Same thing for Latinos. There is a lot of in group diversity.
PLus, the context of reception for immigrants (Latino & Asian) has been dramatcially different. A comparison of this sort is very limiting in that sometimes there is more in group diversity than out.

When racism is used as a tool to oppress, we should all jump up and down and yell. But not every not-so-PC-sounding comment is racist.

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I also concur with the conclusion that culture is a prominent factor for the disparities in educational performance and thus should be a focal point when discussing educatinal gaps. True, Latino children tend to start school at a disadvantage in many areas, and those are exacerbated as the students move on up grade levels without the underlying problems being addressed.

These people who get butt hurt over the mention of perceived ‘cultural educational deficiencies’ and try to preclude constructive and informative discussions thereof, our doing a great disservice to our Latino community.

Good post, HP. I re-posted it at soy.

http://2deepthoughts.blogspot.com/2005/10/how-do-you-talk-about-this-stuff.html

Another comparison that I like, and one that has been studied more than the Mexican vs Asian comparison, is that with Blacks vs. Mexicans. In fact, when you look at it from this angle, you get counterintuitive results. Mexicans and Blacks share alot of the same living conditions, economic status, bad schools and poorly educated parents (my dad, for example, didn’t even know how to write his own name when he immigrated to the USA), but Mexicans, not Blacks, also have a language barrier to overcome, they also have, alot of times being recent immigrants, assimilation difficulties that Blacks don’t have. So with all of this, you would expect Blacks to do better than Raza in school. Yet this is not what you see, in study after study, Mexicans, especially after a few years of schooling, start to outperform their Black brothers and sisters in the ghetto. Granted, not by much, but enough to make a statistical difference. Why is this so? In my opinion, there are many factors here, but the two primary ones are, first and foremost, that Mexicans tend to have both parents living at home at a much higher percentage than Blacks, and secondly, anti-intellectualism is not as prominent in the Mexican culture as much as it is in the Black culture. So you see, even with two groups of the same background, with Mexicans in many respects having worse starting positions, culture (and I would classify two parent families, and strong marriages under the cultural category) plays a large roll in how much a certain group progresses.

On the other hand, one could make the ‘racism’ argument, one could argue that since Blacks tend to be darker than Hispanics, they would face much stronger racism and this could explain why they under perform Hispanics. However, even this doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, especially to those of us who spend time on college campuses and good companies. For example, I go to UC San Diego, and the few Blacks that I have seen in my classes, engineering classes, are all primarily from Africa. They speak with a heavy accent, and come from places like Cameroon or Nigeria. They also tend to be darker than the typical Black, and in many cases, started off just as poor as those of us that grew up in the ghetto. Yet they ended up at drastically different ending points (they also tend to be, atleast from my experience, the most critical of American born blacks, often times using strong language to show their distaste, saying things like, “They need to get off of their lazy asses and ….you get the idea).

In addition to this, Mexicans aren’t doing that much better. I have taken courses with 150 seats, and in many cases, I am the only Mexican in the class. The few times that I have seen other Latinos, they are always foreign born Latinos. Transfer students from Peru, students from Mexico City, and students from Monterrey, but I have yet to see another United States born Mexican. Of course my experience is very limited, since I am not going to school fulltime, and I haven’t looked into the other majors, but this does shed a little light on how racism could not be as large a factor as people currently make it out to be, since in many cases, those minorities who do end up doing well in school are more ‘Mexican’ and more ‘Black’ than those who live in the ghetto (In fact, my experience has been the exact opposite of racism, sometimes I get the feeling that because I am Mexican, because people know - but don’t publicly say - that we are a minority on campus yet a majority of the public, they make a little more effort making me feel comfortable than had I not been, it may be all in my head though, since I can’t stand being seen as a charity cause).

With all of that said though, I have seen studies that control for everything you say. Most recently, the book I recommended to you earlier, No Excuses by the Thernstrom’s do exactly that. And even when you control for the same educational background, the same income level ( for example, they even compare rich Blacks to Rich Asians, or Whites), the same family background and the same starting point, minorities, Mexicans and Blacks, but more so Blacks, still show a considerable educational gap. In addition, studies have also shown that when you have parents, regardless of race, regardless of educational background, regardless of starting points, and regardless of income, stressing education at a very high level, for example, by setting expectation levels high (A- and above), students with pro-education peer groups, a stronger philosophy that ties good grades to effort, not natural intelligence, and a belief that bad grades is equal to a bad life in the USA, than regardless of everything else, the student will do very well in school.

But in the end, I still think more studies like this need to be done, I think one of the most neglected areas in this whole ‘race in America’ discussion is precisely this point, cultural factors, and how they play into educational success, and financial stability.

That is why I applaud Zhou and his study, and rebuke those Latinos that would try to censor this type of information.