Race at the Top: Asian Americans and Whites in Pursuit of the American Dream in Suburban Schools

The preliminaries

• This book focuses on the town “Woodcrest,” (a pseudonym) which is filled with highly educated parents who make good money and seek excellent educations for their kids.
• ⅘ adults have a bachelor’s (compared to ⅓ of Americans overall); many also have a master’s.
• Over 30% of the residents are Asian American, and most others are white.
• The author spent three years visiting Woodcrest to try and understand the impact of the growing and academically successful Asian community.
  • She was curious about the assumption that suburbs are places where well-educated immigrants blend in seamlessly.
• White parents move to Woodcrest for its “excellent” schools, assuming their children will be guaranteed success by doing so.
  • But the Asian population grew over the last decade, and Asian American children have continued to outshine their white peers.
• Woodcrest has one high school, with over 2,000 students.
  • Over ⅓ of the students are Asian, just over ½ are white, and the rest identify as mixed, Black, or Latinx.
• The average SAT score for Asian Americans nationally is 100 points higher than the average for white Americans.
• Asian Americans are overrepresented in selective universities: 35% of Asian Americans who go to college attend a very selective one, compared to 25% of whites.
  • At Harvard, over 25% of domestic Harvard undergraduates are Asian Americans, but Asian Americans make up 5% of all adolescents in the US.

Good parenting in an age of migration

• The common story about race in the US is that whites generally remain at the top while racial minorities struggle to succeed in systems designed to privilege whites.
  • Black kids are more likely than white kids to be referred for special education testing and less likely to be referred to honors or AP classes; they’re more likely to be punished for “defiant” behaviors.
  • Black and Latinx students are more likely to attend community colleges.
  • Real estate agents continue to discriminate against racial minorities, steering clients to neighborhoods that demographically reflect their race/class, shaping where people live, where kids go to school, etc.
  • When racial minorities do succeed, they are often forced to abandon their cultures and emulate “white” behaviors, speech patterns, and styles.
• These explanations fail to make sense of situations in which racial minorities catapult ahead of established whites.
  • Asian Americans outperform whites in many important areas, from standardized test scores to admission to elite colleges, and higher average incomes.
  • When Asian Americans loosen the racial hierarchy, whites can feel less comfortable and resent Asians for seeming to encroach on their status.
  • While both Asian Americans and white children do well in Woodcrest, Asian American kids outperform white peers academically.
    • This is in part because visas for highly skilled workers are a key avenue through which Indian and Chinese immigrants arrive; these immigrants tend to be elites, and tend to raise high-achieving children.
• For instance, more whites are conceding that the typical criteria for evaluating students, especially standardized tests, are seriously flawed.
  • But standardized tests have been critiqued for decades for their systematic exclusion of African Americans.
    • Why take these critiques seriously now? It is likely that the majority of whites started paying attention to the very real flaws in standardized testing because Asian Americans started to outperform them.
  • This is an example of whites adjusting their beliefs about merit in order to maintain their own status at the top.
• Generally, working class or immigrant parents are blamed for their parenting styles, while the behaviors of white middle-class parents go unexamined. 
  • Upper-middle-class white parents are particularly adept at deploying their resources, often to the detriment of racial minorities.
  • College-educated parents tend to have more cultural know-how to help their kids and they cultivate behaviors that are rewarded in school.
  • Racial minorities think about issues that whites rarely notice: ensuring diversity in school, seeking positive images of their race in books, creating strong ethnic identities.
  • Many people attribute Asian American academic achievements to some innate set of cultural values, ignoring the selective migration that takes place, and the education systems Asian immigrant parents left behind.
• Many of our decisions are shaped by “cultural repertoires” (different from values) which are “habits, skills, and styles from which people construct ‘strategies of action.’”
  • These influences can lead to ethnic patterns, which can lead to racial tensions.
• Suburbs are increasingly the first destination for immigrants. Woodcrest is filled with “suburban liberals”–liberals who support liberal policies on a national level, like environmentalism, while instituting restrictive laws in their own towns.
  • Programs like busing (where some children from a neighboring and less prosperous neighborhood are brought into Woodcrest) allowed Woodcrest residents to support “diversity” while maintaining Woodcrest as a separate, economically advantaged school district.
    • Social policies from 50 years ago were designed to shut out blacks, and today Asian Americans benefit from that racial exclusion.

Chasing excellence in the suburbs

• Woodcrest has high property taxes, and ¾ of the parents the author interviewed specifically named the schools as the reason for moving to Woodcrest.
  • For many parents of color, diversity also played a role in their move.
    • But for both white and Asian families, the paucity of Black and Latinx families in Woodcrest did not come up when speaking about diversity.
    • That is, the presence of Asians was enough for most whites to claim diversity, and most Asians sought neighbors who came from the same country as them.
  • Abigail, an immigrant Chinese student, told the author that her parents didn’t like the pressures of the Chinese school system, so they came to Woodcrest.
    • This is a reminder that all burdens are relative; for her parents, Woodcrest felt like a relief and an escape from China’s rigid standardized education.
• Over half the students in the school reported spending 3+ hours a night on homework.
  • 40% of the students take at least one AP exam a year. 
  • Many students prepare outside of school and in rigorous non-AP classes.
  • Extracurriculars at Woodcrest are highly competitive and a serious investment.
    • To join the middle school school bands or orchestras, you have to have at least one or two years’ experience.
    • Private coaching was common, for sports, musical instruments, singing, and art.
  • In one year, nearly 36 graduates went to Ivy League colleges, and even more got recruited by selective colleges for sports. Overall, over ⅓ of students attended the most selective colleges in the US. Nearly half of adults raised in Woodcrest earn in the top 20% of US incomes.

Tensions over the “right” way to achieve academic excellence

• In Asia, standardized tests are the sole basis for entering elite colleges, and elite degrees are critical for getting an elite job.
  • Thus, most immigrant parents are highly focused on academic achievement.
  • Many immigrant parents interviewed drew from their own experiences: they didn’t see extra math as unusual.
    • Given the extra math classes and tutoring even when a student was not struggling in a class, it’s no surprise that a disproportionate number of Chinese and Indian American students take the highest-level classes.
  • Many also felt that they lacked the social networks and cultural references that help children of American elites.
• White parents
  • White parents generally sought “balance” in their children’s lives, reserving summer vacation for fun and job experiences.
  • They often contrasted themselves to other “more unreasonable parents.”
    • One white parent said, “I had a conversation at the gym with a guy who does local real estate. And he expressed some concern about the Chinese moving in, like they’re going to take over. And he felt like this was an alien invasion or something.”
    • One white parents described “sociodemographic changes” as the reason for her children needing tutoring. Thus, not naming immigrants or Asians explicitly, but making her view clear.
  • Why didn’t white parents push their children to meet the highest academic levels as many Asian parents did? Many drew on stories of successful individuals in the US who had not been academic superstars–US elite colleges examine more than just academics.
• Our actions tend to be guided more by our cultural repertoire rather than by our values or ambitions.
  • Asian Americans students
    • On average, Asian Americans students spent more time on homework, took more advanced classes, and achieved higher grades.
    • They were more likely to spend summers on academic pursuits.
    • Woodcrest doesn’t weigh GPAs–an A in an advanced course counts the same as an A in a remedial level course. Despite their overrepresentation in higher-level classes, Asian Americans still earned higher grades.
    • Asian American students did not complain about their parents’ emphasis on academics. Rather, they seemed to have internalized the cultural repertoires for success that their parents held.
  • White students
    • Many white students described the message they learned from white parents: that high academic achievement isn’t necessary for success in life. 
    • None of the Asian American students shared this specific message–white students had internalized their parents’ cultural repertoires.
    • There may be some truth to the message about academics being less important than they think, especially coming from white, upper-middle-class parents. 

The racial divides of extracurricular excellence

• Most US schools spend more per pupil on sports teams than they do on math. In contrast, in both India and China, high school teams are rare, likely because those universities pay little attention to activities beyond academics.
  • In contrast, being a top athlete can get you into a good college in the US even if your grades aren’t good.
  • Their cultural repertoires in turn shaped how much time they thought their children should spend on those activities.
• Many parents engaged in “concerted cultivation,” exposing them to multiple activities and insisting they cultivate talent in something.
  • Asian parents tended to encourage their children to participate in STEM activities and the debate team. 
  • They especially disliked the intensive commitment required for varsity sports teams (around 12 hours a week, if not more). 
• White parents
  • One parent spent tens of thousands on various leagues and for travel to practices and games across the country.
  • Parent with kids in varsity sports advised their children to adjust their academic levels accordingly–this was part of their cultural repertoire for balancing academics and extracurriculars.
• Asian parents
  • The author didn’t meet any Asian parents or students who spoke of taking fewer classes to make room for sports, or being recruited for a college team. Asian parents tended to see sports only as a means for physical fitness.
• This also resonates with data on admissions to Harvard.
  • The data suggest that one reason for Asian American applicants’ lower admission rates than whites’ (for students with same grades and SAT scores) is the higher likelihood that white applicants are recruited athletes, identified prior to the admissions process.
  • Overall, white kids in the US are far more likely to be recruited by college coaches than kids of any other race, so this is an area where whites are able to maintain an advantage.
• Many white parents did for sports what many Asian parents did for academics: pay for extra coaching, enroll their children in activities outside the school system, etc.
  • The author thought Asian parents would critique this, similar to how white parents critiqued Asian parents about academics. And would Asians push for sports as well?
    • This is what theories of assimilation would predict–immigrants changing their behaviors to be more like established Americans.
    • Wrong on both fronts.
      • Asian parents, first-generation or not, didn’t seem to mind when their children didn’t make it onto varsity teams–they didn’t feel the need to assimilate. 
      • They also didn’t criticize white families for limiting entry onto high school teams only to those with intensive prior training.

Emotional well-being: happiness and status

• Many parents engage in “emotional safeguarding,” which includes “intervening to protect a child’s self-esteem, and expecting that teachers understand a child’s uniqueness.
• The battle over homework
  • In a school-wide survey, over half of the students reported that homework caused them a lot of or extreme stress.
    • White students reported even more homework-related stress than Asian American students, even though Asian American students spent more every night on homework.
  • Several white parents succeeded in pushing for a new homework policy aimed at reducing the amount of homework in Woodcrest (banning work on holidays, long weekends, etc.).
  • By calling for reduced academic work, these white parents argued for deemphasizing a domain in which their children were losing to their Asian American peers.
    • Asian parents didn’t want to limit how much students could take on–an absence of limits that enabled top-performing AA students to spend as much of their hours outside school on homework as they wanted.
    • Research has shown that white, upper-middle class parents are skilled at bending schools to their will, sometimes at the expense of students of color.
      • They draw on professional expertise in their advocacy; they use their social networks to build support for their perspective.
      • Their shared racial identity with most school staff means they are more likely to share similar cultural repertoires for addressing students’ emotional health.
    • In contrast, a lack of cultural know-how and the alignment between white parents’ perspectives and those of school staff made immigrant views fall on deaf ears.
  • Instead of changing homework, why didn’t anyone suggest a new extracurriculars policy, establish a maximum number of hours on the field, etc.?

The “right” way to parent

• We judge other parents and draw moral boundaries to distinguish ourselves from parents we feel are less worthy than ourselves.
  • Several white parents indicated that their kids were losing their intellectual identities because there were so many extraordinary Asians.
    • The author sensed that they wanted their kids to feel successful and special, as if they were entitled to a position at the top.
• Many white parents expressed disdain for Asian parents who did not take family vacations so their children could stay home and study.
  • These sentiments went hand-in-hand with worries about their own children feeling “average” and these judgments helped them maintain a sense of superiority and moral worth.
  • In a liberal town like Woodcrest, most parents did not express overt disdain; instead, their reports were about the kind of parents they are not.
  • Many felt like these “geniuses” and “superstars” negatively affected their childrens’ self-esteem, never recognizing that the “geniuses and superstars” may have studied more–some explicitly blamed Asians.
  • And yet, most white parents pulled out all the stops when it came to the college application process.
    • For example, hiring an individual tutor or college counselor was a good thing to do, whereas a summer job in a research lab was not.
  • Ultimately, as their children no longer felt “special,” they grew resentful of the number of Asians, and did not emulate the cultural repertoires that they saw leading to that outcome.
    • Instead, whites maintained their feeling of superiority by rejecting Asian families’ strategies. 
• Asian parents were very aware of these critiques. Some drew a parallel between white parents’ attention to sports – they didn’t judge white parents for their emphasis on sports in the same way they were judged by many white parents for their own emphasis on academics.
  • They accepted the critiques but said that they were not on the wrong side of the moral boundary even if most Asian parents were.
  • The defensiveness from Asian parents and kids suggested that they believed in the “superior” white ways of parenting. They took white parenting as the standard by which they should be measured. 
• Parenting cultures shift over time. We take for granted that everyone sees their children as an important source of meaning. But this view developed only 100 years ago, with the shift from an agrarian society (children for labor) to one in which children became “priceless.”
• Woodcrest’s principal, who is white, said that there’s been an increase in furious white families, upset that there are more Asian Americans coming in, feeling that “my child can’t keep up” and stereotypical perceptions of the “smart” kids; “They’re naturally smart. My kid’s having to work too hard…Who are those kids.”
  • The author guessed that his white identity may have made many parents assume he shared their perspectives and hence made them more willing to share strong emotions about parents who look like the author.

The anxieties of parenting and the American dream

• We believe in the promise of equal opportunity and the idea that everyone can succeed if they just try hard enough.
  • But we’re also very aware of how much of that success is shaped by parents’ strategies and resources. And so as parents, we hedge our bets. 
• The author realized that to be accepted by white parents and school officials, parents of color often have to fit into a narrow definition of good parents.
  • Black and Latinx parents often are stereotyped by whites as not focused enough, while Asian American parents are seen as too focused.
• Most Woodcrest parents seemed unaware of the advantages their children held over other children.
  • Though most chose to live in Woodcrest for its school system, they did not fully grasp the influence of that system, instead assuming their children’s achievements were a result of individual smarts and hard work.
• The problem of Woodcrest’s privilege is not these parents doing everything they can to help their children get ahead; all parents do that. Rather, the problem is a housing and schooling system that enables them to do so with so many more advantages than others.
  • Asian Americans should recognize more fully the reasons we need, for example, affirmative action, and more generally expansion of opportunities for all.
    • Asian Americans should also support greater class and racial integration in neighborhoods through, for example, expanding low-and mixed-incoming housing in their communities, increasing housing density through zoning, etc.
• But we need more than just an appreciation of diversity and the standard liberal rejection of overt racism.
  • We need more privileged whites to become antiracist.
    • It means whites not rejecting Asian cultural repertoires outright. It means not assuming that their children will and always should be the ones whose priorities the school district emphasizes.
  • For Asian Americans and whites alike, it means supporting policies that increase opportunities for Black, Latinx, and Native American youth even if this does not directly benefit their own children.
    • It means recognizing the problems with college admissions and standardized tests–systems of meritocracy–that reward a disproportionate number of already well-off students.

• Numerous interviews with students, parents, community members
• Why so many white Woodcrest parents sought private schools as an alternative
• Asian American cultural brokers
• Additional studies and examples of white people adjusting their beliefs about merit in order to maintain their own status as the top-performing group.