Asian immigrants succeed in grueling admissions test; other minority voices suggest racism

Stuyvesant High School is a prestigious New York high school that accepts students on the basis of academic excellence. Being rich doesn't guarantee you a seat; only good scores on the difficult admissions test. Sounds good, doesn't it? The system allows for poor and hard-working intelligent students to get a leg up. Consider the following case:

Ting Shi said his first two years in the United States were wretched. He slept in a bunk bed in the same room with his grandparents and a cousin in Chinatown, while his parents lived on East 89th Street, near a laundromat where they endured 12-hour shifts. He saw them only on Sundays.

Even after they found an apartment together, his father often talked about taking the family back to China. So, following the advice of friends and relatives from Fuzhou, where he is from, Ting spent more than two years poring over dog-eared test prep books, attending summer and after-school classes, even going over math formulas on the walk home from school.

Source: The New York Times

But not everyone feels the situation is fair:

This year at Stuyvesant, 72 percent are Asian and less than 4 percent are black or Hispanic.

Melissa Potter, a spokeswoman for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, one of the groups that filed the complaint with the United States Department of Education in September, said that though some of the citys poorest Asian immigrants had found their way into these schools, poor blacks and Hispanics were being left out.

I don't understand these complaints. The Asian students are just as poor as the black students...poorer, actually, in many cases because they don't accept welfare and live as working poor in miserable conditions. And yet students like Ting Shi manage to study and succeed. What better indicator of a fair system could there be?

Instead of complaining endlessly about alleged racism and "being left behind," if black students focused on studying as hard as Ting Shi they would see results. I don't believe blacks are inherently less intelligent so clearly it's a matter of hard work, right?

asian american population in nyc is TINY compared to the complaining population.

so, quality (high grades) over quanity (dominant ethnic groups)

I think it's a show of extreme racism if they hold back certain ethnic groups because they are doing too well. So what if one group is testing higher than an other, if they change rules so people that aren't earning their way get into the schools, they are completely defeating the original purpose of it.

You may as well just hand out "special" diplomas.

What's your degree?

I got a B.A. in:

...being black
...being dumb
...being a poor white kid from a trailer park
...threatening to sue over every little issue that shed's my own responsibility

Originally posted by TheXoor
Instead of complaining endlessly about alleged racism and "being left behind," if black students focused on studying as hard as Ting Shi they would see results.

Perhaps a strong work ethic as exemplified by parents might help as they did with this kid.

How does the government help with this aspect? Truth is you can't magically make parents good role models.

You're absolutely right. It's the big elephant in the room. See the third post in this thread about my experiences with this issue. Of course, the issue really isn't about race; it's about culture. If you raised Black kids in Asian families, they'd do well because they were expected to. If you raised Asian kids in a "culture of impoverishment," then they wouldn't do as well at all.

Bill Cosby addressed this issue in Come on people, on the path from victims to victors where he maintains that the culture must change. He was widely attacked for this, mostly by white liberals, whose whole notion of themselves is wrapped up in white guilt and "accommodation."

But you've brought it up. Expect to be called a racist.

My take on this.

The issue isn't that the test is excessively hard.
The issue is that you have to spend a ton of cash on tutoring for your kids in order to pass.

Now if it's a case where the kids that get tutored the most are the ones consistently gaining admittance.
Then there's a problem.

The equitable solution would be for everyone to get tutored evenly so that the playing field is level. Everyone should have a fair chance of getting in.

i think asian parents, for the most part, value academic excellence.

plus the strict culture of respecting and obeying your elders or patriarch without question also plays a big role.

so when an asian parent says study for 4 hrs, the kid doesn't say screw off i'm playing wii.

he's expected to obey, and not only that, but to do it right and without error. personal failure in asian culture is seen as a failure to the whole.

and this is especially true when asians come from over seas to study in n.america and see high school students still coloring.

its not that they're super smart, is that the n.america academic system is so stupid and simple, that they find it much easier than the rigorous and extreme curriculum in say japan or china.

on the issue of the test, the questions are the same for everybody, so how is not fair.

Originally posted by grey580
My take on this.

The issue isn't that the test is excessively hard.
The issue is that you have to spend a ton of cash on tutoring for your kids in order to pass.

Now if it's a case where the kids that get tutored the most are the ones consistently gaining admittance.
Then there's a problem.

The equitable solution would be for everyone to get tutored evenly so that the playing field is level. Everyone should have a fair chance of getting in.

So poor immigrants who sleep in bunkbeds and work 12-hour days at laundromats can afford this but somehow black students cannot?

If the kid in the article can scrape up the time and money to make it happen, lack of time or money can be no excuse for anyone in America. Period.

Originally posted by randomname
i think asian parents, for the most part, value academic excellence.

plus the strict culture of respecting and obeying your elders or patriarch without question also plays a big role.

so when an asian parent says study for 4 hrs, the kid doesn't say screw off i'm playing wii.

he's expected to obey, and not only that, but to do it right and without error. personal failure in asian culture is seen as a failure to the whole.

and this is especially true when asians come from over seas to study in n.america and see high school students still coloring.

its not that they're super smart, is that the n.america academic system is so stupid and simple, that they find it much easier than the rigorous and extreme curriculum in say japan or china.

on the issue of the test, the questions are the same for everybody, so how is not fair.

edit on 28-10-2012 by randomname because: (no reason given)

welll said.

and if you look at what the non-asian kids/parents are complaining about, is basically they are mad and jealous at asian culture for setting high standards... which is racist.

so to complain about asians doing TOO well on exams is complaining that non-asians are not studying...so the question is, what are non-asians doing while they're NOT studying?

reply to post by FailedProphet

So poor immigrants who sleep in bunkbeds and work 12-hour days at laundromats can afford this but somehow black students cannot?

If the kid in the article can scrape up the time and money to make it happen, lack of time or money can be no excuse for anyone in America. Period.

Unfortunately we don't have a clear picture of what's going on. And unless there is some study done here we never will. We don't know where or how people spend their money. Point is that I can see the validity to the claim about kids with extra tutoring getting in.

Personally I'm all for letting those kids in. If you put in the time and effort then you belong there. And if you have to sacrifice for your kids then so be it. It's worth it in the long run. Especially when your old and you need someone to take care of you.

The picture is clear enough.

It's all obvious.

Why the "politically correctness??"

What does it REALLY solve??

reply to post by WhatAreThey


Okay Asians are smarter and work harder then their minority counterparts! Lol is that better. Another great thread to get the whites/blacks even more worked up.

The answer to people's problems is in their past.What happened to blacks? They were slaves. What happened to natives? They were almost wiped out. These people are now looked down upon as not contributing to society, but the reason these people are like this is because......well you know why.

reply to post by Putyournamehere


Because Asian immigrants have it easy.

Immigrants will always do better. In their own countries they are not the worst off, and they have a go get spirit the ones who stay put do not have. Why compare Chinese immigrants with US Blacks who are no immigrants? Compare them to Nigerians, Haitians etc. Is there such a study?

Asian immigrants succeed in grueling admissions test; other minority voices suggest racism

Oh yes, there is racism. It is called affirmative action, tough, and it works against poor hard-working whites and asians.



Admissions should be based on merit alone.

Asians should go to the top athletic schools and DEMAND to be put on the teams. And when they get denied, they should shout and scream how racist it all is, cause ya know, everyone is 100% equal in every conceivable way!

Here's an interesting link:
www.chineseorjapanese.com -
Why Asians Are Good At Math, Finally, A Legit Theory...

I may be a nobody nowadays, but when I was in high-school I tried to do well. I didn't spend all day doing homework, but I passed my classes and got a high gpa throughout (somewhere around 3.6-3.8). I procrastinated, but who doesn't? I also got teased a lot, so... Honestly, I had an asian friend in high-school and he was really smart. But he was also an exchange student. Either way, I went on to a community college and the good grades continued. (My IQ, btw, is average.)

(on that note, my asian friend back in HS did say that school in the US was easier. but i think he was emphasizing that it was looser and not as tight as asian schooling, not necessarily dumber. although considering that we were going to school in a backwoods community, maybe a small bit...)

What's my point? Not sure. I just think that too many of us are using our gut and not being sensible. To really understand IF or why asians are better at math and science, we need math and science. Maybe that's a telling dilemma, no? The gut is good at a lot of things, but it can still easily be wrong.

I'm not saying the link I give here resolves anything. I just found it on the net and thought I'd share it. If I end up not offering anything sensible then my post is kind of mute, no?

Here's the book that's referenced in the link:
en.wikipedia.org - Outliers (book)...

In Outliers, Gladwell examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success. To support his thesis, he examines the causes of why the majority of Canadian ice hockey players are born in the first few months of the calendar year, how Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates achieved his extreme wealth, how The Beatles became one of the most successful musical acts in human history, how cultural differences play a large part in perceived intelligence and rational decision making, and how two people with exceptional intelligence, Christopher Langan and J. Robert Oppenheimer, end up with such vastly different fortunes. Throughout the publication, Gladwell repeatedly mentions the "10,000-Hour Rule", claiming that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours.

(from the same wiki link about the Outliers book) This passage is from the reception section

.........
Finding it ironic that Outliers provided suggestions on how to resolve cultural biases, the Sunday Times review by Kevin Jackson agreed that the book itself suffered from an unbalanced focus on American subjects, predicting that this would lead to better sales in the United States than in the United Kingdom. Jackson was disappointed in the book's lack of new ideas, noting that it merely expands on the concept that "you have to be born at the right moment; at the right place; to the right family (posh usually helps); and then you have to work really, really hard. That's about it."[18] He was also skeptical towards Gladwell's arguments for the 10,000-Hour Rule by countering that The Beatles' success had more to do with "the youthful spirit of the age, the vogue for guitar bands and a spark of collaborative chemistry".[18] Regarding the book, Paul McCartney, former member of The Beatles, said in an interview on August 6, 2010:
----- "I've read the book. I think there is a lot of truth in it [...] I mean there were an awful lot of bands that were out in Hamburg who put in 10,000 hours and didn't make it, so it's not a cast-iron theory. I think, however, when you look at a group who has been successful... I think you always will find that amount of work in the background. But I don't think it's a rule that if you do that amount of work, you're going to be as successful as the Beatles."
............

Speaking of the "10,000-Hour Rule", ever looked at a list of Kanji symbols? Gah, it's a minefield of scribbles. I'm thinking 10,000 hours ain't enough. Each scribble is made up of radicals too.

Language is an interesting topic. Does our language really impact our math?

If you can't pass the test you don't deserve to get in.

The NAACP is paid to focus on frivolous issues.

reply to post by Maslo


Um, not really the main group of people that benefit from affirmative action are white women. And Asians are minorities, therefore benefit from AA.