I hate Amy Chua, a notorious child abuser, with a fiery passion but it seems like some smart Jew let her add her name to his on a very interesting article*. It is titled “What Drives Success?” and discusses the differences in achievement between various immigrant groups. I’m an immigrant from a traditionally under-performing group, so obviously the subject interests me.
The article shares some very interesting information about the high levels of attainment among different groups. Here are some facts that I found interesting:
For the 2013 school year, Stuyvesant High School offered admission, based solely on a standardized entrance exam, to nine black students, 24 Hispanics, 177 whites and 620 Asians. Among the Asians of Chinese origin, many are the children of restaurant workers and other working-class immigrants.
Good for you, Chinese Asians! This success is of great interest to me because my immigrant community is in many ways similar to the Chinese-American (a closed, very insular community, a history of living in a Communist regime, a harder time inscribing ourselves into our new societies. And we also have a lot of Amy Chua type of child abuse.) Still, we don’t get to Stuyvesant in massive numbers if there is no chance of bribing one’s way in.
And here is more interesting stuff:
Nigerians make up less than 1 percent of the black population in the United States, yet in 2013 nearly one-quarter of the black students at Harvard Business School were of Nigerian ancestry; over a fourth of Nigerian-Americans have a graduate or professional degree, as compared with only about 11 percent of whites.
Yes, this is an immigrant community that consists of scarily brilliant people. But I didn’t know they were doing this well.
The article also discusses the success of Cuban-Americans but that is something very easy to understand. The people who flee a Communist revolution are always the most brilliant, enterprising, self-reliant, non-conformist, and likely to succeed everywhere. Within a couple of generations, a Communist system stomps all of these qualities out and we get the Russian-speaking immigrants who aren’t saved from being passive, sullen, under-achieving, and on the perennial hunt for handouts even by being, for the most part, Jewish.
Of course, it is obvious to everybody that these differences are in no way in-born:
Group success in America often tends to dissipate after two generations. . . The fact that groups rise and fall this way punctures the whole idea of “model minorities” or that groups succeed because of innate, biological differences. Rather, there are cultural forces at work.
*If this comment bothered you, ask yourself why child abuse seems less important than the possibility that somebody is not very nice to an adult. And yes, I know Rubenfeld is her husband, this in no way changes the facts.
[To be continued. . .]
Clarissa's Blog 
Have you read what Amy’s daughter, 18-year-old Sophia, has written?
http://nypost.com/2011/01/18/why-i-love-my-strict-chinese-mom/
I liked this:
I think the desire to live a meaningful life is universal. To some people, it’s working toward a goal. To others, it’s enjoying every minute of every day. So what does it really mean to live life to the fullest? Maybe striving to win a Nobel Prize and going skydiving are just two sides of the same coin. To me, it’s not about achievement or self-gratification. It’s about knowing that you’ve pushed yourself, body and mind, to the limits of your own potential.
You have once written that for you the meaning of life is to be happy, but isn’t happiness pushing yourself to the limit for you too?
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I really don’t want to be compared to this sad, destroyed person in any way or manner. I was never this pathetic or beaten down.
“You have once written that for you the meaning of life is to be happy, but isn’t happiness pushing yourself to the limit for you too?”
– No, unlike this victim of horrifying and ongoing abuse, I’m not a masochist.
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Poor kid. “Early on, I decided to be an easy child to raise” aka “Early on, I realized that Mommy will always matter more than me”. “If I actually tried my best at something, you’d never throw it back in my face.” and then “To me, [living life to the fullest is] not about achievement or self-gratification. It’s about knowing that you’ve pushed yourself, body and mind, to the limits of your own potential. ” . Also, the one thing she brings in as proof it was ok to do stuff Mommy didn’t preapprove is putting on eyeliner in 9th grade, which surprised Mommy. Raising an untraumatised kid means they shouldn’t even remember the parents’ reaction to the first time they put on goddamn makeup.
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The worst part is how desperately Mom is trying to make money from this abuse. It’s like this product she is peddling everywhere she goes.
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// “To me, [living life to the fullest is] not about achievement or self-gratification. It’s about knowing that you’ve pushed yourself, body and mind, to the limits of your own potential. ” .
Is this problematic, if we disregard the conext for a moment? Why?
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Self-gratification is way better than “pushing yourself” especially “to the limits.”
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” It’s like this product she is peddling everywhere she goes.”
So of course the easy to raise kid shows up in her defense.
“Is this problematic, if we disregard the conext for a moment? Why?”
Pushing yourself to the limit is busywork for the sake of busyworking. Note how she says “this is not about achievement or self-gratification”. What other healthy reasons of doing stuff are there except achieving the desired results or enjoying yourself?
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“Pushing yourself to the limit is busywork for the sake of busyworking. Note how she says “this is not about achievement or self-gratification”. What other healthy reasons of doing stuff are there except achieving the desired results or enjoying yourself?”
– Exactly.
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// Note how she says “this is not about achievement or self-gratification”. What other healthy reasons of doing stuff are there except achieving the desired results or enjoying yourself?
I thought that the pushing itself is for 1 of those 2 things you mentioned, but that she would be able to accept failure and not torture herself mentally, as long as she did her best to succeed.
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No, her Momma will do all the torturing.
Look, this poor individual is parroting whatever she has been told to parrot. She has no thought of her own. It makes zero sense to discuss this seriously.
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“not torture herself mentally”
And this is why Clarissa was calling it masochism. Self-torture that can only be avoided by performing certain strict behaviours is masochism.
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// And this is why Clarissa was calling it masochism. Self-torture that can only be avoided by performing certain strict behaviours is masochism.
I think feeling guilty and ashamed of yourself, if you fail at something important through lack of effort and self-discipline is a normal, healthy reaction. Of course, if it becomes an obsession for years, instead of moving on and achieving something new, it stops being healthy.
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The time and energy you spend being guilty and ashamed of yourself is time and energy you’re not using for anything productive or enjoyable. If one fails at something one considers important, wasting further resources on stuff that neither offers one another chance nor mitigates the effects of failure is completely nonsensical *unless* this is the main mechanism one has to motivate oneself to do important stuff, which is highly unhealthy and exactly what you’d expect of kids with parents who spend that much energy (visibly violently or not) on guiding their kids on the One True Path to success.
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// *unless* this is the main mechanism one has to motivate oneself to do important stuff, which is highly unhealthy
What if you don’t want to do something important, but understand it has to be done and ended with?
In general, how can people with “imagine your future life as a Failure” mechanism change it to something better? Clarissa, may be you can write about that too? “A Step by Step Guide to Healthy Motivation”.
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Clarissa can probably write about this better than I can (this particular issue is one of the ones I’m getting therapy for) so I’ll just ask: important for whom?
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// Russian-speaking immigrants who aren’t saved from being passive, sullen, under-achieving, and on the perennial hunt for handouts even by being, for the most part, Jewish.
FSU immigrants have been very successful in Israel. (I am speaking about the huge immigration wave of the 90ies.)
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“FSU immigrants have been very successful in Israel.”
– All I have seen and read proves the exact opposite.
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Seen in Israel? Of course, not everybody succeeded, but many did and are currently working as doctors, teachers 🙂 , programmers, etc.
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“Seen in Israel?”
– We have a crowd of friends, relatives and acquaintances who emigrated. At least, some of them have preserved their sanity. Some, on the other hand, started saying things like, “A good Arab is a dead Arab.” Of course, I’m sure they must have been somewhat touched in the head even before emigrating.
This isn’t about Israel, of course. The things our friends who emigrated to NYC are saying are even worse.
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// Russian-speaking immigrants who aren’t saved from being passive, sullen, under-achieving, and on the perennial hunt for handouts even by being, for the most part, Jewish.//
Do you refer to a particular age group and time of immigration or any immigrant who speaks Russian?
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We are all like that with very very rare exceptions.
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Australians tend to have a very high level of animal nature and are very masochistic. They tend toward what Steven Pinker talks about in terms of the parable of the scorpion and the frog. They hire a frog to get them across the river, but then they sting it because that is in their nature. There’s no getting beyond this, no higher mind, nothing to reason with. It’s a cultural instinct. The love stinging frogs so much, they don’t care what happens to themselves.
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//We are all like that with very very rare exceptions.//
So, following this logic, a 10-year old who immigrated in 1975 is like 60-year old who immigrated in 1995. Really??!
//for the most part, Jewish.//
Meaningful Jewish immigration ended in mid-90s. Older generation is dying. Vast majority of immigrants in last 10-15 years are not Jews.
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“So, following this logic, a 10-year old who immigrated in 1975 is like 60-year old who immigrated in 1995. Really??!”
– Are you aware of the concept of cultural differences? This is not a blog for 2-year-olds,
“Meaningful Jewish immigration ended in mid-90s. Older generation is dying. Vast majority of immigrants in last 10-15 years are not Jews.”
– I immigrated to Canada 15 years ago. At that time and until today, it was enormously more difficult for somebody with a Slavic last name like mine to emigrate than for somebody with a Jewish last name like my father. The whole process took me 2,5 years and him less than 2 months. Are you aware that there are specific programs adopted by Canadian immigration authorities that facilitate the immigration of Jews to the degree where dozens of people I know are faking Jewish ancestry just to enter the country?
Are you aware of any of this? Or do you opine before informing yourself?
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“Group success in America often tends to dissipate after two generations. . . ”
Oh, so that must mean that the group commonly labeled “WASP” in the US peaked in success centuries ago. Oh wait…
“Nigerians make up less than 1 percent of the black population in the United States, yet in 2013 nearly one-quarter of the black students at Harvard Business School were of Nigerian ancestry”.
“Were of Nigerian ancestry” is kind of ambiguous — I bet if you did DNA testing, most African Americans would be “of Nigerian ancestry”, just Nigerian ancestry from way back. Sure you can argue that that’s even before Nigeria became a nation-state but then again, if you’re claiming “of (insert nation-state) ancestry”, then you always run into this problem.
I think they probably mean something like “descend from voluntary immigrants from Nigeria” (1960s and later when the country came into existence as independent and had significant voluntary migration to the US or the west in any large numbers).
Yeah, of (insert ancestry) can be pretty ambiguous and a bit underspecified. Mexicans can be of “Spanish ancestry”. Pakistanis can be of “Indian ancestry” prior to 1947. People who are now French or Polish can be “of German ancestry” as can say “Anglo-Saxons” or Argentines. Native Americans can be “of Siberian” ancestry. Humans all around the world can be “of East African ancestry”. Not to open up a can of worms.
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