Why do Asian Americans outperform their piers? Discrimination I tell you!
This article points out that Asian Americans are awesome academics. Why? One answer you could give is discrimination. But that would be a silly answer since nobody finds it plausible that white employers, teachers, and mortgage lenders would be discriminating against other whites in favor of Asians. That answer can properly be dismissed.
You can’t be dismissive of the possibility that white achievement in contrast to blacks and Latinos is because of discrimination. That could be a part of why there are differences in outcomes, or it could be the whole thing.
Here’s where sociologists and social science generally stop being objective researchers, and start being liberals. You could never ever write the same article about why white’s outperform blacks and Latinos. The article cites conscientiousness as the main driver for Asian academic success. The idea that the same reason could be the driver for other race differences is simply dismissed without discussion. If we’re going to say that Asians outperform Whites because they work harder, don’t we have to at least consider the possibility that that’s why whites outperform blacks and Latinos, instead of assuming that in a non-racist world race outcomes would all be the same?
By the way, conscientiousness is heritable… Oh no, that might mean (dun dun dun!) natural differences.
Conservatives and libertarians would be doing the same thing if either of them owned social science. And they would all do good work up until their work brushed up against the sacred laws of their ideologies. The least left-wing social science is economics, and liberals still outnumber their counter-parts 3-1 in economics.
The article and researchers revert back to liberal suppositions by the end.
the team says Asian-American students reported lower self-esteem, more conflict with their parents, and less time spent with friends compared with their white peers.
We have a negative Asian American outcome. The obvious explanation is people who work harder at achieving academic success have to make tradeoffs with having a social life (friends), or need to attain a higher standard in order to feel fulfilled (self-esteem). But,
The team suspects the high academic expectations or their "outsider" status in American society could be to blame.
Of course.
The article came from Skeptical Libertarian.
