From AOL News:
It looks like the iron-fisted tiger mother's hard work paid off: Her 18-year-old daughter has been accepted at Harvard.
In contrast, deer dad Andrew Ferguson, author of Crazy U., didn't want to reveal where his son wound up after getting turned down by a lot of private colleges, so he just modestly called it Big State University. (It's easy to deduce from details in the book, however, that his BSU is one of the more prestigious of all public universities, but I won't violate the kid's privacy by naming it. Please don't bother posting guesses in the comments.)
Allow me to reiterate that it's basically nuts to publish a memoir in which your currently teenage children are major characters. Ferguson's version of his two kids is much less revealing than Chua's, but, still, don't do it.
Allow me to reiterate that it's basically nuts to publish a memoir in which your currently teenage children are major characters. Ferguson's version of his two kids is much less revealing than Chua's, but, still, don't do it.
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72 comments:
Though Chua had hogged the spotlight, maybe the success of her daughter owes as much to the less showy support given by the Jewish father. Maybe Chua's daughter might have ended up differently(badly) if her father was just as ruthless as the mom. Maybe the girl was able to handle Chua's pressure because, when the mother was away, there was the father to assure her that "you know your mother's a bit crazy, I know she's a bit crazy, but she means well, she loves us, we love her, and I love you no matter what you choose to do, and blah blah kiss kiss, etc".
So, there was the tiger roar from the mother but also the weasel purr from the father. Of course, we the roar more than the purr, but both may have been just as crucial. After all, tons of Jewish kids without tiger moms end up very successful.
GOP should go for the Big State College folks. We've had it with Yalees and Harvardites who ruined the GOP.
But does this really have anything to do with her upbringing? Or with her genes? And if it is the genes then is it Chua's or her husband's? The more I learn about Amy Chua the less impressed I am with her "accomplishments" - such as they are. The secret of Chua's success seems to be having been born into an affluent family and then marrying a rich guy. This is just a combination of being born on third base and gold-digging.
Her 18-year-old daughter has been accepted at Harvard
Legacy admit? Amy Chua is a Harvard grad.
Of course it helped a lot that both the kid's parents were prominent Ivy League professors. And let's not forget Amy's recent celebrity. The Ivy Leagues are just as star-struck as the average National Enquirer-reading housewife. (Ever notice how many child actors and actresses managed to get into Harvard and Yale?)
"Legacy admit? Amy Chua is a Harvard grad."
My guess is her daughter was blessed with the best of both worlds: legacy and ability.
You can't beat that.
Breaking News: Jewish and/or Asian kid gets into Ivy League University.
Man, when was the last time that happened?
"Breaking News: Jewish and/or Asian kid gets into Ivy League University.
Man, when was the last time that happened?"
I think the lesson to take from this is not that a Jew/Asian kid got in but that Amy the mother took no chances DESPITE the fact her daughter--with high IQ and legacy credentials--was a shoe-in.
In other words, NEVER REST ON YOUR LAURELS AND GROW COMPLACENT just because you think you have it made. Work hard even when you don't have to. That is real work ethic. Work/study ethic is not working/studying cuz you have to do but because working/study is the point of life.
I think wasps forgot this along the way.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc!
Seems like the person who wrote that first line did not get into Harvard.
Tiger Mom or Chua Chua Train?
I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.
The little engine that could.
A question I haven't seen asked is: is it worth the effort? Does going to Harvard improve your life so much that its worth the huge effort that the Chua kid went through to get in? If so, why?
It's hilarious how Amy Chua tries to step back from the spot light by saying, "Sophia did it all. I take no credit." Didn't she say that all kids are intrinsically lazy, and parents have to ride herd on them until they acquire sufficient skills to experience the elation of a "mastery moment." I give Amy 80% of the credit for Sophia because,
A. She gave her kid smart genes
B. She prevented her daughter from fraternizing with her Less-Than-Zero peers in New Haven.
C. She kept her kid academically focused for twelve years.
I give her daughter 20% of the credit because she stopped chewing on the Steinway.
But Steve is right. It was tragic for Chua to reveal so much personal information about her daughter, who probably would have gotten into Harvard anyway as a more than adequate legacy (it says a lot about her daughter's level of achievement that she applied to only three elite colleges, with UVa as her safety).
Obviously, Chua wrote this book to steal her kid's glory for herself.
What's the big deal. If your parents had to get you into a certain preschool and force you to take music lessons,etc that would catch the eye of an admissions representative to get you into Harvard then the accomplishment is as much theirs as yours. I really don't understand the sense that this is a threat. Such Universities have obviously outlived their usefulness. Admissions should give preferential treatment to kids who show outstanding ability on their own merit not on the amount of money/attention their parents lavished on tutors, lessons, etc.
I'd say look to the prominent state U's for the real talent not a bunch of soon to be obsolete Ivy's who select their students based on how much effort/money their parents have put into raising the "perfect" child.
Chua's Harvard educated daughter isn't going to do much with her life beyond gaining a slight advantage in employment in her chosen field and then performing at about the level that could be expected in her chosen field. This isn't even considered evidence of true genius. Why bleed for such an advantage when all it really communicates to the world is how ambitious/rich your parents were?
"A question I haven't seen asked is: is it worth the effort? Does going to Harvard improve your life so much that its worth the huge effort that the Chua kid went through to get in? If so, why?"
Amen, LBK. These kids are competing for spots at universities that will ultimately keep them from having to compete with anyone after college but what are they really contributing to society or any field of endeavor after all.
They are both Ivy League professors and prominent professors know each other (and that don't need to be at the Ivy League). In grad school there were two very well known (in academia) professors/researchers who had a kid who was accepted to the Ivy League. It was well known their son was not that bright.
"A question I haven't seen asked is: is it worth the effort? Does going to Harvard improve your life so much that its worth the huge effort that the Chua kid went through to get in? If so, why?"
Most of the time, the answer is YES.
Graduating from Harvard gets you access to the Harvard alumni network that includes CEOs of major corporations, investment bankers, VC's, and all other kinds of people rolling in the money.
Its not what you know, but who you know. It is the connections that Ivy League students are paying a quarter of a million for.
The notable exception to the rule that I know of was the early 90's recession when even Harvard and Stanford MBA graduates could not find jobs.
"Work/study ethic is not working/studying cuz you have to do but because working/study is the point of life.
I think wasps forgot this along the way."
You're ridiculous. Of course work/study for you is simply to gain as much status as possible rather than to contribute something worthwhile to society. WASPs or what's left of them are more pragmatic and perhaps even more altruistic. I see the drive to get into an Ivy League U as status seeking and nothing more. Anything you accomplish after and get accolades for is just as likely to serve your need for recognition than to contribute to society.
Come on. Asians don't care about the rest of the citizens of the US or of the rest of the Western world for that matter. Admission to exclusive universities is just a way to get yourself designated an elite who perhaps have more rights than the rest of us as such. This doesn't qualify you as the best and brightest, btw. Those people would be seeking solutions to problems that affect the masses not competing to be the best in some abstruse and obsolete endeavor the knowledge of and interest in which would exclude 99% of the population though not be a indication of IQ or ability in and of itself.
If Jed Rubenfeld can get Amy a tenured professorship at Yale, getting his daughter into Harvard must have been a piece of cake.
The Seventh Anonymous said: "Work/study ethic is not working/studying cuz you have to do but because working/study is the point of life."
You sound kind of crazy.
"Come on. Asians don't care about the rest of the citizens of the US or of the rest of the Western world for that matter."
I wish this was truer. I think it is true of Asian immigrants. Asian parents seem to care most about their own kids, judging by how Chua's father raised his girl.
But Asians who grew up in the US and went to good colleges are among the biggest liberal pain in the arses. You see them on PBS documentaries moaning and groaning about 'social justice'. Oh, this is unfair, oh that is 'racist', blah blah, they are like mini-me's of liberal Jews or liberal wasps.
I don't mind Asians minding their own business and working hard to succeed. Same with Jews. But I don't like people succeeding and then using their power to bitch and whine about how society is soooo unjust! It wasn't long ago I saw some Chinese-American medical guy on some PBS program on black poverty invoke Thomas Jefferson and how our nation fails to provide same healthcare to everyone. Jesus! I prefer the Asian who says, "I do my thing, you do your thing", the end.
Also, we gotta make up our mind. Is altruism a good thing or a bad thing? I often hear a lot of moaning-and-groaning about how Asian-Indians and Chinese are NOT altruistic, i.e. they are selfish uncaring people and don't care about humanity.
But then, the same people beat on wasps for being so altruistic--as stupidly naive, boo hoo caring, goo goo, ga ga, guilt-ridden, etc, etc.
Personally, I think altruism as tough love and conditional aid is okay. But altruism as developed in the West after WWII really blows and has to go. It's basically Swedes wasting tons of cash in Africa. It's our stupid welfare state. This kind of altruism does more harm to the takers than to the givers. It leads to dependency, entitlement greed, and other crap.
This is why conservatives have been right to attack idiotic liberal do-goody altruism.
Also, Chinese and Indian distate for altruism is partly a backlash to what happened after WWII. Both nations went into ultra-altruistic mode. In China under communism, everything had to be shared. Indeed, even before communist victory, many of the best educated Chinese sympathized with the communist cause cuz they were appalled by the corruption and 'greed' of the KMT. So,under communism, China was supposed to one big altruistic state, brother for brother, equality between man and woman, etc. Also, even though Chinese were very poor, Red China poured lots of aid to other nations in the name of international brotherhood. And China sacrificed 1 million in the Korean War. Even during the Great Leap which killed 30-40 million, China was sending food aid to Poland and other brotherly communist nations. And China was the main supplier of aid to Vietnam, which is why Chinese took it personally when Vietnam chose USSR as its main ally after the war. China also sent lots of aid to Africa when most Chinese were living near starvation. Under communism, Chinese heard nothing but 'greed bad, money bad, capitalism bad, self-interest bad, blah blah blah'. After too much of this, there was a huge backlash, as when Deng said "it's glorious to be rich." Since then, Chinese have been 'money, money, money'. From ultra-altruism to ultra-my-familism-and-me-ism. Also, one child policy led to lots of spoiled rotten kids.
India was never under psychotic totalitarian rule, but the prevailing ideology among Indian elites was also 'capitalism is bad', 'socialism is good', 'we gotta all work together', etc. Gandhi and Stalin were the great heroes to many Indian elites. So, anyone with initiative or 'greed' had to go through endless red tape, like the guy in the movie GURU.
One gets the sense that altruism is often a morally convenient weapon to steal a slice of the pie. Suppose you're an intellectual without much money while another guy is a rich businessman. How do you get your hand on his cash? If you say, 'I want his money and lots of power', you'd come across as egocentric and self-centered. So, what you do is you cook up some bogus altruistic excuse to take his money. You call him greedy and pressure him to donate to your 'cause' or 'foundation'. You basically run an extortion racket. After all, after Bill Gates donated tons to liberal causes, he was no longer badgered as the greediest son of a bitch. Some people are sincerely altruistic but, more often than not in politics and economics, altruism is just a bogus gimmick for mediocrites to take something from the rich and talented. It's like Jesse Jackson and Obama yammering about 'social justice' and 'spreading the wealth around' when they really mean, 'gimme more free money so I have more power.'
And look at public spending in Japan. It's totally out-of-control but justified in the name of 'common good'.
I don't think WASPs or other whites (Irish, Italians, Greeks, Eastern Euros, etc.) were ever that hardworking. I remember reading that some politically incorrect early 20th century intellectual (maybe Lothrop Stoddard?) said that the Chinese could work and live under conditions that Europeans could not. Another intellectual (Galton) advocated for the Chinese colonization of Africa, claiming they were more industrious/orderly than all other races (including Euros).
In South Africa, the British government restricted Indian shopkeepers from operating in white zones, as white businessmen argued that Indians were capable of working hours and accepting living conditions that whites could not bear. In much of the Anglosphere (Canada, Australia, NZ, US), Chinese workers were detested for outcompeting whites.
Really, the consensus has always been that Chinese and maybe Indians were among the most industrious of races. Capable of toiling for long hours, living very frugally, and not disrupting the social order. Where Europeans felt themselves superior was in thinking, creating, and pushing progress forward.
Of course, back then, Europeans and Chinese/Indians inhabited different societies. So if a British capitalist started a company or founded a university, his ethnic group didn't have to compete against a bunch of Amy Chuas. Communications and travel were backward enough that it was difficult to outsource jobs or know-how to Chua country. Now that Chinese/Indian industriousness and materialism has hooked up with Western ingenuity, the Chuas are at competitive advantage against Deer Dads.
Whites, Chinese, Indians, blacks, Arabs are all the same people they've always been. It's just that immigration, travel, trade, and high tech communication have brought us much closer together. So racial differences are more apparent than they were in George Washington't time.
The Seventh Anonymous said: "Work/study ethic is not working/studying cuz you have to do but because working/study is the point of life."
"You sound kind of crazy."
This is the impression I got from a European history class on the Protestant Work Ethic.
We were told that many British and German elites, even after they amassed great wealth, didn't just take it easy and throw lavish parties and etc, like Russian and Latin Amerian elites. And instead of buidlig mansion they could, they invested their money in enterprises, institutions, facilities, etc.
And 'work' didn't necessarily mean 'having a job' but using one's time constructively. The view was that life was a gift from God. Life is time, so time should never be wasted and squandered. One should always do something. Incidentally, our professor, an old New England guy, once told us, 'always DO something'. He told us that nothing upset him more than when his kids weren't doing or working at something.
Even if you had millions and could party all day, you shouldn't--according to Prot work ethic--cuz it's an affront to God. God didn't give you life to be a party bum. God gave you life/time for you to be good, wise, diligent, active, etc. So, even if you were rich and don't have to work at a job-job, you should still work at something. And there was some of this in Thomas Jefferson, who spent a lot of time doing scientific, agricultural, philosophical research in his own time.
And there is something like this in
Chinese culture too. Confucius said money not enough. You always need learn and gain wisdom and be good person in community and make world better.
I read iSteve for all the cutting-edge Amy Chua gossip.
"Work/study ethic is not working/studying cuz you have to do but because working/study is the point of life."
That seems like a rather narrow definition of what life is about. There ought to be more to life than just being a workaholic.
A larger question is: will Asians start edging out the old wasp elite the way Jews have done?
I don't travel in elite circles so I don't know if there even still is a wasp elite anymore, but this seems like a good Isteve type of topic. How will a society with an Asian and Jewish elite differ from a society with a wasp elite? What will this mean for the future of the U.S.?
When you come from a coolie culture, with people living asshole to elbow, yeah, the grind is life. Otherwise, you're in the pit with the rest of the coolies.
When you have elbow room, you can be happy with 40 acres and a mule and a workshop to tinker in, or whatever suits your fancy.
People bloviating about "merit" and "worthiness" should bloviate about reciprocity for a while. MC Prolific can dump 10,000 word drafts into every thread, but nothing about reciprocity?
China doesn't reciprocate.
India doesn't reciprocate.
Israel doesn't reciprocate.
Do go on about "worthiness" and "merit" though, we're all ears.
Why should anyone believe yellow supremacists (or their erstwhile fellow-travelers) when they talk about "merit" on the "level playing field" when the game absolutely must, must, must be played in our backyard, with our house as the prize?
Steve doesn't like the kind of word I'd use for people like this, so I'll just let you use your imaginations.
As a Canadian who moved to the US as a professional, I still find it amazing that so much of an upper middle class kid's future here is determined at age 17. There are no elite private colleges in Canada.
I went to medical school, and so my college credentials matter not at all. For some years, I practiced in a high income area of California, and worked with many colleagues who did go to Harvard college/med school, Yale, Stanford, etc. Funny thing, they get paid exactly the same as the CSU grads who went to Mexican or osteopathy schools (same prestige).
Uh oh, did someone start referring to Asians as coolies? I was wondering how long it would take for this thread to devolve into Stormfront...
Uh oh, did someone start referring to Asians as coolies? I was wondering how long it would take for this thread to devolve into Stormfront...
Did you just call us racist?
Steve,
Amy Chua and her daughters qualify as under-represented minorities for academic, corporate, and government affirmative action, including, I believe, at most (all?)Ivy League or other elite colleges, as do many Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans.
Do you or your commenters realize why? (another one for your 'Age of the Fine Print'.)
The answer helps to explain part of the motivation behind an activist campaign of a few years back.
So add ethnic preferences for aff.action/diversity to the list of ability, legacy, celebrity, money and connections.
CJ
"Uh oh, did someone start referring to Asians as coolies? I was wondering how long it would take for this thread to devolve into Stormfront..."
Oh my, Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I am concerned. And in the comments of a real blog on the internets, no less. I think I'm going to faint. I'm sure the devil himself will be posting next.
Amy Chua and her daughters qualify as under-represented minorities for academic, corporate, and government affirmative action
While it's possible there might be some ethnic nepotism going on at some corporations, Chinese and Jews definitely do not qualify for affirmative action. On the other hand, being female might help the Chua girls get some AA slot in corporate world.
S'up.
The grind is life in East Asia and India because the land is vastly overpopulated, opportunties are few, and the slackers are culled off. Only those that toil away unendingly and live on little will thrive. Life is harsh and those with the work/life balance aren't going to make it. For the lucky few, the good life means a big house, lots of status, and plenty of servants. For everyone else, life is dreary. So there's a very competitive and money/status orientation in these countries.
Even with East Asians and Indians in America, I see this attitude that if you don't push yourself to the extreme (in work/education) and also buckle down to your family's demands, you're screwed. People that enjoy life and are independent-minded are viewed as foolish, while the robotic grind is viewed as the community ideal. Success is not about personal happiness or doing what you like - success means big house, good jobs, good degree, big bank account.
Indians, for those that don't know them, are nothing like NAMs. They're just like the Chuas. No difference, except maybe in IQ structure. In the Carribean, blacks detest competition from Indian "coolies" (descendants of laborers brought generations ago), who they see as untiringly industrious and no fun to be around.
The word "coolie" is accurate, if a bit offensive. Asians and Indians are very industrious, highly frugal, dominated by their families, submissive, and big time competition in the labor market. For an American college kid or a computer programmer, going up against them is similar in experience to what early 20th century American miners contended with from Chinese immigrants.
The reason that life is so much worse than the the easy going 1960s is....
1.) Deindustrialization means most of those high-paying entry level factory jobs are gone.
2.) Outsourcing means many new jobs are created overases.
3.) Legal and illegal immigration brings in immense competition for all levels of society, benefting the rich while nailing everyine else.
4.) The finance wizards and corporate oligarchs are concentrating ownership in the hands of fewer, and hence redistributing wealth away.
5.) Immigrants drive up population, which drives up land prices. Means harder to buy a house and start a family.
6.) Tons of NAMs means large swathes of America are not suitable for living.
7.) The children of Asian immigrants swamp your local university, hurting your child's chance of getting himself an education and becoming a professional.
8.) All this family breakdown (divorce, illegitimacy, etc.) means that family, a major source of support in tough times, is weakened.
"As a Canadian who moved to the US as a professional, I still find it amazing that so much of an upper middle class kid's future here is determined at age 17. "
Only if you're a hack with no big entrepreneurial ideas. Then you must rely on elite high paycheck employment to bankroll your Toll Brothers/Porsche Carrera lifestyle.
"If Jed Rubenfeld can get Amy a tenured professorship at Yale, getting his daughter into Harvard must have been a piece of cake."
Maybe it was the reverse. Jews aren't exactly in short supply on Ivy League Law faculties and Diversity is the commanding ethos of the faculty lounge.
"While it's possible there might be some ethnic nepotism going on at some corporations, Chinese and Jews definitely do not qualify for affirmative action. ..."
Chinese, and all Asian Americans and Asian immigrants, absolutely do qualify for government 'Affirmative Action' ethnic preferences in employment and in receiving billions of dollars in contract awards by 'virtue' of being a designated 'disadvantaged minority'.
I know it is so difficult to google something, but spend 2 minutes verifying what you are talking about before spreading this false meme. The same BS is spread around many blogs and other media sites, including many clueless conservative websites.
Government contracts and sub-contracts are the most lucrative aspect of affirmative action preferences, and Asian Americans and Asian immigrants are probably the largest per capita recipients of Affirmative Action preferences, and in some programs, including small business financing, they may be the largest recipients outright. The only place where *some* Asian ethnic groups do not receive ethnic preferences is in those academic areas where they are obviously over-represented.
However, that's not why Amy Chua and her daughters get ethnic preferences even at colleges with an over-representation of Chinese and Chinese American students. It's because Amy Chua and her family qualify as Filipino. Even though her family is as Chinese as they come, because the spent a generation or two, or maybe just a year or two, as overseas Chinese in the Philipines before coming to the USA, they get to check off the box of an Asian ethnic group that is under-represented. And yes, what a bunch of crap that is, but not because it's not true.
Look into (successful) efforts to disaggregate the Asian ethnicity in college admissions to see where else this has come into play. Although that is not the only motivation behind those efforts, it is the hidden one.
How about all Anglo/white-Americans latinize their names and apply as Hispanics?
Sailerez. Svigorez. Balooez.
"( Please don't bother posting guesses in the comments.)"
What if I did post a Big State University guess? Would that cause as much offense as if I'd have burned a holy cow koran?
Ba-da-bee, Ba-da-bee, Ba-da-bee: That's All, Folks!
From what I understand of Chinese culture in discussions with Chinese coworkers, the push for women to excel is so that they can be viewed as having good genes, and get into the circles of highly talented men. So, in the daughter's case, they hit a home run!
Cal Berkeley
"Asians and Indians are very industrious, highly frugal, dominated by their families, submissive, and big time competition in the labor market."
I suppose stereotypes are stereotypes for a good reason, but the biggest slackers and do-nothings I've seen in computer science are Indians: all talk, no code.
"How about all Anglo/white-Americans latinize their names and apply as Hispanics?
Sailerez. Svigorez. Balooez."
Tequila.
Uh oh.
The founder of PayPal catches up to Steve and his readers.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/peter-thiel-were-in-a-bubble-and-its-not-the-internet-its-higher-education/
I've always wondered: if you bring a Harvard admissions letter and your stellar SAT scores to a job interview, will it really hurt your chances of being hired if you didn't bother to go to the dang place?
Wouldn't it be funny if someday Harvard had to admit 30% of their 100,000 applicants to fill a class of 1600 because kids were just applying for the admissions letter?
I don't think WASPs or other whites (Irish, Italians, Greeks, Eastern Euros, etc.) were ever that hardworking. I remember reading that some politically incorrect early 20th century intellectual (maybe Lothrop Stoddard?) said that the Chinese could work and live under conditions that Europeans could not.[...] In South Africa, the British government restricted Indian shopkeepers from operating in white zones, as white businessmen argued that Indians were capable of working hours and accepting living conditions that whites could not bear.[...]
Yes, many writers from Stoddard's time remarked that some other races had superior endurance, and tolerance of miserable working conditions, than whites - and that other whites were superior in that way to Nordic types. Oddly, "willingness to tolerate miserable working and living conditions and being shat upon by higher-ups" were not to them the distinguishing characteristics of human excellence that they have become in our age.
So, judging from the results of the type of societies they create, who has the better work ethic? While everyone agrees that laziness is a vice, there are different kinds of "work ethic", and it's an open question which produces the best result, socially and individually. (Per the above example of "lazy" white shopkeepers vs. "hard-working" Indian shopkeepers, which group creates neighborhoods the other group wants to move into, and which group creates neighborhoods the other group moves away from at all costs?)
What (some) Westerners waxing rhapsodic about the "work ethic" of Asians really mean is "man, it sucks that so much of the gains in productivity are going into the creation of good living conditions for the working- and middle-classes, rather than my pocket".
Is it indubitably true, though, that affluence tends to undermine all the "good" kinds of work ethic, too.
Cee effin Jay said...
Chinese, and all Asian Americans and Asian immigrants, absolutely do qualify for government 'Affirmative Action' ethnic preferences in employment and in receiving billions of dollars in contract awards by 'virtue' of being a designated 'disadvantaged minority'.
Do you have any stats or concrete examples of this? SE Asian Indians lobbied and got a sweet deal on minority SBA loans to try to corner the small motel business, but that's seems a pretty isolated event. Are Chinese really doing that much better than people like Devoli who (falsely) claimed to be Hasidic?
I'm skeptical because the federal government is obsessed over blacks but does about a little for asians as for whites. For example, Chinese kids being ethnically targeted and beatened in Philly and SF by blacks is as insignificant as if they were whites. The DC and other elite whites I've met either view asians as a unwholesome threat or equals and certainly not deserving of any "hand up".
Furthermore NAMS are hugely overrepresented in the federal government - especially in places like miniority assistance programs. Many of these guys are outright hostile to asians. Many hate "model minorities" becuase they expose the some of the myth of institutional white racism.
Government contracts and sub-contracts are the most lucrative aspect of affirmative action preferences, and Asian Americans and Asian immigrants are probably the largest per capita recipients of Affirmative Action preferences, and in some programs, including small business financing, they may be the largest recipients outright.
Whoa that's a big claim. Perhaps for women, but for all Asians? Any sources?
The only place where *some* Asian ethnic groups do not receive ethnic preferences is in those academic areas where they are obviously over-represented.
You lose credibility here if by describing statistically large and systematic reverse discrimination against asains in higher education and paths to upward social mobility like medicine as simply "not receiving ethnic preferences".
However, that's not why Amy Chua and her daughters get ethnic preferences even at colleges with an over-representation of Chinese and Chinese American students. It's because Amy Chua and her family qualify as Filipino. Even though her family is as Chinese as they come,
Good point, but I'm not sure this is still true. A Filipina friend told me they lost their preferential admissions to UC schools when I was there in the mid-80s (probably too many ethnic Chinese sneaking through that back door). I suspect having two Yale Law School professors, one who is a media obsession of the moment probably did much more for her application.
Look into (successful) efforts to disaggregate the Asian ethnicity in college admissions to see where else this has come into play. Although that is not the only motivation behind those efforts, it is the hidden one.
Cui bono? I suspect the biggest winners will be NAMS if Asians are disaggregated. No more having to compete against ethnic Chinese sneaking in as Polynesians, Filipinos, Indonesians, and other underperforming "Asians". More counter examples to the Asian "model minority" stereotype that conservatives can use to demonstrate how many opportunities there are for the hardworking.
Bryan Caplan makes some interesting points against the Tiger Mom strategy in today's WSJ:
http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/04/11/twin-lessons-have-more-kids-pay-less-attention-to-them/
It would be interesting to compare the long-term success of kids who got into Harvard just being themselves vs. those who were pushed mercilessly by their parents.
Ferguson and his son appear on Reason.tv and divulge the school: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exqr4UrX60E
I'm not naming names but the initials are UVA.
lolled at "weasel purr from the father"
how droll
btw Svigor is a rocking commenter, good posting career
"It would be interesting to compare the long-term success of kids who got into Harvard just being themselves vs. those who were pushed mercilessly by their parents."
Good question. The results are likely to be mixed though since legacies, who tend to have less talent than the average for the applicant pool, might be more likely to be pushed by alumni parents -- especially ones unable to afford the Harvard Number -- thereby developing a strong work ethic, while non-legacies might float in on an abundance of natural talent: being a genius can often undermine ones work ethic.
In the case of the Tiger Mother, you gotta wonder whether she paid the Harvard Number, given that she probably spent at least a half million dollars (2 x K-12 $public educations) on her kids piano instruction, including the rental of Carnegie Hall.
Anybody wonder about that?
Indians, Chinese, and maybe some other East Asians do seem to have a high ability to labor for long hours, tolerate miserable working/living conditions, and submit to familial/societal dictates. This diminishes a little among their descendants in the West and has lessened among the affluent Japanese, so I'm not saying it's always their default state. It's more that if you put them in stressful or competitive situations, they revert to this personality type very easily.
I don't think I'd ever want to live in a society dominated by these people. As much as I admire their industry and frugality, I think they're unhappy people. Whenever I see them in the malls or grocery stores in my city, they always have that same expressionless look on their face. They don't smile, they don't laugh. These people are just lifeless. Their loveless marriages of convenience, their long hours, their miserly spending habits, their immense family obligations, their constant need to measure up and keep up.... That's a recipe for a bad life. No offense to them, but I'd say that East Asians and Indians (in the first generation at least) are robotic.
Western society is superior in that it values personal happiness over family wealth/status. It also is highly dynamic and always creating new technologies, methods of organization, and institutions that expand opportunities and make life easier. So everyone has more than enough and can do what makes them happy.
Easterners, for all their grind, are stagnant and don't create much new (Japanese are an exception). They just keeping plowing the same land with the same tools, year after year. As do their children and grand children. Maybe some family gets lucky and acquires more land from some other unfortunate peasant family. Someone wins, someone else falls into starvation. Life is tough, grueling, and ultimately zero sum though.
A typical American idyllic upbringing of church socials, baseball in the park after school, proms, fright night football, a steady job in the local foundry after high school... is completely at odds with who these people are. It wouldn't have come into existence had Indians and East Asians colonized this country.
I don't think WASPs or other whites (Irish, Italians, Greeks, Eastern Euros, etc.) were ever that hardworking. I remember reading that some politically incorrect early 20th century intellectual (maybe Lothrop Stoddard?) said that the Chinese could work and live under conditions that Europeans could not.
And you know what? If we import too many Chinese, even if they supaah smart, eventually we'll end up living in conditions that we just cannot tolerate. Harvard and MIT and Stanford produced brilliant people who advanced humanity long before the Asian invasion meant those people would have to waste their childhood just to get accepted. Are the students at those schools better now, that being admitted requires them to have been single-minded drones for their entire childhood?
What is she decides to go to UConn instead because it has more hot guys?
Cry me a river!
Having the Chua's replace the Ferguson's in Harvard is the best possible thing that could happen to America. Its elitist guys like Ferguson and their irrational belief in universal individualism that has created all the problems we are facing now. The sooner these guys get marginalized, the sooner liberalism will fail, and the sooner we can take our country back.
>Its not what you know, but who you know. It is the connections that Ivy League students are paying a quarter of a million for.<
Why would anyone want to know a know-nothing?
Why would anyone want to know a know-nothing?
Money. Power. Status.
>Money. Power. Status.<
Let me walk you through what I mean.
Say you're a Fortune 500 CEO. We're talking about networking, so of the following, with whom is it more profitable for you to associate?
a. A fellow CEO;
b. An inventor with a track record;
c. A successful venture capitalist;
d. A brilliant Harvard student with superb grades and genuine knowledge in a hard field relevant to your business interests;
e. A legacy Harvard admit, who went to the school in order to associate with you or anybody like you. His grades are okay.
Also, "e" sends you lots of copies of his CV, and tries to crash your garden parties.
"E" is the least rewarding person to know. He's a "know-nothing," in the punning sense that I was using in my comment.
But wait a minute. Maybe "e" has connections. Maybe he knows someone whom you would like to get to know. Maybe he knows that venture capitalist.
Unlikely. Remember the terms of the situation. He went to Harvard in order to get to know such people. Meaning, he does not know them now.
Why on earth would any one of those people want to get to know him? He has no power, money, or status to speak of. In short, who wants to know a know-nothing?
Harvard's utility as a networking hub consists in its continued recruitment of high-flyers; the mission of the school must be centered around genuine accomplishment, or else the school's "brand" loses its value. (There are some people who argue that Harvard's brand, at least in certain ways, is already significantly diminished; I'm one of them.)
To think that the way to advance socially is to get into Harvard by hook or crook, is to make the same kind of error made by the people who think that sending everyone to college will result in everyone having higher incomes.
>As much as I admire their industry and frugality, I think [coolies are] unhappy people. Whenever I see them in the malls or grocery stores in my city, they always have that same expressionless look on their face. They don't smile, they don't laugh. These people are just lifeless. Their loveless marriages of convenience, their long hours, their miserly spending habits, their immense family obligations, their constant need to measure up and keep up.... That's a recipe for a bad life.<
As appealing as your worldview is, it's irresistible to reply that such were the successful WASPs of WASP ascendancy. Who put the British Empire (and thus WASPs) on top: WASPs like Scrooge or WASPs like Cratchit?
Wasn't it the "cold, hard, miserly, unsmiling" traders and "hard-hearted businessmen," arranging marriages and forming dynasties, saving every ha'penny and accumulating capital, who got white people somewhere? It surely wasn't Cleatus the Slack-Jawed Yokel. It was people like Franklin and Ford, and careful, frugal men - the exemplars of the so-called "Protestant work ethic" - who gradually lay the capital foundation beneath the Western world. Green-eye-shade-wearing bankers with no lips and flinty, squinty eyes, living in near penury while children, living in even worse penury, toiled 18 hours a day in filthy factories.
Doing such things for generations is how a people gets on top of the world. A number of Indians and Chinese are doing it now, perhaps very close to you.
The Western world's wealth wasn't built by Baby Boomers living casually in the 1960s, enjoying the fruits of protectionism and the lack of competition from a destroyed Europe and undeveloped Eastern world. They were the squanderers of the Western world's wealth (if not in their own lives, then in their politics); their lifestyle is surely no model for capital accumulation.
Probably both types of people are needed, with the former (the hard noses) forming the vast bulk of the operant adult population, and the latter (the casuals) - say, affluent, pampered sons with a yen for scientific pursuits - catalyzing the mix.
And what if the legacy Harvard admit with the so-so grades becomes a U.S. Senator or President? Think your being college chums with him might prove very useful to you as a Fortune 500 CEO?
I just can't help thinking that all those grads of state U's aren't going to relinquish all power and influence to people who wasted tons of money on Ivys. In fact the more competitive certain schools get because there was no room at an Ivy for most of the best and brightest in America, the less such prestigious institutions are gonna matter.
P.S. I can't wait until you brand obsessed boomers start heading to retirement homes.
A scion of two extremely well-educated and successful parents gets accepted to Harvard. Wow, big surprise. But one parent is Asian and the other, Jewish: it must be a conspiracy.
To add to the hilarity, Steve follows with, "In contrast...", as if one fact has anything to do with the other? If a link exists, then please explain Steve.
What a pathetically shallow attempt to create controversy. Yes, you know what I'm talking about: Rice (Ivy League Safety School) grad. Let me guess: affirmative action?
It makes me sick to my stomach that this pathetic dilettante writes a blog aimed toward riling up uneducated southerners for the sole purpose of meeting his bills (98' Accord anyone?), yet NEVER dares to comment or debate against anyone with half a brain. Why are your comments on infoprocessing or gnxp, just as an example, lacking the same vigor and level of rhetoric?
Perhaps, because you know better? What a pathetic fraud! Math and physics fail, Steve. And you know what I mean by that in a general, albeit obnoxious and admittedly ad hominem sense. Meaning, Steve would never dare to make these statements among people of a certain--shall we say?--pedigree, education, background and IQ.
Stephen, that cries out for a rebuttal.
Asian parents seem to care most about their own kids...
Doesn't everyone care most about his own kids? I'm white, and I certainly do.
So if a British capitalist started a company or founded a university, his ethnic group didn't have to compete against a bunch of Amy Chuas.
If the Amy Chuas are so inherently superior, why are Chinese kids working so hard to get into our universities? Why isn't the rest of the world trying to get into theirs?
when they talk about "merit" on the "level playing field" when the game absolutely must, must, must be played in our backyard, with our house as the prize?
Further to my question above.
The grind is life in East Asia and India because the land is vastly overpopulated, opportunties are few, and the slackers are culled off. Only those that toil away unendingly and live on little will thrive. Life is harsh and those with the work/life balance aren't going to make it.
Then by all means, let us continue to allow endless millions of them, and Mexicans, and everyone else who fancies his chances into the States, so that we can end up just the same.
The Devil Himself...LOL!
P.S. I can't wait until you brand obsessed boomers start heading to retirement homes.
Does that include Steve?
Meaning, Steve would never dare to make these statements among people of a certain--shall we say?--pedigree, education, background and IQ.
Feel free to toddle back to the superior life from whence you came, and leave us dummies to it, then. It's a blog, sir. There are millions of them. Go find one worthy of your station.
A scion of two extremely well-educated and successful parents gets accepted to Harvard. Wow, big surprise. But one parent is Asian and the other, Jewish: it must be a conspiracy.
Steve took note, in two sentences, of the acceptance into Harvard of the progeny of the year's most famous mom. Wow, outrage. He must be insinuating a conspiracy.
To add to the hilarity, Steve follows with, "In contrast...", as if one fact has anything to do with the other? If a link exists, then please explain Steve.
Tiger Mom : Deer Dad :: Tiger Daughter : Deer Son. Don't worry, this type of question is no longer on the SAT.
What a pathetically shallow attempt to create controversy. Yes, you know what I'm talking about: Rice (Ivy League Safety School) grad. Let me guess: affirmative action?
You guessed wrong. The massive Tiger Mom controversy is not about affirmative action. Nor was it created by Steve.
It makes me sick to my stomach that this pathetic dilettante writes a blog aimed toward riling up uneducated southerners for the sole purpose of meeting his bills (98' Accord anyone?)
Your obnoxiousness makes me sick in my stomach. What's your excuse? Did uneducated southerners steal your lunch in fourth grade?
Steve would never dare to make these statements among people of a certain--shall we say?--pedigree, education, background and IQ.
What statements? And among whom? You know that Gregory Cochran, Steve Hsu, and Andrew Gelman read this blog, don't you? Steve has also debated Steven Levitt in Slate. Who reads you, big guy? (Not just some uneducated southerners in a pathetic little blog, I hope.)
PS Are we now down cheering retarded comments, Truth? You know full well you can make those yourself. Be all that you can be, Truth.
"PS Are we now down cheering retarded comments, Truth?"
Where did I cheer?
Doesn't everyone care most about his own kids? I'm white, and I certainly do.
Not everyone does.
There are many parents who don't give a damn about their kids.
There are also many parents who think they give a damn, but do the opposite of what the kids really need; and who care more for society, friends, neighbors, state, church, Jesus, than their kids.
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