Asians at W&M

Squiddy
Tue, 02 May 2006 00:45:39 +0000

Not sure of the point of your lecture, but while you’re asking others to consider why there are so many asians in California, I’ll similarly ask you to consider that not all Asian ethnic groups are from the Pacific Rim; these discusions have blithely excluded Pakistani and Indian subcontinent groups, which are far more numerous on the East Coast than the West. The factors that influenced them, their background, resources, and experiences are probably far different from, say, someone who immigrated from Korea or the Phillipines (whose situations are similarly, on average, going to be substantially different from one another.) So, if you want to try to parse the census numbers, you’re going to have to use the census bureau’s definition of just what “asian” is. And consider just how different each of these groups’ experiences might differ from your own. Point being, you should consider your own advice - things aren’t always as they appear.

Your assertion that social and spatial mobility are inextricably linked sounds good, but doesn’t really track with my (empirical) experience. Ethnic groups do tend to cluster in certain areas, but far more for social and familial reasons more than for a lack of economic resources. For an example close to you, my neighborhood was heavily Samoan, mostly 1st and 2nd generation. They clustered together not because they reached the West Coast and ran out of gas money, but because that’s where their relatives were, their familial support systems. If they can afford to live in a high-cost area like SoCal, they certainly had the financial wherewithal to move elsewhere, if so inclined, to a less costly area. At the same time, consider the large populations of immigrants in places you’d never expect, like the African immigrant enclave I found in rural North Carolina, or Haitians in Detroit, or Latinos in Minnesota - they’ve somehow managed to get beyond, far beyond the place where they landed on the continent.

And where I live now, there’s almost no “natives” - most people moved here from other places because the area offered more economic opportunity than where they came from; my experience is that lower-income people are, in general, more mobile than upper-income people are; because they have to be.

Anyway, I have to say, this entire discussion has become rather pointless, not to mention depressing, because it seems that some are still committed to proving that somehow life and society isn’t fair to them because of their race, and those that dare disagree are just stupid and uneducated – or should I say “fussy”?