asian americans
... Asia) have high poverty rates. Wu also mentions that the high Asian American levels of educational attainment is not proof that Asian Americans have been accepted into the American mainstream. Asian Americans continue to face discrimination to the extent that they are usually paid less than similarly qualified whites. Higher educational attainment merely serves to mitigate the effects of discrimination that Asian Americans continue to face. The secret of Asian American success lies in Asian-American self-sufficiency. This claim, advanced by Bell, places emphasis, among other things, on the structure of Asian American families and the values that these families teach their children. Asian American families are strong and encourage children to do well in school and do better than their parents. Families are also seen as a key to economic success in another way. Many Asian Americans have small businesses that make use of the labor of the entire family. One of the reasons that Asian Americans have higher average family incomes even despite discrimination is because they work longer hours. Moreover, Bell argues, Asian Americans are self-sufficient as a community because their community organizations allow them to help each other and pool their resources together. In this way, they are able to create opportunities for themselves without relying as much on the government. As Wu points out, and as Bell himself recognizes, however, Asian Americans are often successful not because of a culture that emphasizes self-sufficiency and hard work but because they usually come from middle class backgrounds that have allowed them to get educational qualifications (for example, college degrees) that are not as within other minority groups. Moreover, Wu points out that even some of the successful Asian American businessmen have benefited from affirmative action government programs. Apart from its inaccuracy, the model minority myth, Wu argues, has to be criticized for two other reasons: First, it reinforces racial hierarchy. This is a point that, as we have seen, Steinberg makes with respect to the cultural explanations of Jewish success. The success of Asian Americans is used to justify the inequalities of American society. Asian Americans are presented as a ‘proof’ that the American Dream is alive and that American society offers equality of opportunity to all its citizens. The implicit message of the model minority myth, therefore, is that those minority groups, like African and Hispanic Americans, that have not been as successful have only themselves to blame. This...