Post #987, written by a parent from SE Asia who knows Asian parents in WWP, confirms the existence of a hypercompetitive atmosphere. Isn’t is possible for people to be saying that the situation has gotten out of control and have that be the truth and not some white power grab?
I find it interesting that the same people who tell white parents to opt out of the rat race, give a pass to Asians in the rat race, saying they have no choice. We all have a choice.
It only affected a tiny proportion of the populace and wasn’t necessarily based on SES. For instance, sons of merchants* were officially barred until 1461…but in actual practice from many contemporaneous records…the ban on sons of merchants was already a dead letter long before that date.
As for the course description…it pertains to Chinese society after the start of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms towards a market-driven effectively capitalist economy. Not the period I was talking about.
Especially considering most Confucians in a large part of the imperial period would be ideologically horrified at the degrees of blatant materialistically oriented social climbing practiced by most of the new upper/upper-middle class in Mainland China since 1978 and moreso…since the early '00s.
** Wealth generated through speculation/moving money around, not actually producing things which was considered a negative in the Confucian/Neo-Confucian mindset.
"In particular, how will Whites react at selective, elite universities, where Asians are increasingly prominent and other non-Whites are maintaining or capturing a larger share of enrollments? "
Oh get a grip. It already is the case – the two elite schools my kids attended were probably 25% - 33% Asian-American.
How did my white kids “react” to the presence of Asian-American kids? Uh - “Hi, you’re in my history class, right? Wow, that was a really interesting lecture. Want to study together some time? Want to hang out together some time?” Practically every picture of my kids with their friends on campus is heavily Asian-American. So what?? Who cares? What does the author think – that white kids will react with horror or something??
Sure, Asians have experienced prejudice. So has every group at some point. Women, even white women, still aren’t making the inroads toward equality that they should be. Society takes a while to change. Racism doesn’t explain everything. In addition, as I pointed out, the colleges claim to be using their diversity guidelines to counteract racism.
This comment reminds me of several conversations I’ve had with some college classmates who happened to be White and all from upper/upper-middle class backgrounds who felt expending even a modicum of effort or attention to one’s GPA was “grade grubbing” and scholarship students like yours truly should “loosen up”.
One thing they failed to understand and acknowledge even after it was pointed out to them…the combination of their high SES background, race, and the fact their families had been in the US for 2+ generations meant they had far greater social and financial capital which meant they had viable safetynet fallback plans if they graduated with sub-3.0 or even sub-2.x GPAs or even spent stints on academic probation/suspension.
Factors which are often extremely lacking/not available to recent immigrants and/or racial minorities. If I had a bad semester GPA-wise…there was no safetynet fallback plan I could have fallen upon if I had lost the scholarship portion of my FA/scholarship package.
One good case in point regarding greater social capital is greater access to information to navigate one’s way through the K-12 and college education/application landscape many regular posters on CC have compared with what my immediate and some parts of my extended family had or those of most HS classmates from immigrant/recent immigrant* minority backgrounds.
Something similar was observed by Vance Packard in the 1950s at HYP. At the time, HYP admitted mostly from SES-elite prep schools, with some (though increasing numbers of) academically elite students (often on financial aid) from other (usually public at the time) schools. The scions of wealth were content with gentlemen’s C grades, while the public school graduates actually worked for their A and B grades. The scions of wealth tended to look down on the latter, since social status at the time looked more favorably on inherited wealth and family ties than self-made or earned wealth (now, at least the veneer of being self-made is favored).
That may have been your reality in NYC, but the Asian immigrants in suburban NJ (and most definitely in WWP) are professionals in high-paying fields with higher incomes than their non-Asian counterparts. Secondly, around here Asians dominate certain fields like IT and pharma research, so their children have as many or more connections than non-Asians. They can opt out of the rat race, just as much as everyone else can.
Furthermore, the author of the article is offended at the adcom’s comment about the Asian kid who wants to be doctor. It sounds like the tone may not have been appropriate, so I’m not defending it. But let’s be truthful about this. The colleges are not dictating to Asians what major to choose or what careers to strive for, all for the nefarious purpose of thwarting Asian success. Asians do tend to cluster in certain STEM fields and it’s not racist to say so. My S’s high school friends were all Asian, and with the exception of his gf, there were only 3 career goals represented among them when they were seniors: doctor, engineer, and biotech researcher. It’s their right to choose whatever career they want, but colleges only have so many spots for engineers and biology majors, and that is not racism.
@PragmaticMom, what I took from that op ed piece was that the author was focused on the unfairness of elite school admissions, attributing the unfairness to white privilege, and focusing on admission to those few elite schools as the only way for Asian Americans to succeed in life. Presumably whites–and all other minorities–don’t need the boost that the elite school confers?
I can’t link right now to the many articles I have read on the subject of the bamboo ceiling but the real obstacle to achievement is not admission to Harvard or Princeton because whites have changed the definition of merit but the very real and enduring racism in the workplace that prevents Asian Americans from obtaining and succeeding in leadership positions in all walks of American life. It’s true in corporate America, it’s true in the tech world, it’s true in academia.
I have extended relatives in suburban NJ towns similar in SES to WWP…but not anywhere near as academically intensive as what you’ve described. Ironic considering several of them lived and attended K-12 in towns whose school districts are within the top 10 like WWP.
However, they moved into that town 30-40+ years ago when it was comparatively cheaper and the aunts/uncles mostly never completed their college or in some cases…even high school educations due to various reasons*.
Cousins who attended K-12 from the '70s till the early 2010’s ran the gamut in academic ability from ones who barely graduated and struggled in undergrad at state/regional private Us to one family branch where all the students in my generation ended up and excelled at Ivies/comparable elites.
If anything, their parents were much more laid back than some multi-generationed American parents I met in their neighborhood and among those of classmates at my STEM-centered public magnet. Granted, some of that was due to the fact at least one of the cousins was of such a highly gifted type she could have easily sailed through Stuy and graduated in the top 10% or higher while taking the hardest academic track without having to stay up till 1-2 am like I did.
It sounds like it would be an understatement to say that the situation faced by GFG is extremely toxic and unhealthy There appear to be certain groups who want all the privilege for themselves without even considering the mass of students that can be undermined by their demands
I don’t think there’s any deliberate attempt on any group’s part to gain power or privilege. It’s a situation where one group’s response to a perceived economic or educational reality clashes with the other group’s. Probably both need to compromise for the sake of the student body as a whole. One side may need to scale back their academic expectations, and the other may need to step it theirs, at least in my district. WWP may have some unique situations I don’t know about.
The runaway story highlights that the students are feeling too much pressure, resulting in unsafe behavior.
The Salon article cited above ends ungracefully with a petty and racist comment about “mediocre” whites with low grades and no extracurriculars. I didn’t find the piece very convincing. The author, a Harvard CS graduate who now works in the culture industry, does not seem particularly oppressed to me.
I’m not Asian but I always wondered about that term as a catch-all. Is the Vietnamese fisherman’s child in Louisiana or the Hmong refugee’s child in Minneapolis having the same struggles as the child of Chinese middle-class university-graduate parents working for pharma companies in New Jersey? I doubt it.
I also question the glib concept of “white privilege” when the news of increased deathrates for white middle-aged men with low education was made public. These people died from pure despair (drug overdose and alcoholism), just like in 1990s Russia. Not getting into Harvard or Yale does not seem like a big tragedy in comparison.
NJSue the author is also a UPenn Wharton MBA who has on her resume JPMorgan Chase. I don’t think she is particularly oppressed either
Actually it turns out it’s white women in the South, and to a smaller extent, white women in the midwest, who are driving the entire increased death rates. Death rates for white men, and white women in the east and west, are holding steady or going down,
http://andrewgelman.com/2016/01/19/death-trends-update-its-all-about-women-in-the-south/
Death rates holding steady over time is a bad sign, to be sure, because in other parts of the world death rates are declining. But the headline increase is middle-aged white women in the South. Not men. Women.
Yes, there seems to be some debate now in social science circles between Case and Deaton, and Gelman. But the point about “white privilege” still stands, whether it’s lower-class white women or men who are dying at greater rates. The concept of “white privilege” does not apply at the bottom rungs of the ladder IMHO. The concept is very outdated. Poverty, social isolation, and lack of employment, not race, are the issues.
The article the Salon oped refers to a survey of the general public, based on a limited number of California residents, not on college admissions counselors. Since it is only the abstract, there is no good way to know if this is a weak or strong effect.
I agree that kid whose parents work in tech, pharma, STEM or are doctors, have more connections for internships, shadowing or job regardless of race. It is much more about class. The kid of a plumber or the mail clerk or a service worker would not have as many opportunities. Many of the WWP parents are in those fields.
Pragmatic mom: Do you seriously think the typical NJ high school white boy nerd has any kind of social status? Nothing could be farther from the truth. A socially awkward boy, regardless of race or ethnicity, is not going to have an easy time in high school. There are certainly very smart kids that are also socially adept. At my son’s high school, there were some smart, popular, athletic Asian boys who were higher on the social ladder than some of the nerdy, non-athletic white boys (and of course there were non-athletic, not socially adept Asian boys right there with them). At least at our HS, social status depended much more on social skills, humor, reasonable level of smarts, looks and athletic ability than on race. Of course that is high school and not the real world.
Regarding Asian and STEM: Asian students choose STEM majors because of several reasons: 1. They want to have stable jobs to establish a quick foundation for the offsprings. 2. They are underdog in non STEM areas: their English communication, their voice, and their physical appearance don’t have strong influence yet (would you vote for an Asian politician, hire an Asian lawyer, recruite an Asian ballet dancer,…?). It will take some generations so that they may have the same level playing field. It’s a reality.
Well that’s great but colleges have only so many STEM spots. And as GFG said - that’s not racism.
“Pragmatic mom: Do you seriously think the typical NJ high school white boy nerd has any kind of social status? Nothing could be farther from the truth”
Isn’t that the truth! That was pretty amusing to read, as it’s so far off track.
“Regarding Asian and STEM: Asian students choose STEM majors because of several reasons: 1. They want to have stable jobs to establish a quick foundation for the offsprings. 2. They are underdog in non STEM areas: their English communication, their voice, and their physical appearance don’t have strong influence yet (would you vote for an Asian politician, hire an Asian lawyer, recruite an Asian ballet dancer,…?). It will take some generations so that they may have the same level playing field. It’s a reality.”
We are talking Asian-Americsn kids, whose English communication, voice and physical appearance are quite fine. And “would I vote for an Asuan politician / lawyer / etc”? Of course I would. What a nonsensical question.