I once read that the most successful ethnic groups in America are:
-The japanese-Americans
-the Jewish-Americans
-the greek-Americans
Is there a comman denominator in all of these groups" successes? All of them seem to have had a very strong work ethic…and they all seem to have a deep respect for family ties. The jewish-American’s success is also quite amazing: most of thesempeople (who came from Poland and Russia) were originally among the poorest and least-educated immigrant groups! The late Steven Jay Gould related the case of turn-o-the century "intelligence tests"inistered to Russian jewish immigrants) which “proved” that a substantial number of them were feeble minded! yet, in 2-3 generations, these people have advanced to become leaders in academia, business, and the professions.
The japanese-American are also interesting: in 1900, most of them were poorly paid farm hands and day laborers-now they rank as the most successful ethnic group 9this is not just in the USA-Brazil has a substantial japanese ethnic group, who are also very successful).
What are the things that these people did right? Can these same things be taught to other, less susccessful ethnic groups?
Folks from China and the Indian subcontinent do pretty well, from what I’ve observed. Actually, all the Koreans I know are brilliant too. Makes my Québécois heritage seem pretty underachieving by comparison. Seems to me a strong work ethic and an emphasis on education are common traits among folks from these cultures. That’s a pretty simplistic answer, but trying to get a more comprehensive and satisfying one puts you into the ugly realm of racial politics, and you’re unlikely to get an objective viewpoint from anybody. Brace yourself.
I know this board is not the place to say this — but IQ score is suppose to be the single best (indicator) predictor of both academic and economic success.
The secret seems to be strong family and community bonds. Building equity in neighborhood businesses. Not having a sense of entitlement.
Greeks, Italians, Jews and so on came over with nothing and were willing to sleep ten in a room until they could save enough to buy their own businesses. They put their neices and sons and cousins to work in their dry cleaners and diners where they are supported by their neighbors. In a strange way, even their organized crime contributed to building their communities.
Community bonds? I don’t think so. My maternal grandfather was a plumber, and moved around quite a bit. My paternal grandfather died when my father was 11, and they moved around New York quite a bit also. The Asian parents in my town are often engineers, who don’t have much of a community, and who haven’t built a business.
I think it was more a matter of choices. Even when my father wasn’t making a lot he was saving for college. (And he never got to go - they were too poor.) When he got the big promotion, the thing that mattered most was that it let me go wherever I could get in. All my friends (mostly Jewish also) had parents who felt the same way. I contrast that to people where I live now. The non-Asian parents feel that the University of California schools are too expensive, and they can save money by sending their kids to a 2 year school and transferring later. I got into trouble dissing the two year schools - they’re fine for those who couldn’t make it in a four year school, or who really didn’t have the money, but a lot of these people have no problem buying new cars while pleading poverty. It’s all a matter of choices, and what’s important in a family. If you grow up with parents who look up to the sports stars and look down on the eggheads, I’m sure you get the message.
Cite?
An article in the Sunday Times by Charles Murray on the “earning power of IQ” – (there’s also mention of IQ result and formal education). It’s importanmt to note that this information comes from a study of siblings raised together.
http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/murray-iq-place
Linked below and quoted here are relevant portions of a paper from the American Psychological Association – Quoted below is the relevant portions on formal education (academic performance and years of formal education) and income -
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/iku.html
Linked below is an April 2004 paper from two professors, one does his work in economics and the other, psychology. The paper discusses economic correlations with averaged national IQs with a conclusion that national IQs correlate with per capita GDP. Note that after thousands of regressions related to national economic growth, the conclusion is that national IQ is the most important factor.
As you can see, the file is .pdf so you’ll need a reader to open.
http://www.siue.edu/~garjone/JonesSchneApr.pdf
Last — from an article from Scientific American showing general life outcomes, job complexity and prestige, and IQ -
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfred.html
Why is success so hard to understand? The formula is relatively simple: Work hard, save your money. Have a little ambition, and act on it. Take pride in your work, do a good job. Become someone that people want to hire because you offer great value.
We had a real estate agent who went way above and beyond the call to help us find a house. Never complained when we wanted to see yet another house, after having looked at dozens. Cut us a deal on commission because we let him sell our house, even though we didn’t ask for it. Sold our house in a timely fashion. Coordinated alll the lawyers, bankers, etc and minimized our hassle.
When a friend needed a realtor, we recommended him. He did the same thing for our friend. Our friend recommended him to his friends. Multiply this by all the other clients he has, and he’s a very busy guy. Very successful. Wealthy.
I have a friend who’s a real estate agent. Or was. He did the minimum required. Took people to see houses. Tried to help them for a couple of days, but if they were too ‘demanding’ or he felt like they were wasting his time, he’d find a way to dump them. Never did real homework for them. Basically, he just treated his job like a 9-5 job. Showed up at work, waited for the phone to ring, did the least he could.
He started out with a few contacts given to him by the agency. Got some business cards and a few free ads in the paper. Even sold one or two houses. But he just never built up a clientele, never got referrals, and eventually the work dried up and he quit.
His analysis of his failure? He was unlucky. The successful realtors? They’ve got ‘connections’. They’re part of the ‘network’ - the one he couldn’t break in to. Poor him. Life just wasn’t fair. Guys like him just couldn’t get ahead. Yada yada.
Sorry, hit enter too soon. To tie this back into the OP:
The communities in mentioned share some traits in common, in my experience - the most important being a cultural bias towards a hard work ethic. In the case of the Japanese and Jewish communities, they also have a cultural bias towards being frugal and saving. They also tend to help their own people within the community.
Another cultural group that seems quite successful in our society - Indians. I have a lot of Indian friends, and they’re all very successful. They’re also much more ‘driven’ to succeed than most of my other friends. They’re conscious of class and their place in society, and driven to always climb the ladder. They’re never happy to just sit back and do what they’re doing - always trying to do better. Very entrepreneurial. In my small circle, I’ve noticed that they are very generous with family members in loaning money to them for businesses or investing in their ventures. So there is some group support there, which I’m sure helps. If one of my Indian friends had a good business idea, there always seemed to be some uncle or cousin or friend who could be called on to provide some seed capital.
I know (from experience) that to even get considered for a visitor’s visa from India, you need a good steady job or be partway through a degree at a respected university, a hefty bank account, a tight-knit family preferably both in the US and India, be married or engaged, and preferably have evidence of previous foreign travel. I’d imagine it’s just as hard to immigrate. Although a lot of things I saw in India seem to also be traits I see in Indian-Americans (in India, every man is an entrepreneur. And nobody will turn down business even if it’s something they know nothing about. Thus tobacco stores are travel agents, even the cheapest hotels serves food and subcontracts out laundry and taxi drivers will arrange real estate deals). But a lot of things characteristic of business in India- especially how connections and social standing can be more important than merit- would be frowned upon here.
Anyway, it seems obvious to me that a parental emphasis on education is the key. Jews have always valued knowledge, and various Asian-American groups quickly went to work making sure their kids got the best grades and education possible. But how do we get parents of less successful groups to emphasize education, especially if the people involved have crappy schools? There is no magic way to understand why an education is important if you were raised to think it was a waste of time. It’s not a matter of stupidness or laziness, it’s a matter of a cycle of un and mis-education that just keeps turning. Anyone with bright ideas on how to stop this are welcome to try.
My personal answer is that we ought to start recruiting teachers from the ghetto and offering them a free education in exchange for spending a couple years (hopefully more) teaching. This gives people access to higher education, puts educated people in poor neighborhoods and provides role models and reinforces the role of education in bettering yourself. It’s not a perfect idea, but it’s a start.
I think even sven has a point about Indians in the US. We get the upper crust of that country’s population immigrating here, so it’s not clear that there is a cultural advantage to be found there. Japanese-Americans are an interesting group in that there has been very little immigration from Japan in decades. Most of the Japanese-Americans you’ll meet are 3rd generation or more. If they have in fact maintained a high socio-economic status, that shows it is possible (though still difficult, I would suspect) to illude the bad side effects of assimilation.
Not sure how her idea of getting teachers in the ghetto addresses what she herself said was the root of the problem-- lack of parental involvement. If the parents don’t care much about how their kids do in school, locally grown teachers probably won’t make any difference.
Education is a big help, but it’s not a necessary condition for success. My grandparents died fairly wealthy, and my grandfather had a grade 9 education. How did they do it? By being frugal and hard-working. Always lived below their means. Never carried debt. No matter how little money they were making, they always figured out a way to save a little of it - even if it was only $20 per month.
They worked hard and lived in a shack until they were in their 30’s, then they used their savings to make a down payment on a small, decrepit store. Worked their asses off in the store, improving the property, cleaning, painting, repairing, giving good service, until they built up a steady clientele. Once the value of the store had been doubled, they sold it, and bought a small farm. They got it cheap because it was a ‘fixer-upper’. The house, for example, had no running water or heat (aside from a cast-iron stove in the center of the small house), and was 100 years old. They lived in that house for five years (so did I) while my grandfather built their new house with his own hands. Eventually, they built that farm up to the point where they sold it for half a million dollars and retired.
At no point did either of them make much more than minimum wage while in the work force. My grandfather often had a second job - I remember when he was about 50, and they were planning on buying their farm. They were uncomfortable with the size of the mortgage, so my grandfather took a second job pumping gas for minimum wage, even though he was a store owner, just so they could save more money for their down payment. He did that for two years, saving every nickel of his second salary, and they managed to almost buy that farm for cash.
And they raised five children.
Are you serious? I don’t deny that many people have worked hard for what they have, but to try to pretend like people who aren’t rich and successful don’t want to be is laughable. If it were that easy, many more people would be successful. MOst of the peopel that I know that work the hardest and do the most important jobs get paid the least. Police officers, firemen, teachers, and soldiers come to mind.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you reasoning, but the groups you mentioned are also voluntary immigrants. Much of their sucess is due to the fact that they left the lazy folks back in their native countries. Compare Indian-Americans to Indian people in India. There are many discrepancies in terms of economic and academic success. It’s not that any ethnic groups are inheirantly smarter or harder working.
Also it is important to discuss why some groups have underperformed. Many of the Hispanic immigrants currently residing in our country are illegals who came over here with little education and few marketable skills. That throws of many of the numbers regarding how “sucessful” they (as a whole) have been.
African-Americans have a unique history in this country. Few other groups have been systematically subjugated and discriminated against in such a long and abusive way. In addition, that fact that the predominate belief in our society was, and is, that AAs are intellectual inferior has closed many doors. Not to mention an entire generation of racists who are still living, breeding, and in some cases, making laws and policies.
Also, AAs are often judged based on the behavior of individual black people. Whether its Jason Blair, OJ Simpson, or [insert rapper’s name], it makes it harder for individual AAs to succeed when it is assumed that you are a stupid thug. I understand that not every person thinks that, but most people can recognize that AAs are at the bottom of an informal American caste system.
I don’t begrudge anyone their success, but I think it is faulty to think that it is due to an appreciable difference in IQ or innate ability.
Damn, I hit enter again too soon…
Anyway, my point about the grandparents is that they were part of another demographic group that did very well - people who lived through the Great Depression. I think it made a huge impact on them - knowing that the rug could be pulled out at any time made them compulsive workers and savers. They weren’t about to trust that they could always work their way out of big debts or that the economy would always be providing jobs. So their attitude was to be conservative with their money, always always have a nest-egg to fall back on, and to make hay while the sun was shining.
In contrast, I think a lot of people today have grown up in an era where they know deep down that somehow, somewhere, they’ll always get bailed out. Too much debt? Hell, you can always claim bankruptcy and start over. There are government programs to help you out if you get in a real bind. There’s welfare, unemployment insurance, workman’s comp if you get injured, etc. Lots of protections.
Now, many of these programs may be good things on balance, but the fact is that if you mitigate the effects of failure, you’ll get more risk-taking behaviour. In my grandparent’s memory, if you really screwed up your finances, you could literally wind up out on the street. If the economy went south and you didn’t have the savings to see your way through the bad times, you could find yourself living behind a soup kitchen with your children spread around with your friends and relatives until you got on your feet again.
I think the same attitude prevails with many immigrants. Grow up in a poor country, and you grow up without the belief that in the end the state will protect you (and that it’s always someone else’s fault if you don’t succeed).
I really think that the main defining characteristic of these successful immigrant groups is work ethic. They simply bust their asses to get ahead. It’s not rocket science.
They already do this in many places. I had a roommate who was part of one of them. I will look up the name when I get a chance. Her program, gave her loans for school which did not have to be paid back if she taught in an inner-city or failing school for 3 or 4 years. But, it often does not work for a number of reasons.
First, there is a reason nobody wants to teach at these schools. She taught 3rd grade in her first year. The kids in her class were incredible disrespectful; one even told her she was a going to die of AIDS because she was a whore. Although that is extreme, I don’t know many people who want to put up with that for extended periods of time. Also, she was constantly forced to raise scores for random testing without the teachng them the basic skills they needed (and without many supplies).
Second, many teachers don’t want to be teachers, social workers and parents to their students. It is overwhelming. Some of these kids didn’t have winter coats or food to eat (aside from the school breakfast and lunch). It is taxing on a person to have to worry about all of these things in addition to your own problems. NOT to mention belligerent parents who want to know why you aren’t doing your job.
Third, if the school in is the city, it is most likely gonna be expensive to live there. She taught in NYC, where her salary didn’t go very far.
Many people in my family are in education, and I know that much of their fulfillment comes from seeing their students go on to do great things. When you teach in an environment with 30% dropout rates and low college attendence, it makes many teachers feel like Sisyphus.
That’s only partially accurate. Most of the Indians who come here do happen to be very well-educated. They may or may not come from rich families over in India. I’m part of this class of “upper-crust” Indian immigrants and both my parents grew up in mud huts and didn’t see electricity till they were in their teens. Their primary mode of transportation was to catch a fishing boat downriver. Nevertheless, they both went on to university and came over here (well, Canada first, then here) They weren’t American poor-they were third world poor. My parents continue to spend as though they are on the brink of poverty, frankly, which is probably why they are well-off.
There are some current programs- many of my friends’ parents were involved in them. Most ended up in pretty bad situations because they had too strict of requirments, didn’t garentee a full-time teaching job and were generally half-assed. I’ve also see people in programs like Teach for America completely founder because they didn’t know what they were getting in to and the kids couldn’t respect that.
What I’d like to see is something more like the military. Where I grew up, countless kids joined the military on vague promises of tuition money and mostly because they didn’t know what else to do. I’d like to think we can do something more with these promising young people and use their drive to improve their communities. In my school, the teachers that failed were the ones that lived a few suburbs over and sent their kids to different, better schools. Kids can see that sort of thing. But adding more educated people to neighborhoods (and I think people will naturally gravitate towards places where they are from- I don’t think we need to force them to teach in underprivledged places…just teach) helps and making teachers someone kids can look up to as a role model they can actually emulate helps.
Anyway, I think Sam Stone is dead wrong. There used to be a time when hard work was all it took. Back then there were solid factory jobs, homes were smaller and more affordable, things like health care were cheaper and retirement was taken care of by the company, companies recruited internally and the workers had more buying power and more oppertunities. Now, instead of a decent factory job, you get retail jobs at minimum wage. Managment isn’t internally recruited. There are actually seminars on how to reduce training to zero. Full time work is hard to find on the lowest rungs. New college graduates leave with several years’ salaries worth of debt (a new thing since the mid-sixties) and almost every job wants a college degree.
The groups that are suceeding are not the groups that send their kids to work at Taco Bell after school. They are the ones who make their kids sit down and learn the times tables the first day multiplication is assigned. Where I grew up it was largely Vietnamese kids, and you bet these kids’ wern’t going out to play until they put in several hours of homework if they needed or (most likely) not. That is why so many Asian immigrants are doing better than so many Mexican immigrants that came here to put in long hour doing backbreaking work. Education breeds success nowday. Work doesn’t neccesarily.
Did you miss the part where I said that my grandparents worked for minimum wage their entire working lives?
There is a book called “The Wealthy Barber”. It’s a financial management book, and it makes the point that if you start young enough, even very modest savings can wind up making you wealthy. The example in the book was $5 per day, as I recall.
If you save $5 per day for 40 years, at a return of 10% per annum, you will retire with a million dollars in the bank. If you save $2 per day for 40 years, you will have about $400,000 in the bank.
Sam Stone, that’s an excellent book. My father made me read it when I was a teenager. Sadly I think it’s constrained my ability to be a irresponsible. Everytime I want to throw away a couple grand on a trip I keep thinking “Roth IRA, Roth IRA!!!”
I just want to amend my statements to add that in terms of Indian immigrants-mostly it’s the upper-castes that tend to immigrate here. Their economic situations back in India may vary but you can tie their advantaged position to that fact-no matter how poor they may have been at home. The permanent undercaste in India is much worse off.
I think you are missing the point **Sam **was making. He’s not talking about getting on the union job escalator to middle class success. He’s talking mainly about people who start their own businesses-- either as their first or second jobs. These people often work the asses off. Yes, the days you described above are largely gone. But that doesn’t mean other avenues to economic success aren’t plentiful.
anu: You make a good point. I should have said “educational upper crust” rather than just “upper crust”. And the dose of poverty your parents had growing up gave them a leg up on their spendthrift North American neighbors.