My latently racist ex-flatmate used to claim that Black Lives Matter and basically the whole claim of racial discrimination in the US against black people is a made-up whine. He argues that Asian-Americans were even more discriminated against in the first half of the 20th century than African-Americans and yet managed to work their way to the top, so to speak, because of their hard-working nature, which he claims African-Americans lack.
I know it's an unbelievably over-simplifying and generalizing misinterpretation, but I've never been able to present facts that would convince him. Does anyone know of any reliable hard numbers and facts that I could use next time I engage in such a debate?
There are a number of factors to keep in mind when doing these kinds of comparisons. I'll draw on recent census information to illustrate some of these points- I'll leave it to the moderators to decide whether this is consistent with the sub's policies or not.
-Two, the great majority of Asian-Americans arrived in the US after the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which overturned an earlier law that strongly favored immigrants from Northern Europe, making it more possible for Asian, African and Latin American immigrants to enter the country. Meanwhile most African-Americans are descended from enslaved ancestors brought over before the end of the international slave trade in 1807. That is to say, the African-American experience has been shaped by slavery, segregation, the Civil Rights struggle and various other challenges while the great majority of Asian-American families have only ever known a post-Civil Rights Act America.
-Three, while there has been sporadic anti-Asian violence and persecution in the United States, including anti-Chinese riots on the West Coast in the late 19th century, the Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882, and Japanese internment during the Second World War, the subjugation of African-Americans was a constant theme of American politics and society since the introduction of slavery in the 17th century. The Tuskegee Institute reported that over 3,000 black people were lynched between 1882 and 1959- and lynchings were just one form of mob violence that were brought against African-Americans. White mobs would also destroy the homes and property of entire black communities; in 1921 a particularly serious race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma burned down 35 blocks of buildings, destroying what was then America's wealthiest black neighborhood and leaving nearly 10,000 homeless.
Madeleine Hsu argues in The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril became the Model Minority that it was the very process of creating our current immigration system that created Asians as the model minority.
Chinese immigration was illegal for long periods and extremely difficult at others. Ultimately, the only Chinese allowed to immigrate were those with connections to missionaries or who otherwise had high levels of education. Prior to the founding of the People's Republic of China, immigration from China to the US came in the form of student visas. This continued even after the Communists took over.
Since recent immigrants from China tended to be educated, they had high levels of measurable "success" in the US. Proponents of Chinese immigration pointed to this as proof of the success of Chinese immigrants at assimilation.
Therefore, when the 1965 Immigration Act past, it relied, in part, on the idea of accepting immigrants based on their desirability for the US economy and workforce. This was exactly how Chinese had been immigrating all along since other routes were barred to them. Whereas immigration had previously been more open (based i n national quotas), at least nominally, to people of all socioeconomic status, the Hart-Keller Act made it primarily for the educated.
TL;DR Chinese immigrants post-1882 were highly educated because these were the only Chinese allowed to immigrate. This, over time, gave them the reputation of being the "Model Minority."