Conservatives using the "Asian-Americans are successful" argument

[PlanetaryOrbit]

I've noticed that some conservatives in recent years have been trying to use the success of Asian-Americans as an argument in favor of conservatism. Usually the argument goes something like this:

"Asian-Americans are a racial minority, yet they are successful, more so than African-Americans or Hispanics. Therefore, 1) Asian-Americans work hard and therefore succeed, and 2) African-Americans and Hispanics don't work hard and therefore don't succeed, therefore it's about diligence vs. laziness, not about race or circumstances, blah blah blah blah blah."

Without diminishing the success that Asian-Americans have had, or the discrimination that they've faced, how exactly does one go about debunking this sort of logic?

[MisterP]

1. Wikipedia notes that SE Asians do worse on degree attainment than US-born Blacks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_minority#Model_minority_stereotype

[FarCenter]

13. The same Wikipedia article also notes that Africans in the US are a model minority

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_minority#Invisible_Model_Minority:_Africans

African immigrants and Americans born to African immigrants have been described as an "Invisible Model Minority" mainly due to their high degree success in the United States, but due to misconceptions and stereotypes of them their success is not a widely known fact or have been greatly acknowledged by the greater American society and other Western societies and thus are invisible.

Had Obama's father stayed in the US, he would have been a member of this minority.

The West Indian community also attains an economic status above the average for various white ethnic groups.

[Blue_Tires]

2. Don't even play that simple-minded game...

Sociology is complex, and proper debunking takes a fair amount of multi-layered research...By the time you've dug up all the scholarly journals, studies and statistics, the other guy has moved on to something else...

It's not worth all that effort to win a argument on the innernette

[JI7]

3. Obama got over 70 percent of the Asian American Vote

[Cali_Democrat]

11. Boom

there it is.

[PlanetaryOrbit]

12. That doesn't answer the thread question at all.

The thread isn't about who voted for whom.

[JI7]

14. you said they use Asian aMericans to argue for conservatism, but ASians are not voting Conservative

[Wounded Bear]

18. They're not doing it to get the Asian American vote...

They're doing it to justify their own racist tendencies and feel better about themselves when they block gov't help for minorities.

[davidpdx]

20. They are doing to to try to eliminate affirmative action

Without even reading the article I can smell that shit a mile away. They've successfully eliminated part of the VRA and they've been trying on affirmative action as well.

If the Republicans thought they could get away with it they'd try to make the argument that a African American president is proof enough for the elimination of affirmative action. It wouldn't surprise me a bit.

[Bunnahabhain]

4. What are you "debunking?"

I mean, it's factual that the majority of different Asian American populations experience "success" at higher rates than the general population. It is factual they are a minority, in fact one of the smallest minorities, in the US. The action is in thinking about why this might be, why it might be factual that African Americans and Hispanics experience success at lower rates than the general population, and what steps can be taken to change this situation. You do not argue against the facts but rather steer the conversation to why these facts exist.

[Skittles]

9. that's gonna fly right over that one's head

yes INDEED

[Throd]

10. My experience in Little Saigon (Westminster, CA) was that they put a high priority on education.

The first generation came from Vietnam to a strange land with practically nothing, yet many of their kids went to UC Irvine.

[Monster_Mash]

19. Education and strong familial pressure to succeed...

... even to what many would consider an extreme.

[Liberal_in_LA]

15. they never discuss - why asians are more sucessful than whites, academically

No references to culture or not working hard enough when referring to whites. That,s the racism in these type of discussions

[Bunnahabhain]

21. That's not the only racism going on in those discussions

and it rather misses the point I was raising...which I'm used to.

[Heather MC]

5. Rethugs have always had trouble making connections to things. EX they don't realize

their views on Immigration effects all immigrants not just hispanics.

Their views on women's healthcare rights effects more than just white women that they want to keep continuously pregnant so the pure white race doesn't become the minority.

And their are quite a few gay Asians who desire to be married.

Their statement about Asians as hardworking is actually very racist and not a compliment because they see Asians as one thing. Retail Small business owners.

I am sure it never Occurrs them why they work so hard, is because they have families they are fighting to care for just like all other Americans.

Oh and they don’t really consider the True Amerikanns either.

I hate to stereo type A Republican. but it is ok some of my best friends are repugs lol

[KamaAina]

6. Many Asian immigrants arrive here with considerable wealth

they're often middle-class in their own countries, which have higher savings rates than the U.S. (not difficult). They come here not to make better lives for themselves but for their children, who (they believe) will benefit from upward mobility here.

[Shankapotomus]

7. As no culture is the same,

American culture (or, historically, Western European culture) exploits (exploited) different cultures in different ways. As as a result of those varying degrees of exploitation, racist assessments have been drawn and reinforced. Asian culture was never given as negative an assessment in the collective conscious by the ruling White culture as African American culture. And so the ruling white assessment doesn't have the same impact on Asians as it does on African Americans. That's not to say Asians do not suffer from racism. The assessment is different, however, and therefore the impact will be in different areas. Maybe for Asians it won't be in the job market but will arise under different circumstances, such as during war time.

But white culture is not the God-given assessor of other cultures. The problem is not that cultures are different. The problem is that it is typically white culture that keeps doing the assessing of other cultures under their rules, under their paradigms. That is part of the racism.

[The Straight Story]

8. Well then, here is a simple and easy retort to those idiots

How can we blame Obama for the unemployment rate if Asians are so successful, maybe them good ole boys are just dumb and lazy eh?

[uponit7771]

16. Most Asian Americans aren't 2 generations removed from Jim Crow and are subjected to James

...Crow now that's the easy one.

Also not all cultures are subjected to racism at the same levels...by the SBA Asian wealth in America is looked at as the same level as whites in America

http://smallbusiness.foxbusiness.com/finance-accounting/2013/04/30/study-women-minorities-get-fewer-business-loans/

“Level of startup capital is a strong predictor of business success,” the SBA wrote, referencing two earlier studies on the topic.
According to the SBA, Asians were looked at separately from African American and Hispanic business owners in the study, because their levels of wealth are similar to white business owners.
An earlier study mentioned found assets are the single most important factor in determining business creation, and explain why African Americans and Hispanics create businesses less often than whites in the U.S.

[dkf]

17. No Asian Americans were subject to things like the Chinese exclusion act and Japanese internment.

The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed by the 1943 Magnuson Act, during a time when China had become an ally of the U.S. against Japan in World War II. The Magnuson Act permitted Chinese nationals already residing in the country to become naturalized citizens and stop hiding from the threat of deportation. It also allowed a national quota of 105 Chinese immigrants per year. Large scale Chinese immigration did not occur until the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Despite the fact that the exclusion act was repealed in 1943, the law in California prohibiting Chinese people from marrying whites was not repealed until 1948.[19][20] Other states had such laws until 1967,[21] when the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Loving v. Virginia that anti-miscegenation laws are unconstitutional.

Even today, although all its constituent sections have long been repealed, Chapter 7 of Title 8 of the United States Code is headed "Exclusion of Chinese."[22] It is the only chapter of the 15 chapters in Title 8 (Aliens and Nationality) that is completely focused on a specific nationality or ethnic group.

On June 18, 2012, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution introduced by Congresswoman Judy Chu, that formally expresses the regret of the House of Representatives for the Chinese Exclusion Act, which imposed almost total restrictions on Chinese immigration and naturalization and denied Chinese-Americans basic freedoms because of their ethnicity.[23] The resolution had been approved by the U.S. Senate in October 2011.[24]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act

Japanese American internment was the World War II internment in "War Relocation Camps" of about 120,000 people of Japanese heritage who lived on the Pacific coast of the United States. The U.S. government ordered the internment in 1942, shortly after Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.[2][3] The internment of Japanese Americans was applied unequally as a geographic matter: all who lived on the West Coast were interned, while in Hawaii, where 150,000-plus Japanese Americans comprised over one-third of the population, only 1,200[4] to 1,800 were interned. Sixty-two percent of the internees were American citizens.[5][6]

President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment with Executive Order 9066, issued February 19, 1942, which allowed local military commanders to designate "military areas" as "exclusion zones," from which "any or all persons may be excluded." This power was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire Pacific coast, including all of California and much of Oregon, Washington and Arizona, except for those in internment camps.[7] In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the exclusion orders.[8] The Court limited its decision to the validity of the exclusion orders, adding, "The provisions of other orders requiring persons of Japanese ancestry to report to assembly centers and providing for the detention of such persons in assembly and relocation centers were separate, and their validity is not in issue in this proceeding."[9] The United States Census Bureau assisted the internment efforts by providing confidential neighborhood information on Japanese Americans. The Bureau's role was denied for decades, but was finally proven in 2007.[10][11]

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter conducted an investigation to determine whether putting Japanese Americans into internment camps was justified well enough by the government. He appointed the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) to investigate the camps. The commission's report, named “Personal Justice Denied,” found little evidence of Japanese disloyalty at the time and recommended the government pay reparations to the survivors. They formed a payment of $20,000 to each individual internment camp survivor.

In 1988, Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed legislation that apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation said that government actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership".[12] The U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6 billion in reparations to Japanese Americans who had been interned and their heirs.[13]

Of 127,000 Japanese Americans living in the continental United States at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, 112,000 resided on the West Coast.[14] About 80,000 were nisei (literal translation: "second generation"; Japanese people born in the United States and holding American citizenship) and sansei (literal translation: "third generation"; the sons or daughters of nisei). The rest were issei (literal translation: "first generation"; immigrants born in Japan who were ineligible for U.S. citizenship).[15]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment

[uponit7771]

22. Those were regional and not generational either... not nationwide Jim Crow and allowing for

... over discrimination like the fed did for hundreds of years

[JustAnotherGen]

28. +1

But I've never seen dfk show just without guile or question empathy for black Americans . . . so let it go.

[kalisto2010]

23. They're still discrminated against, they're more educated than the average White American

However they paid less than a White person with less education. They're still discriminated against, it's just their grievances aren't a national story, which they should be.

[KamaAina]

24. That certainly explains why Hawai'i has the most robust economy

and the highest test scores and stuff.

[treestar]

25. They are ignoring past history of slavery and Jim Crow

Asian immigrants would have to have the money to travel to the US, too, and are likely therefore to be the more successful at home to begin with.

I had one conservative claim that Haitians who migrate to the US do better than American Blacks, as a way of trying to argue that it's our system that fails African Americans. Not sure where he got those statistics now.

[gopiscrap]

26. Those who are in places where education is valued

and those who don't have to worry about where they will receive food, shelter, medical attention etc are much more likely to succeed regardless of race. As a nation we don't value education.

[gopiscrap]

27. BTW welcome to DU