The Triple Package (29 page)

West Indian by birth or descent
:
See Alba and Nee,
Remaking the American Mainstream
, p. 198; Violet M. Showers Johnson, “What, Then, Is the African American? African and Afro-Caribbean Identities in Black America,”
Journal of American Ethnic History
28 (2008), p. 101 n. 26.

only Jamaica sent
:
Massey et al., “Black Immigrants,” p. 251.

Colin Powell
:
Colin Powell,
My American Journey
(New York: Ballantine, 2003), pp. 7–8.

Clifford Alexander
:
Catherine Reef,
African Americans in the Military
(New York: Facts on File, 2004), p. 3.

“business, professional, and political elites”
:
Alba and Nee,
Remaking the American Mainstream
, p. 198.

among the nation’s poorest
:
Capps, McCabe, and Fix,
Diverse Streams
, p. 17; Sam Roberts, “Government Offers Look at Nation’s Immigrants,”
New York Times
, Feb. 20, 2009 (“Somalis are the youngest and poorest” immigrants in America). According to one researcher, African immigrants as of the late 1990s were doing worse overall than other black immigrants, F. Nii Amoo-Dodoo, “Assimilation Differences Among Africans in America,”
Social Forces
76, no. 2 (1997), pp. 527, 528, and another says that Haitians and “black immigrants from Africa do not . . . have stronger outcomes than African Americans.” Suzanne Model,
West Indian Immigrants: A Black Success Story?
(New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), p. 2. These authors do not, however, break out African subgroups like Nigerians or Ghanaians.

Nigerian Americans dramatically outperform black Americans
:
U.S. Census, American Community Survey, Table DP03: Selected Economic Characteristics (2010 5-year dataset) (population group codes 004 – Black or African American; 567 – Nigerian).

and also outperform Americans
:
U.S. Census, American Community Survey, Table S0201: Selected Population Profile in the United States (2010 3-year dataset) (population group codes 001 – total population; 567 – Nigerian). About 21 percent of American households as a whole earn over $100,000 a year, with 4.2 percent earning over $200,000. U.S. Census, American Community Survey, Table DP03: Selected Economic Characteristics (2010 5-year dataset).

includes a significant number of new arrivals
:
Over 25 percent of America’s Nigerians entered the country in or after 2000. U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, Table S0201: Selected Population Profile in the United States (2010 3-year dataset) (population group code 567 – Nigerian); Dennis D. Cordell and Manuel Garcia y Griego, “The Integration of Nigerian and Mexican Immigrants in Dallas/Fort Worth Texas,” Working Paper, http://iussp2005.princeton.edu/papers/51068, p. 20 (noting contrast between high incomes of Nigerian immigrants overall and low incomes of recent arrivals, and explaining that “many of the Nigerians who have arrived since 2000 . . . are students living on a restricted budget”).

end up in unskilled jobs
:
Capps, McCabe, and Fix,
Diverse Streams
, pp. 16–9; Patrick L. Mason and Algernon Austin, “The Low Wages of Black Immigrants: Wage Penalties for U.S.-Born and Foreign-Born Black Workers,” EPI Briefing Paper No. 298 (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, Feb. 25, 2011).

“dysfunctional” culture
:
Dinesh D’Souza,
The End of Racism: Principles for a Multicultural Society
(New York: Free Press, 1996), p. 24.

product of racism
:
See Richard Thompson Ford, Book Review, “Why the Poor Stay Poor,”
New York Times
, Mar. 6, 2009 (describing these arguments); see also Mary C. Waters,
Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities
(New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999), pp. 7–8, 13; Ezekiel Umo Ette,
Nigerian Immigrants in the United States: Race, Identity, and Acculturation
(Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2012), pp. 129–30.

“highest-income, best-educated”
:
Pew Research Center,
The Rise of Asian Americans
(Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, Apr. 4, 2013) (updated edition), p. 1.

“Asian American”
:
Ibid., p. 22.

several of the poorest
:
Asian American Center for Advancing Justice,
A Community of Contrasts: Asian Americans in the United States: 2011
(2011), pp. 9–10, 34, 36, 38–40, 45 (citing data from the U.S. Census Bureau, 2007–9 American Community Survey, 3-year estimates).

The six largest U.S. Asian groups
:
Pew Research Center,
The Rise of Asian Americans
,
pp. 2, 7, 57; Asian American Center for Advancing Justice,
A Community of Contrasts
, pp. 9–10.

twenty-three of the fifty top prizewinners
:
Society for Science and the Public, “Science Talent Search Through the Years,” http://student.societyforscience.org/science-talent-search-through-years.

“Super Bowl of science”
:
Chris Higgins, “The Super Bowl of Science,” mental_floss, last updated Mar. 26, 2010, http://mentalfloss.com/article/24306/super-bowl-science.

The résumés of these Intel winners
:
Society for Science and the Public, Intel Science Talent Search 2012 Finalists, http://apps.societyforscience.org/sts/71sts/finalists.asp (bios for Amy Chyao, Jack Li, and Anirudh Prabhu).

“synthesized a nanoparticle”
:
Kenneth Chang, “Nanotechnology Gets Star Turn at Speech,”
New York Times
, Jan. 25, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/science/26light.html.

30–50 percent of the student bodies
:
Grace Wang, “Interlopers in the Realm of High Culture: ‘Music Moms’ and the Performance of Asian and Asian American Identities,”
American Quarterly
61, no. 4
(2009), p. 882.

Tchaikovsky Competition
:
E-mail from Ivan Scherbak, International Projects Director for the Association of Tchaikovsky Competition Stars, Aug. 6, 2013 (confirming that Jennifer Koh [1992], Emily Shie [1992], Sirena Huang [2009], and Noah Lee [2012] are the only Americans to have won the International Tchaikovsky Youth Competition) (on file with authors).

spelling bees
:
Visi R. Tilak, “Why Indian Americans Are Best at Bees,”
Wall Street Journal
, June 2, 2012, http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/06/02/why-indian-americans-are-best-at-bees/.

Presidential Scholars
:
U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Presidential Scholars Program, http://www2.ed.gov/programs/psp/2012/scholars.pdf and http://www2.ed.gov/programs/psp/2011/scholars.pdf.

hypersuccessful Asian American teens
:
The statistics on Asian representation at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford are from those universities’ sites at https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org. The SAT statistics are from the College Board, cited in Scott Jaschik, “SAT Scores Drop Again,” Inside Higher Ed, Sept. 25, 2012, http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/09/25/sat-scores-are-down-and-racial-gaps-remain.

“anti-Asian admissions bias”
 . . . CalTech:
See Ron Unz, “The Myth of American Meritocracy,”
The American Conservative
, Nov. 28, 2012.

Indian Americans
 . . . Taiwanese Americans:
U.S. Census, American Community Survey, Table S0201: Selected Population Profile in the United States (2010 3-year dataset) (population group codes 001 – total population; 013 – Asian Indian; 018 – Taiwanese) (median household income and individual income); ibid., Table DP03: Selected Economic Characteristics (2010 5-year dataset) (population group codes 001 – total population; 013 – Asian Indian) (income level percentages).

relatively conventional and prestige-oriented
:
Bandana Purkayastha,
Negotiating Ethnicity: Second Generation South Asian Americans Traverse a Transnational World
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), p. 91; Mei Tang, Nadya A. Fouad, and Philip L. Smith, “Asian Americans’ Career Choices: A Path Model to Examine Factors Influencing Their Career Choices,”
Journal of Vocational Behavior
54 (1999), pp. 142–5; S. Alvin Leung, David Ivey, and Lisa Suzuki, “Factors Affecting the Career Aspirations of Asian Americans,”
Journal of Counseling & Development
72 (March/April 1994), pp. 404, 408; see also Min Zhou, “Assimilation the Asian Way,” in Tamar Jacoby, ed.,
Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What It Means to Be American
(New York: Basic Books, 2003), pp. 139, 140–2.

“respectable,” and “impressive”
:
See Purkayastha,
Negotiating Ethnicity
, p. 91; Yuki Okubo et al. “The Career Decision-Making Process of Chinese American Youth.”
Journal of Counseling & Development
85, no. 4 (2007), pp. 440–1; Pei-Wen Winnie Ma and Christine J. Yeh, “Factors Influencing the Career Decision Status of Chinese American Youths,”
The Career Development Quarterly
53, no. 4 (2005), pp. 337, 338; Philip Guo, “Understanding and Dealing with Overbearing Asian Parents,” December 2009, http://www.pgbovine.net/understanding-asian-parents.htm; see also Min Zhou, “Negotiating Culture and Ethnicity: Intergenerational Relations in Chinese Immigrant Families,” in Ramaswami Mahalingam, ed.,
Cultural Psychology of Immigrants
(Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, 2006), pp. 315, 323 (noting that Chinese immigrant parents often have three main goals: “To live in your own house, to be your own boss, and to send your children to the Ivy League”).

a disproportionate number of Asian Americans
:
Mitchell J. Chang, Julie J. Park, Monica H. Lin, Oiyan A. Poon, and Don T. Nakanishi,
Beyond Myths: The Growth and Diversity of Asian American College Freshman, 1971-2005
(Los Angeles: UCLA Higher Education Research Institute, 2004), pp. 4, 17–20; Tang et al., “Asian Americans’ Career Choices,” pp. 142–3.

Nobel prizes
:
The Indian American Nobel laureates are: Har Gobind Khorana (medicine, 1968), Subramanyan Chandrasekhar (physics, 1983), Amartya Sen (economics, 1998), and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (chemistry, 2009). Amartya Sen, an Indian citizen and longtime U.S. resident, won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1998. See Surekha Vijh, “Indian Americans Become a Force to Reckon With,”
News East West
, Oct. 8, 2012, http://newseastwest.com/how-indian-americans-became-a-force-to-reckon-with. The post-1965 Chinese American Nobel laureates are: Samuel Ting (physics, 1976), Yuan Tseh Lee (chemistry, 1986), Steven Chu (physics, 1997), Daniel Chee Tsui, (physics, 1998), Roger Yonchien Tsien (chemistry, 2008), and the British-American Charles Kao (physics, 2009). See China Whisper, “The 10 Ethnic Chinese Nobel Prize Winners,” Mar. 18, 2013, http://www.chinawhisper.com/the-10-ethnic-chinese-nobel-prize-winners.

Zappos founder Tony Hsieh
:
Tony Hsieh,
Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
(New York and Boston: Business Plus, 2010). Hsieh writes that his parents wanted him to attend medical school or get a PhD, but “I always fantasized about making money, because to me, money meant that later on in life I would have the freedom to do whatever I wanted.” Ibid., pp. 9–10. See also “Jerry Yang,” Forbes.com, http://www.forbes.com/profile/jerry-yang/; “Steve Chen,” CrunchBase, http://www.crunchbase.com/person/steve-chen; Derek Andersen, “How the Huang Brothers Bootstrapped Guitar Hero to a Billion Dollar Business,” TechCrunch, Dec. 30, 2012, http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/30/how-the-huang-brothers-bootstrapped-guitar-hero-to-a-billion-dollar-business/; Michael Arrington, “Alfred Lin Has the Midas Touch,” TechCrunch, July 28, 2009, http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/28/alfred-lin-has-the-midas-touch-the-man-with-2-billion-in-acquisitions-under-his-belt/.

The Indian American list
:
Katherine Jacobsen, “Amar Bose, Inventor of Bose Speakers, Dies,
Christian Science Monitor,
July 15, 2013; “Amar Bose,” Forbes.com, Mar. 2011, http://www.forbes.com/profile/amar-bose; “Top 6 Indian CEOs in America,” SiliconIndia, Mar. 15, 2012, http://www.siliconindia.com/news/usindians/Top-6-Indian-CEOs-in-America-nid-109397-cid-49.html; “Boot Camp for Engineers,” Forbes.com, Apr. 16, 2001, http://www.forbes.com/global/2001/0416/088.html; Julia Werdigier, “Two Executives Are Ousted at HSBS,” New York Times, Feb. 23, 2007.

Indian American Silicon Valley entrepreneurs
:
“Vinod Khosla—Partner Emeritus,” Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, http://www.kpcb.com/partner/vinod-khosla; Vivek Wadhwa, “The Face of Success, Part I: How the Indians Conquered Silicon Valley,” Inc., Jan. 13, 2012, http://www.inc.com/vivek-wadhwa/how-the-indians-succeeded-in-silicon-valley.html.

Bobby Jindal
:
Jill Konieczko, “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Bobby Jindal,”
U.S. News & World Report
, May 22, 2008.

Nikki Haley
:
Jonathan Martin, “Democratic South Carolina Chair Defends Nikki Haley Barb,” Politico, May 14, 2013, http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/dick-harpootlian-nikki-haley-90918.html.

cover of
Time
magazine
:
See Massimo Calabresi and Bill Saporito, “The Street Fighter,”
Time
, Feb. 13, 2012.

“I thought I had”
:
Remark made by presenter Atul Gawande at Boston Public Library “Literary Lights” award ceremony, Apr. 15, 2012 (attended by Amy Chua).

underrepresented at the top levels
:
See New York City Bar,
2010 Law Firm Diversity Benchmarking Report: A Report to Signatory Law Firms
(New York City Bar Association, 2010), p. 15. A study of the largest Bay Area corporations concludes that while Asians are well-represented in the workforce, they are underrepresented in the boardroom and at the top executive levels. See Buck Gee and Wes Hom, “The Failure of Asian Success in the Bay Area: Asians as Corporate Executive Leaders” (Corporate Executive Initiative, Mar. 28, 2009), p. 3.