Stay Curious

SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AND UNLOCK ONE MORE ARTICLE FOR FREE.

Sign Up

VIEW OUR Privacy Policy


Discover Magazine Logo

WANT MORE? KEEP READING FOR AS LOW AS $1.99!

Subscribe

ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER?

FIND MY SUBSCRIPTION
Advertisement

Not all brown people take stats

Explore the success factors of Indian Americans, examining education, culture, and high-paying careers in the U.S.

Newsletter

Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science news

Sign Up

Dumb article, Nobody's Model Minority, in response to Jason Richwine's Indian Americans: The New Model Minority (H/T Steve), makes a pretty obvious error:

He presses on anyway, attributing Indian Americans' overall "success" in the U.S. to three factors: culture, education (that is, an "obsessive emphasis on academic achievement") and most significantly, IQ. This success is defined by the number of Indian Americans with college degrees (69 percent), their median head of household annual salary ($83,000), and their representation in high-paying fields like medicine and information technology. In other words, being a "model minority" boils down to one thing--money. But even this characterization is deeply problematic.

Figures like median income are skewed by a few individuals at the top earning extremely high salaries.

In fact, Indian Americans aren't just IT workers, engineers and doctors--they are activists, journalists, taxi drivers, sales clerks and more.

The author is confusing the mean with the ...

Stay Curious

JoinOur List

Sign up for our weekly science updates

View our Privacy Policy

SubscribeTo The Magazine

Save up to 40% off the cover price when you subscribe to Discover magazine.

Subscribe
Advertisement

0 Free Articles