by Amy Chua
competing north/south snobberies: See Fisher, The Indians of New York City, pp. 29–34; Rayaprol, Negotiating Identities, p. 75; Chetan Bhagat, 2 States: The Story of My Marriage (New Delhi: Rupa & Co, 2009), pp. 13–4, 51; Steve Sailer, “Why Are South Indians So Smart?,” Mar. 23, 2002, http://isteve.blogspot.com/2002/03/why-are-south-indians-so-smart.html. On the colonial origins of the north/south divide, see Dirks, Castes of Mind, pp. 140–3.
Indian Institutes of Technology: See Anita Raghavan, The Billionaire’s Apprentice: The Rise of the Indian-American Elite and the Fall of the Galleon Hedge Fund (New York and Boston: Business Plus, 2013), pp. 40–1; Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Picador, 2007), p. 127; Matthew Schneeberger, “Why IIT grads abroad are returning to India,” Rediff India Abroad, May 15, 2008, http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/may/15iit.htm (reporting that 35 percent of IIT graduates emigrated to America between 1965 and 2002, and 16 percent thereafter).
anti-Brahman movements: Bairy, Being Brahmin, p. 124; see also Rothermund, India, p. 164 (noting that long before the twentieth century “Buddhism and Jainism were social and religious movements founded on the quest for individual salavation” that “challenged [the] order based on caste and endogamy”).
British colonial rule: See, e.g., Chua, Day of Empire, pp. 224–28; Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (London: Allen Lane, 2003), pp. 146–54, 210–15, 325–8.
“suffer a degradation not fit for human beings”: Dutta and Robinson, Rabindranath Tagore, p. 216.
“I always felt so embarrassed by my name”: Benjamin Anastas, “Inspiring Adaptation,” Men’s Vogue, March/April 2007, p. 113; see Julia Leyda, “An Interview with Jhumpa Lahiri,” Contemporary Women’s Writing 5, no. 1 (2011), p. 66.
The popular claim . . . “worshipping cows”: Purkayastha, Negotiating Ethnicity, p. 39.
“smelling like curry”: Rosalind S. Chou and Joe R. Feagin, The Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism (Boulder and London: Paradigm Publishers, 2008), p. 70.
Sikh men: Sidhu and Gohil, Civil Rights in Wartime, pp. xiii–xv, 48, 64–8.
“You fucking Arab rag-head”: Prashad, Uncle Swami, pp. 4–5.
Indian cabdrivers: Sidhu and Gohil, Civil Rights in Wartime, p. 65; Palash Ghosh, “South Asian Taxi Drivers: Victims and Perpetrators of Racism,” International Business Times, June 22, 2012, http://www.ibtimes.com/south-asian-taxi-drivers-victims-perpetrators-racism-705690.
although perhaps “Caucasian,” was not “white”: United States v. Thind, 261 U.S. 204, 210, 214–6 (1923).
Many Indian Americans attest: Prashad, Uncle Swami, pp. 3–7; Purkayastha, Negotiating Ethnicity, pp. 27–31, 38–41.
“whiten” their lobbies . . . “Even foreign is not a bad thing”: Dhingra, Life Behind the Lobby, pp. 126–9.
Rajat Gupta came to the United States: Raghavan, The Billionaire’s Apprentice, pp. 40–2, 46.
“oldest bloodlines” . . . “natural superiority”: Ibid., p. 11.
passed over by every firm: Ibid., pp. 78, 82–4.
McKinsey’s chief executive: Ibid., p. 123.
“‘model minorities’” . . . “‘real’ minorities”: Purkayastha, Negotiating Ethnicity, p. 93; see also Maira, Desis in the House, p. 72 (“[t]he anti-Black prejudices of South Asian immigrants are reinforced by the Black/White lines of American racial formations”); Vijay Prashad, The Karma of Brown Folk (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), pp. 157, 178–9 (arguing that many Indian immigrants accept anti-black racism as part of a need to enhance their own foothold in their new country), pp. 97–8 (noting “obsession with skin color” prevalent in India); see also Mahalingam, Philip, and Balan, “Cultural Psychology and Marginality,” pp. 160–62.
“better, smarter, more high-achieving”: Purkayastha, Negotiating Ethnicity, p. 93.
Young South Asians who date African Americans: Maira, Desis in the House, pp. 71–2.
may be more insulated from American racism: See Prashad, Uncle Swami, p. 13.
“whiten” their complexion: See, e.g., Purkayastha, Negotiating Ethnicity, pp. 33–4.
“naked brown male bodies”: E-mail to Amy Chua, Dec. 4, 2012 (on file with authors).
reconfigured through their confrontation with American society: Karen Leonard, “South Asian Religions in the United States: New Contexts and Configurations,” in Rajan and Sharma, New Cosmopolitanisms, pp. 91, 94–6.
caste distinctions have become much less significant: John Y. Fenton, Transplanting Religious Traditions: Asian Indians in America (New York: Praeger, 1988), p. 34; Fisher, The Indians of New York City, pp. 52–3; Rhitu Chatterjee, “Beyond Class Part V—Indians in America—Caste Adrift,” The World, Public Radio International, May 23, 2012, http://pri.org/stories/2012-05-23/beyond-class-part-v-indians-america-caste-adrift?utm_source=rss&utm_ medium=rss&utm_campaign=india-caste-us; Joseph Berger, “Family Ties and the Entanglements of Caste,” New York Times, Oct. 24, 2004. Even in India, the importance of caste varies greatly in different contexts and in different regions. It is very common for Indians in the United States (as in India) to interact and socialize across caste lines. For this reason, it would be both politically incorrect and inconsistent with common practice for an Indian American to openly express a belief that he or she is superior because of his or her caste background.
generally viewed as discriminatory: See, e.g., Chatterjee, “Beyond Class” (describing caste as “discriminatory and outdated”).
across caste and regional divides: Rayaprol, Negotiating Identities, p. 76; Purkayastha, Negotiating Ethnicity, p. 97; Prashad, Uncle Swami, pp. 13–4; Fisher, The Indians of New York City, pp. 74–5.
“‘superior culture’ narrative”: Purkayastha, Negotiating Ethnicity, pp. 89–90.
lowest out-marriage rate: Only 14 percent of Indian American newlyweds in 2008–10 married outside their ethnic group, compared to 64 percent Japanese Americans, 54 percent Filipinos, 39 percent Koreans, and 35 percent Chinese. See Pew Research Center, The Rise of Asian Americans, p. 106.
almost 70 percent of Indians: Ibid., p. 128.
emphasizing their Hinduism: Leonard, “South Asian Religions,” p. 98; Purkayastha, Negotiating Ethnicity, pp. 96–9. Professor Purkayastha says that this Hindu emphasis is part of “a new ideology of superiority” among (Hindu) Indian Americans. Ibid., p. 97.
10 percent of Indian Americans who are Muslim: Percentages are from Pew Research Center, Asian Americans: A Mosaic of Faiths (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2012), p. 16. On Muslim Indian Americans, see also Aminah Mohammed-Arif, Salaam America: South Asian Muslims in New York, trans. Sarah Patey (London: Anthem Press, 2002), p. 33 (estimating that in 1990, there were approximately 80,000 Muslim Indian Americans out of a total Indian American population of 815,447). The Pew report found that 51 percent of Indian Americans identify themselves as Hindu and that 59 percent say they were raised Hindu. But see “So, How Many Hindus Are There in the US?,” Hinduism Today (Jan., Feb., Mar., 2008), http://www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/2008/1-3/61_swadhyay%20pariwar.shtml (suggesting that 80 percent of Indian Americans are Hindu).
Hindu temple building . . . transformation: Purkayastha, Negotiating Ethnicity, p. 97.
also serve as social centers: Ibid., pp. 97–98.
feedback loop . . . “superior family/ethnic culture”: Ibid., pp. 89, 91–7; see also Gupta, “Hidden in Plain Sight” (noting that Indian American culture is often self-depicted as the “‘best of both worlds’: American independence, determination and self-reliance coupled with Indian morals, religious beliefs and family values”).
not the only Asians who experience racism: A 2012 Pew survey found that 21 percent of Chinese Americans, 20 percent of Korean Americans, 19 percent of Filipino Americans, 18 percent of Indian Americans, 14 percent of Vietnamese Americans, and
9 percent of Japanese Americans “have personally experienced discrimination.” Pew Research Center, The Rise of Asian Americans, p. 114.
“Sometimes I’ll glimpse”: Wesley Yang, “Paper Tigers,” New York Magazine, May 8, 2011.
“racially gendered stereotypes”: Nancy Wang Yuen, “Performing Race, Negotiating Identity: Asian American Professional Actors in Hollywood,” in Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou, eds., Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity and Ethnicity (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 251, 266.
“You’re a quarterback”: Yang, “Paper Tigers” (quoting Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu). On the male Asian American reaction to Jeremy Lin, see, e.g., Deanna Fei, “The Real Lesson of Linsanity,” Huffington Post, Feb. 16, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deanna-fei/jeremy-lin-asian-americans_b_1281916.html; Adrian Pei, “Jeremy Lin & Asian American Male Sexuality,” Next Gener.Asian Church, Feb. 9, 2012, http://nextgenerasianchurch.com/2012/02/09/jeremy-lin-asian-american-male-sexuality.
Bullying of East Asian kids: See Jin Li, Cultural Foundations of Learning: East and West (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 214–16; Desiree Baolian Qin, Niobe Way, and Meenal Rana, “The ‘Model Minority’ and Their Discontent: Examining Peer Discrimination and Harassment of Chinese American Immigrant Youth,” in Hirokazu Yoshikawa and Niobe Way, eds., Beyond the Family: Contexts of Immigrant Children’s Development, no. 121 (2008), pp. 27, 29–36.
Yul Kwon’s: Alexis Chiu and Cynthia Wang, “Master Strategist Yul Kwon Wins Survivor,” People, Dec. 18, 2006; “Yul Kwon, from Bullying Target to Reality TV Star,” NPR, May 15, 2012, http://www.npr.org/2012/05/16/152775069/yul-kwon-from-bullying-target-to-reality-tv-star.
“chink” or “gook” . . . “However improbable it might be”: “Opinion: Red Chair Interview: Why Yul Kwon Ditched Law for TV,” CNN in America, Nov. 16, 2011, http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/16/red-chair-interview-yul-kwon.
“Fear of being persecuted and even murdered”: Dennis Prager, “Explaining Jews, Part III: A Very Insecure People,” Townhall Magazine, Feb. 21, 2006, http://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2006/02/21/explaining_jews,_part_iii_a_very_insecure_people/page/full.
“You were born into anxiety”: Daniel Smith, “Do the Jews Own Anxiety?,” New York Times, Opinionator, May 26, 2012.
A history of persecution: Ancient Egypt enslaved its Jews (if the Bible is to be believed) and killed their newborn sons; Hadrian drove the Jews out of Jerusalem; England expelled its Jews in 1290; France did so in 1306, 1322, and 1394; Germany’s Jews were massacred in 1298, 1336–38, and 1348; Spain expelled them in 1492; Pope Pius V expelled them from the Papal States in 1569; over 50,000 Jews were killed in Poland between 1648 and 1654. And all this was before the rise of modern anti-Semitism. Chua, Day of Empire, pp. 38, 130, 134, 138; J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (London: Edward Arnold, 1963), p. 98.
Franz Kafka: Daniel L. Medin, Three Sons: Franz Kafka and the Fiction of J. M. Coetzee, Philip Roth, and W. G. Sebald (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2010), p. 22. In a similar vein, Walter Isaacson writes that “[l]iving as a Jew under the Nazis” left Henry Kissinger with an insecurity that fueled his ambition: “Confidence coexisting with insecurities, vanity with vulnerability, arrogance with a craving for approval: the complexities that were layered into Kissinger’s personality as a young man would persist throughout his life.” Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 56.
“That’s a mother’s prayer”: Joyce Antler, You Never Call! You Never Write! A History of the Jewish Mother (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 1, 135 (citing An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, original cast recording, Polygram Records, 1960).
“A Jewish girl becomes president”: Paul Mazursky, in Abigail Pogrebin, ed., Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish (New York: Broadway Books, 2005), pp. 79–80, cited in Antler, You Never Call!, p. 5.
“construct developed by male writers”: Martha A. Ravits, “The Jewish Mother: Comedy and Controversy in American Popular Culture,” in Harold Bloom, ed., Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004), p. 163; Antler, You Never Write!, p. 145. For those who haven’t read Portnoy’s Complaint, Sophie Portnoy is the mother of the protagonist, Alexander Portnoy, and “the definitive article: she cleans up after the maid, worries endlessly about what goes into Alex and what comes out of him, and exists to protect him from gentiles and manhood.” Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Jew,” New York Times, Feb. 18, 1969.
“often the only thing [they] could clearly communicate”: Robert Warshow, “Poet of the Jewish Middle Class,” Commentary, May 1946, p. 20, quoted in Alexander Bloom, Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals & Their World (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 19.
“self-perception of failure”: Bloom, Prodigal Sons, p. 18.
“forever disappointed in my father”: Isaac Rosenfeld, Passage from Home (New York: Dial Press, 1946), p. 7.
“[W]hat was it with these Jewish parents”: Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), p. 119.
“worked for many years as a banquet bartender”: Marco Rubio, An American Son: A Memoir (New York: Sentinel, 2012), p. 100; transcript of speech by Marco Rubio delivered at Republican National Convention, Aug. 30, 2012, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/80493.html.
“Perceiving the sacrifices made by their parents”: Rubén G. Rumbaut, “Children of Immigrants and Their Achievement: The Role of Family, Acculturation, Social Class, Gender, Ethnicity, and School Contexts,” p. 1, http://www.hks.harvard.edu/inequality/Seminar/Papers/Rumbaut2.pdf.
almost a third: Ruth K. Chao, “Chinese and European American Mothers’ Beliefs About the Role of Parenting in Children’s School Success,” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 27, no. 4 (July 1996), pp. 403, 412.
“familial obligation and prestige”: Vivian S. Louie, Compelled to Excel: Immigration, Education, and Opportunity Among Chinese Americans (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), p. 48. See also Peter H. Huang, “Tiger Cub Strikes Back: Memoirs of an Ex-Child Prodigy About Legal Education and Parenting,” British Journal of American Legal Studies 1 (2012), pp. 297, 300–1. Quantitative psychological studies have confirmed that a sense of family obligation is more prevalent in Hispanic and Asian American families than in white American families and have found evidence that, in Asian American adolescents, a strong sense of family obligation acts as a buffer against the negative impact of low socioeconomic status on academic performance. See Lisa Kiang and Andrew J. Fuligni, “Ethnic Identity and Family Processes Among Adolescents from Latin American, Asian, and European Backgrounds,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 38, no. 2 (February 2009), pp. 228–41; Lisa Kiang et al., “Socioeconomic Stress and Academic Adjustment Among Asian American Adolescents: The Protective Role of Family Obligation,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 42, no. 6 (June 2013), pp. 837–47.
a child’s best—perhaps only—protection: See, e.g., Louie, Compelled to Excel, pp. 54, 57, 60–1; Beloo Mehra, “Multiple and Shifting Identities: Asian Indian Families in the United States,” in Clara C. Park, A. Lin Goodwin, and Stacey J. Lee, eds., Asian American Identities, Families, and Schooling (Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing, 2003), pp. 27, 45–6; Jamie Lew, “The Re(construction) of Second-Generation Ethnic Networks: Structuring Academic Success of Korean American High School Students,” in Park et al., Asian American Identities, pp. 157, 166–7.
“Harvard #1!”: See, e.g., Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose (New York and Boston: Business Plus, 2010), p. 8 (“Harvard yielded the most prestigious bragging rights”); Louie, Compelled to Excel, pp. 42, 107; Lew, “The Re(construction) of Second-Generation Ethnic Networks,” p. 166; Tracy Jan, “Chinese Aim for the Ivy League,” New York Times, Jan. 4, 2009.
“Why just an A�
�: See, e.g., Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou, “Frames of Achievement and Opportunity Horizons,” in David Card and Steven Raphael eds., Immigration, Poverty, and Socioeconomic Inequality (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2013), pp. 206, 216 (“Asian respondents described the value of grades on an Asian scale as ‘A is for average, and B is an Asian fail’ . . . the stakes have risen so that an A minus is now an Asian fail”); Louie, Compelled to Excel, p. 46 (“Why not 100?”), p. 109 (“she always expected 100s”).
“Koreans . . . they take it to another level”: Rebecca Y. Kim, God’s New Whiz Kids? Korean American Evangelicals on Campus (New York and London: New York University Press, 2006), p. 79.
pointed comparisons: See, e.g., Lee and Zhou, “Frames of Achievement and Opportunity Horizons,” p. 216; Louie, Compelled to Excel, pp. 97–8; see also Li, Cultural Foundations of Learning, p. 207; Jin Li, Susan D. Holloway, Janine Bempechat, and Elaine Loh, “Building and Using a Social Network: Nurture for Low-Income Chinese American Adolescents’ Learning,” in Yoshikawa and Way, Beyond the Family, pp. 9, 18.
“my parents thought I was a bad girl”: Purkayastha, Negotiating Ethnicity, p. 92.
“average” but not “great” . . . “better if I was first or second”: Lee and Zhou, “Frames of Achievement and opportunity Horizons,” pp. 216, 217.
lowest self-esteem of any racial group: Douglas S. Massey et al., The Source of the River: The Social Origins of Freshmen at America’s Selective Colleges and Universities (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 120–1; Carl L. Bankston III and Min Zhou, “Being Well vs. Doing Well: Self-Esteem and School Performance Among Immigrant and Nonimmigrant Racial and Ethnic Groups,” International Migration Review 36, no. 2 (2002), pp. 389–415.