[mc32]

People like to blame society or the system.

Some of it is but there is also parental responsibility and small/immediate culture which has greater effect.

If you have parents that come from poor backgrounds and despite that produce kids who overrepresent in achievement, people in some corners like to brush that under a rug and anyone who highlights that is guilty of falling for the "model minority". Problem is, that's a cop-out and veers on crab mentality. Some subpopulations simply push their kids to study more and play less than others. That's just how it is. The parents may have two jobs, but still manage to instill an education mindset into them --a minority of these kids will look back and say that their childhoods were not fun, and that is likely true, but I don't think they'd be have a better life trudging away as a HS dropout or similar. And surely some parents overburden their kids to study "respected" professions. But that's a different problem.

Within a particular ethnicity or "race" some subpopulations have dedicated parents and others don't.

If I were born in the south to "hillbillies" my odds for landing in talented and gifted would go way down, not because of race, or ethnicity but because the culture of the parents and the immediate culture.

But take South Koreans 1st gen and compare them to Philippine 1st gen or Pole and Romanian and that's a no-no.