In reality, Indian Americans, much like other immigrants, have diverse experiences and backgrounds. Indian Americans are doctors, engineers and lawyers, as well as small business owners, domestic workers, taxi drivers and convenience store employees. Community members hold a range of immigration statuses and include naturalized citizens and H-1B visaholders, guestworkers and students, undocumented workers and green card holders. Some have access to higher education while others struggle to learn English in a new country. As with all communities, Indian Americans do not come in the same shape and form, and cannot be treated as a monolith.
Qual trumps quant! Look at diversity:
Both groups are characterized by income diversity. But that doesn't negate the fact that they differ a great deal in their distributions. Appeals to vague qualitative terms in rhetoric are useful because they obscure these details. On the other hand, what if I was to say that Mexican Americans exhibit a great deal of diversity, so we shouldn't characterize them as an "at risk" group when it comes to outreach for higher education? I suspect then the same individuals who go qualitative when confronted by inconvenient facts will reveal themselves to be very aware of quantitative social statistics! Rigor in the service of me, not thee!
Check out this prose:
Comparing Indian Americans with Mexican Americans, as Richwine does ("In sharp contrast to Indian Americans, most U.S. immigrants, especially Mexican, are much less wealthy and educated than U.S. natives, even after many years in the country) is an example of the sort of constructed division between immigrant communities that creates cultural and ethnic hierarchies. The use of the model minority label results in placing Indian Americans "above" other communities based on certain factors such as educational aptitude or work ethic - which are clearly shared across ethnic and cultural lines. It further isolates Indian Americans and makes it challenging to build solidarity that naturally arises among communities that share common experiences as immigrants and people of color in America.
Shorter: Eyes on the prize, whitey is evil.
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Are those graphs cooked? It's amazing how steep the slopes away from $20,000 and $70,000, respectively are. In the case of Mexican-Americans the slopes make sense -- the graph shows that most of them are getting by, but just barely. (Full time minimum wage is about $16,000, and it would be hard to survive on much less than that -- are these family incomes?)
The only reason I can imagine for the sharp $70,00 peak is the H1B visa and other aspects of immigration law. South Asian immigrants are hired mostly to fill the lowest-paid tier in high-paid professions, sort of like scab professionals.
That was conjecture, but I'll go on to guess that almost all of the differences between these two demographics are artifacts of American immigration law and of the historical realities of immigration. And in turn, a lot of the supposed comparisons of these two ethnic groups mask what are really discussions of the structure of the American labor force.
john, yeah, those aren't mexicans and indian americans. it's a toy example to show that just because there is diversity doesn't mean you can't say something about the distributions.
There's an irony to columns like Deepa Iyer's quoted above. At the same time he complains about "sort of constructed division between immigrant communities that creates cultural and ethnic hierarchies" he has no problem assuming that "solidarity that naturally arises among communities that share common experiences as immigrants and people of color in America." There seems to be a slight inconsistency here. Constructed divisions apparently aren't ok unless they are the one's that appeal to Iyer.
while agreeing iyer's commentary could be misleading, it's hard to dismiss that naming any particular group a model minority could be divisive. they get setup as a foil for minority groups w/ lesser attainment, and it might breed resentment.
it'd be difficult to quantify whether the model minority image contributed meaningfully to the 92 LA riots involving black and koreans, but i'm going to go out on a limb and say it probably didn't help.
it'd be difficult to quantify whether the model minority image contributed meaningfully to the 92 LA riots involving black and koreans, but i'm going to go out on a limb and say it probably didn't help.
the dynamic between middlemen minorities and the majority who they deal with on a day to day basis is pretty general and i don't think that academic debates really matter. koreans and blacks have "tensions" (this is a euphemism) for basic economic and cultural reasons.