为什么亚裔在美国如此成功

为什么亚裔在美国如此成功

THIS is an awkward question, but here goes: Whyare Asian-Americans so successful in America?

为什么亚裔在美国如此成功？这个问题有点尴尬。

It‟s no secret that Asian-Americans are disproportiona tely 不成比例的stars in American schools, and even

in American society as a whole. Census data 统计数据show that Americans of Asian heritage earn more than other groups, including whites. Asian-Americans also have higher educational attainment

than any other group.

在美国的学校里，亚裔表现优异的比例格外地高，就连在整个美国社会中也是如此。人口普查数据显示，亚裔的收入高于包括白人在内的其他群体。而且亚裔的教育程度也比其他任何群体都高。

I wrote a series of columns 专栏last year,

“When Whites Just Don‟t Get It,” about racial inequity, and one of the most common responses from angry w hites was along these lines: This stuff

about white privilege is nonsense, and if blacks lag, th e reason lies in the black community 社区

itself. Just look at Asian-Americans. Those Koreans an d Chinese make it in America because

they work hard. All people can succeed here if they ju st stop whining 抱怨（whine）and start working.

我去年写了一个关于种族不平等现象的系列专栏，题为“白人就是不明白”，一些白人读者愤怒地予以驳斥，其中最常见的回复大意是：白人拥有特权的说法真是一派胡言，如果黑人落后了，原因在于黑人社区本身。只要看看亚裔就知道了。韩裔和华裔在美国获得了成功，因为他们在努力。黑人只要停止抱怨，开始努力，所有人都可以在这里获得成功。

Let‟s confront the argument head-on直接

的. Does the success of Asian-Americans suggest that the age of discrimination 歧视is behind us?

让我们直面这个论点吧。亚裔的成功是否昭示着歧视的年代已经成为过去？

A new scholarly book,

“The Asian American Achievement Paradox悖

论,” by Jennifer Lee and MinZhou, notes that Asian-A merican immigrants in recent decades have started wi th one

advantage: They are highly educated, more so even t han the average American. These

immigrants are disproportionately doctors, research sc ientists and other highly educated professionals.

在新出版的学术著作《亚裔美国人成就的悖论》

(The Asian American Achievement Paradox)中，作者珍妮弗·李(Jennifer Lee)和周敏注意到，美国亚裔移民近几十年来开始获得一项优势：他们的教育水平很高，甚至比美国人的平均学历还高。这些移民成为医生、科研人员，或从事其他高学历专业岗位的比例格外地高。

It‟s not surprising that the children of Asian-American doctors would flourish 繁荣，表现出色的in the United States. But Lee and Zhou note that kids of working-cl ass Asian-Americans often also thrive,showing remark able upward mobility.

亚裔医生的子女在美国表现出色，这倒并不令人惊讶。但两位作者注意到，工薪阶级亚裔的孩子往往也表现出色，展现出了非同一般的向上流动性。

And let‟s just get one notion观

点out of the way: The difference does not seem to be driven by differences in intelligence.

我们首先要说的一个观点是：这种差异似乎并不是智力差异造成的。

Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology 心理学专家who has written an excellent book about intelligence, cites 引用

a study that followed a pool of Chinese-American child ren and a pool of white

children into adulthood. The two groups started out wi th the same scores on I.Q. tests, but in

the end 55 percent of the Asian-Americans entered hi gh-status occupations, compared with

one-third of the whites. To succeed as a manager, whi tes needed an I.Q. of 100, while Chinese-Americans n eeded an I.Q. of only 93.