I believe that Jay was referring to Natasha Warikoo’s recent book Race at the Top which focused on competition between white and Asian students in an East Coast town that the author nicknamed Woodcrest.
Glenn, I know that you frequently bring up The Asian American Achievement Paradox, a book which I haven’t gotten around to reading. I believe that any discussion of Asian American achievement should acknowledge the impact that elite immigration has had on Asian American academic performance over the past decades. Although I’m sure Asian Americans possess cultural attributes conducive to success and would be overrepresented among high achievers even if the Asian American population were representative, I do believe that selective immigration has played a non-trivial role in explaining the shift in the demographics of the right tail of math ability in this country.
Prior to the early 1990s, Jewish Americans were well-represented among competitors at the International Mathematics Olympiad, but since then East Asian Americans have come to dominate. Most recently this month, the 6-person Chinese American USA team finished 2nd to the 6-person Chinese team at the IMO held in Japan. The simple fact is that we’ve pushed for elite immigration from places like China, South Korea and India over the past 20-30 years and the children of those immigrants have distorted the achievement gap in ways that have resulted in palpable racial tensions.
The entire conversation regarding California’s newly adopted math framework is fascinating because although the discussion portrays Black and Hispanic students on the one hand versus higher performing white and Asian students on the other, the actual data that the initiative was based on is more nuanced in terms of the story that it tells. The data motivating the new framework showed that between 2004-2014, roughly 32% of Asian students were in gifted math education, compared to around 8% of white, 4% of Black and 3% of Hispanic students. Clearly the Asian/non-Asian gap is far more significant than the gap between white students on the one hand and Black and Hispanic students on the other.
New York City is an outlier in that Asian Americans supposedly have the highest poverty rate of any ethnic group in the city. But the story in many other places around the country is one of highly educated Asian immigrants coming over to America in the past 20-30 years and settling in certain areas where their children end up dominating the elite high schools. I do believe that Asian Americans possess cultural attributes worthy of emulation and which surely in part explain their disproportionate success. But I question whether or not it’s realistic to expect non-Asian students to match the average achievement of children whose parents disproportionately hold advanced degrees.
As far as geopolitical competition with China, I’m far less sanguine than Jay that it’ll all die down. In fact, as the October 2022 semiconductor export restrictions by the Biden administration show, the US political class has clearly decided that China is a threat to American primacy in a way that transcends mere economic concerns. Jay’s right to point out that the business class in this country is pushing back against the various export controls being levied against China, arguing for instance that they deprive American companies of needed revenue. Unfortunately our politicians have decided that vaguely articulated national security interests trump any such economic concerns to the point that we’re willing to hurt American companies if it means being able to stick it to China.
The era of globalization may truly be dead. The only silver lining I can draw from all of this is that competition with China might be what finally cures America of its liberal universalist pretensions, a philosophy which people like John Mersheimer argue has resulted in disastrous American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.
On the topic of affirmative action, I'm glad to hear that Jay has come around and realized how unproductive race based affirmative action has been. As I argued on Bari Weiss’ site The Free Press, I actually think the entire discussion around affirmative action somewhat misses the point given how few students actually attend elite schools.
I believe that Jay was referring to Natasha Warikoo’s recent book Race at the Top which focused on competition between white and Asian students in an East Coast town that the author nicknamed Woodcrest.
Glenn, I know that you frequently bring up The Asian American Achievement Paradox, a book which I haven’t gotten around to reading. I believe that any discussion of Asian American achievement should acknowledge the impact that elite immigration has had on Asian American academic performance over the past decades. Although I’m sure Asian Americans possess cultural attributes conducive to success and would be overrepresented among high achievers even if the Asian American population were representative, I do believe that selective immigration has played a non-trivial role in explaining the shift in the demographics of the right tail of math ability in this country.
Prior to the early 1990s, Jewish Americans were well-represented among competitors at the International Mathematics Olympiad, but since then East Asian Americans have come to dominate. Most recently this month, the 6-person Chinese American USA team finished 2nd to the 6-person Chinese team at the IMO held in Japan. The simple fact is that we’ve pushed for elite immigration from places like China, South Korea and India over the past 20-30 years and the children of those immigrants have distorted the achievement gap in ways that have resulted in palpable racial tensions.
The entire conversation regarding California’s newly adopted math framework is fascinating because although the discussion portrays Black and Hispanic students on the one hand versus higher performing white and Asian students on the other, the actual data that the initiative was based on is more nuanced in terms of the story that it tells. The data motivating the new framework showed that between 2004-2014, roughly 32% of Asian students were in gifted math education, compared to around 8% of white, 4% of Black and 3% of Hispanic students. Clearly the Asian/non-Asian gap is far more significant than the gap between white students on the one hand and Black and Hispanic students on the other.
New York City is an outlier in that Asian Americans supposedly have the highest poverty rate of any ethnic group in the city. But the story in many other places around the country is one of highly educated Asian immigrants coming over to America in the past 20-30 years and settling in certain areas where their children end up dominating the elite high schools. I do believe that Asian Americans possess cultural attributes worthy of emulation and which surely in part explain their disproportionate success. But I question whether or not it’s realistic to expect non-Asian students to match the average achievement of children whose parents disproportionately hold advanced degrees.
As far as geopolitical competition with China, I’m far less sanguine than Jay that it’ll all die down. In fact, as the October 2022 semiconductor export restrictions by the Biden administration show, the US political class has clearly decided that China is a threat to American primacy in a way that transcends mere economic concerns. Jay’s right to point out that the business class in this country is pushing back against the various export controls being levied against China, arguing for instance that they deprive American companies of needed revenue. Unfortunately our politicians have decided that vaguely articulated national security interests trump any such economic concerns to the point that we’re willing to hurt American companies if it means being able to stick it to China.
The era of globalization may truly be dead. The only silver lining I can draw from all of this is that competition with China might be what finally cures America of its liberal universalist pretensions, a philosophy which people like John Mersheimer argue has resulted in disastrous American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.
On the topic of affirmative action, I'm glad to hear that Jay has come around and realized how unproductive race based affirmative action has been. As I argued on Bari Weiss’ site The Free Press, I actually think the entire discussion around affirmative action somewhat misses the point given how few students actually attend elite schools.