying the Indian American kids stay away from others in your neighborhood? That sounds very uncommon.</p>

67

<p>"but it resonated with me because in my personal experience, being skeptical, being questioning, caring intellectually about the topic at hand because it’s interesting to wrestle with (not just to go get an A) are some of the characteristics that are associated with successful people. The successful person IS skeptical and says, “How can we make it better?” The successful person says “Instead of going down the path we have been going down, what new paths are there?” "</p>

<p>My experience has been that at least in the private sector, caring about the tangible results (do we increase market share, do we get more billable hours, etc) is much MORE highly valued - if you care about the intellectual issues on their own, you are looked at as somewhat odd. </p>

<p>we seem to have divided the world into two groups in this thread - the grade grubbers, and the socially astute intellectuals. I see a business world where being “alpha” but not too intellectual is very beneficial - the frustration that intellectually gifted, often socially awkward (when not actually on the autism spectrum) people have is quite real. So some of the sense of being dominated by ones “inferiors” (however we feel about such language) is not about credentials, but about other things.</p>

<p>Now obviously some of that is necessary and justified - social skills, drive, etc etc are important to actually getting things done, and in some areas VERY VERY important. OTOH IMO they are rewarded perhaps in excess of their actualy necessity. </p>

<p>To me that suggests simply at some point lessening to some extent our emotional commitment to the idea of “meritocracy” No society is completely a meritocracy (howsoever merit is defined) and none ever will be. Better to accept that the market INEVITABLY generates unjust results - and then use progressive taxation, a full social insurance state, etc, to soften the impact.</p>

<p>Michael Walzer wrote something good on this some years back, IIRC.</p>

68

<p>I just wanted to confirm that TheGFG and Pizzagirl realize that Wesley Yang was born here? That he is American?</p>

69

<p>

</p>

<p>You know, the two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. The willingness to test a theory, the result of which may be something entirely tangible, is one of the hallmarks of intellectual curiosity. Marketing, after all, is rooted pretty solidly in the social sciences (my apologies; for a moment, I thought this was the “Time to Get Rid of the Liberal Arts” thread. :p)</p>

70

<p>Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t.</p>

71

<p>

</p>

<p>Coming up with new and creative ways of doing things that achieve results IS the tangible results that I am on the hook for. I consult for many Fortune 500 companies / household names, having spent time at a packaged goods firm myself. The whole POINT of why they pay me the big bucks (or small bucks but all the frequent flyer miles I can handle) is not because I am the quickest at identifying the “right” answer out of all the answers that have already been given, but because I come up with new answers, and often new questions. </p>

<p>“Increased market share” doesn’t just invent itself, unless you come up with a creative way of doing X better, targeting Y more crisply, with more precision and efficiency, developing new stories, touching new emotions, communicating better, etc. All of those are precisely the result of being skeptical, of not just believing that the same paths previously trod will get you there, and most importantly of having intellectual curiosity as to why people buy / use the given category or brand in the first place.</p>

<p>I just came back from leading a 4 - day workshop for a client who is a household name on the West Coast (but nowhere else). We are paid precisely to care about the intellectual issues surrounding brand positioning, marketing, targeting, etc. that in the course of the workday, no one has time to think about. We are also paid precisely because we come up with good ideas, and part of good is “novel, new, think out of the box.” Raw smarts? The people with the “raw smarts” are the ones cranking out the supporting data for us and making half our salaries and that we might never let a client see.</p>

72

<p>I skimmed the article, and found it hilarious and wonderful on so many levels (not least is as a grad of Stuyvesant myself, from the dark ages when it was barely 20% asian and about 40% Jewish) It reminds me of my time in the Ivies, and the different experiences of Jewish suburban kids from Jewish city kids, different degrees of assimilation and fitting in, etc.</p>

<p>This was classic </p>

<p>“Hsieh didn’t have to conform to Western standards of comportment because he adopted early on the Western value of risk-taking.”</p>

<p>All I could think of was “badly” comported Jewish entrepreneurs from the old days.</p>

73

<p>

</p>

<p>Brooklynborndad - in the past few years, I have been brought in to “rescue” consulting projects given to other firms – big-name firms, for whom my clients were paying half a million dollars – and their results were useless, so then they went and paid my business partner and me a tidy sum of money to rescue it. Is it about our sheer brain power in analyzing data better? Well, yes to some extent :slight_smile: But the part that makes us successful, the part that causes people to hire us to salvage other people’s work, is that we know how to effect change in organizations by driving the findings through to a wide audience and in causing people to break their paradigms and begin to manage their businesses a different way. That’s what these companies really need – not just the most brilliant analysis of data by the bestest mathematician. And part of that is done by social skills. I’m an introvert and I’m certainly not the glad-handler of the crowd, but I know how to lead, motivate and inspire an audience, to keep them enthused, to keep them highly motivated and high-energy while working through some pretty tough stuff. That’s where the power lies, IMO.</p>

74

<p>

</p>

<p>And the way you describe these people in no way suggests that they are “beneath you,” am I right, Pizzagirl?</p>

75

<p>

</p>

<p>Actually, employees discussing pay rates with each other or not has economic effects as well. In a situation where the cultural norm is to keep pay rates hidden, employers have greater power over employees in setting pay rates, since an employee who is underpaid relative to his/her skill levels is less likely to know that.</p>

<p>Indeed, the tendency to buy status goods (expensive clothes, watches, shoes, jewelry, cars, houses, expensive schools, etc.) may just be an alternative way of signaling wealth indirectly (although imperfectly, since people sometimes go into foolish amounts of debt to buy status goods).</p>

76

<p>

</p>

<p>Of course not, fabrizio. How are they “beneath” me? I can’t do my job without them, and they can’t do their job without me. Everybody’s needed.</p>

77

<p>Increased market share" doesn’t just invent itself, unless you come up with a creative way of doing X better, targeting Y more crisply, with more precision and efficiency, developing new stories, touching new emotions, communicating better, "</p>

<p>I can think of three kinds of smart people who couldnt do that</p>

<ol>
<li>the number cruncher who cant thing very well about stories and emotions</li>
<li>the socially awkward type who can think those things, but has difficulty communicating it, difficulty understanding the social dynamics of organizing the idea, the team, the selling strategy etc</li>
<li>The idealist who is so questioning and skeptical as to question the very value of touching someones emotions in order to increase market share</li>
</ol>

<p>I have no objection to you doing what you do. I am sure it makes our market system run more smoothly (or disruptively, in a good way, sometimes). What I have trouble with is the notion that because you are good at that, you are ANY better a person, or any more entitled to the fruits of our society, than any of the three types of people I mention. And I dont expect or want our society to stop remunerating people like you more - I just want us to accept that we do it for purely pragmatic reasons, and not because people like you are “better” or “deserving” - so that when we find some way to alter the distribution of the fruits of society in ways that are not unpragmatic, we stop raging against the “unjustice of helping the undeserving” In the society that I live in, the growing inequality of incomes, the increasing concentration of income and wealth in a very small portion of society, is a much bigger status/equality issue of greater importance then, say, the condescension of some asian MIT grad against State school grads. </p>

<p>The defeat of the aristocracy by the plutocracy was heroic and progressive - back in 1790. Barber of Seville and all that. Today the concentrations of wealth and power in the plutocracy is a bigger issue. and the fact that some of the wealthy and powerful are state school grads does not make the result either egalitarian, or genuinely populist. </p>

<p>Now maybe the asian MIT grad dude is not thinking this way - hes want to keep the status quo inequality, he just wants to divide the top slots in ways that work better for him. I will go once again to the history of the American Jews. Lots of folks wanted to simply get the top slots away from the WASPs - they mostly succeeded, either by sheer entrepreneurial gumption, or by waiting a generation or two, and using that time to cultivate the appropriate traits (both the funtional and the incidental ones). SOME of us, an ennobling few IMO, challenged the entire structure of inequality. What I would like to do, is to get some of those asian folks who are fed up, to reframe the way they approach things. To not focus on the details of discrimination for a few top slots, but to challenge the structure of inequality and privilege in our society.</p>

78

<p>What the Asians need to do is start a lot more companies from their parents garages so they create a new paradigm.</p>

79

<p>

</p>

<p>Where are we talking about people being “better” or “more deserving” as people?? We all have equal value and worth as people. </p>

<p>But if the pragmatic result is that my work brings about an increase of x% market share for a client, why <em>wouldn’t</em> that be rewarded in the marketplace at a higher level than the number cruncher who crunches the numbers well, but who can only describe where the company has been, and provides no context, structure or direction for where it might be heading or should head? You said yourself upthread that what gets rewarded are the “tangible results” (such as increased market share).</p>

80

<p>our entire society is debating that - </p>

<p>[healthcare</a> for the undeserving - Google Search](<a href=“healthcare for the undeserving - Google Search”>healthcare for the undeserving - Google Search)</p>

<p>[food</a> stamps for the undeserving - Google Search](<a href=“food stamps for the undeserving - Google Search”>food stamps for the undeserving - Google Search)</p>

<p>[welfare</a> for the undeserving - Google Search](<a href=“welfare for the undeserving - Google Search”>welfare for the undeserving - Google Search)</p>

<p>The whole debate about healthcare reform, the budget, etc is pervaded with the issue, and I think its the unspoken subtext of any debate about status and who gets what goodies in our society (which, ultimately, is the complaint of the author of the article in the OP)</p>

<p>I am not particularly interested in the rationality of your clients. As I said (or at least meant to imply), this kind of remuneration is often “economically rational” and market driven. (I think there are some cases within large organizations where it is not - and while there are certainly clients who are non optimal in their buying of consulting services that are overvalued due to the selling skills of the consultant, but there are plenty of consulting services that are worth every cent or more of their cost, and not knowing you, I will assume you are in the latter). </p>

<p>My point is that young people frustrated about glass ceiling, or bamboo ceilings or whatever have more POV’s to choose from then A. This is unjust cause us folks with higher IQs should get be in the top 1% thats getting all the goodies or B. Suck it up, its the folks with the high “alternative intelligences” who are in the top 1% getting all the goodies, and they deserve it. </p>

<p>A better approach would be that since “meritocracy” is to a considerable degree illusory, lets consider reordering our society without the notion that the way to make it more just is to make it more meritocratic, but that to make it more egalitarian (in RESULTS) is the way to make it more just.</p>