Asian American Success

During the 1980s and 1990s, a flurry of books and articles appeared which extolled Asian Americans for the progress they had made in adapting to American life and in achieving economic gains. Social demographer William Peterson at Berkeley called Asian Americans a model minority (Winnick 23). President Ronald Reagan said they were "exemplars of hope and inspiration" (bell 26). Kitano said that the previous stereotype of Asian Americans as sly and untrustworthy aliens of the Fu Manchu variety had been replaced a new image of a "a hard-working, quiet, achievement-oriented people with a minimum of social problems" (125). On closer analysis, it is apparent that the truth concerning Asian Americans is more complex. More than 20 nationality groups have been lumped into the category of Asian Americans (including Pacific islanders), each of whom has distinctive religions, cultural heritages and unique historical experiences before they arrived in the United States and sen

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three years were receiving public assistance (148). In 1990, the overall poverty rate among Asian Americans (14 percent) was higher than that of non-Hispanic whites (9 percent) but was much lower than comparable rates for blacks (29 percent) and Hispanics (25 percent) (Tyson A8). A number of factors appeared to account for the relatively high degree of material success achieved by Japanese Americans and Chinese Americans among earlier immigrant groups and for the disparities among later arriving groups. Kitano said "the basic strength of the Japanese-Americans lies in the community, the family and the culture-hard work and other values" (133). Light said that earlier immigrant groups, especially the Japanese and Chinese brought with them a cultural tradition of "hard work, thrift, rationality and self-denial" (314). Many of them were imbued with a strong entrepreneurial tradition. Japanese and Chinese Americans, and later Korean Americans developed strong community support groups, including rotating credit associations which facilitated the accumulation of capital. Winnick says that Pilipinos tend to have weaker traditions in these areas (27). Kitano said that second and subsequent generation Japanese Americans "used educational
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Approximate Word count = 2311
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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