“Asian” is a broad umbrella term. About 60% of the world’s population are Asians. One needs to reconsider then, how accurate are these charts and graphs that discuss the “socialeconomic” success of Asians? The Chicago Tribune has written an article about how Southeast Asians are having a hard time dealing with the pressures of academics in the U.S. In the article it states this is due to Asians overall academic success, go figure!

The Chicago Tribune article gives us an interesting graph of various Asian categories and their reading test scores:

As you can see, SE Asians lag slightly behind the other Asian groups, in terms of reading test scores. It would’ve been nice to see the various SE Asians separated, however. Although it’s just one test(and we are not sure of the sample size), this is some interesting data. Why though…why do SE Asians fall so behind the others?

Possible Reasons

Here are some possible reasons, both brought up by the article and by me:

1. The invisible minority (the disadvantaged Asians).
2. Southeast Asians numbers are relatively small.
3. Lack of socio-emotional, academic, and remedial support.

These reasons all stem from the point that southeast Asians are being lumped together with all Asians, which is a problem in itself. There’s a bunch of statistics showing that Asians are doing quite well compared to other ethnicities. We should realize, however, that classifying Asians as the “model minority” is very much a stretch. A lot of other Asians besides the Southeast variety that need help, and if we continue on with this myth of Asians being brainiacs, we are in effect reducing the amount of awareness and help that these struggling Asians need.

image credit: no2self.net

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