Dangerously early guesses and questions about The Triple Package

Amy Chua, the Tiger Mom author, is back with a new book, co-written by her husband. And it looks like it will be unintentionally racist and blissfully unaware of social theory.

The Triple Package comes out next month, but it's easy enough to get a sense of its argument. Some "cultural groups" are more successful than other cultural groups, and this has to do with three values - a superiority complex, insecurity, and impulse control - that those successful cultures share. The specific groups, they revealed in an interview with Yahoo, are Mormons, Cuban exiles, Nigerian Americans, Indian Americans, Chinese Americans, American Jews, Iranian Americans and Lebanese Americans.

Now, since it isn't out until February, I obviously haven't read it. And I don't know that I will ever read it. Because it sounds plain dumb. But, rather than claim to know what it's done wrong, I'll ask some questions that are prompted by what I have seen:

1. Who came up with the eight "cultural groups", and how? The categories they've defined throw up some red flags. Some of her "cultural groups" are defined by religion, others by political status or country of origin, but categorical ambiguity isn't, itself, necessarily problematic - it's realistic, because that's how we self-identify. But I wonder whether the members of the groups would identify first as "Mormon" or "Lebanese", or about the particular contexts within which they'd do so. And with this kind of work, it is hilariously easy to create a homogenous group where none exists, to group people together based on your perception of their similarity, rather than on their own perception. Neither of the authors are trained sociologists, so it'd be interesting to see whether their methodology accounts for those sorts or risks.
   
2. What role in their success do you attribute to American society? I don't see any indication that they're accounting for American society as a whole, much less the dominant ideologies that define success. Even if we concede, for argument's sake, that the American socio-economic system rewards these three values, the orientation feels wrong - why look at who is successful, rather than those systemic features that enable their success?
   
3. That is, what about capitalism and racism? Or, put another way, you can't do this analysis without explicitly addressing the roles that capital and race (that is, whiteness) play. I don't see any mention of either of those things in the blurb on the site. For instance, your proximity to whiteness matters - there's a reason that the two white groups (alright, "Jewish Americans" are a bit more complicated than that, but I'm trying to be concise) aren't defined by their geography or nationality - it's because race matters, and the white groups aren't marked by visual difference from the American norm. Which is to say, I think it's difficult to argue that the same thing is happening to and within these groups.
   
4. How is this disproving the existence of the model minority? The blurb on the site says that successful immigrant groups become less successful over time, and this disproves the model minority theory. But this looks like a misunderstanding of what a model minority is and does. The model minority is not a person or people so much as a function within in a society. It describes minority figures or groups whose success legitimates the system ("If a schlub like me can make it, anyone can...") and its unequal treatment of populations within that society ("...which means you just didn't try hard enough, you leech."). And it actually makes sense that a given group would lose their model minority status and another gain it - because that function doesn't belong on any one minority, and it'll shift. Chinese Americans have existed for 200 years; they've only been model minorities for the past few decades.
   
5. When looking at immigrant communities, how did you avoid selection bias? I think there's probably a pretty simple explanation for why some of these groups are, on the whole, disproportionately successful. The blurb notes that Nigerian immigrants have a lot of PhDs, which strikes me as pretty common sense, given how immigration works. There's a selection bias at work: only the best are allowed to come to the country, so we'd expect them to do well. (And we'd expect their kids to regress to the mean.)

Ironically, I get the sense that this book, while claiming to disprove the model minority, is actually telling us what a model minority is, and who fits that definition, right now. Which would make it kind of useful, right?

Again, haven't read the book, and probably won't unless someone gives it to me and I'm struck by a mood. But, then, everything I've seen has me thinking that it probably isn't worth my time. Or yours.

If you're gonna name your team after real people, at least do it right

We live in a world with NFL teams like the Washingtons* and MLB teams like the Clevelands*, that celebrate a tradition of white settler racism. A world where most sports fans lie somewhere on a spectrum from oblivious to indignant, mascots are unrepentantly racist, and owners have dug in their heels in defense of horribly offensive "traditions".

[* That's right. I refuse to use their chosen names. More on that below.]

That being the case, it seems important to celebrate the teams that do it right. Teams like the Spokane Indians. From Rodney Harwood of the Indian Country Today Media Network:

"In 2006, the baseball team’s front office and the tribe collaborated to come up with a team logo not only saying Spokane Indians in English, but developed a team logo printed in the Salish language, which was depicted on the sleeve of its uniforms.

"The Spokane Indians baseball team will take that collaboration one step further, making the logo in the Salish language the main logo on the front of its home uniforms for the 2014 season."

A Salish-language logo? And it's also their primary logo? That's pretty damn cool. It also addresses the obvious concern that this is a team called "the Indians". This is a word that was applied to the Aboriginal people of North America by white settlers, who misidentified them as Asian - and then didn't bother to correct themselves. It's inherently racist.

Impressively, the team is aware of this and shares those concerns - they don't use mascots, they don't have chants, none of that cartoonish crap that the Washingtons or Clevelands use. Says team co-owner Andy Billig, “We have a very positive relationship with the local tribes. We would talk with them from time-to-time to check in and say, ‘How are we doing?’ Even if we weren’t using any imagery, the name of the team was still the Spokane Indians and we knew that could potentially be sensitive. We believe that we are still the only professional sports team to collaborate with local tribes in this way.” 

The difference, with this Spokane team, is all in the collaboration and the new/old language. In making the Salish name the one that goes on their logo, with the help of the Spokane Nation, the name is effectively reclaimed - "Indians" becomes, at best, an English translation of the actual name. And an officially sanctioned nickname for the specific people that they represent. And it will surely decline in use as people familiarize themselves with the pronunciation of the Salish name.

This, by the way, is what that logo looks like:

In the past, I've always come down squarely against every iteration of the people-as-team-mascot kind of sports team. But this one, one that Spokane elders themselves say shows them respect and bring them pride? This is one that I feel pretty good about.