Academic researchers and the public have two very differing views of Asian American inequality. One popular narrative is that Asian Americans have a positive trajectory that reflects ample economic opportunities. In contrast, many academics resist this framing and call it the “model minority myth.” The argument is that assuming that Asian Americans are doing well can make us forget the role that racism has, and continues to have, in American culture and it misleads us into thinking that Asian Americans don’t need help.
The status of Asian Americans is one of those issues where both frames have pretty strong empirical evidence. By any measure, Asian Americans are doing quite well in terms of income. Consider this data, produced by the Pew Center. Notice how the caption buries the leading point which focuses on group variance and downplays median levels. The largest Asian American groups in terms of population are Chinese (24%), Indian (21%), Filipino (19%), Vietnamese (10%), Korean (9%) and Japanese (7%). According to the chart below, these groups account for 90% of all Asian Americans and all have median incomes of $70k or more and the overall median house hold income in 2021 was about $71k according to the US Census. These same groups also have poverty rates at or below national averages. The same article also reports very high rate of education, with 54% of Asian Americans holding a college degree, which correlates with higher income.
The critics also have important points to make. Asian Americans experience racism in many forms. There is violence, such as the infamous infamous Vincent Chin murder in 1982 and the 2021 Atlanta shootings. There have also been anti-Asian riots in American history. People have also documented glass ceilings in some very important occupations. For example, there is a notorious lack of Asian American leadership in Silicon Valley, which is notable because Asian Americans tend to be highly educated, relatively wealthy, and concentrated in the state of California. Some scholars have also noted that some Asian Americans are disadvantaged in social situations, such as this study of Asian American men in online dating markets.
So what do we make of this situation? How do we square trajectories of economic success with ongoing social disparities and racism? I think the simplest solution is probably the best one here: cultural and income inequality are different, but related, phenomena. If a society is able to produce avenues for income that are very transactional in nature, then it becomes possible to increase income. When markets and other social processes include biases, this becomes harder.
This approach would explain two empirical facts that seem at odds with each other: the glass ceiling in corporations for Asian Americans and the very high number of Asian American small businesses. You’d expect people who own lots of businesses to have an advantage at reaching the top of corporate America. The money/culture distinction helps with this puzzle. There’s a lot of research indicating that elite hiring practices are riddled with biases and racism. For example, Lauren Rivera’s research documents how incredibly narrow hires are at elite law and consulting firms. In other words, elite law firms don’t go with folks with the highest GPA and LSAT, they look for “fit” and cultural homophily. So it should not be a surprise that many groups, including Asian Americans, are not granted access to the highest status corporate jobs. In contrast, few people really care who owns the gas station or local bodega.
There is another theory out there that explains the complex social position of Asian Americans - the “honorary whites” hypothesis, which says that Asians are giving a sort of “intermediate” pass by White society. I actually believe a version of this theory, but I don’t think it passes muster as a basic explanation for the contrasting cultural and economic trajectories described above. For example, it doesn’t really give you an account for the patterns of economic outcomes (e.g., why some Asian groups are around the US median in income, while other are above the median). Another odd pattern is that, in some data, Asians are promoted to management at lower rates than groups that are not “honorary Whites,” such as Blacks and Latinos. These variations suggest to me that it is just easier to say that when market processes become less transactional and more personal, people will deploy a complex set of racial biases which don’t easily correspond to the “honorary Whites” theory.
Bottom line: To understand inequality, you need to give money and culture their due.
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