Why are Asian-Americans so successful in America?

I acknowledge that it's a problem that people are scorned for trying to succeed.

But why does that occur disproportionately among a single race? Bad genes? Bad luck?

 

1800's? In the Catholic Inquisitions of 1492. Jews have been the scapegoats of Europe since the founding of the Holy Roman Empire.

 

It's not particular to that race, DW. And, even if we stipulate that it is ... Do you honestly believe that a people capable of surviving centuries of bondage and the horrors of Jim Crow ALSO stood by helplessly while an ethic of self-destruction took root and flourished?

 

It's not particular to that race. But it certainly is more prevalent within that race, by leaps and bounds.

Why?

 

You tell me. It's not enough to simply ask why. You have it in your head that African-Americans' history makes them vulnerable to that pathology. Tell us why that is.

 

Poverty makes them vulnerable to that pathology. Their history makes them vulnerable to poverty.

 

Strange that when they were poorer (in the 1940s the poverty rate among African-Americans was 87 percent) they were on the brink of great strides. By 1960, however, when the African-American poverty rate had fallen to 47 percent, these gains began to slow. I guess that's when the pathology reared its ugly head.

Or maybe something else happened ...

 

Wouldn't poverty drive people to want to succeed rather than make success a bad thing?

 

For sure. It seems like a great breeding ground for success. Makes me jealous of the kids growing up in third-world countries.

 

I guess we can just dismiss that whole cliché about one athlete winning because he was hungrier than another.

Because as DW has shown, if you're hungry, then you know you're doomed to fail, so you quit trying. And criticize those who do.

 

Well, it is a cliche ... generally one athlete wins because he was better than the other.

 

Great.

So why aren't blacks kicking ass and taking names academically? They must be really, really hungry!