The Stanford sociology department is sponsoring a speech on an exciting conceptual breakthrough: "Stereotype Promise."
Jennifer Lee
Professor of Sociology, University of California, Irvine
Visiting Scholar, Russell Sage Foundation
The Tiger Mother and Asian American Exceptionalism?
Framing Success and “Stereotype Promise” among LA’s Second Generation
*Jointly sponsored with the Department of Sociology and the Center for Comparative Studies on Race and Ethnicity
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Colloquium with Q&A 12:30-1:45
email suemartin@stanford.edu for more information
"Why do second-generation Asians exhibit exceptional academic outcomes, even when controlling for socioeconomic factors like parental education, occupation, and income? ... Moreover, the external validation and reinforcement of the frame by teachers can generate a “stereotype promise” among Asians—the promise of being viewed through the lens of a positive stereotype that leads one to perform in such a way that confirms the positive stereotype, thereby boosting one’s performance. As a result, Asian students—regardless of ethnicity, class, and gender—gain an advantage over their non-Asian peers in the context of U.S. schools."
I don't think "stereotype promise" reminds people enough of "stereotype threat." "Threat" and "promise" are kind of antonyms, but it's not self-evident that they are being used as opposites. Therefore, Professor Lee's assertion that that Asians outperform others because teachers are biased in favor of apple-polishing Asian students should be renamed "stereotype pet."
Is it true? I don't know, but it's definitely more memorable as Stereotype Threat / Pet.
Posts
60 comments:
Azns playing checkers, "black-brown coalition" was already on chess. Looking at Lee's c.v. page she appears too young to be a full prof (even sociology) but the UC system is going to hell anyway. For a panelist they should get Jennifer 8. Lee of the New York Times
My sense is that Asians/Indians are more deferential to parental and societal expectations than other groups. So if their teachers expect more, they tend to achieve more.
"Stereotype promise?" I . . . guess? I can't imagine teachers have more than a trivial role to play here, though, because the pressure is all in the home and peer group, at least from my experience growing up (albeit as a half-Asian in California). To the extent there's "stereotypes" at play here, it's not the stereotypes held by the majority about Asians, it's the stereotypes held by Asian-Americans themselves, the somewhat un-PC view that, well, look at your competition. Of course you should be getting A's! No excuses! Among my peers growing up, people expressed this attitude with varying degrees of frankness, but I think it was a pretty common undercurrent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/national/20women.html?pagewanted=1
Meanwhile NYT admits that high SAT = smart and high GPA = disciplined.
I read a comment once from a Korean immigrant shopkeeper that blacks' problems were not caused by a lack of intelligence but by a lack of discipline.
I asked this in the last stereotype threat post - has anyone ever tried to square Stereotype Threat with Fear Of Acting White.
Ive seen Fear Of Acting Whie posited as a cause of relative NAM failure but ST seems all the rage now. What happened to FOAW? Does anyone still push that?
Lack of intelligence and a lack of discipline.
For example, I bet low-IQ Koreans tend not to commit much crime or other underclass dysfunctionality. I bet they tend to be gainfully employed. Most likely, however, they work for a lower wage and their kids don't finish college after HS. They're not prosperous, but their outcomes are much better than blacks, whites, or Latinos of equal IQ.
Asians, from my experience, don't regard themselves as super smart. The general stereotype is that "we can outwork and take more hardship than the competition." Asians seem to be higher in perserverance, resilience, and conformity. Jews, from my experience, do regard themelves as inherently smarter than the competition.
I've heard the opposite for blacks. The teachers have low expectations for them so thats why they dont do well in school. Don't really buy it either way.
The whole notion strikes me as utter BS: a weird instance of double-reverse special-pleading or something. I can't even bother to figure out the precise nature of the fraudulence, but it's readily evident anyway. Isn't it?
What a boring way to go about being in the world.
Why doesn't this sterotype promise/pet help Asians dominate sports?
Is there a simplier explaination we're missing here?
Blacks problems are caused by both a lack of intelligence AND a lack of discipline.
A lot of the reason for the later is PC diverse impact type nostrums. E.g. schools that don't want to be constantly sending blacks to detention and so on more than other groups. Another is having no stable father figure in their life in more than a critical mass of black elementary and secondary students.
"Let's look for our keys over by the streetlamp, where the light is better/"
Lee's concept is just another leftist's way to explain everything through biased "feelings." It enables them to avoid seeing the reality that people who have high IQs, and who are organized and disciplined and who live virtuous lives will always outperform those who are stupid, violent, impulsive, short-sighted, lazy and resentful (blacks and hispanics).
Why doesn't this sterotype promise/pet help Asians dominate sports?
What about ping-pong?
" As a result, Asian students—regardless of ethnicity, class, and gender—gain an advantage over their non-Asian peers in the context of U.S. schools."
Hmm, "Asian students—REGARDLESS OF ETHNICITY" do better????
How does Professor Lee account for the fact that the Hmong (an Asian ethnic group) always tend to perform quite low on cognitive tests compared with Asians of other ethnic groups?
Data from this years cognitive testing in California-
http://star.cde.ca.gov/
2011 California 7th grade CST math test results by ethnic group, (number tested), and % of each group scoring advanced
Chinese (7376) 58%
Korean (2,723) 54%
Japanese (1,274) 45%
Asian Indian (4,177) 43%
Vietnamese (4,023) 42%
Filipino (10,832) 27%
White (107,518) 25%
Hmong (755) 15%
Pacific Islander (2,457) 13%
American Indian (2,960) 11%
Hispanic (211,201) 11%
Black (27,502) 8%
All Students (400,738) 18%
***Why do second-generation Asians exhibit exceptional academic outcomes, even when controlling for socioeconomic factors like parental education, occupation, and income?***
What happens when they control for things like brain size and cortical thickness? The neurobiological factors that Paul Thompson & Jeremy Gray identify with cognitive ability?
www.yale.edu/scan/GT_2004_NRN.pdf
Looking at Lee's c.v. page she appears too young to be a full prof (even sociology) but the UC system is going to hell anyway.
She is an Associate Prof. It appears that she was given a tenure just three years into her faculty appointment (!) on a strength of 1) three unremarkable articles, one of which in non-peer reviewed magazine, 2) a book called "Civility in the City: Blacks, Jews, and Koreans in Urban America" which purports to show, unlike what everyone thinks, urban Black and Korean minorities get along just fine (just ask L.A. Koreans, I suppose!)
What a travesty.
1. Stereotype threat has anyway been proven to be wrong anyway in metastudies, entirely a result of publican bias (.eg the bigger the sample, the weaker the result, with zero in the biggest test).
If that was a hoax, why believe this?
2. If true, so if Asian I.Q estimates are upward biased, Asian academic achievements and income should under-perform in for example the NLSY AFQT test, which they don't.
Obviously a bunch of people competing for grades from professors who often have jobs unrelated to impact in the real world have already demonstrated they are less than geniuses. Think about it. Year after year, incoming freshman starting the process of absorbing the same information as the previous class. Wow, you are one of a million other people who've taken this same rather unimaginative path to graduation: papers incestuously designed to impress the professors in your major, plans for a closely related grad degree, interest in the recently published books related to your field, perkiness despite the prosaicness of your chosen field of study.
What can only impress your future employers/the grad school admissions committee is
a. you yourself are unusual variety of student that has taken this path (diversity appeal)
and/or
b. you have been lucky enough to stumble upon cutting edge research in your field (consensus on next generation scholarship)
Outcomes:
You get to be one of hundreds of darlings who get academic or even journalism careers using this specialized knowledge.
You grow older and ever more dogmatic about what was current in the field a generation or more ago.
You become a quaint, obsolete old fart who doesn't have a clue & hasn't aged as gracefully as a rock star intellectually speaking.
Being highly competitive and conformist seem to be defining characteristics of Asian populations. Better outcomes in tried and true fields of endeavor don't necessarily relate to higher IQ, however. While Asians do seem to have preference for fitting into the system as it exists, adaptation requires much more proactive thinking than this.
I'm assuming their Jewish and goy counterparts who may actually be smarter will groan at the punctiliousness and monotony required to compete in a more mandarin/credentialist education system.
The bored, disenfranchised sensation seeker types will eventually generate alternative paths to success which may include an alternative set of admissions criteria for an alternative network of universities that feed into career paths traditional and non-traditional. The measures of success will change, Asians will probably scramble to keep up perhaps causing the quicksilver European minds to devise another plan which will both "keep it real" and keep it fun.
Give up you Asian supremacists. I've known too many of you too well to buy in to the tripe that you will dominate academia. I'd predict obsolescence of the Ivy League and academic degrees in general before that could happen.
Poison the Ivies!
Slightly OT: Do teachers, especially college professors, have pets anymore? I've only ever noticed teachers giving special attention to at risk students and nerdy white guys who don't have any other social outlets.
This past summer, while on sabbatical from my regular gig teaching Legendary High-Scoring Asians at a prestigious UC campus, I decided to take a cross-country road trip in order to visit all the amazing colleges, universities and hospitals that have been founded in this country by Amazing High-Scoring Asians, as a gesture of gratitude to the country that has given them so much, when it didn't really have to.
On the first stop of my trip, I visited Tanaka Sanwa University in Washington State, the famous "Harvard of the Northwest," founded by High-Scoring Asians, and a magnet for the high-scoring of all tribes, Asian and non-Asian alike.
I next visited the ivy-covered walls of storied Nihau College in Minnesota, the "Georgetown of the Upper Midwest," famous for its scholarship programs for high-scoring whites.
Next I went to Haegol-Kim University, "the Notre Dame of Texas," also famous for its generous admissions policies for deserving whites. Its legendary founder, a high-scoring Korean immigrant, is noted for his famous saying, "the Asian who dies poor dies disgraced."
I next visited the Asian Fordham of Ohio, the Asian Princeton of Florida, and the Asian Amherst of Philadelphia -- all founded by generous, philanthropic, civic-minded high-scoring Asians, who gave of themselves to help build this country and help deserving white people, wven though they didn't have to.
My travels left me exhausted, so I ended up in a hospital bed in well-known Saint Chuang-tzu of the Cedars of Szechuan, a famous hospital also generously founded by high-scoring Asians.
Then I woke up and my pillow was gone, and I was covered with leeches. Where had they come from?
UP NEXT: Famous combat exploits of USMC Jews!
"This past summer, while on sabbatical from my regular gig teaching Legendary High-Scoring Asians.....etc etc"
That was bloody brilliant mate!
Most of the measurements of these exceptional academic outcomes take place between 15 and 17--an age where white diligence is probably at its nadir. Thinking back to my high school calculus class...the white kids of both sexes spent untold hours ogling the opposite sex, doing unproductive group studying as an excuse for flirting, and so on while the Asians silently worked, completely oblivious to both the noise around them and each other. In college the Asians all seemed utterly asexual until around age 20 (girls) or 22 (guys). And don't tell me that fear of Tiger Mother has knocked the teenage lust out of them, Professor Lee (who is getting paid, probably by federal grant money, to invent unproveable theories for Asian success when the biology would be infinitely more interesting and plausible...)
"They put up a poster saying WE EARN MORE THAN YOU!,/
Working for the clampdown!"
See, but now it's okay, because, um, because, well... you know why, right?
"Who's barmy now?"
@edgy gurl
Professors still have "pets." The most important characteristics for a favorite undergrad are 1. co-nationality with the professor 2. NOT planning to go to professional school
3. Able to converse animatedly about the professor's field while asking intelligent questions
The reasons behind the first are obvious (i.e., American professors generally enjoy students who get their jokes. They don't have to laugh but they should at least roll their eyes.) The second rule is less based on any academic snobbery than on pre-med/pre-law students' obnoxiousness about their grades (showing up at every office hour to haggle over a test question/beg for extra credit as if it will make the difference between Yale and Generic U.) The conversation tactic is especially good in the hard sciences--these people never get to have an enjoyable conversation about what they love. Their fellow professors are always sniffing around for research ideas and non-science people get bored quickly with most topics.
Dunno how the grant system works but she's made $2.5 million in 'em!
http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=4667
"Then I woke up and my pillow was gone, and I was covered with leeches. Where had they come from?"
So, evolutionarily speaking, the impact of Western culture and education on the Asian mind has been more beneficial to Asians than it ever was to Europeans?
I'm still not buying it.
Give up. If you were going to be superior to us in the future, you'd already be dominant in all our cultures. I'm predicting a contraction in Asian economies not far into the future as well. But do go ahead and keep up those overconfident rants, I'm used to it by now.
"has anyone ever tried to square Stereotype Threat with Fear Of Acting White."
So, blacks and Latinos perform worse academically either because they are afraid of acting white or they are afraid of not acting white ...
Logically speaking, that pretty much covers the waterfront.
galtonian, thanks for those numbers. i have always wanted to see the groups of asia broken out like that. as i suspected, it's the chinese and korean kids. of course they are not dumb at all, but they're totally grinders. student for student, they are by far the most likely to just plow hour after hour into studying those math books after the school day ends.
wonder if there will ever be an east asian craig venter, a guy who slacks off in high school and college, then decides a little later that he's serious now, and goes on to become by far one of the leading scientists in his field, dramatically out innovating thousands of other scientists who have been studying the same exact topic as him for decades but not even coming close to his results.
hard to believe that mexicans are over 50% of students. well, it's not, considering what's happening in the US, but every once in a while it's still shocking to see hard figures on how fast the change is happening.
kind of puzzled by the vietnamese, they're definitely not that smart and produce almost nothing, but in school in california they do good. maybe there is some stereotype promise here, or at least positive peer pressure. glad to see it.
I can understand Stereotype threat working on some individuals of any race sometimes. It sounds plausible at that level but not at a group level.
Fear Of Acting White sounds much more plausible to me, anecdotal evidence seems to point to that anyway.
My Asian students do well, but none of them are suck ups. They are mostly very quiet.
Jody wrote "kind of puzzled by the vietnamese"
Many of the Vietnamese in the USA are actually of Han Chinese ethnicity. For over 200 years Han Chinese were settling in Vietnam. In the south of Vietnam they were often the majority of the prosperous urban merchant class. The Vietnamese of Chinese origin are sometimes called Hoa.
A large proportion of the boat people refugees during the 1970s who left Vietnam for the USA were these merchant class Vietnamese of Han Chinese ethnicity.
>
wonder if there will ever be an east asian craig venter, a guy who slacks off in high school and college, then decides a little later that he's serious now, and goes on to become by far one of the leading scientists in his field, dramatically out innovating thousands of other scientists who have been studying the same exact topic as him for decades but not even coming close to his results.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/18/business/technology-rebel-wants-japan-s-inventors-to-get-some-us-style-rewards.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
Ordered to stop the scientific research he thought extremely promising, Shuji Nakamura hid the work from his superiors at a Japanese chemical company. He secretly obtained patents in the company's name.
Dr. Nakamura's mission paid off: his inventions revolutionized the world of consumer electronics. One helped make possible an array of products, from flat-panel computer screens to video billboards to long-lasting, efficient flashlights. Another will make it possible to store 5 to 10 movies on a single DVD-like disk.
Dr. Nakamura has been celebrated in the United States as an innovative pioneer. But in Japan he is more controversial. After it was clear his inventions would make a lot of money, his bosses took them to market without additional compensation for him. So Dr. Nakamura sued the company, claiming that the patents were a result of his efforts and he should receive royalties
...
Dr. Nakamura's suit is challenging many of Japan's basic assumptions about conformity in a culture where personal gain or greed, particularly among technical people, is still considered distasteful.
''This case will have a huge psychological impact on Japanese business,'' said Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley technology consultant. ''This goes to Japan's entrepreneurial soul.''
If Dr. Nakamura wins, an avalanche of similar suits may follow from Japanese researchers who believe they have been denied fair compensation from their inventions.
'kind of puzzled by the vietnamese, they're definitely not that smart and produce almost nothing, but in school in california they do good. '
Why aren't more Asians skipping grades or at least graduating early?
The scenario laid out is bleak. In each grade Asians manage to take each course twice with summer and/or Saturday school. Then they either test out of high school courses or take them about three times by having to repeat in college. Those who aren't going to get into elite institutions could save money and time by getting high school credits out of the way and graduating early.
I'm really thankful most Asians aren't prolific breeders though. Small a group as they are, they're loud enough braggarts about everything from salary to the imitation designer watch they bought to grades. I dunno how great Asians can really be. Bragging is usually a sign of insecurity.
"we can outwork and take more hardship than the competition."
That would depend on where the Asian falls on the curve. It's a rare thing to encounter a sig 4 or more person in real life. Even if you did, maybe one of them has never spoken to you in a serious manner.
"Asians, from my experience, don't regard themselves as super smart. The general stereotype is that "we can outwork and take more hardship than the competition." Asians seem to be higher in perserverance, resilience, and conformity."
I was invited to the home of 3 Vietnamese siblings, 2 sisters & a brother. They urged a lot of duck on me--duck is their version of filet mignon, or stuffed turkey, I guess. Asians are usually good hosts and press a lot of food on you--like pressed duck. It was ok, but not crispy enough to be appetizing and I had to force myself...but I digress.
The conversation turned to education etc., and the guy insisted that Asians were not smarter than any other people, just that they worked harder because they knew that was the only way they'd get anywhere. This family may have been Chinese, as were a lot of the Vietnamese who came here were, esp the more educated ones. He was quite adamant, even gruff about their hard-working qualities. Discipline and work are considered more honorable than innate brains in Asian culture, because what you do is more important than what you are. What you are born with is not so much--it's a gift of fate. They have a similar opinion about looks, traditionally.
However, I wouldn't count on all Asians to be so nuture oriented. The remarks of the Japanese official (PM?)about the US being burdened with a lot of lower-smarts (guess who) people, were quite on the side of nature.
"Give up. If you were going to be superior to us in the future, you'd already be dominant in all our cultures."
Already are. Protestant Reformation was actually Taoist/Confucian upgrade of Christianity.
>I read a comment once from a Korean immigrant shopkeeper that blacks' problems were not caused by a lack of intelligence but by a lack of discipline.<
"Winston, you lack discipline."
"Madam, you are intelligent. But in the morning, I shall get back on discipline."
>So, blacks and Latinos perform worse academically either because they are afraid of acting white or they are afraid of not acting white ...<
The implication is that the very existence of white people is what fs-up non-white people.
Solution: get rid of white people. And their monuments. Monuments would remind future non-whites of whites and racism would thereby continue.
Anonymous ("This past summer, while on sabbatical from my regular gig teaching Legendary High-Scoring Asians at a prestigious UC campus, I decided to take a cross-country road trip in order to visit all the amazing colleges, universities and hospitals that have been founded in this country by Amazing High-Scoring Asians, as a gesture of gratitude to the country that has given them so much, when it didn't really have to" . . .
Wonderfully done! Thanks for making me laugh (a rarity when perusing the web these days).
I read a comment once from a Korean immigrant shopkeeper that blacks' problems were not caused by a lack of intelligence but by a lack of discipline.
Sounds like a smart Korean shopkeeper. Overall black-American intelligence is most likely increasing through mixing with other races. But their criminality is higher now than it was back in the 1950's. So self-discipline and intelligence are only loosely connected.
OT but here's a Yelp review of a Dim Sum Place near S.F. I'd like to put this guy in charge of the schools.
A lot of you didn't grow up in Hong Kong or Southern China, and perhaps have had little exposure to dim sum tea houses other than the random places in Chinatown or the upscale seafood restaurants that also offer the fusiony stuff. That's ok, let me xplain it.
It wasn't all like that in the day. Back in the late late 1800s in Guangzhou China, people would go to tea houses primarily to enjoy a boiling hot pot of tea, and two items of steamed goodness would usually go along with it. The two items were typically big ass buns (mostly chicken, some have pork or beef), enough to fill you up. It started off as a relaxation thing, for people to talk business (or pleasure...) with upstairs seating having a premium charge, less noisy, and better view/exclusivity. Ground floor for the blue collar workers who needed their calories for work. Ha gow (shrimp dumplings) didn't come into play until 1920 when a tea house in Wufeng village in Guangzhou decided to use local freshwater shrimp to make dumplings. Then later came stuff like cha siu bao, pork liver siu mai. Dim sum tea houses in the 30s to 50s also served rice plates/bowls for those who wanted to fill up remaining stomach space (vs loading up on dim sum).
Around the same time, there were places that sold alcohol, fireworks, and some also doubled up as....brothels. Yep, food, drink, and sex. Then Hong Kong outlawed sale of fireworks, prostitution circa 1930s/1940s(?). Business wasn't so good. Then tea houses and these sorts of places joined forces and eventually became the alcohol seafood restaurants that evolved into the high end restaurant biz.
Now imagine if the ban didn't take place, you could go to a alcohol joint to get tea, dim sum, get hammered, get laid, have a smoke and walk out with fireworks.
edgy gurl: "But do go ahead and keep up those overconfident rants..."
[Pause. Long, long, uncomfortable pause, while everybody else here just sort of stares down at their shoes. Then, finally...]
Um, can somebody else here please explain the joke to edgy gurl? Somehow I just don't have the heart to do it.
You might also explain the Andrew Carnegie joke, and why nobody would ever actually name a real university "Tanaka Sanwa".
"I'm predicting a contraction in Asian economies not far into the future as well."
If you can't tell that "Cedars of Szechuan" isn't a real hospital, and why, then I guess I wouldn't put too much stock in your predictions.
Sounds like a job for "High Expectations Asian Dad" ...
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/high-expectations-asian-father
http://highexpectationsasianfather.tumblr.com/
How does Stereotype Threat explain poor black academic performance back in African countries where they have no white teachers? Telepathic emanations of negative expectations from thousands of miles and a continent away? How did China & most South East Asian countries (excepting Japan) remain such backward, war-wracked places for much of the 20th century? Insufficiency of tiger moms?
Why didn't Russian racist contempt for the Japanese cause the latter to lose the 1904 war over Port Arthur & the sea battle of Tsushima? Why didn't the low expectation held by the White colonial powers occupying China at the start of the 20th century prevent the Boxer rebellion? Why did America lose the Vietnam War? Insufficient Stereotype Threat directed at the NVA? Not enough Stereotype Pet for the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam?
that's cool about shuji nakamura. but was he a slacker who got Cs and Ds in high school? wikipedia suggests he went directly to college, got an undergrad in engineering at 23, then a masters in engineering at 25, then went directly into industry research. that doesn't sound like a craig venter slacker. seems like we're just trying to say here that somebody from east asia developed an important thing from scratch.
i've argued before that east asians are wrongly stereotyped as being not technically creative or innovative in other fields. they can be. last month i was researching surgery and who develops each pioneering surgery, and one the guys most responsible for our modern colonoscopy procedure is a japanese doctor. and the guy who developed the arthroscopic surgery widely used in sports medicine was also a japanese surgeon.
now that's something even the professional academics in HBD don't investigate: who came up with each important surgical procedure? millions of lives are more dependent on a breakthrough surgery that becomes common, than on some of these science nobels with obscure applications. i see these surgeons cutting people in half to remove cancer, or attaching new hands and faces to people with grievous injuries, and they'll never get a medicine nobel.
how pro many athletes are on the field now and playing, when only 25 years ago their careers would be over after a bevy of injuries? i'm not even that old and i can already see how dramatically less effect major injuries have on players today than they did in the 1980s, all thanks to brilliant doctors. one of my favorites is this microfracture surgery which basketball players get in their knees. over the last 10 years it has improved so much that now it can save careers AND restore almost all of a player's jumping and pivoting.
yeah, vietnam would be the largest country in europe by a good margin, if it were in europe. with about 90 million citizens, it's bigger than germany by about 10 million people. but almost nothing comes out of there. it's main export is good looking women. GDP per capita is about 3000 bucks. pretty much a third world backwater.
so the chinese explanation makes some sense. otherwise you end up with a large group of 90 million who are better at math on average than europeans, but producing nothing, and content to farm the land for a couple grand a year, rather than manufacture anything.
Lee, so typical of Asians who can't even take pride in their accomplishment. They feel sorry for success, especially for having violated the rule that says America is so racist that people-of-color cannot succeed without things like affirmative action.
By succeeding, Asians have exposed black and Hispanics complaints as lies. How terrible.
So, what to do? Explain and denigrate Asian success as the result of pernicious white racist stereotype of the 'model minority' or Magic Asian.
Or, maybe Lee is just being clever. Taking note of the fact that whites will be numerically eclipsed by blacks and Hispanics, maybe she wants to send the message that her kind are victims of whites too.
It's a variation of the Jewish gripe that Jewish success is the produt of white oppression of Jews, i.e. since whites regarded and prized Jews as money-lenders through the ages, Jews got good with numbers. So, Goldman Sachs is really run by historical victims of stereotype promise.
Lee's theory says Asians got good with academics because white colleges and companies have prized Asians as diligent grinds and loyal workers.
But then, why do Asians do well in school in Asia as well? No evil white elites there.
"I've heard the opposite for blacks. The teachers have low expectations for them so thats why they dont do well in school. Don't really buy it either way."
Teachers have low expectations of blacks because to do otherwise would mean getting beat up by the student(and his/her parent). If a teacher really came down hard on black students for being lazy, they might knock his or her face off.
If a teacher got tough with a black parent who didn't make sure her child did homework, the parent would scream and go crazy.
Besides, liberals and blacks insist on affirmative action, which is based on the notion that blacks don't have to do as well on tests to be admitted to colleges or promoted at work.
If stereotype threat is really a problem, liberals should first get rid of affirmative action, which assumes that blacks cannot do as well in many areas of life and therefore need special assistance.
Stereotype threat or stereotype promise, it's all really
stereo-hype. Or monohype as we hear the same thing over and over.
Since the main paradigm in social science is 'white privilege and power are to blame for all problems', everything 'wrong' in society must be forced to revolve around that planet mistaken for the sun. It's intellectual Ptolymeanism.
Since Asian success doesn't fit into the paradigm of 'people of color don't have a chance', it must be made the machination of white evil to favor certain races over others. So, blame white evil again. Since both white liberals and Asians know they must bend to Ideological Threat(or be blacklisted from upper echelons of power), they just go along. But are white conservatives really any better? Sarah Palin, the Zionist pet. Herman Cain, to prove 'we are not racist'.
The real Stereotype Promise is 'if you agree with PC, we promise you lots of treats and prizes'.
But it might be called "counter-stereotype-stereotype-promise".
A person must act in a way that is seemingly counter to one's social stereotype while milking that stereotype for all its worth.
For example, Obama was appealing to whites for his counter-stereotype-ism. He was a 'clean cut black guy with self-control and law degree from Harvard'.
Yet, he also played on the appeal of black slickness and cool factor; he also played on black rage and resentment, albeit in a haute-and-well-managed way to make it seem respectable.
Jennifer Lee also fits into the counter-stereotype-stereotype-promise model. On the surface, she is a counter-stereotype. Instead of playing the quiet Asian drone worker bee, she is outspoken. No demure Asian lady is she. Instead of just conforming to white-dominated society, she rails against its insidious subconsious or muted 'racism'.
BUT, her spouting of all this PC nonsense is so typically Asian in its slavishness and teacher's-petsyness, in this case, to the reigning intellectual force in America: the liberal Jewish establishment.
She plays the independent-minded Asian woman speaking her mind, but everything that comes out of her mouth has been plante there by things she picke up from Jewish professors.
Jews have been brilliant at creating followers who think like sheep but bark like dogs.
Same with 'gay marriage'. Jews say 'gay marriage' must become a reality since so many young people want it. But WHY do so many young people think they want it? Because their minds have been modled by TV and public education dominated by liberal Jews.
"that doesn't sound like a craig venter slacker."
But I'll bet Craig Venter hired a lot of people with sterling academic credentials. Could he have done what he did if he'd hired only other slackers like himself?
Also, was he really a slacker or a stacker who neglected schoolwork because his mind was filled with other things? Einstein, for instance, was not a slacker. He may not have been the most diligent student, but his mind was busy with big ideas all the time.
The notion of some lazy slacker being creative and doing great things is a myth.
'Slackers' who do great things seem like slackers only on the outside. Inside, they are thinking big things, and if they don't do well in school, their minds are too busy for something so easy, boring, and humdrum. They regard schoolwork as a form of intellectual salckerism for mediocrities.
Another thing. People often mistake 'expressive' with 'creative'. Jeff Spicoli is wonderfully expressive and entertaining, but his ilk are not creative. Creativity is often hidden, solitary, mysterious, and internal. One needs to spend lots of time alone to probe, explore, think and work things out.
Some actors are both creative and expressive, but most tend to be expressive than creative, which is why they are so utterly dependent on creative writers and directors. Nicholson was great in CHINATOWN--the creative work of Towne and Polanski--, but not so good in TWO JAKES, directed by himself. Creatively, Nicholson doesn't have it. He's an expressive talent.
My guess is Asia has lots of creative talent, something the larger culture has yet to fully tap into. Asians prefer a society governed by the system, and so the system and its iron rules too often determine what is permissible and what isn't. But when Asian societies undergo dramatic changes and a window of opportunity opens up for creative talent, remarkable things can be achieved. Consider Japanese filmmakers like Kurosawa, Imamura, Ichikawa, Kobayashi, and many others in the post-war period.
Most were not products of elite colleges or institutional privilege. They rose at a time when anyone with talent could be given a chance.
This was a time when the old system was no more and a new system had yet to be instituted. There was a burst of cultural creativity. But once Japanese stabilized and erected a new system, creative freedom gave way to conforming to the new order.
But this may be true of America as well. From the mid-50s to the early 70s, the boomer generation was coming into their own, and the old system was crumbling. But the new system hadn't yet come into place. And so, there was a great deal of ferment in cultural, political, and artistic activity--ranging from idiotic to brilliant. But once the liberal/leftist boomers consolidated power by the late 80s, we've had little but political correctness for politics and MTV for culture.
Stereotype pet is just too darn cute.
"My sense is that Asians/Indians are more deferential to parental and societal expectations than other groups. So if their teachers expect more, they tend to achieve more."
The Asian pet in the article has not surprisingly taken a conformist approach by providing research that proves her PC ex-profs theories. She's unquestioningly internalized the liberal values of academics and is doing an excellent PR job on behalf of her race. As long as status matters more than truth and getting funding matters more than freedom to pursue one's true intellectual interests, the Asian girl is a success. This is perhaps a case where we can observe the relative adaptiveness of Western vs non-Western values.
Will Asians prevail because doing what it takes to get the credential matters more than the search for truth or self-expression typically more important to whites? Will whites stop striving for degrees and spots at competitive universities because neither gives sufficient advantage to compensate for being white? Will Asians soon bump into the glass ceiling of diversity as well being less useful to the establishment than underrepresented minorities?
Sociology is one of the easiest majors, I'd say right behind recreation specialist and, perhaps, social work. Alas, it's also a relatively useless standalone. I'd say the Asian chick's a special snowflake who has a snagged a career teaching in a state dominated by her own demographic.
Eventually you'll probably see an ever smaller percentage of the academic pie claimed by whites with degrees from elite universities while the rest will belong to sufficiently qualified Asians/Indians, hispanics and blacks.
It demonstrates some naivete that some believe that Asians getting professorships demonstrates that Asians have won some kind of battle between the races. In actuality, this is part of a deliberate move to create a multicultural workforce at all levels of society. It is cute, however, that the Asians who read this blog are responding with pride and a sense of belonging just as intended. Also sweet is that you see her as the only remotely qualified candidate for her job.
"Will Asians prevail because doing what it takes to get the credential matters more than the search for truth or self-expression typically more important to whites?"
ROTFL. That used to be the case with whites, but not today. What self-expression from whites but PC nonsense? What search for truth? Swedes, Brits, French, Germans, Americans of all stripes blab on endlessly about 'racism', 'homophobia', and other blah blah nonsense.
If anything, it seems like Asians, Latinos, and Muslims are picking up this mindless crap from whites.
To an extent, culture of correctness isn't necessarily a bad thing. Correctness demands proper form, expression, behavior, mentality, and etc.
Correct cultures are more anal, puritanical, repressive and/or repressed, and etc than incorrect cultures.
This makes incorrect cultures more flavorful, wild, fun(at least from a distance), and lively than correct cultures. I used to love reading Royko talk about his ethnic Polish-American community. But US needed the propriety, sobriety, and dignity of Anglos. If Founding Fathers had been like the Polacks and other ethnics in Royko's dad's saloon, I don't know what kind of Constitution we might have ended up with.
Given the importance of form and correct behavior, Anglo-American society could be stifling. You couldn't fart like a Greek or dance like a Russian. Or even fight at the drop of a hat like a drunken Irishman. Not that non-Anglos folks were great champions of freedom or liberty. They were steeped in tribalism, ancient customs, and patriarchalism. Even so, they tended to be more emotional, messy, spontaneous, and instinctive. More uncouth and earthy, more like Zorba the Greek.
Non-Anglos were less tolerant of those who violated taboos but more tolerant of imperfection. Greeks in ZORBA THE GREEK may kill a woman for her sexual 'crimes', but they later drink like fish and act like stupid children.
Anglos, in contrast, were less tolerant of wild messy behavior and insane spontaneity and were more into perfection of form. As such, their society tended to be more orderly and dignified and reserved. Since Anglos distrusted strong emotions, they came to disdain extreme custom-ism and taboo-ism. Killing a woman like in ZORBA THE GREEK would have been looked down upon not merely as morally wrong but lacking in civility. One could not be a gentlemen condoning that sort of behavior. If there was a bad woman about, she was to be shunned or reformed, not killed by a mob.
So, Anglo-correctness led to better control of emotions, which did wonders for social order, which then allowed more freedom in thought. (People are more likely to be afraid of 'dangerous ideas' in a society fraught with disorder. In an orderly society, even a dangerous idea is just an idea.)
But somewhere along the line, the Anglo emphasis on correctness of form and behavior weakened, and Anglos and wasps came to embrace loutishness. To compensate for loss of correctness of form(which used to support social order), there has been the rise of correctness of thought. So, from behavioral correctness to political correctness. Now, you can go on the dance floor, stick your ass out and have it pummeled by some thug, but you are not supposed to have 'homophobic' thoughts.
" Discipline and work are considered more honorable than innate brains in Asian culture, because what you do is more important than what you are. What you are born with is not so much--it's a gift of fate. They have a similar opinion about looks, traditionally."
I haven't discussed innate intelligence with anyone while I lived in Seoul, but I have to disagree about their views on looks. Traditionally, all cultures' fables and religious teachings stress character over physical appearance, but that doesn't always reflect the true attitudes. In Korea, plastic surgery is, pretty much, standard today for anyone who can find a way to afford it. It's a priority. When my brother came for a visit, he was amazed at how different the young women looked from the high school girls. Almost everyone gets their eyes done, but the nose, ears and other are also very prevalent. I've actually met several women who had their jawbones shaved. Apparently, it's becoming increasingly expected of men as well, if they want to succeed in the business world. The nice, obedient children in my Korean classroom talked openly about how they disliked a certain teacher because he was "fat like pig". I won't even go into how important make up, clothing and accessories are over there, to both genders.
"Teachers have low expectations of blacks because to do otherwise would mean getting beat up by the student(and his/her parent)."
Maybe in some districts the kids and their parents are left on their own to do the dirty work when dealing with a teacher, but in my Southern inner city, the administration requires us to pass all the students and give a certain portion of a class As and Bs. Otherwise, the teacher might get fired, or(as it happens most often) the grades are simply changed behind the teacher's back.
Interesting
The sabbatical comment was good, mentally I read along in the voice of that chick from "House Hunters" but my own sense from childhood in a 50% Korean town is that you need more references to basketball leagues/gymnasts and Moot Court Honors
but I have to disagree about their views on looks. "
What you say is true, and I've noticed the obsession with stuff. When I was in Europe, it was common knowledge that women from the Mediterranean countries were far more obsessed with how they dressed, looked, jewelry, etc. Northern Euros, much less so.
Re Asians, I was referring more to traditional attitudes,specifically the Chinese. One of the reasons footbinding was so important was that it meant the woman had "made" her own feet through suffering and discipline. Or rather her mother had them, or whoever was in charge. This was considered more important than a pretty face, though that was important also. I guess, though, small feet were certainly part of "looks." It's just that they were looks that had been deliberately contrived--sort of like plastic surgery. Chinese foot reduction might make a reappearance any time now.
Post a Comment