Reply to This American Life about desegregation in schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]New poster here

Here is the elephant in the room

Why do many Asian and African immigrants generally break the poverty cycle in one generation while other populations don't

It's not SES because most immigrants arrive at the bottom of the SES stack so they have to attend a "crappy" school with parents working crappy long jobs but somehow the students make it  [/quote]

In all honesty, I hear this question over and over again. I know many Africans from different countries. I was an active member of African Society Union in college. I have never met one African immigrant who was impoverished. They may not have come to this country rich, but they were not impoverished in their home countries. The Africans who make it to the U.S. and Canada are not the poor Africans you think you know. They are not the Africans you see when you go outside your gated resort and walk and drive around the countryside.

Now I will readily admit that I don't know very many Asians, but surely the Asians who are paying thousands of dollars to get here to send their kids to TJ while another parent stays in the home country to work cannot be considered a poor immigrant. Where are these poor immigrants, outside of the Central Americans, that you speak? [/quote]

NP here. When I read PP's comment I automatically thought of the Vietnamese boat people, who came to the U.S. in the hundreds of thousands as refugees at the end of the Vietnam War. Many of them were not the highly educated, highly motivated immigrants you mention, many were working-class or poor in Vietnam (and after years of war and months as refugees before arriving, some were malnourished, sick, and had PTSD). They as a group have done pretty well despite losing everything and arriving in this country only a generation ago, many without speaking any English. If they could make it without becoming criminals and drop-outs, I think AAs can, too.

And now someone will bring up the diaphanous specter of "institutionalized racism" that somehow doesn't affect refugee or other minorities, and only affects AAs.[/quote]

Do you have any statistics?  Growing up in a refugee resettlement area it was always my impression that Hmoung struggled quite a bit.[/quote]

Hmong and Vietnamese aren't the same culture.

So what you're saying is that it must be partially culturally driven, i.e., cultures and subcultures with strong academic and work focus do well as immigrants/citizens and those that don't have that same focus, don't do as well? Because that's an argument that seems to hold water.[/quote]

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