<p>Speaking for my own Asian family, my great-grandpa moved here with KMT money and connections. He was pretty much able to buy success for all of his kids (my grandpa). By the time you get to my dad, we might as well be white. My dad and his brothers and sisters went to Catholic school, focused on sports over academics, and married white people.</p>
<p>I don’t really have that much in common culturally with my Asian friends, whose parents are mostly immigrants. My parents look at my academic thing no different than they look at my sister’s cheerleading. It is an expensive, time-consuming (and in my case, relatively productive) hobby. They are happy to finance it and do all the driving and fill out all the papers. They are proud of me, but they aren’t pushing me.</p>
<p>Um… that’s interesting considering that about 50% of the people in my major - Residential College in ARTS and HUMANITIES is Jewish. But again, nice generalization :rolleyes:</p>
<p>^^Well, idk then. It’s what I hear around my community. Asian and Indian parents force their children into hot fields where the most money can be made. Usually its computer science, electrical engineering, or medical field.</p>
<p>It’s why you don’t see many Asians and Indians as a history major or anthropology or stuff like that. I guess I can’t speak for the Jews, but my Jewish friend tells me that they usually go into banking and finance and end up making a lot of money. :/</p>
<p>"Um… that’s interesting considering that about 50% of the people in my major - Residential College in ARTS and HUMANITIES is Jewish. But again, nice generalization "</p>
<p>How many people are in this, two with you being the Jew?</p>
<p>You’re more likely to find Jews majoring in Humanities than you are to find Asians, but Jews as well tend to gravitate toward more practical majors.</p>
<p>If that was supposed to be funny… it failed. About 250 people out of the 400 are Jews. I do not count myself as a Jew in things like this. I am talking about people who actually practice. </p>
<p>And whatever with the “practical” major. “Practical” is just another term for pigeon-holed in my opinion. </p>
<p>My point is that people on here just paint everyone with a broad brush and it’s bull. Maybe the reason that “Asians” and “Jews” go into these majors is because that’s where they’re steered by the general public as well as family/cultural/whatever heritage.</p>
<p>^ I didn’t say that Jews are going into Arts and Humanities because that is my experience. I said that people should quit painting people with a broad brush as though it’s fact. It’s not.</p>
<p>^^^^nah, I was just trying to give an example of how ridiculous it is to stereotype and assume because experiences are gonna vary.</p>
<p>Like, here it always seems asians are ridiculously smart math but I’ve only ever met them as hipster-folks. So it’s gonna vary for people is all.</p>
<p>One thing that you’ll learn (if you don’t already know) is that most racial stereotypes are caricatures. They’re based on reality but they blow it up to 400% the actual size to the point where 1/2 of the people that it pretends to describe don’t actually fit into it. When people say that all Asians are super-smart, it’s like saying that all black people are good at basketball or all Jews are rich. There are definitely a lot of people who fit into that stereotype but it’s not everyone and it might not even be most of them! Stereotypes can be useful but people just have to make sure that they don’t use stereotypes INSTEAD OF actually talking to individual people.</p>
<p>There are a lot of interesting notions in this thread.
Among them, there’s the idea that all Asian ethnicities are equally successful. Cambodian-, Laotian-, Hmong-, and Vietnamese-Americans underperform. Hugely. In some areas of California, their high school drop out rates are lower than those of more “typical” underperforming minorities, Hispanics/Latinos and blacks. In the 2000 U.S. census, the percentages of 25 year olds with less than a high school education were: Hmong, 59.6%; Cambodian, 53.3 %; Laotian, 49.6%; and Vietnamese, 38.1%.
There’s also the success of African immigrants, which has been totally ignored.</p>
<p>In general, unassimilated immigrants outperform their native counterparts. The reasons this is untrue for the aforementioned Asian ethnicities has to do with their motives for immigration/push and pull factors, and is not on account of any cultural failing. Hispanics, overall, defy this because that their sudden lare numbers created sufficiently large ethnic enclaves and, again, because of reasons for immigration. (As the US-Mexico border is an anomaly, it should be expected that Hispanic/Latino immigrants would also be quite different from the norm.)</p>
<p>LOL. Where I live there’s a HUGE hmong & Vietnamese population. They’re cool though b/c they seem to be more like the “laidback” type of asian ppl.</p>
<p>I think the higher performing Asian groups are obviously gonna be Chinese & Korean. and maybe Filipinos? </p>
<p>I think the more successful Africans HAVE to Nigerians (<<–) and Ghanians. I’m not sure about Somalis b/c they’re still trying to overcome that language barrier but they’re generally extremely hardworking people and many have become sucessful over here and some run sucessful businesses…</p>
<p>@ Eastafro- Sorry, I’ll remember that it’s Somali. That was a mistake on my part. :
I just meant that the way you stated it was ‘obvious’ placed all immigrants into one field, where as it might not be that way. </p>
<p>Also, on another note, good point on something else you stated ^ about the Nigerians and Ghanians. I didn’t realize it until now, but you’re right. One of the native Nigerians I know is pre-med at Duke, and also a Millenium Scholar.</p>
<p>@John and whoever else said something about career paths- yes, it’s also true that different cultures place different emphasis on certain jobs. For example, both of my sisters got politics-related degrees (which is a field that may or may not get them good jobs, and will take a LOT of hard work), while I do feel pressured to get more of a ‘real degree’ (Medicine), especially since both my parents went into very concrete professions (Law and Engineering).</p>
<p>This thread isnt about “jews are rich” or “asians work hard.” Its about why jews and asians are rich (and work work hard). Its about the why.</p>
<p>Previously posters brought up an interesting idea of laidback asians. I think certain asian countries tend to be less successful in US. I know certain asian countries are dreadfully underrepresented in HYPSM. I believe Vietnamese and Fillipinos are good examples.</p>