DEMOGRAPHICS AND SPECTACULAR STEREOTYPES

Demographic facts:

5.6% of this countries population is Asian American/Pacific Islander

12.5% is African American/black

1.7% is Jewish

17% is Hispanic

1% is Muslim

2% have red hair

It is amazing to see how much ethnicity and cultural identification can predict behavior…in an age when stereotyping is not politically correct I think some valuable information in the social sciences and in the study of human behavior, anthropology, and psychology is lost… Information that could increase our understanding of ourselves and give us some clues as to how to improve the condition for those demographics that are not experiencing the successes that are desperately hoped for…

I would argue that stereotyping shouldn’t restrict or limit the way we view a certain demographic of people but to dismiss it entirely is just self inflicted ignorance.

Let’s begin:

Even among 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th generation of people residing in the United States we still see a very strong connection in many cases between a person’s ethnicity and culture, and the way they think and behave in a society different from their one of origin.

Today I heard that the Congressional Black Caucus is upset with President Obama’s white nominee to the Supreme Court….the cry is that only (1) Supreme Court Judge of the (9) is black.. that is 11%. The black population is 12.6%, hardly a glaring example of discrimination.

We have had a black President for the last 7 years…(one I voted for twice) the last two attorney generals have been black…George W. Bush had (2) black Secretary’s of State, in Condeleeza Rice and Colin Powell…Obama appointed African American Susan Rice as his Ambassador to the United Nations. The head of homeland security, Jeh Johnson, is African American….etc. etc….

And yet the Congressional black caucus is upset that another African American couldn’t be put on the Supreme Court… Women make up 50% of the population and there are only 3 women (out of 9).

Hispanics make up 17% of the U.S. population..the largest minority group in the United States by about 40% and there is only one member on the Supreme Court from the latino community …and there has only been one in it’s entire history…

There has NEVER been an Asian American on the Supreme Court, nor has there been an Asian American President, or one in any cabinet position of the President that I know of….and yet, Asian Americans make up 5.6% of this countries population…

Asian Americans have won (2) Academy Awards over the entire history of the Academy Awards….yet you didn’t see or hear them complaining about their omission during the Academy Awards. You rarely see Asian’s on T.V. in scripted television, certainly not in starring roles. Yet, strangely, Asian Americans are not particularly uncommon on news channels, as hosts or anchors of news shows.

Asians are highly successful in American society in general, they are one of the most highly educated demographics in America…yet, they have an incredibly low profile…and very little cultural impact…not even measurable.

There are very, very few Asian Americans in sports…virtually none in music..except, perhaps, studio musicians behind the scenes…NO bands that feature any Asians that I know of …not a single band in history that features an Asian American front man…not one…How could that be?…an Asian American born in this country speaks perfect English and has the same access to pop culture as anyone else…yet, they are a glaring omission from music…a TOTAL omission. even with Asian Americans who are 3rd or 4th generation Americans. Asian Americans aren’t listening to music from their country of origin…..there is nothing at all preventing an Asian American from writing successful pop music, or rock music, or writing television shows or sonnets or the great American novel, or even a great work of non fiction….yet, it rarely happens.

My naïve thinking is that once a person is 2nd generation in this country…then the influence of their parents as a dominant component of their habits and even values is less influential than the prevailing culture that they live in…If you have lived your entire life immersed in the American culture then why wouldn’t you be just as likely as anyone else to be a guitar player or a novelist or a comedian, etc..

Astounding!

No Asian film stars except for Jackie Chan who is cast as a martial artist….I think there might be more dwarfs represented in television and film than Asians though I might be exaggerating ….Asian Americans in this country are nowhere to be found in pop culture…politics, sports, etc…and they make up approximately 1 in 17 of ALL Americans…and they are basically transparent.

It is hard to come up with even a short list of Asian American celebrities…..Jackie Chan and Yo Yo Ma and George Takei (he was an actor in the Star Trek series) are the only ones who come to mind after a few minutes of thinking.

Yet, you could name me 100 black celebrities in minutes….

A hundred Jewish celebrities in a few seconds…

It would be a little easier to name Hispanic celebrities as there definitely are some in the acting world and some in the sports world…(but only in baseball and boxing). There are 535 members of Congress and only (3) are Hispanic. Once again, hispanics make up 17% of the U.S. population.

So, do we assume that the ethnicities that are the most successful are those which have the biggest footprint on American culture? No, because Asian Americans are very successful and highly educated but they have almost no representation in American culture…it’s stunning how little….

Do we assume that the ethnicities that are the most successful are the ones who underwent the least persecution historically in the United States…? I would say absolutely not…though all groups (other than Anglo Whites) have undergone persecution in the United States. Jews have experienced a great deal of discrimination and persecution over the years in the United States and that is well documented. I also note that most would agree that Asian Americans have experienced a great deal of discrimination over the years….historically they have not been welcomed with open arms…and WWII didn’t help things either for the Japanese…they were interned during WWII…though they were U.S. citizens.

Can we say that the groups that have, for whatever reason, made the greatest cultural contribution to America are the ones who have experienced the least discrimination…Absolutely not…..as I would say that blacks and Jews in this country have made large cultural contributions….

The cultural contribution by the American Jew needs it’s own separate treatise. It is staggering and almost unbelievable…a totally disproportionate contribution by a paltry 1.7% of the population which is very hard to explain…though I would love a plausible way to explain it. If you removed the American Jew from the American landscape historically it would be a shell of what it is today…our entertainment legacy would be gutted…as would our scientific contributions, business, etc….it’s hard to imagine America being America without the American Jew.

As expected, Anglo whites make a huge contribution to American culture but let’s not forget that whites have experienced virtually no discrimination based on race (except the Irish in the 19th and 20th century) and they make up the majority of the United States population by a significant margin…..almost 65% of the U.S. population is white, and even a higher % in earlier decades and centuries.

Unlike Asians and Hispanics…very few blacks are now emigrating from African countries….which is to say that virtually all blacks that are living in the United States have been here for many, many generations (that is very thought provoking). Language has never been a barrier because, unlike with Asians and hispanics---blacks have always had English as their first language in this country…..

Here are some thoughts…I think it is a fair assessment to say that virtually all of those living in this country who ancestrally come from Asian countries are either taught, or are inherently very reluctant to stand out in a crowd…they abhor being the nail that sticks up higher in a grouping of perfectly uniform nails….the Asian cultures typically will hammer down the high nail…they like uniformity…..almost obedience…they don’t foster individualism at all….not even creativity ….how many Asian composers can you think of---going back 100 years…maybe Yo Yo Ma, and that’s it.…many, many amazing musicians (players of instruments) but no songwriters….not one! Not one music producer that I can think of…

African Americans are not similarly as inconspicuous or unlikely to exhibit individualism…in virtually all areas of American culture where you see African Americans you see no reluctance to stand out in a crowd…in sports, in might be demonstrating after scoring a touchdown, in music, it might be another distinguishable from of individual expression that is conspicuous.

Blacks, whites and Jews are much more likely to exhibit a high level of individual expression in our society that will garner attention….They are much more likely to have a “Hey, look at me and what I am doing” mentality. Asian Americans and Hispanics and Muslims in this country are much more prone to melting into the crowd…not acting in an outward way that draws attention to themselves individually…

You have lots of white, jewish, and black comedians but virtually NO Asian, Hispanic, or Muslim comedians.

Fascinating….

Asians, to a man, don’t complain about ANYTHING…they will live with the conditions and the playing field that exist and make virtually no waves or outcries in an effort to change it. You could never give an Asian an Academy Award, or a Supreme court nomination, or any cabinet position at the White House and they would have virtually nothing to say about it. Btw, there are only (12) Asian Americans in the U.S. Congress which has 535 elected members.….there is no visible Asian Anti-defamation group…and no Asians were protesting the Academy Awards this year…

The most persecuted groups might be Blacks and Jews…though the Black experience in this country is unique and even though upwards of 6 million Jews were extinguished through genocide just ¾ of a century ago….a history of slavery that lasted for 200 years and of segregation and institutionalized discrimination for another 100, would seem to clearly put blacks at the top of the list for most oppressed in the United States…..though some could argue on behalf of the American Indian. The American Indian population, including indigenous Alaskan tribes, is approximately 5.4 million, roughly 2% of the U.S. population. It is speculated that the American Indian population before the introduction of Europeans to the continent was between 2 and 18 million. At it’s lowest, the American Indian population dwindled to just 250,000 in 1890.

How about this statistic….since 1901…36% of all Nobel Prizes won in this country have been won by a Jewish person…and, as stated earlier, Jews only make up a negligible 1.7% nationwide…Explain that…that is breathtaking.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards the Nobel prizes for chemistry, literature, physics, physiology, and medicine. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee….hardly groups that are biased towards Jews.

Muslims have won 11 Nobel prizes…only 7 from 1901 to 2000….Jews, on the other hand, have won 194 Nobel prizes…

1.6 billion Muslims…23% of the world population

14 million Jews in the world…

The total population of all of Africa and all of North America (combined) is the equivalent to the population of all Muslims in the world…by stark contrast, the entire world Jewish population represents roughly the population of Pennsylvania.

There are almost 500x as many Muslims as there are Jews on planet earth and yet…Jews have won 17X more Nobel prizes than have Muslims…..Explain that…it is crazy….

These people are indigenously from the same part of the world, are they not? Why such amazing disparity in their footprint on the world stage? There are likely only two answers-----Culture (which includes religion) and DNA.

Food for Thought….much thought….