<\/a><\/p>\n

When I first saw the New York Post\u2019s<\/i> scathing review of Amy Chua\u2019s new book, The Triple Package<\/span>, the phrase \u201ctriple threat\u201d immediately came to mind. Surely Chua\u2019s PR hawks would\u2019ve warned her off using the word \u201cthreat\u201d to describe select, successful, largely immigrant \u201ccultural groups.\u201d After all, today\u2019s white U.S. workers are rightfully anxious about the future, but wrongfully suspicious of \u201cthe other\u201d\u2013 undocumented workers, Muslims, China as a whole, young black women who knock on the door asking for help\u2026 But I believe \u201cthreat\u201d would\u2019ve been a more honest word choice.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t read the book, nor am I likely to. The politics behind the framing and messaging of the book\u2019s publicity<\/a> and subtitle \u2013 How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America<\/i> \u2013 is easy to spot. It\u2019s rife with American exceptionalism and model minority thinking \u2013 the notion that anyone can succeed in America if they just act right, and those who don\u2019t will\u00a0get what they\u00a0deserve.<\/p>\n

The book names three cultural traits as a blueprint for success in the United States: a sense of superiority over others, an accompanying sense of insecurity that drives hard work, and good-old-fashioned discipline, or \u201cimpulse control\u201d. My main problem with this is that it ignores the history of race in America.<\/p>\n

Penguin Press, in its online description<\/a> promoting the book, writes, \u201cIt may be taboo to say, but some groups in America do better than others.\u201d So which groups are we talking about? Well, Nigerians, for one, and this is particularly problematic. Offering one example of black uplift, in very specific cultural terms, is an insidious wink at the indictment of blackness implicit in the book\u2019s premise: These black people are making it. Why can\u2019t the rest?<\/i> The recent Nigerian immigrant population in the United States tends to be highly educated, but one must ask why. Answering that demands exposing the history of slavery and of Nigeria. In fact, the first Nigerians to arrive in the United States did so as slaves in the 1600s, but because of slavery, few descendants can trace their Nigerian roots.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s be clear: when Chua talks about Nigerians in America, she\u2019s not talking about the descendants of slaves. She\u2019s talking about those who can identify as Nigerians in the United States today, who largely arrived over the last 30-40 years on student or highly skilled visas. They tend to be professional and middle class, and raised largely in a westernized context (the legacy of British colonization). They are among the most economically and educationally privileged in their countries of origin \u2013 not a shield against anti-black racism in the United States, but a significant advantage.<\/p>\n

Another example that Chua offers is Mormons, who, as she describes, are \u201chitting it out of the park with conventional success\u2026 one of the most successful groups in America.\u201d With their \u201ccorporate, financial, and political success\u2026 Mormons seem determined to prove they\u2019re more American than other Americans.\u201d Again, one needs to do some digging into the history of the Mormon Church to place this \u201csuccess\u201d into context. Chua particularly lauds the affluence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints through the \u201cMormons\u2019 extraordinary capacity to earn and amass wealth.\u201d She writes:<\/p>\n

The amount of American land owned by the Mormon church is larger than the State of Delaware\u2026 the Church of the Latter-day Saints is believed to have owned $25 billion to $30 billion in assets as of 1997, with present revenues of $5 billion to $6 billion a year. <\/i><\/p>\n

How did that<\/i> happen? One way was through an aggressive campaign of international missionary work, which expanded membership and revenue through tithes to the church. But the other way was through settler colonization. The church\u2019s land ownership is the result of a history<\/a> of stealing indigenous lands, resources, and livelihoods.<\/p>\n

To be fair, Penguin touches upon the \u201cdark underside\u201d of the triple-threat formula that the book promotes. It acknowledges: \u201cEach of its elements carries distinctive pathologies\u2026 they can have truly toxic effects\u2026 the authors conclude that the Triple Package is a ladder that should be climbed and then kicked away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hm\u2026 It\u2019s an apt metaphor for the belief system reflected. For in the United States, what is success if not money and power, gained by climbing above (aka: exploiting) racialized political and economic systems in a cynical, zero-sum game with winners and losers? The very notion of success should be questioned. In a nation that is the number one jailor<\/a> in the world, that has the second-highest child poverty rate<\/a> of any developed nation, and whose black-white wealth gap<\/a> is widening despite increased income and educational attainment among African Americans, buying into exceptionalist arguments to explain disparities means endorsing a dehumanizing system of racialized norms.<\/p>\n

Chua\u2019s argument is flawed in the same way that the model minority myth is flawed. If the premise is that hard work is the path to prosperity, then shouldn\u2019t the descendants of slaves be the most richly rewarded inheritors in the United States? And if work is the thing, then why are indigenous communities forced to fight for tribal fishing rights and other livelihoods? Why are undocumented immigrants and other low-wage workers locked out of the promise of prosperity? And why are Asian Americans, if we are indeed so exemplary, so invisible and so disparate?<\/p>\n

The message of Chua\u2019s book is based on a fairytale, an ahistorical view of the world where the playing field is even. It asks us to forget that the present is built upon the past, that the real and brutal terrain of American enterprise is rife with racial bluffs and potholes forged over centuries.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I first saw the New York Post\u2019s scathing review of Amy Chua\u2019s new book, The Triple Package, the phrase \u201ctriple threat\u201d immediately came to mind. Surely Chua\u2019s PR hawks would\u2019ve warned her off using the word \u201cthreat\u201d to describe select, successful, largely immigrant \u201ccultural groups.\u201d After all, today\u2019s white U.S. workers are rightfully anxious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1045,1076,229,1075,1046],"coauthors":[1370],"class_list":["post-7408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-amy-chua","tag-jed-rubenfeld","tag-model-minority-myth","tag-the-triple-package","tag-tiger-mom"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7408"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10529,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7408\/revisions\/10529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7408"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}