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by seanmcdirmid 3244 days ago
I'm 42, just old enough that many of my classmates in school (in the USA on the west coast) were at the tail end of the boat people refugee exodus of ethnic Chinese from Vietnam. Well, Chinese are always smart and hard working right? It was still true, somewhat, as that was their stereotype in Vietnam as well.

However, being a refugee means going through a much more traumatic process than being an immigrant. You are literally thrown from your home with little left and have gone through a difficult process to get out and resettled in a new country. So drug abuse, gang activity, crime, not doing well in school, depression, etc...were problems for that community even though given normal circumstances they would have been similar to other Chinese immigrants.
2 comments
hasenj 3243 days ago
So you basically had the same observation as I had in a totally different community.

I'm not sure about your explanation though. Chinese people are not magical people. IQ is still distributed on a bell curve in China as well. If a chunk of people from a country exhibit characteristics that indicate they might be on the lower end of the bell curve, they might just be on the lower end.

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seanmcdirmid 3243 days ago
Environment, environment, environment.

The Boat People had traumatic experiences, so why wouldn't you expect them to have issues when arriving in their new host country? War, rape, murder, starvation, that shit will screw with your head for maybe the rest of your life. There is no point in comparing refugee and non-refugee immigrant experiences.

Ethnic Chinese were successful in Vietnam, just like the rest of southeast asia, many of them were rich, college educated and so on, and still got messed up for a generation upon being kicked out during the Sino Vietnam war. We aren't talking about soso people who weren't successful in their previous countries. Heck, today, many of the refugees that make it to the west were relatively successful, or they simply wouldn't have had the resources to make it to the west.

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foldr 3244 days ago
Right, but that has nothing to do with a lack of intelligence or hard work.
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hasenj 3243 days ago
You don't really know that. It could very well be the reason.

People are not all equally intelligent or hard working.

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foldr 3242 days ago
Whereas you really do know it? What's your evidence?
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