Sociologists are Scared to Study Asian-Americans

From Heterodox Academy, a podcast from a Professor of Sociology was studies Asian-Americans. That’s not a great career choice for an aspiring young sociologist, since that subject is a matter of intense embarrassment to the leftists in the profession. Some excerpts.

I’ve heard of debates about why sociology is so liberal and there’s some say it’s selectivity—liberals are the people interested in going into sociology…. My perception has been that within the field of sociology, the rewards for people who don’t conform to the conventional wisdom are slim, and I’ve known good sociologists doing good research who did not get tenure because their work didn’t fit into the paradigm very well.

I’ll be frank with you—I’ve been submitting to the American Sociological Review on Asian Americans for the past 25 years and apparently there’s no data good enough for the ASR [American Sociological Review]to convince the reviewers that Asian Americans have reached parity with respect to Whites. Every single one gets rejected. What happens is when the paper doesn’t conform to the conventional wisdom, the methodological standards are raised. But when you argue that there’s discrimination against Asians, the methodological standards are relaxed.

A lot of courses don’t seriously talk about Asian Americans systematically so you’re not provided with evidence or consistent data to test this paradigm for Asians. For example, Erik Olin Wright, former president of the American Sociological Association, has an intro textbook “How America Really Works.” And in the whole chapter on race there’s not a single datum on Asian Americans. And that’s “How America Works” is the name. It’s not uncommon for these data to be deleted, and they’ll talk about this or that particular instance of racism…. They’ll talk about instances of discrimination but they won’t go over systematic statistics which suggest that Asians are actually less likely to be murdered than other groups.

The reason for this is rather obvious, and is bluntly stated by a commenter:

I live in a community that is plurality Asian. I have worked alongside Asians all of my life and have many Asian friends, including my business partner. In my experience, they get married, stay married, and have children in wedlock. The ones I know are excellent parents and grandparents. Their work ethic is off the wall. Asian-Americans I know endorse “bourgeois values” more strongly than nearly every other ethnic group. Their endorsement of bourgeois values also threatens those who call those values racist.

Asian-American success is proof that the Melting Pot works. The hard left can’t stand that.

Even the “heterodox” people at Heterodox Academy shy away from bluntly saying why this is: the contrast between the success of Asians and the failure of blacks is stunning. And if we leave aside a fringe who attribute this to black racial inferiority, we have to face the ugly truth that culture matters. The culture of the inner city ghetto, with the vast majority of kids born out of wedlock, and absurdly high crime rates, condemns black people to inferior status.

Culture matters.

But the leftist hostility to “bourgeois values” goes beyond that. Bourgeois values create strong institutions (family, church, voluntary associations) that are a source of social capital and which rival the state. Leftists (the New Class) have a class interest in the expansion of state power, since the expansion of state power is the expansion of New Class power.

Thus, for the New Class, the role of “marginalized groups” in society is to fail, to articulate grievances, and to demand government benefits. To behave otherwise is to commit treason.