Culture and everything to do with it is 90% of the answer.
Asian Americans face racism, and have absolutely zero cultural standing, nobody cares that Asian Americans don't win Oscars, they are not on TV shows, they are not represented in sports.
And yet Asian Americas are literally 2x the national income and make up vastly disproportionate numbers of high tech workers etc..
The notion that somehow how 'Asian Americans' have 'vast Racial Privilege' that enable them to gain success is plainly ridiculous, obviously.
Most of them do not come to America with stashes of wealth to give them advantage, though some do.
So how are Asian Americans so successful? Because as individuals, they focus on the things that matter to them, and that enable them to have much higher incomes - like education as one obvious example.
Those attitudes, motivations, concerns, behaviours are passed down from generation to generation and though it's unfair to characterize anyone by their culture, those things have tremendous impact.
The general unwillingness (and career danger) to even study this topic is concerning to me. Maybe there are correlated factors, maybe there aren’t. I think we’d all be better off if these topics could be studied, so they could be understood, so any negative effects could be ameliorated most effectively.
When I see respected economists reporting that there are differences in economic success that are correlated with race and respected sociologists reporting differences and other factual data analysis, I see differences that seem to persist by race. All of those are output measurements. What’s the next logical thing you do as an academic, seeking to understand a problem in search of a persistent, structural solution? Go look for input measures and see what you can learn about the system. That’s the step that seems to be a third-rail and if we’re not willing to study the structural inputs to the problem, we’re handicapping ourselves in solving any of it.
various aspects of IQ, demeanor, education, work ethic, surroundings, and a whole host of other variables, some external some internal. Of course the majority of people on HN and in the public will revert to weeping and gnashing of teeth rather than acknowledge this obvious fact, because the majority of people on HN and in the public implicitly tie human worth to economic output and intelligence (which is the actually bigoted and racist thing to do)
I don't care about you trying to cancel me lol that's why this is a sock account, but it's even more telling that you think basic descriptive (not prescriptive) observations about reality are not moderate.
Yeah, but why not stuff like immigration, stances on environmental regulation, income tax rates on high earners, gun rights...
You've gotta agree that those fall under the moderate umbrella a bit more right? I've lived/worked in some very conservative environments and I don't think anyone would've walked along with the race IQ path.
My comment was in relation to the topic of the parent comment, which is why I mentioned it at all. Income tax rates and environmental regulation very rarely get brought up in conjunction with why there are gaps in racial outcome that aren't the result of racism. I think we can both agree that the things I mentioned are more more on point with arguments pertaining to racial outcomes, even if you completely disagree with those arguments.