“What Drives Success?”, Part II

The authors of the article found a curious formula that explains high levels of success among some immigrants:

It turns out that for all their diversity, the strikingly successful groups in America today share three traits that, together, propel success. The first is a superiority complex — a deep-seated belief in their exceptionality. The second appears to be the opposite — insecurity, a feeling that you or what you’ve done is not good enough. The third is impulse control.

I’m not sure if this formula works, but it’s good to see somebody try to come up with an answer. I have 2 characteristics out of 3. So does N although they are not the same as mine. I have zero impulse control and his belief in his exceptionality is limited to him thinking that he is exceptionally unexceptional.

It is true, as the article claims, that the feeling of nothing ever being enough (to compensate for being damaged, rendered invaluable by immigration) is part of many immigrants’ experience:

Numerous studies, including in-depth field work conducted by the Harvard sociologist Vivian S. Louie, reveal Chinese immigrant parents frequently imposing exorbitant academic expectations on their children (“Why only a 99?”), making them feel that “family honor” depends on their success.

“Why only a 99?” is something I heard a lot from my father but, and this is curious, only after immigration. Before, he’d always insisted that grades were a useless waste of time.

Where the article fails is in its definition of self-esteem. Its authors (and this is where Chua’s severe psychological issues obviously made an impact) don’t understand that high self-esteem is promoted precisely by “Why only a 99?” and not by what they confuse for self-esteem:

By contrast, white American parents have been found to be more focused on building children’s social skills and self-esteem. There’s an ocean of difference between “You’re amazing. Mommy and Daddy never want you to worry about a thing” and “If you don’t do well at school, you’ll let down the family and end up a bum on the streets.”

On no planet does “You’re amazing. Mommy and Daddy never want you to worry about a thing” lead to high self-esteem. Leaving this terminological blunder aside, the following paragraph is very valuable and true:

Moreover, being an outsider in a society — and America’s most successful groups are all outsiders in one way or another — is a source of insecurity in itself. Immigrants worry about whether they can survive in a strange land, often communicating a sense of life’s precariousness to their children. Hence the common credo: They can take away your home or business, but never your education, so study harder. . . In combination with a superiority complex, the feeling of being underestimated or scorned can be a powerful motivator.

The article should have ended on this strong statement. Unfortunately, it rambles on for quite a while, stringing together dozens upon dozens of PC platitudes that are obviously supposed to compensate for one of the greatest sins an immigrant might commit. That sin is confessing that she or he values being an immigrant and is not interested in becoming 100% Americanized.

The authors of the article get so terrified of their own daring that they start groveling and wildly flattering their non-immigrant readers. This is an illustration of one more trait needed to succeed as an immigrant which these writers didn’t mention.