Mar

25

I'm not an American citizen, but I go to the Chinatowns in Manhattan and Flushing, Queens often enough to know some of the stories of those communities.

It always amazes me to see the American Dream in action there — men and women from mainland China who can't speak English and live six to a room doing very menial work, but scrimping and saving to send their kids to Stuyvesant and then to the Ivy League.

The only connections these kids have are uncles who cook take-out on Mott St or drive the $15 bus to Boston.

The number of Asian Wall Street professionals who go back to Chinatown on weekends to visit their parents is a testament the American system of meritocratic reward to striving and hard work is intact and alive.


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  1. Kate Donnelly Schneider on March 26, 2008 6:19 pm

    So why is this primarily limited to Chinese, Japanese and most of the other Asian countries as well as Bosnians, Romanians and other Eastern Europeans and the immigrants from the outer islands in the Caribbean? Why do American blacks lag so dramatically? Why does their history immediately post emancipation and in the early part of the 20th century speak to such promise that not just stagnated but has statistically regressed in most measures of progress? Can it all be blamed on the success/failure of the War on Poverty and the Age of the Government Handout? What else needs to be explored?

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