Why are Asian-Americans so successful in America?

It's not.

On edit (and in response to DW): Bolded to emphasize the context of my contention.

 

It has been so noted that you think that.

 

Jim Caldwell doesn't help the discussion.

 

Pretty much any group could be called inferior if you narrow your definition enough. Given its prosperity and lack of ethnic strife (REAL ethnic strife), America is hopelessly inferior with regard to violence. We're superior in blowing things up. Yay, us.

 

You're the only one pushing that point.

 

OK.

Why do you think that blacks struggle economically in America?

 

At least that way you'd get to use your favorite word again.

 

Well, no. YF started the thread with this ridiculous proposition (and it had NOTHING to do with celebrating Asian Americans' ability to rise in the America).

Which is why Dick is insisting on answers and which is why people are dancing around him.

 

Or, people don't have hours and hours to extrapolate the entire history of racial inequality in America on an anonymous Internet message board.

 

Depends. What kind of car does X drive?

 

And I'm not asking them to.

This is pretty simple. There are two choices:

1. Blacks lag behind economically and educationally in America, as compared to every other race, due to public policies (and other outside forces) that have culminated in their current position; or

2. Blacks lag behind in America because there is something inherent to being black that causes them to lag behind economically and educationally.

Which is it?

 

The nuclear family is a huge part of it. Of course, it's easier to keep a nuclear family together when you haven't experienced these circumstances over an unending 400-year cycle:

1. Slaves were frequently captured individually, not brought over as part of a nuclear family in the first place.
2. Those that formed nuclear families on the plantation would see their families sold away.
3. Jim Crow laws existed for a century after slavery ended, and -- outside the South -- blacks were still subjected to institutionalized housing, job, lending and social discrimination in the North far beyond what ethnic whites like Jews, Irish, Italians, Poles had to endure. As part of the Jim Crow system, black men were routinely taken from their families for minor or trumped-up offenses to fuel the convict-lease system, undermining the nuclear family and the stability it might bring.
3. Many stable working-class black neighborhoods were physically decimated by urban renewal while other stable black neighborhoods deteriorated as the government invested in developing the suburbs (largely inaccessible to blacks through discriminatory housing and lending policies) and all their institutions, particularly schools, at the expense of the inner cities. The inability to buy a home in an area where the value would appreciate over time -- even if you had the financial means through a decent manufacturing job -- put blacks far beyond whites of all ethnic backgrounds in terms of building wealth. I'm not talking about hooking your kids up with a trust fund like you're Paris Hilton. I'm talking about stuff like building enough home equity to start that business that you can pass along to your kids. Or to pay for that college education without saddling them with massive debt. Or to help THEM purchase a modest two-or-three bedroom ranch in a safe area with decent schools and services when the time comes. Lots of whites who by no means consider themselves wealthy are much more likely to have the benefit of that reality. This is without even getting into racial discrimination within the trade and labor unions during the postwar boom years (something that YF has documented as still being an issue today).
4. Mass incarceration as a fallout from the War on Drugs -- paired with discriminatory sentencing policies. Nothing does more to destroy the possibility of stable nuclear families. Blacks are disproportionately affected because they're disproportionately likely to get jail time or sent to juvy whereas white kids are more likely to get probation or put in a diversionary program. Once you're in that system, good luck trying to stay out. Especially when you have to check the box when applying for jobs.

Not to mention all sorts of other factors: the disproportionate likelihood of growing in environmentally contaminated areas, being exposed to lead paint in public housing or old, dilapidated slum housing, etc.

Yeah, my grandparents and great-grandparents no doubt had to deal with anti-Semitism in different ways. As did the hardworking Irish and Italian immigrant forebears of a lot of my friends and acquaintances. It's not remotely the same thing. A few "Irish Need Not Apply" signs in Boston in the 1800s or "Gentlemens' Agreements" in college admissions and law-firm and banking recruiting pales in comparison and is a lot easier to overcome.

Yes, plenty of African Americans have and continue to overcome some very difficult challenges. This isn't all meant to let people off the hook for horrible decisions. But again, there but for the grace of God go I. If I was a black kid growing up in Oakland, Detroit, Gary, Baltimore, etc., I can't say that any innate talent or intelligence I happen to have would be enough for me to make it out.

It's easy to sit back and talk about how your gritty Irish great-grandfather did this or how your shrewd Jewish great-grandfather did that and how nobody handed them a damn thing. Well, that may be true - to a degree. But they were handed a system where - for whatever social bigotry they had to overcome -- it just wasn't institutionalized in our banks, in our schools, in our civil service, in our laws and in our justice system to anywhere near the same extent. But yes, let's keep patting ourselves on the back and pointing fingers at the pathology of the black community and swooning every time a Thomas Sowell or Ben Carson comes along to let us off the hook.