Culture? or Functionalism?

The academic achievements that Asian Americans accomplish are not just because of their cultural values. It is just the behaviors that they follow each day. Stanley Sue and Sumie Okazaki, psychologists, states in Explaining Asian American Academic Achievement ,that through functionalism, Asian Americans are influenced by the opportunities that they are given, which affects not only their educational system, but also their non-educational system as well. Non-educational system includes leaderships, integrity, sports and such. This means that through non-educational system, you develop better educational systems that are needed. Therefore, there is a huge difference between cultures and functionalism, on making a model minority.

This is very significant because there are many stereotypes created through Asian American model minority. However, model minority is not created just because you are a certain race. It is rather the things that you do or believe. I was very interested in what Steinberg (1981) said, which he stated that

“In terms of their European background, Jews were especially well equipped to take advantage of the opportunities they found in America. Had Jews immigrated to an industrial society without industrial skills, as did most other immigrants, their rich cultural heritage would have counted for little. Indeed, a parallel situation exists today in Israel, where Jews immigrating from underdeveloped countries in North Africa typically lack the occupational and educational advantages of the earlier settlers, and despite the fact that all share the same basic religion, the recent immigrants find themselves concentrated at the bottom of Israeli society. Thus, in large measure Jewish success in America was a matter of historical timing. That is to say, there was a fortuitous match between the experience and skills of Jewish immigrants, on the one hand, and the manpower needs and opportunity structures, on the other. It is this remarkable convergence of factors that resulted in an unusual record of success.” (p. 103)

There are many ways you can achieve success, but just cultural heritage alone cannot help gain success.