![\"\"](\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-7Uz1UKsKBwY\/T1HNoCgKf2I\/AAAAAAAAAJw\/JsBc0JOY2-A\/s1600\/asian-studying.jpg\")
<\/a><\/div>\nA September 19 article in The Atlantic asked the question How Much Homework Do American Kids Do? <\/em><\/a> The answer? According to a MetLife survey, not much. Considering the dismal state of education in the U.S<\/a>. this should come as no surprise. But then the article made this claim:<\/p>\n Race plays a role in how much homework students do.<\/strong><\/p>\n Asian students spend 3.5 more hours on average doing homework per week than their white peers. However, only 59 percent of Asian students\u2019 parents check that homework is done, while 75.6 percent of Hispanic students\u2019 parents and 83.1 percent of black students\u2019 parents check.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I’m sure some Asian kids study pretty hard. I’ve no problem with that claim. However I do have a problem with the statement “Race plays a role…” Race does not play a role.<\/p>\n If you’re confused by my logic, here’s what I mean.<\/p>\n Race is a political construct. More specifically, race, at least as it has been understood and used in the U.S., is the invention of a group of white pseudo-intellectuals that groups human beings into different categories called races, and invests those races with different racial characteristics in order to make certain people more exploitable and\/or expendable. This system was adapted by American colonists who used it to justify genocide and slavery, the combination of which would allow them to acquire territory, natural resources, and capital so quickly that within a few generations they were able to win a war against the greatest colonial power on earth and found an independent nation that would one day rule the world.<\/p>\n Now, I’m not suggesting that the writer of the article or the researchers in the study it referenced intended to make the case for biological determinism. But the races of those students in that study have nothing to do with how much homework they do. And, inadvertent or not, sloppy references to race are more dangerous than many think.<\/p>\n For instance, the writer refers to Asian American kids. Asian Americans include Japanese business investors and Filipino migrant workers, some of whom have suffered horribly at the hands of Japanese business. We are also war refugees some of whom were once peasant farmers in places like Vietnam and Laos, as well as doctors and lab techs brought to the U.S. from places like India and Taiwan to fill labor shortages in the medical services field.<\/p>\n These are groups that have little in common other than their shared humanity until they arrive in the U.S. and become “Asian” rather than Korean, Hmong<\/a>, Khmer<\/a>, Ilocano<\/a>, or Visayan<\/a>. Asian Americans are driven into the U.S. via a combination of our own immigration policies, and global drivers of migration like war, climate change, famine<\/a> (which is nearly always political), capital distribution, and natural resource privatization into a single, monolithic idea having nothing to do with where we came from and why we entered the U.S. Attributing racial characteristics to such a complex and diverse group is both misleading and dehumanizing.<\/p>\n\n