Asian Americans have been found to be some of the most successful individuals in education, with many earning top grades at some of the top schools in the nation before attending highly ranked colleges and pursuing higher degrees. But why is this one demographic so successful in the U.S.? Authors Jennifer Lee, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Irvine, and Min Zhou, a professor of sociology at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the University of California at Los Angeles, sought to determine the factors behind high levels of Asian American achievement.
Using a combination of in-person interviews, quantitative data from survey and historical facts, found that Asian culture -- which is ofen credited for the high rates of success for Asian Americans -- actually had little to do with it. And the authors take advantage of long interviews with individuals coming from white, black, Chinese, Vietnamese and Mexican backgrounds to find out what challenges and benefits each race and culture has to face when it comes to pursuing an education. Via email, Lee and Zhou answered questions about their new book from the Russell Sage Foundation, The Asian American Achievement Paradox,
Q: You found that Asian Americans are more successful in pursuing an education because of factors that do not relate to values in Asian cultures. How do you hope this book will help to dispel that belief?
A: There is a popular misconception that Asian Americans attain high levels of education and achieve success because they hold the “right” cultural traits and values, but this argument is as misguided as attributing poverty among the poor to their “wrong” traits and values. This line of reasoning also fails to acknowledge important structural and institutional factors and, in the case of Asian Americans, fails to acknowledge the pivotal role of U.S. immigration law. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 gave preferences to highly-educated, highly-skilled applicants from Asia, which, in turn, ushered in a new stream of Asian immigrants of diverse skills and socioeconomic backgrounds. Some Asian immigrant groups are hyper-selected, meaning they are doubly positively selected; they are not only more highly educated than their compatriots from their countries of origin who did not immigrate, but also more highly educated than the U.S. average…
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