No, I am not being hyperbolic. In my ideal world, child protective services agents would swoop down on the Chua household and whisk her poor kids off to a foster home while coppers slapped her in cuffs. Amy Chua is not only a sick, demented woman and a terrible mother, she’s a prime example of why East Asian cultures are so hopelessly fucked up. You gwailo idiots with a endless hard-on for Asians, sit down and prepare to be schooled in the moral failings of your precious “model minorities.”
To recap, Chua wrote an essay for the Wall Street Journal entitled “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” in which she makes an inadvertent argument for a new Chinese Exclusion Act. Here’s her bullet list of what she doesn’t let her daughters do:
A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it’s like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I’ve done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:
- attend a sleepover
- have a playdate
- be in a school play
- complain about not being in a school play
- watch TV or play computer games
- choose their own extracurricular activities
- get any grade less than an A
- not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
- play any instrument other than the piano or violin
- not play the piano or violin.
That’s how to raise children the Chinese way – turn them into mindless, socially inept, overworked drones. Deny them the ability to learn skills that might actually be useful and force them to master ones that aren’t. Cripple their social lives and make them incapable of interacting with the opposite sex. While the American style of “self-esteem” boosting helicopter parenting is screwed up in its own way, the line about “all work and no play” apparently doesn’t translate into Mandarin.
I am so sick of ignorant white American dumbshits who talk about how Japanese or Chinese kids excel at acing meaningless exams and getting high academic marks. Those dubious achievements come at a price – they strip the child of any ability to think for himself or challenge the faulty paradigms of the society he lives in. Making your kids “be the No. 1 student” in every subject doesn’t actually make them number one, any more than all the kids in Lake Wobegon could be above average, but it DOES train them to jump through hoops like a seal. That’s the Asian way – train people to become brainless, unthinking automatons incapable of thinking outside of the box.
As an example, take how Chinese and other Asian students dominate classical music conservatories in the U.S. Yet there is not a single notable music composer of Asian extraction that I can think of. You’d think all that youth wasted rehearsing on the piano would imbue at least one of them with the ability to do more than repeat songs that dead European men wrote, but apparently not. Mind you, composing good music is by no means easy. I know I couldn’t write a song. But then again, I didn’t spend four hours a night, five days a week rehearsing Beethoven when I could have been out being a kid. (Yes, I played in my grade school bands. Laugh it up, knuckleheads.)
This is just one expression of a greater East Asian mental pathology – their inability to come up with any social or technological advancements that they didn’t steal from someone else. They can’t even build on what they thieve from others! Asians rule the classical scene at American universities, but they can’t write a single piece of music. Asian societies mimic the nations of the West, but they can’t produce any advancements on their own. The Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans cannot create, only copy; they are incapable of innovating, only imitating. They are creativity parasites, dependent on other societies to keep their own moving forward. If it weren’t for the technological and cultural progress of the West, the “Middle Kingdom” would still be in the Stone Age – which is where they’ll end up anyway.
And here’s the cherry on top of Amy Chua’s story -Â her husband and the father of her children is a white man. Specifically, he’s Jewish. A Jewish-Chinese couple? Good God Almighty, you couldn’t cram more dysfunction and neuroses into that family if you sent the kids to Neverland Ranch. No doubt he’s your typical gelded, henpecked schmuck of the type that American Jewry excels in producing. (Old joke: a Jewish boy comes home to tell his mother he’s landed a role in the school play. She asks him which role. He says, “The Jewish husband.” She sends him away, telling him to “get a role with a speaking part.”) Nebbish Jewish guy plus Chinese dragon lady is a match made in hell.
My prediction? Both Sophia and Louisa will turn to smoking in college to calm the stress of existence, and die of lung cancer before their time. (Think I’m kidding? Pay a visit to your local quad. Half of the cigarette butts littered around the doors are from Asian exchange students, and you can always see huge crowds of them puffing away in unison.) This assumes that one of them doesn’t murder mommy dearest with a hatchet before then.
Reading this sort of story makes me thankful that my parents were neither too lenient nor too strict. Sure, they punished and grounded me whenever I bombed a test or did something stupid, but they knew when enough was enough. I could have been forced into pointless extracurricular activities I didn’t want to do or made to train for a career I wasn’t suited for by parents who wanted to live vicariously through their children, ending with a nervous breakdown at age 25 and a lead sandwich. I may be poorer and less credentialed then the Chua kids, but I’m independent, happy, and free, things they’ll never have because their delusional mother ruined them.
Video from Advocatus Diaboli’s.
{ 125 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow, that family portrait is fucked. Obviously the mother looks like a mean spirited hag, but the girl holding the violin almost looks frightened and the one at the piano looks like she just wants everything to be over as soon as possible.
Nebbish Jewish guy plus Chinese dragon lady is a match made in hell.
That’s a good one. Poor girls.
Forget the kids for a second. I think the better point you made was about the husband. Who lets their kids be treated like this? A man who lets a woman control his family is not a man, IMO.
Sooo… what are the odds tha daughters will eventually become FANATICAL thug chasers as a response to their upbringing vs the odds of them fanatically adhering 110% to their mom’s “values”?
Both are bad options, but which is more likely?
I went to school with Asian and Jewish kids, and they’re BOTH pushed hard to excel academically. I’d say that the husband and wife both share similar values WRT education.
What you say about Asian kids being pushed to get good grades isn’t far from the truth. I had a Tibetan gal on my bus who was scared to death of getting anything lower than an 80 (my HS did % grades till after graduated); she said her dad would kill her if she got anything less in any subject.
That reminds me of a ‘Sixty Minutes’ feature on Asian kids that I saw many years ago. It delved into the question of why Asian kids did so much better than everyone else. I remember one, young lady who was interviewed for this Sixty Minutes piece. She said with all seriousness and gravity that she did NOT want to date until college or after college. I never, ever forgot that…
- watch TV or play computer games
-THis is better than letting your kid’s brain rot by watching Teen Mom 2 and Skins every day. But it will create a socially awkward kid who cannot converse with their peers.
- not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
– again…it’s not a well-rounded kid they want. just a kid who excels in areas deemed impressive/intellectual classically. and again, will stunt the overall development of a kid.
and yes, they wind up popping pills, drinking heavily and/or hating those around them, unable to discern what about life is unfulfilling b/c they are locked into a vault of not questioning what they’ve been taught will make them happy but clearly has not.
My Korean friend has a mother like this. She married a white man, and her children are both tall – which is fine for the son, but not the daughter. The son did well in school and got a good education and job. The daughter, my friend, did okay in school and got a decent job, but she is now a SAHM to two small children. As a teen she grew up hearing how amazing her brother was, but nothing but criticism of herself. Her mother doesn’t even like the way she looks and offered to pay for plastic surgery because one of her eyes is slightly different looking than the other in the epicanthic fold.
My friend has spent her entire adult life away from her mother – far away. In another state for college, even farther away for parenting. She dreads going home for holidays and vacations because her mother is so critical and nothing is ever good enough. Suffice it to say, she is not taking care of her mother in her old age, even though her mother has a chronic disease and could use the help.
There is plenty of dysfunction in Western families, but it tends not to be of this sort. If the kids grow up hating and resenting their parents, not supporting them when they need care and attention, does it matter whether they graduation from Harvard Law #1 in their class?
Underlying this parenting method is intense pride and status jockeying. Is the success of the kids for their own sake or so the parents look good?
On the flip side, Western parents should require more than that their kids are happy and have good self-esteem.
Most people aren’t qualified to raise children in this society.
In this case, Chua is allowed to dictate her children’s early years, and they’ll be enabled to decide what brand of cat-food she’ll be fed, in her last years.
Doesn’t make for an orderly society, but who wants to live in an orderly society?
In this particular instance, miscegenation is the problem, in most cases involving Asian over-achievers, it’s their proximity to Occidentals which causes the problems.
I think you are being a little hard on her, however you do have some good points. I personally wasn’t raised this way at all and don’t raise my own kids this way. I agree it very likely will not lead to well adjusted children, although they might do okay once they move away from home. I also agree with Grerp about this mother’s motivation of pride in her children (which is understandable and normal) and status jockeying. She is probably an extremely competitive person.
I know an asian woman/jewish man couple and he does seem to be henpecked. The father is pretty laid back and the kids act differently around him than they do with their overbearing mother.
Funny that you keep mentioning authors whose ideas I’m a fan of: Julius Evola, now Amy Chua…
You’ve really got it out for orientals this time. Creative parasites? Like Amy Chua, I think you’ve a bit overboard :)
It’s not a matter of being pro or anti-Asian. It’s simply a question of realizing that their fixation with over-achieving is entirely a product of undue contact with the Occidental races.
While you make some good points about this *particular* situation, they don’t translate to the bigger picture…
At least this mom cares about her kids. At least they aren’t likely to be completely malfunctioning as adults. They will likely be contributors to society in some form, rather than leeches.
If ONLY *every* parent had a similar level of concern for their childs future… not that each and every one of them would do it right, but it sure would solve a lot of society’s problems if so many kids weren’t left to the mercy of government schooling and lowest common denominator values.
It’s similar to the saying about democracy: (paraphrase) Democracy is the worste form of government… except for everything else.
Individual freedom, parenting, etc. is scary stuff at the micro-level… you can ALWAYS find examples that you don’t like. So what. It’s still BETTER than the alternatives.
Taking these kids from their parents and placing them at the mercy of the government welfare system, government schools and one-size-fits-all educational system would be FAR WORSE for ALL of us.
To sum it up: The American method of child-rearing produces lazy drones; the Chinese method produces industrious drones. Neither method is good for the children.
Augh,
The cognitive dissonance and in-congruent logic-tracks of Hereditarian Biological Determinist advocates are becoming confusing even for me.
It is either:
[1] Genetically influenced high average IQ inherently produces a more competent and even superior individual — So the ‘traditional’ style of ChineseJapanese/Korean parenting is contributive and nurturing of that higher intelligence. Isn’t this why HBD advocates insist on calling blacks and Hispanics, “Non ASIAN Minorities” — Because East Asians are seen as the ideal allied minority?
or
[2] A lot of subjective and irrational vitriol is being attached to the objective science of “genetics and race” by Hereditarian Biological Determinist advocates.
As Ferdinand Bardamu stated in a previous blog post — The scientific and more… idiotic claims of HBD advocates need to be put under serious scrutiny by opponents and the public alike.
I personally feel that the potential medical applications of ethnically focused gene therapies and pharmaceuticals has much to contribute to humanity — but the myopic obsession of HBD advocates with ethnicity and PSYCHOMETRICS does much to poison the idea of open discourse in the minds of the general public.
I am not optimistic that HBDSphere bloggers will start combing the pages of imminent Medical and Genetic Journals for posting subjects, but I am however optimistic that if HBD goes mainstream, its “Alternative Right” association will be neutered and it will become something more agreeable.
This is all wasted effort on a daughter. There is no such thing as an educated, resourceful and innovative female. The more educated and (un)accomplished they get, the bigger their entitlement complex and ego becomes. If you want to compare a parasitic sex who takes credit for the accomplishments of or takes for granted the technological and civilizational achievements of the other sex when they’re not whining about self-serving concepts of patriarchal oppression then that’s one thing, but don’t cast bigoted (and WRONG) aspersions on the Asian cultures as if you’re intimately familiar with them. Asian cultures, which have outlasted Western ones for 2-3x the length of time WILL rule the world within 50 years, and we’ll be a less chaotic and dysfunctional planet as a result. I welcome a time when Asian cultures have enough foundation to show you their innovative prowess. Oh, it’s coming.
As a member of The Tribe, I was going to take you to task for your remarks about the special burdens those kids carry by being Jewish AND Chinese, but I have to admit I had the very same thoughts myself when I read the WSJ article before I read your post. :-)
The best parents are those who are married to each other and have their kids legitimately. The best parents will push their kids to live up to the kids’ potential, give them hell when they fuck up, and positive reinforcement when they succeed. And the best parents, especially of younger kids, will always let them know they will never be abandoned–even in a joke.
You do know this woman moved away from this style of parenting later on, don’t you?
She’s written a book, and this is an excerpt from it. Many people have said that the reason they chose to highlight this part was to make her seem more evil and controversial so that people would buy it.
You almost always have incisive comments, Ferdinand, except when you jump the gun as you’ve done here, and more than once.
This is truly the stuff of blog legend:
A Jewish-Chinese couple? Good God Almighty, you couldn’t cram more dysfunction and neuroses into that family if you sent the kids to Neverland Ranch. No doubt he’s your typical gelded, henpecked schmuck of the type that American Jewry excels in producing.
I’m going to get criticized for this, but I’ll state the obvious: Japanese displayed creativity in video games, comics and animation (manga and anime), and popular music. I’m not a weaboo — I haven’t watched anime in years, and I’d be the first to admit that much of their popular culture is inane crap. However, the signal-to-noise ratio isn’t any lower there than than here. Although the Japanese didn’t invent any of the genres of music they play, they do have some worthy metal, sludge and doom bands that I’ve heard. Animes like Death Note rival any HBO or Showtime series that I’ve watched. Their contribution to video game entertainment has equaled that of the U.S. I don’t think their creative output in total rivals that of the U.S., but the country does host a population of disenchanted bohemians who produce some novel and interesting media entertainment here and there. However, it comes across as more of a reaction to Japanese culture than something encouraged by it.
I’ll be laughing my ass off when, probably some time in these girls 30′s or so, some intelligent white guys (who never had Chua as their mommy) put the finishing perfecting touches on computer-generated piano and violin music.
Robin Hanson has this post discussing “Insights vs Connections”:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/01/connections-ver.html
The essence is you can’t make a social status conclusion from an “insight” but you can from “connections”. A new musical insight can come from a low social class but extensive knowledge of classical music means you’ve been exposed to the finer things.
Asians are merely taking the lowest risk road. If anything Asians care too much about conformity meaning none of the them will take a risk that may expose them to being below average.
China is raising its children for COMBAT. For a War to wrest economic dominance from the USA.
China expects casualties in its victory. They think it better than the USA’s method of medicating its enfeebled, tenderized spawn with Ritalin and XBox.
You can’t argue with success.
How old is the one holding the violin? Because I can totally picture her slutting it up with a couple of guys. I don’t wanna feel like a pedo or something imagining this.
Anyways, the thing is that none of this guarantees sucess by their kids. I had a good Asian friend who was brought up this way and even got accepted to NYU. He was going to be a doctor. He ended up as manager of a PetCo, last I heard. The whole family was screwed up. His mom hung herself for some reason I can’t remember.
The problem even with the goal of status jockeying is that the people who actually have status and real power in society are less academic and more charismatic. They are the ones that probably did, or would have if they had the initiative, both ‘gym’ and drama.
If you are grooming your kid to be “successful” in terms of status, I’m not sure I’d consider being a cubicle troll anything particularly prestigious. It’s high status among people who mispercieve what high status is.
I am going to submit a radical notion here.
I don’t give a shit what people do in their own homes.
I will go further, advocating for social workers (even in jest) is part of the reason this country is fucked up.
People talk about getting rid of the DOE (either Education or energy, I don’t care which) but what would be better is to get rid of every social worker.
That is and has been the path of tyranny that women and feminism have taken into the personal lives of the people. You aren’t even safe from the facists in your own home.
It is interesting to read cases from the 1800s in this country (that are made fun of today) regarding domestic violence because the reason the State didn’t intrude back then was the notion that IT WOULD NEVER END. The intrusions into the lives of citizens would have no boundries from the state.
How right those backward neaderthals were.
I continue to be troubled with the obsession with grades, even in K-12 education.
Take a look at the CEOs of the top Fortune 500 companies (I am not even counting entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs). Very few did their undergrad from the Ivy League, and I doubt they have 4.0 GPAs and 1600 SATs.
The problem with most Asians (Chinese and Indians), is they think inside the box. They think 4.0 GPA = everything in life spreads brilliantly before them. They think ‘buying’ a house is the pinnacle of existence (yet never question why they have to make mortgage payments on something they are told that they ‘own’).
In fairness, 50% of Silicon Valley companies are founded by Chinese and Indians, BUT, these are usually not the same Chinese and Indians who got 4.0 GPAs from grades 1-12.
No, the people with the perfect report cards end up being PhD engineers in an obscure lab, earning a healthy $200K, but getting nowhere near the status (and attention from women) that they were told they would get from having A+ academic cred.
the picture says it all “I hit the whip on the floor and they jump, play, and dance. aren’t I great”
the smirk especially
China is raising its children for COMBAT. For a War to wrest economic dominance from the USA.
Having a one-child policy is just about the worst way to prepare for such prospective ‘combat’.
China’s average age is already higher than America’s.
The problem with most Asians (Chinese and Indians), is they think inside the box. They think 4.0 GPA = everything in life spreads brilliantly before them. They think ‘buying’ a house is the pinnacle of existence (yet never question why they have to make mortgage payments on something they are told that they ‘own’).
They do. And most of them, by thinking inside the box, slowly plod along to the highest socioeconomic status positions in society. Their method maybe boring but it produces the results. The consequences of the “Abuse” by Mrs Chua will be a high income, high status household and an upper middle class style of living. Not bad for abuse. I note that the girls are svelte and look feminine. I agree that the system tends to produce a drone upper class but that is the eventual consequence of a protestant flavoured meritocracy. Have you checked out the White people? Not much original thinking at the higher levels of society at the moment. The upper middle class (SWPL) are the bastions of political correctness.
I agree that Asian abuse crushes the spirit, unlike Western abuse which crushes both the body and the spirit.
Now, here is some anti-misandry contrarianism :
“Why Chinese Mothers are Superiorâ€
That she allowed the biological father to be present during the childrens’ youth, something that over 50% of American mothers don’t do, in fact does make her a superior mother (admittedly she only has to clear a shamefully low bar).
In America, 41% of babies are born to single mothers, and of the remaining 59%, a fair number will see their home broken by the mother on a ‘no fault’ basis.
Amy Chua, by ensuring a two-parent upbringing, outperformed most American mothers.
So she is superior to most American mothers, but not for the reasons she thinks.
And most of them, by thinking inside the box, slowly plod along to the highest socioeconomic status positions in society.
The Asian model of upbringing is a great way to ensure that their kids earn over $100K, and settle into that bracket (not a bad goal – such a thing is lightyears beyond anything African Americans could ever achieve).
But it also ensures that they don’t achieve anything great.
Like I said, it is true that 50% of all Silicon Valley startups are founded by Chinese and Indians, but these are not the same Chinese and Indians who obeyed their parents and got 4.0s out of fear. Rather these are the Chinese/Indians who actually rebelled against the cookie cutter.
First, if you had a choice, would you take the black parenting model for or the Asian parenting model? You can either answer for yourself, only for minorities, or for all Americans.
Second, how can the Chinese respect us if they don’t respect the way we raise our kids? Any problem we can have (debt, trade) they’ll point back (sometimes correctly, sometimes incorrectly) to the lax way we raise our kids.
The consequences of the “Abuse†by Mrs Chua will be a high income, high status household and an upper middle class style of living.
The same could be said of most mid-level Mexican drug capitalists. I realize this “ends justifies the means” mentality has grand support among the utilitarian-minded movers and shakers in today’s world and it’s like arguing apples and oranges.
We live in an Age of the Asian which sees their unabashed and impersonal consumerism rewarded by a socioeconomic structure which parallels their personal values.
Conformity is key here. Conformity propelled to unnatural levels results in blinding displays of status-oriented materialism.
if you had a choice, would you take the black parenting model for or the Asian parenting model?
Asian, of course.
The problem with Asian parenting can be summarized thusly :
i) Overrating the corelation between GPA and wealth
ii) Overrating the corelation between having a mortgaged home and having high status.
iii) Having a grossly outdated assessment of the corelation between beta-provider bonafides and attractiveness to women.
Let me tell you an anecdote.
Among US-born Indians I grew up with, most became doctors, or went into high finance (like I did). There was one who’s parents did not pressure him. Everyone thought he had low status relative to the rigid assumptions of what status is. But now he is a filmmaker, and not a very successful one. All he has really made is one film. But everyone talks about him rather than his peers who are boring cardiologists.
He didn’t make money from his one film. But he is a filmmaker! More status than a neurosurgeon for much less effort!! He totally beat the status-whoring Asian model at its own game.
OhioStater’s rhetorical question is groundless in that there is obviously no question which is preferable. I’m not Asian but I was raised with many who fit the prototypical “study until your eyes fall out” model. The question here is not black or white (or yellow, so to speak). The question is which ethnic group will next be historically aligned with the mores of its time. IQ will not always, nor has always been, the prime predictor of “success.” Just because we’re all brains around here (even me), doesn’t mean we are that qualified.
I know kids raised this way. They come out fine; generally they’re successful and raise families, in particular if they’re around other people who were raised this way. Most people will never be creative, and so something like this should be the default. Certainly the outcome is better than kids who are raised in the standard Western Way of TV and video games.
As someone else pointed out: Japan is plenty creative. Quite a bit of original physics, art and technology comes from Japan. It’s second to European nations for certain, but they have plenty of innovation over there.
ferdy Cripple their social lives and make them incapable of interacting with the opposite sex.
this makes no sense. Isn’t China home to over 1 billion people. What’s the divorce rate like over there?
attend a sleepover
this is a good thing & I know plenty of people who feel the same way. why let your young son or daughter go someone’s home when you don’t know the people who live there very well. For all you know little lucy’s dad or teenage brother could have a thing for small children.
this post reads like the three little bears theory.
My guess is this mother is repressed sexually who gives out some rare tidbits of passion to her coddled husband, who is probably stuck in a boring marriage.
She does look sort of mean and incapable of warmth :
http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=amy%20chua&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1074&bih=500
I also noticed that there are almost no photos of her with her husband.
Was he cuckolded?
This article is a good reminder that we need to be careful what we wish for. If we went to a “beta” society that lots of beta men and ugly women want, where well-metriced high achievers got all the advantages in mating, you better believe every household would be like this in a race to collect the resume items that secured you a (“good”) socially-qualified spouse.
Since we won’t be going to that society anytime soon, I don’t think we have much to worry about.
chic, she’s imposing Chinese mentality on an American phenomena.
I have no way of verifying, but I seriously doubt sleep-overs are common currency in Southern China.
This touches on why I am also against high-performing non-white immigration. In small numbers they assimilate fine, for the most part. But in numbers larger than a tiny trickle, they bring with them, at best, annoying displays of arrogance and at worst, they become members of a hostile alien elite.
Stephen King’s novel “The Tommyknockers” was inspired by Asian non-creativity and copy cat behavior. Quoting King, “The Tommyknockers are already here…”
PA,
I understand your point of view.
Separately, also note that a prosperous foreign elite is also vulnerable to scapegoating (see Jews under Hitler, and Indians under Idi Amin). This is less likely in the US, of course.
______________________________________
Now, consider two scenarios :
A) Skilled immigrants are allowed to immigrate in much greater numbers, causing the jobs outsourced to Asia to come back here, new taxpayers keeping SS and Medicare funded, and propping up housing prices in the US.
B) Keeping skilled immigrants out results in more and more tech companies outsourcing jobs to Asia where the candidates reside, to the extent that most US tech companies have 90% of the employees in Asia. US tax revenues fall, and housing prices sag further as new immigrant engineers/doctors are no longer around to buy homes.
So which do you prefer, A or B?
I don’t think there is any third option beyond these two in this day and age. A job and a candidate always find each other – the only question is whether the job moves overseas to the candidate, or the candidate immigrates here (and at least pays taxes/spends money here).
_____________________________________
Lastly, a factiod :
Immigrants from India and China (and Russia, for that matter), are only about 70,000 per year per country. It is never more than that due to greencard quotas (see USCIS immigration data). This number is tiny in a country of 310 million, and is dwarfed by the 600,000 illegal Mexicans that come per year.
Mexico is the only country that ever has more than ~70-80K immigrants (legal or otherwise) per year.
tood, the two of you have been over this many times as have I and obs*. as far as PA is concerned, he is more of an American than you, obs or I because he is white.
End of discusion!
* Obsidian having ancestors who’ve been in this country for at least 200 years.
an unmarried man chic, she’s imposing Chinese mentality on an American phenomena.
I get that but I just don’t think sleep overs are that big of deal esp with many American parents now turning away from allowing their kids to sleepover at other people’s homes.
But it also ensures that they don’t achieve anything great.
Yeah, but they’re betting on the odds. Most immigrants to the West are poor on arrival. Poverty to a Vietnamese is different thing to a White trash Westerner. The Vietnamese parent is thinking, kid works hard and gets into med school 100% social and economic uplift, kid works hard and starts his own business 30% chance long term success 1% chance of hitting the big time. The odds favour the school model that’s why it’s chosen.
chic and PA,
To be clear, I am perfectly fine with PA choosing option B, as long as he recognizes that the financial cost of this involves flat/declining home prices for the next 20 years, SS/Medicare insolvency by the 2020s, and half of Silicon Valley (and the corresponding wealth) eventually leaving the US.
If he still wants minimal skilled immigration after acknowledging these tradeoffs, I have no problem with his point of view.
I am not here to say which is right and which is wrong, just to make sure the tradeoffs are well-understood.
Fifth Horseman,
Our jobs aren’t outsourced because there are higher levels of skill abroad. They’re outsourced because it’s much cheaper to do certain thigns in Asia than it is here, due to differences in cost of living and regulatory realities. If 99% of smart Indians come here, work will still be outsourced to the remaining 1% there.
We’ve been through this at Roissy’s over a year ago; we have irrecoincilable differences on this matter. To me, racial homogenity is a non-negotiable, for reasons that I’ve laid out in the past. I also make allowances for the slave-descended black population and a tiny number or “other.” You, on the other hand, subscribe to a model of ever-expanding growth, fueled by a race and culture-blind intake of people above a certain IQ level.
As to the housing bubble and baby boomers and such, I’d rather have a wholesale economic crash (which is by no means an inevitablity becaue it’s a mistake to project current trends n a straight line) but maintain racial integrity, than the other way around.
I think Ferdinand Bardamu is out of track here.
Amy Chua is doing the right things for her children.
She could be stern but children are damaged when their life is too easy.
Her children are the offspring of two high level professionals, so they probably are 2-3 SD at the right of the curve, in the 130-140 range of IQ. Put these in a normal school with normal people and they will be bored to dead, probably teased and harrassed to be too smart. There they will learn to accept the predigested insight of some authority.
Also, she is making them accustomed to work hard and concentrate on what they do.
The real reason to make them learn to play piano or violin (two hand instruments) is not to make great musicians of them, it is to stimulate the brain to grow more interconnected. More interconnected brain make people more intelligent.
NO TV prevent the children to become passive watchers and stay hours to watch TV doing nothing that chatting lazily.
No PC prevent them from being distracted by wasteful activities like going to Facebook and like.
This until they are 14 years old. Then they can be trusted with increasing freedom (but never stop monitoring them).
If they were exposed to the right examples and learned the right lessons, they will be able to recognize good people from dysfunctional.
Confront what Amt Chua did with what people like the Duggard and Arthur Robinson did.
The only difference is that Amy Chua can be used by the leftists of the NYT, where Robinson and Duggard are radiocative.
The only problem could come out if Amy Chua push her children too much compared to their abilities. But it doesn’t appear the case.
At the end, Amy Chua is doing the best thing she can do for her children: giving the them best cards she can. Then it is up to them to use them well.
OK, so you choose option B. No problem.
I don’t care about rehashing irreconcilable differences on race. My main point is that a lot of people want to stop highly-skilled immigration, but then still want their houses to go up in value, and for SS/Medicare to be there for them at the right time.
I claim that it is no longer possible to have both.
It seems your recognize this, and are willing to make the purchase. Honesty is refreshing.
___________________________________
P.S. : The real reason for outsourcing is the cost of healthcare, feminist policies on business, and regulation on US business. The base-salary delta alone (for engineers) between the US and Asia is no longer all that much. Outsourcing is mainly driven by non-salary costs in the US, most of which are imposed by political correctness, leftism, etc.
@grep
the different treatment of the male vs. the female is cultural.
The main reason a woman must be well educate and well educate women are in high demand is that they are the breeding material to have intelligent , well educated children. Their education will reflect in the education of the children.
Better if they are homeschooled and kept out of the carousel high school are. They could be a little inexperienced but better so than experienced sluts.
It seems your recognize this, and are willing to make the purchase.
True dat.
I note that the girls are svelte and look feminine.
The first thing that occurred to me when originally reading Chua’s article is that it’s her parenting philosophy is a good way to raise girls, though taken to an extreme. For a boy, not so much.
A man who lets a woman control his family is not a man, IMO
Also, no normal man woudl let his wife do a blab publicly about their kids like that. Coincidentally, I mentioned on another blog a day or two ago that professional or quasi-professional female writers are a bad bet for marriage.
I will go further, advocating for social workers (even in jest) is part of the reason this country is fucked up.
Agreed.
This mother would really screw up a boy. Because these girls are cute they should do okay in life, although they will probably be neurotic.
@ PA
Wait, wait, wait…
No offense, but from personally following the debate [invective fueled flamewars] at Chateau Roissy on the subject of race, it sometimes seemed as if you were on the RIGHT of Billy Roper:
http://www.extremepolitics.org/2010/01/08/interview-billy-roper-of-the-nationalist-party-of-america/
Theoretically, if Anglo-American Nationalism became the mainstream political paradigm, what concessions would you be willing to make for native black Americans?
I see this claim made regularly in the Hereditarian Biological Determinist blogosphere, but I am not quite sure what it would mean in terms of policy changes.
Ruby, apparently every white American is to the right of Billy Roper (whoever he is) when factoring in his private thoughts and decisions. That’s another way of saying that every white American is a normal person. That will be my lat commetn on this subject to avoid a thrad hijack.
They’ll probably be like a Christy Yamaguchi or Michelle Kwan type. They seem pretty normal.
I just love how both TFH and PA (commenters I respect) , seem to think there is some “real economy” left in the US that this policy or that policy could “save”.
If they’d be carefully following the housing shenanigans and Fed’s shenanigans over the past 2 years they would know that is not the case. Housing prices will collapse in all but the wealthiest areas within the next two years OR there will be hyperinflation. It’s no longer a question of IF this will happen as to when. Right now the world economy is being propped up by both the US and China using various above board and below board “stimulus” measures, some of which are merely excuses to move money into this or that government approved TBTF sector.
OK one more comment, I just read the Billy Roper link. Never heard of him before. Nothing unreasonable whatsoever in the bulleted platform items early in teh interview. He gets a little far-out as he goes on though.
My oft-stated views as to America’s ethnic balance is in favor of pre-1965 proportions: 85% white, 12% slave-descended black, 3% other. Everyone speaks English and almost everyone is cultural or practicing Christian.
In some ways I wished my parents had pushed me more. I do think people that achieve too much too soon do often burn out, though.
I remember once my aunt was complaining to my grandfather that he didn’t push her enough as a child. His reply was, “You want me to tell you what to do, fine, go make your husband dinner.”
seem to think there is some “real economy†left in the US that this policy or that policy could “saveâ€.
If the government got out of the way and shrank in size, the economy would be saved, and do quite well thereafter.
Housing prices will collapse in all but the wealthiest areas within the next two years OR there will be hyperinflation
Actually, neither. Housing will be flat for the next 10-15 years, but there will not be hyperinflation either. The effect of Moore’s Law (which finally comprises a large enough %age of GDP) is curbing inflation while also boosting productivity, but traditional economic stats don’t know how to capture this.
But this is a topic for another time and place.
In Response to PA :
Actually, I agree. Billy Roper’s 16 Point National Reform Strategy is awesome; And his later policy changes are horrifying and dangerous.
Your stated policy changes are arguably agreeable as well. A few questions, though:
[1] Wouldn’t immigration from Anglo-Diaspora and European countries fulfill both the Fifth Horseman’s and your wishes for social, ethnic and economic national balance?
[2] How could Agnostics and Atheists fulfill the requirement to be “culturally Christian” in your Ideal America? Many of your Alternative Right allies are Atheist and Agnostic and would be completely alienated if you demanded traditional adherence from them.
I ask this because, sadly, even after years of forum, blog and even physical correspondence, many Alternative Right pundits have yet to come up with comprehensive, logically sound and UNIQUE political platform.
Just my $0.02.
The child abuse accusation is way over the top. Spend some time around some real abused children and you won’t confuse them with the Chua brood. An mildly unpleasant childhood is not abuse, and there is no need to get the state involved in this kind of thing.
I think you can be agnostic or atheist and still be culturally Christian. I know many people that fall into that category.
TFH:
I like you, but you are wrong, wrong, wrong.
These three links show everything you need to know:
http://market-ticker.org/
http://www.shadowstats.com/
http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/california-budget-2011-financial-abyss-income-down-real-estate-ownership-state-budget/
Garbage in, garbage out. When one no longer can trust the official stats , and when you follow any of the foreclosure cases going on before the courts and note just what rules and laws are being broken/changed and what accounting standards are being bent, one can tell there is far more of an issue than the current political system wishes to address.
The next few years should be VERY interesting.
I,as well as should everyone, refuse to ponder any of this until Gorbachev posts one of his essays.
Clarence,
I like you, but you are wrong, wrong, wrong.
Dude, I work in high finance, and have access to top-tier Bloomberg data. Not that everyone who works in the field is always right, but the links you posted would be considered very novice compared to what I ready daily, plus they don’t really support your prediction except in the most scattergun way.
What will happen :
i) Housing flat for 10-15 years, but no nosedive.
ii) No hyperinflation at all (despite attempts by the Fed to create it).
iii) New tech companies with big valuations and big profits keep springing up (Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, Groupon, EnPhase, etc. etc.), even as the bottom 60% of the workforce suffers. The reasons for this were explained by me, and are for the same reason that the hyperinflation that some expect just doesn’t show up.
TFH:
Unless you can show me that you predicted this current crisis on your blog, and more to the point when it is going to end, I’ll disregard your Bloomberg data as easily as you disregarded my links. You may have far more “sophisticated” stuff available to you (I’m aware of mathematical modeling and I’m extremely dubious using it in economics given that whole parts of economics can’t be considered scientific, but whatever floats your boat)but the Dr. Housing Bubble blog and Denniger are at least able to say they predicted the mortgage crisis.
In any event, I don’t have much respect for high finance.
This of course says nothing about you personally, except that I tend to take your economic predictions with grains of salt. It doesn’t mean I consider your website useless or all your ideas wrong. And it would be interesting to see your take on which one of my two predictions is more likely to come to pass if I am right, and you are wrong.
This is, sir, ignorant racism.
Furthermore, your logic is faulty. You assume that East Asians are a group you can make huge, broad generalizations about, and then you assume further that they are not capable of critical thinking, etc. Amy Chua’s WSJ headline (not written by her) is provocative, but you go to the other extreme: “Chinese mothers are inferior and should have their children taken away from them.” That’s essentially what you’re saying. You know something? Parenting practices differ the world over. Within regions, parenting styles differ. Within cities, parenting styles differ. ( Doubtless, some are better than others; I would agree with you there.) One has to be very careful about making generalizations, and frankly, Chua’s generalizations are more carefully made than your own. In the final analysis, her book markets itself explicitly has her story.
I think when you read this blogpost in 10 years your opinion of the asian american will change as they carve out a bigger space in traditional and non traditional media, which will assist in a reformation of the asian american stereotype as more than just “the model minority”. Not that I take any offense to that label. There are far worse things you can say about a person.
Asian/asian american kids are being pushed to the brink. Opinions will vary on whether this is a good thing or not. Some kids won’t be able to take it. Some will. It’s a percentages game. The parenting style exposes kids to the work and pressure it takes to succeed (economically) in real life early on with the idea that they’ll be better off for it in the long haul, which is a reasonable assessment. AND THEY ARE WILLING TO BE HATED TO DO IT. I put that in emphasis because often times it seems like parents choose the cool route rather than the right one. That happens far less in Asian households, whose parenting style is like a military officer trying to break the will of a child in order to build them into a valued member of society. It’s about the community to them, not the individual. The mothers especially, almost relish in being a martyr.
Whether you like it or not, demographically Asian kids are much likelier to grow up into contributing members of society. How many asians are in jail? How many are on welfare? How many are enormously overweight? How many attend the best colleges (and needed affirmative action to do so)? Make over 100k? Compare it between races…because after all this blogpost is trying to make it one.
As far as creativity is concerned, just look at what their parents are pushing them towards excelling. Their creativity isn’t readily apparent because they’re not trained from the crib to be actors, or R&B singers, or writers, or big ballin athletes. They could be on the cutting edge of medicine, or scientific research, or space exploration, and you wouldn’t know because that shit isn’t published on the NY times. It’s in the annals of academic research that no one cares to dust off except for the people that work in those fields. I will say though, that as time passes by this idea will be outdated as asians start achieving more mainstream and commercial success in more “creative” fields. I believe Far East Movement holds the number one song in America right now. First Asian American group to do that…won’t be the last.
Of course, when you apply this parenting philosophy against the backdrop of modern america, you get a bunch of asian chicks getting pissed off at how they’re being ridiculed at home and being treated less favorably than their brothers, who are valued more in Asian culture. It’s natural to want to rebel against such a pressure packed environment. And a lot decide that dating white guys is a good way to stick it to their family. Or if they’re really really pissed and are really rebellious…black guys. That’s rare though…they’re probably on the fast track to porn. (This is the cliff notes version of the phenomenon.)
ALSO, AM I THE ONLY ONE THAT NOTICES THAT THESE GIRLS ARE GONNA BE CERTIFIED BABES IN 8 YEARS? MIXED ASIANS ARE THE SHIZZ!!!
“If we went to a “beta†society that lots of beta men and ugly women want”
If was this society that got us out of living in grass huts, and hunting for our food.
FB,
Some more material for you..
–
Jared Loughner’s Scary Online Postings Discuss Rape, Rejection
http://jezebel.com/5731559/jared-loughners-scary-online-postings-discuss-rape-rejection
Tucson shooter Jared Loughner’s postings on online gaming forums reveal a disappointment with life that turned violent and misogynist.
Clarence :
Unless you can show me that you predicted this current crisis on your blog, and more to the point when it is going to end,
Sure, that’s easy.
Housing bubble + 20-year flatline predicted way back in April 2006 (back when it was social heresy to claim that houses could drop in price) :
http://www.singularity2050.com/2006/04/the_housing_bub.html
Stock market bottom level of Dow 6500 predicted 6 months before the fact (and several days before the big Oct 2008 plunge) :
http://www.singularity2050.com/2008/10/a-history-of-stock-market-bottoms.html
Form of economic recovery (jobs level, duration, UE rate, etc.), predicted in April 2009 :
http://www.singularity2050.com/2009/04/the-form-of-economic-recovery.html
You won’t find many other places with this many accurate predictions.
Your links don’t even make the point you are seeking to make – articles of that calibre could be pulled off of the cnbc or cnnfn website headlines tomorrow.
Clarence : Important comment in moderation (i.e. proof of accurate predictions).
Nobuo Uematsu, if only because I am a utter Final Fantasy nerd (or was, they’ve screwed us all over at this point.) The piano version of “Those Who Fight Further” is fricken incredible, and “One Winged Angel” always pleases. So, there’s your composer.
“As an example, take how Chinese and other Asian students dominate classical music conservatories in the U.S. Yet there is not a single notable music composer of Asian extraction that I can think of.”
Insert white women and they have a worse case.
I don’t know about composing but these guys are awesome:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoMIOiD_-es
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYjYlfblm1w
Hi Ferdi,
Happy New Year and all that, and yea, I’ve heard about Ms. Chua and agree with your analysis and in particular, your commentary about the Asianphiles among us. Speaking of which, I did a bit of Asian sacred cow skewering myself; check it out all out here:
http://sagatsays.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/thailand-cracks-down-on-its-africans/
Aaannd…
I’m happy to report that The Obsidian Files will be making a triumphant return on the morrow! Stay tuned for the official announcement…
O.
Hey guys, Jews aren’t white. They are semitic. They may happen to have skin the same color as people of European descent (whites), but they are racially distinct. Like Australian Aborigines and Negroes – similar skin and hair, but genetic distance studies confirm that of the major races on Earth they are actually the LEAST related to each other.
Your guys “hamster wheel” is on overdrive. When you’re talking about blacks/hispanics, you say they have lower iq and ask how many are doctors, engineers, have successful jobs, etc. Now about asians (who have all of these), you denigrate that by saying oh, but success isn’t measured by having a good job in a cubicle, they’re not as creative, they’re not good socially etc. You guys are the Holden Caufield of the blog world.
goldenfetus,
Fine, except the “Jews aren’t white because they’re Semitic” WN canard is pretty much a judgement call, isn’t it? And your “Africans vs. Abos” analogy doesn’t work, because it suggests there is a TREMENDOUS genetic distance between “Semites” and Europeans, and that any similarity between Middle Easterners and Europeans is the result of paralell evolution. Neither of these is true. Semites are both part of the larger “caucasian” phenotype and fall into the same “western Eurasian” group of genotypes as Europeans.
Jews DO stand out genetically from their host countries, it’s true, but that’s largely a consequence of well, inbreeding. Any large somewhat inbred population tends to be genetically distinct when compared to other groups–Iceland and Sardinia are two other examples, European but genetically distinct (more than the Jews themselves in the Sardinians case).
But eh, who cares. It doesn’t help much when they remain the cheerleaders for virtually every Left-wing brain fart in existence, including mass immigration, to any Right-wing brain fart that benefits them (corporate welfare or anything to do with Israel).
But back to the point of this thread: God, if these girls decide to rebel in college, there’s going to be hell to pay. I can see them turning into absolute hypersluts once out of mommy’s grip (I’m not going to bother with the “chasing Alpha bad boys” thing, since I’ve seen the dreaded “slut-out” happen too many times among formerly repressed college chicks. They’re usually none too-particular about their sex partners. It’s too bad Whiskey never ran into any of these types of girls). They may even grow up to be worse, like that Washington-D.C. area Asian wunderkind-turned-escort, Jessica Cutler.
Ummmm… NOT when you have over 1.3 BILLION heterogeneous people pumping out kids. The Chinese are not savages like Indians are.
Given what we know about genetics, you have to wonder if what Chua is doing will make any difference at all.
“Parental personality cannot have any measurable effect on child personality (except of course via genetics). Parenting style (to the extent it is consistent across all children) cannot have any measurable effect on child personality…
How parents run the family will naturally shape relationships and behavior between members of that household. The point is that this does not generalize to the adult personality with which the offspring addresses the rest of the world…
Pretty much all evidence of similarity between parents and children, or of parenting behavior and behavior in the offspring once grown up, can easily be explained in this way.”
(from Personality by Daniel Nettle – chapter 8)
So is her behavior fro the benefit of her children or for the benefit of herself? Research seems to point to the latter.
NOT when you have over 1.3 BILLION heterogeneous people pumping out kids.
Yawn….One child policy equals ‘pumping’? Yeaaah. They can’t even take over Taiwan.
The Chinese are not savages like Indians are.
Actually, they are worse. They can’t evolve to democracy, and Mao massacred 50M of his own people – something that did not happen in India. China was also poorer than India until from 5000BC until 1993 AD.
I know the Chinese scare you TFH, just keep plugging away at that CS career for Dell (New Dell? New Dellhi?) until your USA citizenship papers arrive.
Congrats to Mr. Mao offing 50 Million Chinese; Indians can’t even off 50 Chinese. Hell, Indians can’t even prosecute Muslim Mumbai Bombay Bombers to get a 30 day conviction.
This leaves you wondering: are Mongol moms better than Chinese moms?
Proper method of raising children is ancient chinese secret.
Noob,
I’m not a geneticist, but I don’t believe it’s a judgement call or a canard. For whatever value you put on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews
This suggests that the Ashkenazi Jews are perhaps as much 5%-23% European (white), depending on which study you believe. Either way, genetic studies make it clear they originated in the middle east, and my perception – faulty as it may be – is that they are more closely related to Arabs than whites. I don’t consider them to be phenotypically caucasian, either – I just consider most people to be ignorant of the difference because they buy the lie that “race equals skin color”. Which is why I pointed out the Negro/Aborigine example.
I don’t consider them to be phenotypically caucasian,
You might want to look up what the official definition of ‘Caucasian’ is.
As Dr. Zaius said to George Taylor : “You may not like what you find.”
I cannot get a job because I “don’t have social skills”.
Fifth Horseman, Firepower has proven himself around the blogosphere to be a total fucking idiot trying to do some weird stand up comedy career via internet blog comments. Stop engaging him please. It only encourages his dumbassery and makes him comment more.
J
I apologize
for interfering with
our movement’s GREAT strides of progress.
Fifth Horseman: I’m not emotionally invested in believing Jews are not white/caucasian. What it comes down to is the equivocation allowed by having European races identified by a skin color that is shared by non-Europeans. Yes, the Ashkenazi Jews have white skin, but they are genetically distinct from Europeans.
I started reading your post because I thought I agreed with you… and then I had to stop because you’re hatred is so intense I thought it might stain my new shirt black through the computer screen. While you may have a point I will never know it. This blog does not shout anything about love, that’s for sure.
My own two cents is that China DID invent a staggering amount of stuff: gunpowder, printing, paper money, the compass, but never did anything with it because technology threatened social stability.
When China or other Asian societies are made to choose between disruptive but advantageous technology and society being stable, they choose stability every time.
Look at Chua. She feels her kids have musical talent. You can’t throw a stick and not hit pretty young Asian women playing piano or violin in classical music. BUT … there’s none playing jazz piano, or saxophone, or trumpet, or trombone. Jazz is at least as lucrative as Classical, just as beautiful, just as G-loaded, and has less competition. She could have had the next Diana Krall, or Marsalis brothers (as sisters), and instead did “me-too” musical accomplishments.
My problem with Chua is not discipline (keep media and bad peers away) so much as being rigid and social status mongering, instead of imaginative. Kids work far harder at stuff they actually like. Maybe one daughter would have liked to be “cool” and play the sax or trumpet in jazz ensembles. Or wanted to sing Opera. Or whatever.
The two worst things about American childhood is the media (full of toxic Teen Mom examples) and stupid peers (“hey lets get wasted!”) So that I don’t fault. Just the rigidity of doing what everyone else among Asian emigres does.
THANK u!
sheesh. she says she once even threatened to burn the piano-playing daughter’s stuffed animals if she didn’t play some piece correctly.
that’s fucked up.
firepower@
“China is raising its children for COMBAT. For a War to wrest economic dominance from the USA.
China expects casualties in its victory. “
Most relevant remark anyone’s made on this thread.
One has to keep one’s eye on the ball, what is relevant and important in a civilization’s drive towards hegemony and domination of its sphere?
The sort of parenting Amy describes and the education policies of the culture she hails from, echo the sorts of cultural changes that occured in Prussia almost 200 years ago as Prussia sought to transform itself, essentially, from a mideval 3rd world like principality into a dominant world power.
The structural changes created what became the hyper-disciplined modern germany of the late 19th-mid 20th century, the seeds of which only took a couple of generations to nurture.
I’m not exactly comparing China to Germany, that would be like comparing cherries to grapes, I’m trying to point at something. These were top down policies influencing the common and popular culture, top down pushed ideas on child rearing, education, discipline, etc. The Chinese govt has a history of encouraging by top down fiat child rearing and education policies dedicated at producing certain types of workers, from manual workers, to information workers.
An empire encourages the sort of child rearing and education practices it needs to produce the soldiers it needs, be they economic or commercial or military soldiers.
Whether that empire’s experiments become a success is a matter of watching history, but it’s best to observe it for what it is.
Me, I wouldn’t sire or raise children with someone with Amy Chua’s mindset – or if I did I would make sure I was the dominant influence and not ceed power to her.
However someone who knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that their children would be at the frontlines of terrible conflict, and who wanted their sires to win beyond any cost, and who saw winning in life’s conflicts as more important than being emotionally healthy and well balanced, would make different choices.
@hbd chick
“she says she once even threatened to burn the piano-playing daughter’s stuffed animals if she didn’t play some piece correctly.”
I like the style, for sure.
@whiskey
I don’t find the NE Asians lacking imagination or talent.
in China the Emperor (and the bureaucrats/eunuchs) dominated. And they repressed and stopped the economic development of new industries. For the Powers-To-Be a new industry, with a different mindset and outlook is a threat. It is easier to legislate it away than compete. Europe, with its fragmentation in multiple reigns, could not do the same, because any king shutting down an industry (because the bourgeois would become a nuisance) would lose his tax revenues and would lose his kingdom to his neighbors.
So Europeans imported th spectacles and the paper in the XI-XII century (from China) and in few decades they were full fledged industries. In China the remained curiosities.
It would be interesting to compare the Japaneses born in Brazil with the Japaneses born in the US and Japan.
Ditto for the Chinese.
goldenfetus @
Define “europeans” genetically. There are many racial stocks in Eurasia, with varying geographic dispersions throughout both Europe itself and Asia. I think often people have trouble in their mind wrapping their heads around the fact that people, throughout history, fuck, have fucked, do fuck, somewhat more indiscriminately than official history allows or wishes to admit.
Both in matters of rape and war, and sexual slavery and concubinage – as well as in just everyday marriage, adultury, youthful promiscuity, prostitution, whatever the gamut runs. Genetics notwithstanding there are a huge number o w ‘white’ people in Syria who look British or Norman, blond, pasty white with ruddy faces when they get cold, hands, face, nose, etc. There are a large number of Irish who are not pale, nor red headed, but swarthier in hue, with dark hair, and shorter.
There are a large number of Ashkenazi Jews who are blond at the roots, with blue eyes. Not a majority, but large enough to make one wonder about a few things.
I’m not an anthropologist, I don’t pretend to be one, anyone reading this is free to take my opinions, leave them, or roll them into a sharp point and sit on them – or for that matter, play darts with them.
Ashkenazi European Jews are ‘white’ from where I sit, and doubtless most of the rest of the world agrees on this point, most Westerners in their day to day interactions accept Jews as white.
Construing them as either white or not-white, of course, has ideological ramifications. But then again so does the notion of ‘white’ itself which ignore the immense genetic and racial variation of Europe herself. Anyone with half an eye can tell the difference between an Albanian, a Sicilian, Germans from various regions (and they really do look different), various Irish types and so on. The definition of ‘white’ has shifted in history, often in ways convenient to those doing the defining. ‘White’ is diverse, unless one really has an unspoken agenda in considering ‘pure white’ to essentially be pure Nordic, but even here when you look at the genetics and history, what the hell does this mean. There is immense genetic variation in Iceland, in Denmark.
From where I sit, looking at Ashkenazis genetically, they sure do look a lot like certain people native to eastern Europe. Genetically.
I believe Ashkenazi Jews are far more genetically diverse than the general discourse admits in public, many without a doubt share genetic haplogroups that are prevalent throughout Europe, a significant eastern Mediterranean component doubtless, but also haplogroups common amongst Slavs, or Baltics.
R1a1 is found in any Ashkenazim individuals, which indicates some shared ancestry with, well, groups of people spread all the way from India to bloody Norway. Skythians, Poles, Russians, etc.
I also believe than many ‘Europeans’ are far more genetically diverse than one would imagine, as many people are discovering with the increasing popularity of DNA testing.
Ashkenazi genetics is diverse and points to many lineages contributing to their present day population, significant admixture with neighboring non-Jewish populations.
Frankly people fuck, irrespective of their social or religious taboos, and when they do they produce babies often enough, and those babies often enough are raised as one of the tribe of the father, whether the father suspects, or not, he’s raising a bastard. Or of the tribe and family of the mother, as the social structure in place may or may not dictate.
This suggests an explanation as to why one Russian friend of mine has a cousin who is blond and looks rather Nordic, and another who looks a bit like Amy Winehouse. Or why one Jewish girl I used to know looked like a Lebanese Arab and her mother looked very, very, Slavic.
Ashkenazis are a very mixed people, and they are very ‘european’. I suspect more ‘european’ than not. Culturally, when compared to Mizrahi or other ‘eastern’ Jews their value systems, mores, and cultures are more ‘european’ than Asiatic.
Now whether ‘europa’ wants to accept them as her children is another matter, but from where I’m looking Ashkenazis are far more European in any significant way, than not.
Of course that brings up the difficult problem of ‘what is european’ since ‘europe’ is far from monolithic, it’s actually quite diverse, as diverse as Asia, monoculture leveling attempts notwithstanding…
My private conversations with Russian Jewish friends suggest to me there is a good deal of implicit knowledge of the varied genetic origins of their people.
Anyway, as Noob points out, ‘Semites’ (an idiotic description) are by definition Caucasoids. (another idiotic anthropological designation but anyway)
I suspect few people in the world even care about truth in matters of population genetics, they really only care about sustaining their own national myths and sense of being a chosen or exceptional people, in some way shape or form.
The frauds and cons possible here are endless… and quite profitable for those either in on them, or able to ride the wave..
Caucasoids are destroying themselves with silly battles between Jews, Arabs, and Europeans.
This is 100% true. Can’t stand the Asians at my school.
They’re also more likely to cheat. “Oh, let me see your homework! I couldn’t study for a test and now I have to copy off you because my dad will kill me!” They’re leaches, you never want to have an Asian lab partner, they’ll never do the work and take all the credit.
And they are some of the most envious people you will ever meet.
UGH.
I know, anecdotal shit, but I don’t care. It’s the truth.
“Yet there is not a single notable music composer of Asian extraction that I can think of.”
Joe Hisaishi. Kenji Kawai. Ryuichi Sakamoto. Nobuo Uematsu. Well, you probably didn’t even know that East Asian countries have music industries.
“This is just one expression of a greater East Asian mental pathology – their inability to come up with any social or technological advancements that they didn’t steal from someone else. They can’t even build on what they thieve from others! Asian societies mimic the nations of the West, but they can’t produce any advancements on their own.”
Now you’re not even trying, but just making things up at random. Or maybe you really are so ignorant that you believe this.
“The Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans cannot create, only copy; they are incapable of innovating, only imitating. They are creativity parasites, dependent on other societies to keep their own moving forward.”
And you base this entirely on what China does? Oh, wait, I forgot: all Asians countries are the same.
In short, you’re an ignorant and uneducated racist.
Way to come off as a complete racist.
The woman, Amy Chua, has moved away from that parenting when the youngest smashed a glass at a cafe in public and screamed she didn’t want to be Chinese and hated her mother and pretty much her whole life. Chua, while she has like inevitably scarred her children for life, at least recognized her failings prior to that point and has sense turned away from her past mistakes.
While it doesn’t excuse her, give that credit where it is due.
That said, your blatant trashing of every Asian culture is disgusting. You are as overzealous and nauseating as much of Chua’s article discussing her previous parenting beliefs. If you don’t believe that these cultures are capable of creativity then you are one ignorant bastard. I recommend a trip to a library or a few classes at your local community college to educate you on the Eastern cultures, religions and histories. (I has a class that discussed the above when I was in 6th grade. Where does that leave you?)
And to follow it up, you can do a quick online search. Guess what? For starters, Japanese and Korean music are enjoying a massive popularity explosion in America, at least, and in some cases, around the world. Japanese and Korean animation novels/comic books, are sold in book stores. Each story is mostly quite different. In Japanese culture, particularly, it is ripe with a distinct cultural creativity and beauty.
Lastly, hello, not every single Asian person is a tyrant like Chua. I’ve known plenty of psycho “Western” parents who quite simply were downright emotionally and verbally abusive of their child. To blame it all completely on the fact that Chua, and others like her from Asian countries, are Asian truly proves what a narrow-minded, racist, ignorant and pathetic person you are.
(Oh, and FYI, just as not every Asian country and culture is the same, every Asian person is not the same. EVERY PERSON, regardless of race, is a person in their own right and thus different. Just in case you were still confused and believed that all Asians came from the same cookie cutter mold.)
Ferdinand. You say that your parents were neither lenient nor strict – but you turned out stupid, biased, racist and full of shit. You say you’re independent, happy, and free – but you’re mean-spirited, bitter, angry and frustrated.
Get a job asshole.
Chua’s maniacal child-rearing can be summed up quite easily.
What female from a stringent Chinese family would dare marry outside of her own culture? Clearly Chua is over-compensating for marrying a non-Asian by raising her kids in an ultra-strict Chinese fashion. I guess this is Amy’s way of getting Mommy’s approval. “Look Ma, my kids are half-Chinese, but we are raising them the old country way”
Predictably we see those who can not think for themselves, ranting about racism and spouting the usual platitudes. Very banal stuff.
If you think racist behavior is wrong, I suggest you stay well away from China and Asia generally. Rather than impressing us with your inclusive, worldly, educated attitudes, you are demonstrating your ignorance. Discrimination on the basis of race is a reality around the world. The Chinese are a classic example. Inadvertently you have alienated the majority of the planet, when you rant and puff about racism (The very thing you make a big show of not doing). What you’re really objecting to is freedom of speech.
Sure he may have gone too far in the article, but valid points are made. My partner is Chinese and her discriminatory attitudes are very confronting. But I love her and except she views the world from a different cultural context.
Racism is commonplace in the world… and so what? You’re not making an argument, you’re stating the obvious.
According to your logic, objecting to something someone says is an attack against freedom of speech. Since you also object to what others have said, you also are attacking freedom of speech. But this is a moot point since you don’t understand what freedom of speech means anyway.
Hey Chinese mothers are atleast less extreme than Japanese mothers who go to even bizarre lengths
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoiku_mama
http://www.roadjunky.com/romancepage/417/japan-kinky-sex-culture
There is also strong evidence of widespread incest in Japan with the majority of cases involving mothers and sons. As the Japanese boy matures into puberty the mother worries that his sex drive may distract him from his studies and so a few take it upon themselves to provide relief themselves.
(ref. Michio Kitahara, “Incest-Japanese Style.â€)
The latter is most likely urban legend but seriously Japanese education system is among the most fucked up in the world.Say what you want about the American system(dysfunctional as it is) ,at least in America ,students dont go around cramming worthless drivel at the end of the high school year to pass an examination for the glory of being a salaryman!
Those examinations literally can make or break a students life.Thankfull American students have far more options.
I find Indian mothers to be far more oppressive.For gods sake, we used to go to school from 9 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon and then again were forced to attend private tuitions for from 6 to 9 in the evening learning the same shit that we were supposed to learn in school but the teacher didnt want to impart the knowledge as he/she(usually the latter) would make more money in private tuitions.Please remember that everytime someone brings up the glorious Indian education system!!
I always admired the American system a lot more as it is so much more rounded with sports, music, debate and various other extra curicular activities ala Rushmore .However also like the lead character in Rushmore ,academic performance often suffers!Of course the key is ,as in so many other things, to find a balance.
man these white people making comments are pussies
Asians are not creative parasites. Do your research on Chinese and Japanese culture.
That said, I agree that Amy Chua’s theories are ridiculous. However, I’ve read an article about Chinese parenting on National Geographic. Chinese parents still came off stricter than Americans, but by no means that extreme. Personally, I think that woman is either a) an individual case, or b) a hugely successful troll (no, seriously). This is just my opinion, though.
Now I know where I can find all the losers. If your mothers were half as serious about raising all of you as Chua then you would have a job and doing something productive. I guess she’s paying the price by still keeping you in her home. Don’t you all wish she would have stopped living her high school over while you were growing up on ritalin? I would rather take one Chua daughter than 500 of you.
Ferdinand, you are a fucktard who really needed a tiger mom to set you straight? You will shit in your pants at her presence you pussie bitch.
Obviously most of the people making comments have never actually read the book.
If you had, you would have realized that Amy Chua raises her daughters with the compassion, strength, and love only a devoted mother and wife can. This story is not about her strict parenting methods, but the story of one moms struggle to help her incredibly talented children reach their full potential, the unconditional love in a family, and the happiness found in a pet dog.
The people writing these comments sound completely stupid.
In the book, Amy Chua steps down from her questionable parenting ways, and lets her daughter Lulu play tennis. While you might say that she is socially depriving her children, she is not. She once let her daughter go to a sleepover. Sophia had a terrible time, was crying, and never wanted to have another one.
Amy Chua was not cold and heartless. She had to struggle through the pain of her children not always liking her, her sister’s AND mother in law’s leukemia, her younger sisters down syndrome, and just raising kids. I am utterly disgusted at the people who attack their family for no reason whatsoever, except for the excerpts from the Wall Street Journal.
If you happened to read anything written by the daughters, they say honestly and truthfully how much they love their mother, and how they plan on raising their children the “Chinese Way.”
Their family was viciously attacked by the media when her book came out. But they struggled through it and are stronger because of it. You have no right to say those things about their family. You don’t know them.
“Their family was viciously attacked by the media when her book came out. But they struggled through it and are stronger because of it”
That’s why in every subsequent interview she’s backpedaled, or claimed her book is satire, right?
http://jadeluckclub.com/gratuitous-promotion-tiger-mom-amy-chua/
Why is the art of music required to endure the ill-informed antics of such inartistic imbeciles as Amy Chua? Her lust for fame as an old-fashioned stage mother of either a famous violinist (yet another mechanical Sarah Chang?) or a famous pianist (yet another mechanical Lang Lang?) shines through what she perceives as devotion to the cultivation of the cultural sensitivities of her two unfortunate daughters.
Daughter Lulu at age 7 is unable to play compound rhythms from Jacques Ibert with both hands coordinated? Leonard Bernstein couldn’t conduct this at age 50! And he isn’t the only musician of achievement with this-or-that shortcoming. We all have our closets with doors that are not always fully opened.
And why all this Chinese obsession unthinkingly dumped on violin and piano? What do the parents with such insistence know of violin and piano repertoire? Further, what do they know of the great body of literature for flute? For French horn? For organ? For trumpet? Usually, nothing!
For pressure-driven (not professionally-driven!) parents like Amy Chua their children, with few exceptions, will remain little more than mechanical sidebars to the core of classical music as it’s practiced by musicians with a humanistic foundation.
Professor Chua better be socking away a hefty psychoreserve fund in preparation for the care and feeding of her two little lambs once it becomes clear to them both just how empty and ill-defined with pseudo-thorough grounding their emphasis has been on so-called achievement.
Read more about this widespread, continuing problem in Forbidden Childhood (N.Y., 1957) by Ruth Slenczynska.
______________________
André M. Smith, Bach Mus, Mas Sci (Juilliard)
Diploma (Lenox Hill Hospital School of Respiratory Therapy)
Postgraduate studies in Human and Comparative Anatomy (Columbia University)
Formerly Bass Trombonist
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York,
Leopold Stokowski’s American Symphony Orchestra (Carnegie Hall),
The Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, etc.
Some words penned in response to the thoughts of a student writing elsewhere . . .
I would not normally lock horns and try to best a junior in high school; I’m hoping you do not read my words here as such, for they are meant for you only as a provocation to further thought to your ideas well-presented.
You’ve written that you “used to get frustrated when I had to practice violin and I really didn’t want to . . .” Do I read correctly that you no longer “get frustrated?” If so, that’s a remarkable advancement. As a musician myself I want to ask you, Why do you practice violin and not another instrument of your choosing less frustrating, for examples, flute, harpsichord, tuba, or tabla. There is a vast – and I do mean vast! – repertoire for each of those, and many other, instruments that could challenge you unendingly for the remainder of your life. Instead of spending hours at your chosen instrument (whichever it may be) in the drudgery of isolated practice, why not spend more of your time in practice with music ensembles of various kinds. This can yield a discipline and advancement of a uniquely different kind. If you are studying formally with a violin teacher I’m quite sure he will confirm the well-founded idea that, as a performer, playing an instrument is one kind of challenge but playing an instrument WITH PEOPLE is significantly more so. A musician in isolation is a musician limited. And herein lays one, only one, of the transparent contradictions of the way Professor Chua has taught her two daughters to approach their instruments; opportunistically solely for unartistic purposes.
A fundamental flaw in the approach to music of Amy Chua – an amusical hack with no known talent for an art of any kind! – is that she has decided it’s perfectly acceptable to pervert one of the greater of the fine arts for use in ulterior purposes. In the example of the Chua family, so-so slogging through masterpieces of music was used to impress others when applying for admission to university. (Would Professor Chua dare to advocate this openly with religion, physics, good grammar, or issues of national interest?) The whole idea that her elder daughter, Sophia, played a debut recital in Carnegie Hall is an early example of the pervasive blight of résumé bloat on which social climbers like Amy Chua have advanced themselves; a blight to which the Chua daughters were introduced early by two parents who know well how to tweak the system to gain unearned personal advantage.
Carnegie Hall, http://www.carnegiehall.org/history/, includes three auditoria in its building: Stern Auditorium http://www.carnegiehall.org/information/stern-auditorium-perelman-stage/, Zankel Hall http://www.gotickets.com/venues/ny/zankel_hall_at_carnegie_hall.php, and Weill Recital Hall http://www.carnegiehall.org/Information/Weill-Recital-Hall/. It was in Weill that Sophia performed as only one among a cattle-call string of young pianists that day. Do you doubt what I write here? Compare the architectural design,
http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/RV-AB160_chau_i_G_20110107132345.jpg, behind Sophia with that of the architectural design at the rear of the stage in http://www.carnegiehall.org/information/stern-auditorium-perelman-stage/. Having been a performer, myself, in both Stern and Weill over many years you have my assurance that Sophia performed her piece in Weill. Debut recital in Carnegie Hall! Indeed!
You have written about your parents that they are “less extreme than Chua I’ll admit, but a lot of her memoir is satire and exaggeration.” Don’t be deceived by quick-change artist Professor Chua. She has spent more than one year trying to convince readers of her text that she is some kind of nouveau belles-lettrist who did no more than exercise a writer’s license to engage her readers. In truth she meant what she wrote until her hypocritical posturing as an authentic Chinese mother — born in Illinois to a Filipino father, neither speaks Chinese nor writes Chinese script — came back to haunt her with a ferocity that caused this self-styled Tiger Mother to recoil into improvised doublespeak. Amy Chua is a complete fake!
All young musicians should be given only two music instrument choices to pursue in life, Violin or Piano. All else is useless waste. Any adult giving such advice is one woefully ill-informed. As a bass trombonist, my instrument has been my first class ticket from person-to-person, school-to-school, city-to-city, studio-to-studio, and stage-to-stage. With the kinds of preparations the Chua daughters were given will they ever perform, as I have, with Richard Tucker, Birgit Nilsson, Roberta Peters, Herbert von Karajan, Leopold Stokowski, and the two-thirds of The New York Philharmonic who were my schoolmates for five years in Juilliard? Forget it!
Mercifully, I was never besieged with a Tiger Mother or Tiger Anything to motivate me. Yes, I too sometimes was bored with scales and chords. Yes, sometimes my imagined future seemed an unattainable fantasy. Yes, I did sometimes fall flat on my face in public performance (as did my teachers before me and also their teachers before them). Life went on and continues to do so.
You’ve written that “At this point (as a Junior in high school) about 35% of the pressure to do well comes from my parents and the other 65% is complete self-motivation.” From the subtlety of your writing I suspect you’re cutting yourself short with that 65%. You appear to be much more highly motivated than your objective perspective about yourself can show you at this early time.
The violin? I advise you to seriously reëvaluate what you believe is your relationship to any instrument of your choice; if, indeed, the violin has been your choice and not that of someone else. If the violin has been your choice, stay with it through all the coming stormy weather of doubt and seeming incompetence. If it is not, drop it in preference to another more to your liking and its fitness for your physicality. (If it’s the tuba, tell your parents that someone other than I recommended it!)
Good Luck!
Cordially,
André M. Smith, Bach Mus, Mas Sci (Juilliard)
Diploma (Lenox Hill Hospital School of Respiratory Therapy)
Postgraduate studies in Human and Comparative Anatomy (Columbia University)
Formerly Bass Trombonist
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York,
Leopold Stokowski’s American Symphony Orchestra (Carnegie Hall),
The Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, etc.
For all my focus on this subject I think the following text, written from the trenches on the other side of The Pacific, should be required reading everywhere else; perhaps even over there.
Cordially,
André M. Smith, Bach Mus, Mas Sci (Juilliard)
Diploma (Lenox Hill Hospital School of Respiratory Therapy)
Postgraduate studies in Human and Comparative Anatomy (Columbia University)
Formerly Bass Trombonist
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York,
Leopold Stokowski’s American Symphony Orchestra (Carnegie Hall),
The Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, etc.
__________________________
Chinese Mom: American ‘Tiger Mother’ clueless about real Chinese parenting
The “Chinese” parenting style advocated by Asian-American author Amy Chua is no longer popular among Chinese mothers
By Helen He 20 January, 2011
http://www.cnngo.com/shanghai/life/helen-he-dont-demonize-chinese-mothers-545975
As a post-1980s mother, I, like many other young moms in China, often seek parenting advice from various channels and never miss reading the latest popular books on parenting.
Recently, a book titled “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” written by Yale university professor Amy Chua on the parenting experience of a Chinese mother, stirred up a controversy in the West after an excerpt from the book was printed in the Wall Street Journal.
I’m a born-and-bred Shanghainese mother, not that proficient in English, so I wasn’t able to read Amy Chua’s entire work. But I did have friends translate a book excerpt printed in the Wall Street Journal for me.
The author claims that mothers, by being strict and narrowminded and focusing only on results, are able to nurture child geniuses.
This is clearly a utilitarian take on parenting and I was deeply astounded that Chua lauds this as a forte of Chinese mothers.
I only want to say: Please don’t demonize Chinese mothers.
Amy Chua’s claims are misleading because Chinese-American women cannot be said to represent mothers in mainland China, and thus are unable to objectively elaborate on the parenting attitudes and experiences of Chinese mothers.
Amy Chua does not speak for all of us
Environment has a big influence over a person’s values, and the role of a mother is not something that every woman takes to immediately.
The Chinese parenting method Chua champions has no claims to authenticity.Every mother gradually devises her own parenting method, which is often shaped by her own experience growing up, as well as the environment around her.
According to reports, Amy Chua is a Filipino of Chinese descent.
Her parents emigrated to America and underwent an intense struggle to set their roots in a foreign land, which inevitably led them to adopt a more utilitarian outlook in raising their children: “We struggled to get you this new citizenship status, the best way to repay us as our children is to succeed in life.”
Amy Chua brings up Confucius in her article to explain why Chinese parents feel that their children are indebted to them for life. But, she probably doesn’t know that there is another fundamental saying in the Confucian school of thought that “ethics matter more than results, harmony more than competition.”
Simply put, one should not be overly aggressive in trying to outdo others nor adopt a mindset that every investment should get due returns.
Confucius also believed that education should be something tailored according to an individual’s talents and capabilities, rather than a force-fed regime.
In other words, the parenting that Amy Chua received while growing up already deviates from Chinese traditions, and despite her attempts to follow in the footsteps of her parents, the Chinese parenting method she champions has no claims to authenticity.
This strict parenting style, if blindly — or even vengefully — repeated among successive generations, will only be a prolonged tragedy.
The parenting styles of post-1980s mothers
The bulk of parents in China today comprise children born in the 1970s and 1980s. I will raise two examples to illustrate how Amy Chua’s perception of Chinese parenting methods differs from current practices in modern China.
Kaixin001, China’s Facebook that’s popular among the post-1980s generation in China, recently held two online polls.
One was titled “If you had a girl, what would you teach her?” while the other was “What would you do if you discovered your teenage son was in love?” Each had a total of 97,470 and 28,915 respondents, respectively.
a.. More on CNNGo: Another ‘Tiger Mother’ rebuttal from across the ocean
In the first poll, piano and karate came out on top with 55 percent and 54 percent of the total votes. In third place was the response “How to deal with men,” which shows that young parents are also concerned about their child’s interpersonal skills and EQ.
In the second poll, there were more than 15 different response options, but only 366 netizens (less than one percent of respondents) chose the most extreme option of sharply reprimanding the child.
The reason why books such as “Fu Lei’s Letters Home” and “Education of Love,” as well as more recent titles such as “A Good Mother Is Better than a Good Teacher” and “An Average Student at Home,” are so well-received among Chinese parents is because they reflect a parenting mindset premised on mutual respect and communication between parent and child — an attitude that’s fast becoming the norm in China.
The parenting method that Amy Chua encourages, one of forcing a child to discover his talents through disciplined and repeated practice, is contrary to the upbringing that many young Chinese mothers have received.
The parent-child relationship depicted in “Growing Pains,” an American television series popular in China in the 1980s, is something that is finding favor with many mothers of my generation.
When I was in university, the way the Seaver family openly communicated with each other was something I could identify with.
This strict parenting style, if blindly — or even vengefully — repeated among successive generations, will only produce a prolonged tragedy.Along with the opening up of China, my parents’ generation had also opened up to other methods of parenting. They no longer held on to a “spare the rod and spoil the child” mindset, but instead saw their children as equals and hoped to build friendships with them.
Nurturing healthy individuals rather than child prodigies who have no fun
The desire for one’s child to be a straight-A student or a musical genius seems simple and naive to most Chinese mothers.
A survey of 1,285 mothers of children up to six years old conducted by Babytree, China’s largest parenting website, found that health, happiness, self-confidence and kindness were the four most important traits that mothers hoped their children would have.
About 77 percent of mothers did not expect their children to have particular talents and 65 percent of mothers said they would encourage children to pursue their hobbies, even if it was not an interest shared by the mother.
The most important wish among mothers was for their children to have a happy, stress-free life.
The point I wish to emphasize is this: a child is a gift, but the right to control him is not a given.
The child that we nurture may subtly be influenced by our thoughts and values while under our care, but this does not mean that we should forcefully deprive them the independence to discover and grasp other opportunities that the world offers.
Taiwanese author Lung Ying-tai wrote in her book “Seeing Off” that the role of a parent is merely to stand by one’s child and watch his back as he gradually ventures afar.
This very appropriately describes the mindset of many young parents in China today.
To raise a child is to give him the freedom to build a life of his own, rather than to force him to become a replica of your own successes or as compensation to make up for your regrets. As such, the right to decide what is good or bad for a child is not entirely up to the parents — the child should have a say, too.
If life really is a race, instead of encouraging your child to tirelessly try to outdo others and come in first, why not let him run at an enjoyable pace so he can admire the sights along the way?
I dare say that most Chinese mothers, especially those belonging to the post-1980s generation, do silently but lovingly encouraging their children to make the most of life in exactly this manner — a mindset contrary to that advocated by Amy Chua.
Article translated by Debbie Yong. See the original Chinese version here.
http://www.cnngo.com/shanghai/life/helen-he-dont-demonize-chinese-mothers-545975
I divide my year annually between New York and Shanghai. One of my common visitations in the latter city is to the area in and around The Shanghai Conservatory of Music. About four years back the school built a large new building on Fenyang Lu. Along the street side is a lower level with a string of music stores stocked with new instruments. In four of those stores I counted, literally, one trumpet, one horn, one trombone, no tuba, two flutes, one clarinet, one oboe, no bassoon, a handful of strings (but no string bass), and two-hundred pianos! The single trombone (my instrument) looked and felt like it had been made in an industrial arts school as a class project. I asked one of the clerks how many trombone students were
then enrolled in the Conservatory. “Five,” he replied. I told him it would be impossible for any serious student of that instrument to plan advancement playing such useless metal and asked what brand of instruments are taught upstairs. All the trombones were imported by the school, only as needed, from Yamaha in Japan. But, why the sea of pianos?
Most parents do not want their children spending, i.e., wasting, their time on any instrument for which a student can not enter a contest and win prizes. Prizes mean medals and certificates, which Mommy and Daddy can display as their own achievements by extension. It is the major conservatories in China (Shanghai, Beijing, Shenyang, and Wuhan) which are responsible for continuing to nurture this false status, while, visually at least, giving the external impression that China is a major cultural locus of Western classical music. Anyone who has heard the wind sections of a major symphony orchestra in China will hear just how major the cultural locus is in China for those instruments. Naïve morons; school and parent alike!
For the serious student having neither interest nor ability to become a graduate of Harvard Medical School, this phony sequence of contest successes may lead to Juilliard in New York or Curtis in Philadelphia. “If a clown like Lang Lang can make it, then so can my little angel. Who is, of course, the most adept keyboard wizard to blossom since Lawrence Welk or Rachmaninoff.” Stage mothers: Away with them!
All of this clap-trap nonsense has no relationship whatsoever to two very important issues: music or Asian American. It is, with the rarest of exceptions, largely Oriental in the homeland. Atavistic immigrants from those eastern cultures or those descended directly therefrom – like the ever-psychobashing Kommandant Amy Chua – have some untested, sentimental notion that music opens doors and ensures careers in whatever direction the unmusical music student chooses; which the student is free to choose, so long as it isn’t music. (Try to figure out that one. “You are free to study physics or mathematics, so long as you don’t attempt to make a career of them.”)
For the past forty years during my own studies in medicine and music in New York I have been wedded to and worked closely with and around nurses, physicians, surgeons, and medical technicians active in all the standard disciplines. Those persons have come from all modern regions of the world. And, yes, some of my coworkers have come from the beloved Harvard Medical School. But, I can write with authority, the number of those professional persons who have had any direct contact at any times in their lives with piano or violin is insignificantly small.
No one has ever wasted time typing me as a wimp. Nevertheless, with an Amy Chua of my own only thinly masking a contempt while ostensibly trying to encourage me before the age of ten by classing me as “garbage, “lazy,” “useless,” and a host of other niceties (a savage, a juvenile delinquent, boring, common, low, completely ordinary, a barbarian) all the while forbidding me to sit on a toilet until I can play triplets in one hand against duolets in the other mechanistically en duo with a metronome might have (likely would have) set me up both for advanced training to climb The Texas Tower and chronic constipation.
___________________________
André M. Smith, Bach Mus, Mas Sci (Juilliard)
Diploma (Lenox Hill Hospital School of Respiratory Therapy)
Postgraduate studies in Human and Comparative Anatomy (Columbia University)
Formerly Bass Trombonist
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York,
Leopold Stokowski’s American Symphony Orchestra (Carnegie Hall),
The Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, etc.
Amy Chua has never lived in China. Her understanding of its culture, that is, the culture as it’s truly lived by the indigenous people in their dailyness, then must be that of the tourist. Here perhaps is one view of a China she may or may not have seen.
http://bbs.tiexue.net/post_5057209_1.html [Each of the four pictures can be enlarged for clearer viewings.] In what likely is Nanning, the capitol of Guang Xi region, the boy was caught stealing money to pursue his addiction in Internet gaming. (This is a common problem in China, especially among adolescent boys. http://playnoevil.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/1076-China-continues-focus-on-Internet-Addiction-Reading-the-Tea-Leaves.html) As punishment his father has publicly stripped off the boy’s clothes, lathered him with some unstated brown caking (which I shall discretely hope is mere mud), bound his hands behind his back, and then pulled him on his back and buttocks by one foot for disgrace through a very-public area of the city.
On contemporary corporal punishment in China:
A third of them [child respondents] said corporal punishment negatively affected their personalities, causing them to become introverted and depressed.
Legal experts cited by the paper said China should ban corporal punishment in its marriage laws to protect children from physical and psychological harm and to protect the rights of minors.
They blamed the common occurrence of corporal punishment in China on the traditional belief that children were a part of their parents, not individuals. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-12/07/content_397964.htm
The routine beatings allegedly given to child gymnasts in China are no different to the corporal punishment that was once part of daily life in English public schools, according to the head of the Olympic movement.
Mr Rogge said he believed that if physical punishment is being used to train young athletes in China, then it is likely to be confined to sports such as gymnastics and swimming, where the age of competitors is much younger than in the other Olympic sports. What is not known is how widespread the practice is. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/1504716/Chinas-abuse-of-its-athletes-is-no-different-to-Britains-public-schools-says-Olympics-chief.html
“It was a pretty disturbing experience. I was really shocked by some of what was going on. I know it is gymnastics and that sport has to start its athletes young, but I have to say I was really shocked. I think it’s a brutal programme. They said this is what they needed to do to make them hard.
“I do think those kids are being abused. The relationship between coach and child and parent and child is very different here. But I think it goes beyond the pale. It goes beyond what is normal behaviour. It was really chilling.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/2368416/Olympics-Pinsent-upset-at-Chinese-abuse.html
Anyone who thinks the Chinese are a race of genteel pacifists who, collectively, design their lives to awaken every morning wiser than they went to bed the night before is a candidate for some serious awakening of his own. As a whole person Amy Chua is a type; she is not an aberration.
Now, for one question I have not seen asked anywhere. . . Does Professor Chua play a music instrument? If so, let’s hear some of it. If not, from what sources has she gathered her standards about music technique and style and how they might be taught to a very young child who has shown no particular affinity for any instrument? Can she play any music from what she has demanded from either of her two daughters? Can she play simultaneously triptlets in the left hand and duolets in the right? Can she perform, even modestly, http://www.alfred.com/samplepages/00-16734_01~02.pdf, the composition she has demanded her post-toddler daughter play with assurance?
There can be no doubt that Professor Chua likes violence, so long as it’s not directed at her, the core definition of a bully. She has said recently that there are parts of the world in which some of her parenting techniques might be considered child abuse. I do wish she could be persuaded to name (1) which some of those parts of the world are, (2) just which parenting techniques she is referring to, and (3) why she believes those same techinques should not be defined as child abuse in her home state of Connecticut.
How did such a reprehensible woman obtain a position so high up on the feeding chain with so little prior experience in law education?
HUSBAND, faculty of Yale Law School since 1990 : Jed Rubenfeld
WIFE, faculty of Yale Law School since 2001 : Amy Chua
As the lawyers may put it, Let the evidence speak for itself. The Tiger Mom has made it on her own claws.
One last question: Who prevents Professor Chua from sitting on a toilet or eating a meal when, at any given moment, she is vexed beyond her capacity to complete an academic assignment or any other professional obligation within the proper time allocated for its completion?
_______________
André M. Smith, Bach Mus, Mas Sci (Juilliard)
Diploma (Lenox Hill Hospital School of Respiratory Therapy)
Postgraduate studies in Human and Comparative Anatomy (Columbia University)
Formerly Bass Trombonist
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York,
Leopold Stokowski’s American Symphony Orchestra (Carnegie Hall),
The Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, etc.
Professor Chua is a woefully ill-informed parent, one ignorant of just what is happening in some parts of education in America. Fully confident in her presumed success as a writer with an editorial staff at Penguin shadow boxing for her and unapologetically wearing her signature plastic smile for public appearances, the Lawyer Chua is trying to persuade and convince; on both counts controversially, but with enough negative reactions to cause her subsequently to attempt a dilution of the intensity in her initial self-congratulatory tirade by latterly asserting that her writing is merely one person’s experiences of some trying times in motherhood. To gain working points among the Old-Boy network, the prime lubricant of Yale, Professor Chua initially claimed that she is a Tiger Mom as Chinese maternal type; Fierce! When that showpiece veneer didn’t sit well with mothers who are the real thing, i.e., mothers from China, this faux cat altered the validity of her claim to violence by stating that she is a Tiger Mom because she was born in 1962, a Year of the Tiger. That a tenured Professor of Yale can – must? – openly justify her self-classification with superstitious underpinning should provide anyone what is needed to draw a conclusion about the level of intellect afoot in Yale Law School. Professor? Indeed!
Any of Chua’s public statements of the purposes of her work evolve to fit the tenor of the evolving criticisms directed at it. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/10/amy-chua-tiger-mom-book-one-year-later_n_1197066.html It has passed, in her own words, from (1) practical handbook for parenting to (2) tongue-in-cheek (whatever that’s supposed to mean), to (3) memoir, (4) satire, (5) parody, (6) “a coming of age book for parents” (7) “the book is about a journey”; and who knows what else as she makes the rounds of the book circuit trying to snare yet more unsuspecting purchasers into her net. That she can, without blushing, class a single work with such a range causes me to wonder what kind of grade she got at Harvard for her command of the English language. She’s Trollope (the author), Pope (the author), The Wicked Witch in Hansel und Gretel and Gullible’s Travels all penned together into one oversized Pamper. Anyone who can’t read the monetary cynicism driving the kaleidoscope of this whole Tiger Mom scam and its spurious, unproven claimed insights into parenting, with variant latter-day reflections by the author herself, deserves to have paid full retail price for this book.
“What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it.” http://bettymingliu.com/2011/01/parents-like-amy-chua-are-the-reason-why-asian-americans-like-me-are-in-therapy/
Stamp collecting, fishing, lazing about on a summer day, science club, Brownie Scouting, baseball, birthday parties, church annual picnic, kite flying, visiting relatives, kissing, jumping rope, student council, insect classification . . . Away with this woman! “Fun” must be one of the more overused, misunderstood words in the American lexicon. Chinese parent = The Model Minority? In China?
“I’m happy to be the one hated.” http://bettymingliu.com/2011/01/parents-like-amy-chua-are-the-reason-why-asian-americans-like-me-are-in-therapy/
“If I could push a magic button and choose either happiness or success for my children, I’d choose happiness in a second. http://amychua.com/
That’s it perfectly stated in Tigerese: Either / Or; not both. Amy Chua is a chameleonic con artist. PT. Barnum certainly was right, one “. . . born every minute!”
_______________
André M. Smith, Bach Mus, Mas Sci (Juilliard)
Diploma (Lenox Hill Hospital School of Respiratory Therapy)
Postgraduate studies in Human and Comparative Anatomy (Columbia University)
Formerly Bass Trombonist
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York,
Leopold Stokowski’s American Symphony Orchestra (Carnegie Hall),
The Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, etc.
An integral amalgam of defining examples of narcissism that Professor Chua has instilled in her two daughters is self-advancement with sexual provocation. Her public signature posture is one of excessive toothiness, for a university professor exceedingly vulgar displays of long legs, and breast projections that might have won her Blue Ribbons as “Best in Show” as a candidate in any Sweater Queen contest during the 1940s or ‘50s. http://www.britishpathe.com/video/sweater-queen-contest She never misses an opportunity to increase the image of her breast size by folding her arms under them; in one oft-reproduced photograph she actually appears to be elevating the left one nudged up by a folded arm. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Amychua4.png
The elder Chua daughter, Sophia, has learned her lesson well. http://www.nypost.com/rw/nypost/2011/01/18/entertainment/photos_stories/sophia_chua–300×450.jpg and http://www.facebook.com/amytigermother?sk=photos#!/photo.php?fbid=230907580253565&set=o.134679449938486&type=1&theater,
Birds of a feather . . . A coop of nesting trophy wives!
_______________________
André M. Smith, Bach Mus, Mas Sci (Juilliard)
Diploma (Lenox Hill Hospital School of Respiratory Therapy)
Postgraduate studies in Human and Comparative Anatomy (Columbia University)
Formerly Bass Trombonist
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York,
Leopold Stokowski’s American Symphony Orchestra (Carnegie Hall),
The Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, etc.
You’re absolutely right. I live in Singapore and I spend my entire life studying. From morning till night. I’ve got no time for friends or to do anything I love, like playing ultimate frisbee. Asian culture is shit. ( yes, I am Asian) And after studying so much do the ‘geniuses’ in my country invent anything? No. And they like to point out how they’re better than the west, especially America, when everything they use from the iPhone to Facebook was made by Americans, who actually had a childhood. So yeah I’m completely with you. Asian culture is shit.
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