Most Americans know only one thing about Indians–they are really good at spelling bees. When Sameer Mishra correctly spelled guerdon last May to win the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee, he became the sixth Indian-American winner in the past 10 years. Finishing second was Sidharth Chand. Kavya Shivashankar took fourth place, and Janhnavi Iyer grabbed the eighth spot. And this was not even the banner year for Indian Americans–in 2005, the top four finishers were all of Indian descent.
It’s tempting to dismiss Indian-American dominance of the spelling bee as just a cultural idiosyncrasy. But Indian success in more important fields is just as eye-catching. Despite constituting less than 1% of the U.S. population, Indian-Americans are 3% of the nation’s engineers, 7% of its IT workers and 8% of its physicians and surgeons. The overrepresentation of Indians in these fields is striking–in practical terms, your doctor is nine times more likely to be an Indian-American than is a random passerby on the street.
Indian Americans are in fact a new “model minority.” This term dates back to the 1960s, when East Asians–Americans of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent–were noted for their advanced educations and high earnings.
East Asians continue to excel in the U.S, but among minority groups, Indians are clearly the latest and greatest “model.” In 2007, the median income of households headed by an Indian American was approximately $83,000, compared with $61,000 for East Asians and $55,000 for whites.
About 69% of Indian Americans age 25 and over have four-year college degrees, which dwarfs the rates of 51% and 30% achieved by East Asians and whites, respectively. Indian Americans are also less likely to be poor or in prison, compared with whites.
So why do Indian Americans perform so well? A natural answer is self-selection. Someone willing to pull up roots and move halfway around the world will tend to be more ambitious and hardworking than the average person. But people want to come to the U.S. for many reasons, some of which–being reunited with other family members, for example–have little to do with industriousness. Ultimately, immigration policy decides which kinds of qualities our immigrants possess.
calling someone a booty scratcher which has no real historical context
