I spent Sunday attending the wedding of two friends. Generally the idea of being trapped inside a hotel conference room on a fine summer’s day fills me with horror. In this case, however, the wedding had some cultural interest because the groom was Korean-American and the bride Chinese-American. One big difference was the level of participation of the parents. They came right up to the front and, before any vows were exchange between bride and groom, each of the young people promised to love and honor his or her in-laws. Another difference was the level of intelligence and education in the room. Asian-Americans are our most discriminated-against ethnic group. They have a tough time breaking into the Old White Guys’clubs and golf games. They are officially discriminated against by universities and government because they aren’t the right kind of minority. How do Asians respond? Apparently by studying and working like demons. A person at the reception who attended an Ivy League college, earned an M.D. or Ph.D., and was a good enough violinist to play in a symphony orchestra would have been average. The Taiwanese-American woman officiating had an M.D. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from MIT. Twenty more years of Affirmative Action and we will have effectively bred a super-race of Asian-Americans.
My favorite part of the wedding was the groom’s mother’s toast. She recounted how, not having ever been introduced to a girlfriend, she sat her son down and said “I’m your mother. I will accept whatever you tell me, even if it is difficult. Just tell me the truth: Are you gay?” Thanks, Mom.
Wow. It’s like you’ve never spent any time in the company of asian people before. These comments would have been interesting and/or insightful 30 years ago.
Bud, don’t know what you’re smoking, but the phenomenon of Asians entering enmasse into the Ivies is a relatively recent occurrence starting in the late 80’s. These are the children of the wave of Asian immigrants that started in the 70’s. Only now are we are seeing large numbers of them exit the top professional and graduate schools and enter their professional prime.
I think it’s cool that they promised to be nice to the in-laws. I find it interesting how you say that Asian-Americans aren’t the “right kind of minority.” I live in Christchurch, New Zealand, and my city has a large percentage (perhaps 20%) of Asians in an otherwise entirely European population. (Most New Zealand cities would have a lot of native Maori, but Christchurch is an exception for whatever reason.) I think Asians are probably the most discriminated-against ethnic minority also here in NZ, because we perceive them as having selfishly come into our country and made a general nuisance of themselves on our roads and in our universities etc. I don’t think that’s very fair, and even to the extent that it is fair, we don’t really have a right to discriminate on that basis, because it’s certainly a much lesser reflection of the way we Europeans invaded the New Zealand Maori 170 years ago and thoughtlessly (though perhaps not consciously) destroyed their culture. But then, they were hardly a unified and peaceful culture before we were on the scene; they were invading each other’s land and destroying each other many years before that. I think it’s just human nature.
In my experience I have found immigrants from India and China to be smartest of all the Asians. Very intellectual. They, however, are the ones that lack most in terms of “soft-skills”. In that category, I have found Koreans and Taiwanese to be the best amongst the Asians.
Even though this post is flattering to the APA community, it promotes some harmful myths in lumping all APA’s together into one homogenous group. Many of the APA kids that you see at Harvard and MIT came from privileged, professional families to begin with, something that helps that Ivy league push. There are many others who still live in immigrant ghettos (think Laotian refugees in Fresno or the Hmong in Wisconsin or garment workers in NYC’s Chinatown) who don’t have the same economic opportunities to pursue these goals, and the “model minority” myth hurts them because people don’t understand why they’re not far as ahead as the others.