New White Flight --Fleeing smart Asians

Parent Cafe
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<p>One example: Asian parents are too competitive. That sounds like racism to many of “Cupertino’s Asian residents, who resent the fact that their growing numbers and success are causing many white families to boycott the town altogether…”"</p>

<p>I don’t think it’s racism (which is the belief that one’s own race is inherently superior to another/others). I think it may possibly be just the opposite: the secret fear that these asians may actually be inherently smarter, and that one’s own child hasn’t a prayer of competing on a level playing field. Plus, when you’ve enjoyed a long history of being the dominant race/culture, it can be disquieting to find yourself no longer at the front of the pack. It’s not about the fear of drugs, or crime, but there is fear non-the-less.</p>

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<p>Epistrophy, my friends are in the same upper to upper middle economic class. In fact, some of the Asians that are avoided are in a higher economic class than the whites who avoid them and don’t ask them to join groups because of their accents. </p>

<p>My racist Chinese friends are also in the same economic and educational groups. Some lost that status in the Cultural Revolution or Japanese invasion of China but the younger ones are certainly enjoying the privileges of their parent’s Party status. Young and old, my Chinese national friends are decidedly racist. They certainly aren’t biased because of money. Money or class has nothing to do with why they believe they are far superior to Americans, white people in general and absolutely all black people. They simply think the Chinese race is much smarter, much more cultured and far more refined than my barbaric Anglican culture–and they are only too happy to tell me that! </p>

<p>Now, they DO look down on fellow Chinese ethnicities in matter of money and class.</p>

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<p>in our area the newcomers that are moving into the lower income minority communities aren’t that well off- but they are college educated and young and very idealistic about moving into a diverse community.</p>

<p>Many of them are rebuilding their houses themselves- over a 5-10 year period of time, but even though they are low income when they move in, they still have the degree, and in 10 years they both have a much better job and have a pretty nice house as well.</p>

<p>Gentrification is happening all over Seattle, I just notice that outward hostility seems to be more open when the invaders are of a different ethnic group.</p>

<p>I personally would be thrilled if the people moving into my neighborhood were living in a single family house- no matter its size.</p>

<p>BUt developers have cut a swath through this area buying up single family homes left and right, tearing them down, and building condos.
This was a blue collar, industrial neighborhood, the industry is still there, but the condos now have * granite counters* and offer * boutique living* what the heck is boutique living?
The condos across the street are going to start at $500,000 for a one bedroom! What is that going to do to my tax assessment? :(</p>

<p><a href=“http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=homeappreciation160&date=20060716&query=median[/url]”>http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=homeappreciation160&date=20060716&query=median&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The median income in the county is $60,000, in 2003, there were 28 neighborhoods where famiies making median income could afford to live , now there are 9.</p>

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<p>Now re : Asians, this area historically has a strong representation, but there is a bamboo ceiling, Asians are in percieved more “feminine” fields, like music & art, architecture, food industry, but aren’t always represented at the higher levels in other fields.
I admit I don’t really think about this, I do know very successful Asians, and as in general , both their income and education level is higher than median for our area, I assumed they weren’t discriminated against as often as other ethnicities, however the son of a close friend of my mothers is Chinese and was a asst football coach at a California university. I didn’t know anything about him, so I thought I would look him up so that I could make converstation if I met him. ( I obviously didn’t know anything about football- he is legendary) :o</p>

<p>But I was stunned, to read, about teh doors that were closed to him, because of his ancestry, obviously not because of his talent.</p>

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<p>I have a cousin who lives in the Bay Area in Ncal. She goes to Palo ALto high school. I don’t believe that parents are leaving becuase of “overcompetition and high school’s too hard”. The mostly caucasian Palo Alto high school (not too far from cupertino)and Palo ALto in gernal has schools that are just as competitive as, or more, than the mostly asian school districts of cupertino. and yet no one’s talking about leaving. Some parents who say that they are leaving cupertino (w/ a high asian population) b/c of hard academics are in fact moving to palo alto, where schools and academics are even tougher, but where the asian population is much much lower. I feel that it has nothing to do with schools being too academically focused, it has everything to do w/ race. Comparisons?</p>

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<p>I’m not sure how this cuts, but when it comes time to go to college, there is a very clear element of voluntary self-segregation in the schools the students choose to go to. In California, the UC campuses are perceived as being divided into “tiers” of roughly equivalent schools. Berkeley and UCLA in the top tier, followed by UC San Diego; another tier with UC Irvine, Santa Barbara, and Davis, then the other three schools. The “middle” tier of Davis, Santa Barbara and Irvine, is what interests me - particularly Santa Barbara and Irvine. These two Universities, with very similar “prestige”, selectivity and cost, located about 100 miles apart, drawing from pretty much the same “market” of mostly California high school students, attract very different ethic mixes. Irvine is roughly 50% Asian, 25% white; Santa Barbara the reverse. Why? I have absolutely no clue. I do know that (anecdotally) all of the bright Asian students at my kids’ high school who were accepted at both chose Irvine, and all the bright white students chose SB. And as best I can tell they were all aware of the existing ethnic mix of the schools before they made that decision.</p>

<p>Mind you, these are kids who hang out together in high school in mixed-ethnic social groups, so it’s not like they haven’t ever socialized with members of different ethnic groups. But when it comes to choosing which of two very similar colleges, they tend to self-segregate.</p>

<p>Make of it what you will.</p>

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<p>I’m not sure that some of the new immigration DOES pay its dues. I live in NYC and we have a thriving welfare state. There is a subset of immigrants (particularly illegal) that comes here for those benefits. As I’ve said before on other threads, I’ve worked in literacy programs for 20 years and I’ve seen a vast difference in the goals and drive of the people immigrating to my area in that time period. Where the goal in previous years was to come here, learn English, get a job and fit in, that’s not the case for an increasing number of immigrants anymore. Many that I, personally, see have no history of literacy in their own countries - EVER - and many not only don’t speak English, but they don’t speak Spanish either. Some of the Central American Indian dialects are very unfamiliar here.</p>

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<p>Cheers:</p>

<p>As a chinese, and an active poster in a chinese educational forum, I truely believe your chinese friend’s view about americans DO not represent majority chinese here or back in china. In fact, in our forum, we often talked about how we can learn from americans, as we often quoted ’ Do as the Romans do’…you learn from people that you think is better , not inferior ,than you right?</p>

<p>I have been lived in USA for about 14 years, just imagine if I go back to china and say things to my fellow chinese like this:’ I lived in USA for long, and I know there was white policy killing black people, the white people are racist’… Does the fact that there was white policies shoot the black people exists? yes, it does. Does it represent the true picture about Americans? NO, NO, NO, absolutely NOT. However, my statement can be very misleading to those chinese who never been here, just like your statement to those people who don’t have chance to closely observe chinese…</p>

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<p>

And another bigot is born…</p>

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<p>Emeraldkity4 - would you be talking about Norm Chow?</p>

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<p>“I think there is a difference between valuing education and being overly single-minded and demanding about it to the extreme. I think many Asian parents cross that line while those of other backgrounds look to a more balanced life. Personally I would prefer for my kids to have the balanced outlook and enjoy high school a little.”</p>

<p>It’s so true, and we know that we maybe be too single-minded and are struggling to learn to change.</p>

<p>Our old tradition places highest value on learning, when young, working hard to learn from book has the highest priority than any other activities —like sport, social, EQ or leadership etc… that’s how I was broght up. ‘have fun in life’ was never a concern in the time of my youth. </p>

<p>After I become a mother, now looked back, I know I unconciously did about samething to mu kids as my mother did to me, teach my son to like and enjoy learning, but forgot or didn’t know or didn’t try hard on many other issues like sports, social skill, EQ or just plain balanced and health life—all these I was to be aware of later in life from being here.</p>

<p>As a matter of fact, me and my husband has been constantly argued about what should we do to our son, which is actually a fight about whether we shoud let him continiuosly working hard, eventaully become a sicentific nerd or pull him back to normal, like my husband said ,to have some fun to enjoy life.</p>

<p>Right,now, my son seems very advacned in academicas, not because he is extreamly smarter , maybe a little (hehe, after all I’m a mother), but mostly because he has been working hard all these years. He made into USA olympiad math training program this summer, how significant this training is? There were about 250,000 high schoolers initially take part in the first round of math competition, after about 4 rounds of competitions, only about 60 HSchoolers got invited into that program. That’s how competitive this program is. During his first year of high school, he was introduced into physics and he fund himself fall in love and good at it. So right after the summer math program, he announced that he is going to study very hard on physics so evetually, he hope he can make into USA physics olympiad someday.</p>

<p>MY husband, ironically a phd in physics, has been rigorously against his plan. He was not happy for many years for my son was so into academic. he kept saying life has a lot more to learn than just learning from the book. Go out to have more social life so son can impove( or better) his social skill, EQ and a real knowledge about life, you don’t need to be so super acadmically…blahblah…in one word, he doesn’t agree son to put more time into academics besides normal school work. He doesn’t want son grow up to be a typical ascian stereotype kid, he wants son to be more like nomal american.</p>

<p>I, on the other hand, can’t be firmly on either side. I am happy son has a drive, a motivation and focus so he won’t get into drug, sex etc all kinds of troubles. But my husband’s saying seems represent the value of nowaday’s society. Everyone has same amount of time, if you spend a lot of time to enhence one skill, you will be inferiro in many other skills, and a well-rounded student and people seems are more welcomed in today’s sociaty. While I try to be supportive to my son’s desire, I am not sure if I am doing right thing or not? simply saying ‘follow your passion’ seems not responsible enough. so everyday, we still have a long talk, still not very sure.</p>

<p>I blahed so much about my son with only one intention, just to share with you, how we are fighting our traditional value within ourself.</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

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<p>From reading the posts above, I have to conclude that experiences in different parts of the United States must differ greatly, perhaps reflecting differences in the detailed ethnic and socioeconomic makeup of different communities.</p>

<p>Where I live, in Maryland, many of the schools are between 15 and 30% Asian, including a lot of Chinese kids and smaller numbers of Koreans and Indians. There are also sizeable African-American and Hispanic populations. As a result, whites are in the minority at some schools, but this doesn’t mean that some other group is in the majority. There is no majority.</p>

<p>This is what America is going to look like in a few decades. </p>

<p>My daughter, who is white and highly academic, has many Asian friends and smaller numbers of Hispanic and black friends. She travels in social circles that are racially mixed. She participates in musical ensembles that are dominated by Asians. Half of the kids at her birthday party were not white. She has been at other people’s parties where she was the only white person in the room. None of this is uncomfortable for her. It’s just normal, everyday life. The kids are not xenophobic (although their parents may be). Everybody speaks English (fluent, idiomatic, unaccented English) when in mixed groups (and even a group of Asians may be a mixed group, because their families came from different countries). Most of the kids preferentially speak English anyway. </p>

<p>I suspect that people like my daughter will have an advantage over those who grew up in less diverse circumstances when it comes to living and working in the increasingly multicultural America of the future.</p>

<p>Of course, there are issues sometimes. The kids at my daughter’s school, despite their familiarity with diversity, still discriminate (mostly between people whom they think of as “ghetto” and everybody else; “ghetto” correlates somewhat with race but is not exactly the same thing). Some Asian parents do not like their children having non-Asian friends because they are concerned that the non-Asians might not be academically serious (sometimes I feel as though I should have my daughter’s SAT scores tattooed onto her forehead so that these people can relax). Disciplinary issues have arisen for which I was not prepared (it had never occurred to me that I needed to have an Official Parental Stance on whether or not it is acceptable to possess bootleg DVDs purchased by one’s friends on the streets of Beijing). But mostly, it has been a good experience. </p>

<p>Welcome to the future. It’s not bad here.</p>

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<p>Amother,
Thanks for sharing. I think that all of the parents who use this site share with you the intention of trying to figure out the best ways of helping our kids develop into the best people they can be while also having happy lives. It’s helpful to hear about how other parents are struggling with decisions about what best to do. :)</p>

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<p>Ah, what else is new? People want to live with and hang out with people who look and act just like themselves. This is not just an American phenomenon. It is, unfortunately, pretty much the way of the world.</p>

<p>In a short time the Asians will be fully melted into the pot too. They’ll be chubby underachievers obsessed with sports and video games. :wink: Welcome to America!</p>

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<p>amother, There are a lot of similarities between our family and yours. We are not Asian; I am Irish-American and my husband is a naturalized US citizen from Germany. We both have Ph.D.s in physics. Our 13-year-old son is very precocious in math, loves physics, and wants to be a physicist. My husband and I have emphasized sports and arts with our children, and have never put them in academic camps during the summer. Although we were against the idea, our son wanted to go to CTY this summer. He did, and had a wonderful time. (He also did 4 weeks of sailing this summer, by his choice.) He reads physics books for fun. We have never suggested that he do this.</p>

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<p>Around here many parents are very competitive about their children - not only in academics, but in sports, music, theatre, etc. We have a fair number of Asian families and from what I can tell they are neither more nor less likely to be pushing their kids to achieve at a level not chosen by the kids than are white families.</p>

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<p>Amother - Echoing Northstarmom, I agree. Thanks for sharing. Your son sounds like he IS taking the real American path, which is to follow your instincts and your abilities and take pride and joy in yourself as an individual. He should feel little pressure to conform - as a “real” American - either to his peers who are out “having fun” or to the stereotype of Asian students. If he loves physics, let him be a physicist. And BTW, it’s possible that he will be a physicist who also loves hip-hop music and plays soccer and has an absolutely perfect American accent. It is the real trick, how to own your cultural heritage, and yet take advantage of the culture you live in, and make your own identity as you grow up. You sound like a very self-examined mother and I congratulate you.</p>

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<p>NYMomof2 – can I borrow your son for a little while? Just to sort of have some of him rub off on my very-happy-underachiever?</p>

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<p>katliamom, I’m not sure you’d want my son to rub off on yours. He walks around thinking great thoughts, forgetting and losing things as he goes. His grades reflect this, so in some eyes he’s an underachiever!</p>

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<p>“We have a fair number of Asian families and from what I can tell they are neither more nor less likely to be pushing their kids to achieve at a level not chosen by the kids than are white families.”</p>

<p>We have seen the opposite in our area. Our family (I am including obervations of our children) sees that most, but not all, Asian families push their children more than those of white families. The Asian children tend to go to school year round and go to addtional classes after school during the school year. Many of the white children tend to spend several weeks vacationing at the beach, attending summer camp, enjoying the local swimming pool, playing baseball, and perhaps taking a nonacademic class such as drama, or something like pottery making. Some Asian children do participate in golf, and tennis activities, but not to the exclusion of academic courses. Many take private tutoring in art, and music. Many Asian children in our area start taking SAT tutoring in the fourth grade. I am not exaggerating at all. They are instructed in algebra from the sat tutor while learning about what a fraction is in the public school. The Asian children have told our white children about the pressure to get very high grades in school. Some are calculating their gpas in the seventh grade. Many of the white children are spending oodles of time in front of video games, although both groups do seem to get some video playtime.</p>