Education Reflection Essay

The Success Frame and Achievement Paradox: The Costs and Consequences for Asian Americans

Jennifer Lee • Min Zhou

Published online: 30 January 2014

� Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Abstract The status attainment model highlights the role

of family socioeconomic status (SES) in the intergenera-

tional reproduction of educational attainment; however, the

model falls short in predicting the educational outcomes of

the children of Asian immigrants, whose attainment

exceeds that which would have been predicted based on

family SES alone. On the other hand, the cultural capital

model gives primacy to the role of middle-class cultural

capital in reproducing advantage, but neglects contextual

factors outside the family. We fill a theoretical and

empirical niche by introducing a model of cultural frames

to explain how the children of immigrants whose families

exhibit low SES and lack middle-class cultural capital

attain exceptional educational outcomes. Based on in-depth

interviews with adult children of Chinese and Vietnamese

immigrants randomly drawn from the survey of Immigra-

tion and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los

Angeles, we show that Chinese and Vietnamese immigrant

parents and their children use ethnicity as a resource to

construct and support a strict ‘‘success frame’’ that helps

the poor and working class override their disadvantages.

However, there are unintended consequences to adopting

such a strict success frame: those who do not meet its

exacting tenets feel like ethnic outliers, and as a result, they

distance themselves from coethnics and from their ethnic

identities because they link achievement with ethnicity. We

conclude by underscoring the benefits of decoupling race/

ethnicity and achievement for all groups.

Keywords Second generation � Educational attainment � Chinese � Vietnamese � Asian Americans

Introduction

In January 2011, The Wall Street Journal published an

article by Amy Chua, titled, ‘‘Why Chinese Mothers are

Superior,’’ 1

shortly before the release of her memoir, Battle

Hymn of the Tiger Mother. The article and subsequent book

set off a firestorm of controversy; some lambasted Chua for

reifying the stereotype of the authoritarian Chinese mother

(and Asians parents more generally), while others praised

her for the candor with which she contrasted Eastern and

Western parenting styles. Chua argues that the Eastern

parenting style is more likely to produce ‘‘successful kids,’’

‘‘math whizzes,’’ and ‘‘music prodigies’’ because the ‘‘Tiger

Mother’’ understands the cultural formula for success: an

unyielding schedule of hard work, discipline, and rote rep-

etition. By contrast, the Western parenting style focuses on

developing children’s individuality through positive rein-

forcement—asking them to ‘‘try their best,’’ and allowing

them to follow their passions and make their own choices.

Chua attributes her successful parenting style to Chinese

culture, affirming an essentialist cultural perspective on

educational attainment (Fukuyama 1993; Sowell 1996).

Like other culturalist scholars, however, Chua failed to

acknowledge that she—unlike most parents—has a wealth J. Lee (&) UC Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

M. Zhou

Nanyang Technological University / UCLA (on leave 2013-15),

Singapore

1 The article was published in The Wall Street Journal on January 8,

2011 [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870411150457

6059713528698754.html], accessed on June 4, 2011.

123

Race Soc Probl (2014) 6:38–55

DOI 10.1007/s12552-014-9112-7

of economic resources and cultural capital at her disposal.

She and her husband are both law professors at Yale, and

their parents are highly educated; Chua’s father, for

example, is a professor at Berkeley. Chua’s older daughter

has earned admission to Harvard, and is now an under-

graduate there. While Chua may credit her Chinese cultural

child-rearing practices for paving the way for her daugh-

ter’s admission to Harvard, both Chua and her daughter

have benefitted from the intergenerational transmission of

socioeconomic advantage and middle-class cultural capital.

It would be easy to dismiss Chua’s argument as little

more than a reification of racial, ethnic, and cultural ste-

reotypes, but by doing so, we would miss an opportunity to

engage in a debate that her work has ignited, that is, how

do we explain the differences in educational achievement

among racial/ethnic groups, especially when the patterns

defy both the status attainment and cultural capital models?

The status attainment model emphasizes a combination of

family socioeconomic status (SES), individual effort, and

ability to explain intergenerational mobility (Blau and

Duncan 1967). By contrast, the cultural capital model

underscores the role of noneconomic resources in the

household, such as parental education and knowledge of

middle-class styles and behavior to which a child is rou-

tinely exposed and socialized. Both economic and non-

economic resources affect a child’s prospects for mobility,

and help to explain the intergenerational reproduction of

advantage among children from middle- and upper-class

families (Bourdieu 1984; DiMaggio 1982).

However, neither model can explain the educational

attainment of the children of Asian immigrants whose

parents arrive in the United States with little to no English

proficiency, minimal formal education, few labor market

skills and financial resources, and little understanding of

middle-class American mores. Despite the disadvantages

associated with low family SES and cultural capital, some

children of Asian immigrants manage to graduate as high

school valedictorians, earn admission into elite universities,

and pursue graduate degrees (Kasinitz et al. 2009; Zhou and

Bankston 1998). By focusing primarily on differences in

family SES and cultural capital among racial/ethnic groups

without considering the roles of ‘‘ethnic capital’’ and

‘‘ethnic resources,’’ social scientists have left the door wide

open for scholars like Chua to advance essentialist cultural

arguments about the Asian ‘‘Tiger Mother’’ and Asian

culture without a strong voice of rebuttal.

In this paper, we aim to bring culture more squarely and

analytically into the debate by addressing the question: why

do the children of Asian immigrants exhibit high educa-

tional aspirations and mobility outcomes, even when they

hail from families with low SES and low levels of middle-

class cultural capital? In doing so, we draw on the classic

sociological concepts of frames and reference groups to

advance a model of cultural frames in order to illustrate how

culture and ethnicity operate as resources for the children of

Asian immigrants, especially for those who hail from poor

socioeconomic backgrounds. Our analyses are based on

qualitative interview data of two Asian groups—Chinese

and Vietnamese—in metropolitan Los Angeles.

The paper is divided into four parts. First, we demon-

strate how Chinese and Vietnamese immigrant parents and

their children frame academic success—what we refer to as

‘‘the success frame.’’ Second, we illustrate how the success

frame is supported by ethnic resources beyond the house-

hold, which help poor and working-class coethnics over-

ride their class disadvantage. Third, while the success

frame helps to buttress academic outcomes, we highlight

the costs and consequences associated with it. Those who

do not meet its strict tenets feel like ethnic outliers and, in

some cases, like failures; as a result, they distance them-

selves from coethnics and from their ethnic identities

because they link achievement with ethnicity. Fourth, we

conclude by underscoring the benefits of decoupling race/

ethnicity and achievement for all racial/ethnic groups.

Theory and Previous Research

Family SES and Status Attainment

As early as 1967, Blau and Duncan noted that the strongest

predictor of a son’s occupation is his father’s occupation.

Their pioneering study proved that life chances are unequal

from the starting gate since advantages are transmitted

intergenerationally; if a son is fortunate to be born to a

father who is highly educated and holds a high-status job,

he is likely to reproduce those advantages in adulthood

(Blau and Duncan 1967). Since Blau and Duncan’s

groundbreaking study, sociologists have followed their

lead and advanced the status attainment model in the study

of intergenerational mobility, which emphasizes the role of

family socioeconomic status in determining children’s

educational and occupational outcomes (Breen and Jonsson

2005; Haller and Portes 1973; Sewell et al. 1969).

While this model explains how educational attainment

patterns are reproduced across generations, the cultural

capital model explains why family SES matters for chil-

dren’s educational attainment. Cultural capital refers to

both tangible resources (such as the availability of books,

computers, and newspapers at home) and intangible

resources (such as the exposure and access to middle- and

upper-class cultural knowledge, cues, mannerisms, habits,

and practices) that the dominant group values (Bourdieu

1984; DiMaggio 1982; Lareau 2003; Roscigno and Ains-

worth-Darnell 1999)—what Carter (2005) refers to as

dominant cultural capital. Dominant cultural capital is

Race Soc Probl (2014) 6:38–55 39

123

associated with high-status cultural signals (including

attitudes, styles, speech patterns, and taste preferences) and

high-brow cultural practices (such as visiting museums,

listening to classical music, and playing instruments like

the piano or violin).

These high-status signals and practices give children

from middle- and upper-class households an advantage in

their quest for educational attainment because class-spe-

cific signals and practices are rewarded in gateway insti-

tutions such as schools and in the workplace (Lamont and

Lareau 1988; Ridgeway and Fisk 2012). Moreover,

because the acquisition of dominant cultural capital is both

class- and race-specific, poor African American and Latino

youth find themselves at a disadvantage in their quest for

educational attainment and mobility (Carter 2005; Rosc-

igno and Ainsworth-Darnell 1999).

While the status attainment and cultural capital models

help to explain the reproduction of advantage and disad-

vantage among US-born white and black children, both

models fall short in explaining some of the vexing patterns

among the children of immigrants. For example, children of

Chinese immigrants from disadvantaged backgrounds

achieve levels of education on par with their middle-class

coethnic counterparts, and even attain levels of education

that exceed their native-born, middle-class white peers (Kao

1995; Kasinitz et al. 2009; Louie 2004). Furthermore, those

who hail from middle-class family origins are dispropor-

tionately likely to over-achieve despite the intergenerational

tensions they experience with their strict, ‘‘unacculturated’’

parents (Chao 1994).

The educational outcomes of the children of Vietnamese

immigrants are even more puzzling. Although most Viet-

namese parents arrived in the United States since the mid-

1970s as poorly educated, penniless refugees, Vietnamese

children have graduated from high school and college at

much higher rates than their parents and, remarkably, they

have surpassed the levels of educational attainment of

native-born whites and blacks. How do children of Chinese

immigrants and Vietnamese refugees attain high academic

outcomes in spite of their families’ disadvantaged economic

backgrounds and lack of middle-class cultural capital?

Furthermore, why do Chinese and Vietnamese—two Asian

ethnic groups who hail from such divergent class origins—

converge in the second generation with respect to educa-

tional attainment?

Culture and Immigration

For decades, sociologists retreated from discussing the

relationship between culture and achievement, due in large

part to the backlash and stigma that resulted from ‘‘the

culture of poverty model’’ made famous by Moynihan’s

Report, The Negro Family (1965). Seeking to understand

poverty among African Americans, Moynihan (1965:

218–219) pointed to the ‘‘tangle of pathology’’ that was

‘‘capable of perpetuating itself’’ due to the weak, dys-

functional black family structure. Moynihan argued that

eradicating poverty in the United States necessitated

changing the cultural values, aspirations, and behaviors

among poor African Americans. Moynihan’s conclusions

proved to be attractive to US politicians and policy makers

because they highlighted the cultural differences and defi-

ciencies of individuals and families rather than the gross

structural inequalities that produced them.

Most social scientists, however, reacted differently, and

for years following the release of the Moynihan Report, they

abandoned culture as an explanation for poverty and

inequality. Instead, they focused exclusively on the macro-

structural causes of poverty and inequality: the change from

a manufacturing to a service-based economy; the outsourc-

ing of jobs from central cities to the suburbs and to devel-

oping countries; the skills and spatial mismatch between

jobs and residents in inner cities; and persistent residential

and school segregation (Massey and Denton 1993; Wilson

1987). Evoking culture to explain poverty or inequality

became tantamount to endorsing a neoconservative policy

paradigm, and therefore, largely for political reasons, cul-

tural analysis lagged structural analysis (Skrentny 2008).

The study of culture receded into the sociological

background at a historic moment in the United States: the

year that Moynihan released his infamous report, the United

States passed the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act, which abolished the

national origins quota system, and replaced it with a skills-

based and family reunification preference system. The Hart-

Cellar Act ushered in a new stream of immigrants from

Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean and chan-

ged the landscape of the United States from a largely black–

white society to one composed of multiple racial and ethnic

groups (Alba and Nee 2003; Lee and Bean 2010; Portes and

Rumbaut 2001; Portes and Zhou 1993).

While Asians and Latinos have altered the racial and

ethnic landscape of the United States, research in immi-

gration and culture has lagged behind America’s new

demographic realities for two primary reasons. First, the

debate about race and culture was at an intellectual stale-

mate when America’s new immigrants began to arrive in

1965. Second, scholarship about race and culture has tra-

ditionally been framed within a black–white binary, which

has left Asians and Latinos far behind (and often absent) in

the discussion.

The Re-emergence of Culture

Decades later, culture re-emerged with the birth of a new

generation of social scientists who have placed it at the

forefront of the poverty and inequality research agendas

40 Race Soc Probl (2014) 6:38–55

123

(Carter 2005; Harding 2007; Lamont and Lareau 1988;

Small 2004; Skrentny 2008; Small et al. 2010; Vaisey

2010; Young 2010). This cadre of scholars departs from the

generation of old in two fundamental ways. First, they

reject the essentialist definition of culture as a core set of

unchanging values, behaviors, practices, and norms that are

immune to structural changes. Instead, they maintain that

culture is dynamic and susceptible to change because it is

supported by reinforcement mechanisms, in the absence of

which changes occur (Small 2004).

Second, they do not define culture as an all-encompass-

ing category that includes a group’s values, norms, aspira-

tions, and behaviors. Instead, they conceive of culture

through more narrow, analytical concepts such as cultural

capital, frames, repertoires, narratives, schemas, and group

boundaries. By defining culture through a more narrowly

defined lens, scholars have been able to empirically test its

role in influencing a diversity of outcomes, including edu-

cation, employment, and community involvement (Carter

2005; DiMaggio 1997; Small 2004; Harding 2007; Young

2010). While the emergent scholarship in culture has

advanced tremendously since Moynihan’s Report, still

absent in the literature is a focus on culture and immigration

and, more specifically, the role of culture in explaining the

variation in immigrant and second-generation outcomes.

Frames

In the vast literature in the field of culture, we found the

concept of frames particularly useful in understanding the

varied mobility outcomes among members of the new

second generation. Goffman (1974) conceived of a frame

as a lens through which we observe, interpret, and analyze

our social life. Most plainly, frames are ways of under-

standing how the world works, and by understanding the

different frames that the members of different ethnic

groups employ in their decision-making process, we may

begin to understand the intergroup variations in attitudes

and behavior. Frames, however, are not culturally intrinsic,

nor do they cause particular behavior; rather, they make

certain patterns of behavior possible or likely by delineat-

ing horizons of possibilities (Lee and Zhou 2013; Small

et al. 2010). For example, in his study of a Latino housing

project in Boston, Small (2004) employed the concept of

frames to understand the variation in community partici-

pation among its residents. He found that the ‘‘neighbor-

hood narrative frames’’ through which the Latino residents

viewed the neighborhood (rather than how much the resi-

dents valued community involvement in itself) affected

participation. Residents who framed the community as a

beautiful neighborhood to be preserved were more likely to

participate than those who viewed the neighborhood as a

ghetto that they wished to escape.

In addition, in a study of African American men in

poverty, Young (2010) employed the concept of frames

to examine meaning-making processes. He found that

while most African American men adhered to the same

general contours in defining ‘‘a good job’’ (such as salary,

benefits, opportunities for promotion, personal growth,

and respect), their frames differed in the degree with

which the men emphasized particular features of a lived

experience. Differences in the framing of situations,

Young found, influenced the men’s orientation toward

work, which, in turn, affected their employment

outcomes.

Applying the concept of frames to immigration research

sheds new light in understanding interethnic differences in

second-generation educational achievement. We find that

while immigrant parents and their children value educa-

tion, the frame through which they define ‘‘a good educa-

tion’’ differs across ethnic groups (Lee and Zhou 2013).

For example, some members of the second generation

frame ‘‘a good education’’ as graduating from high school,

attending a local community college, and earning an

occupational certificate that allows them to work as a

laboratory technician or dental assistant. Others frame ‘‘a

good education’’ as graduating as the high school vale-

dictorian, getting into a highly competitive university, and

then going to law or medical school in order to work in a

high-status profession. In other words, it is not the case that

some second-generation groups value education more than

others (which is the essentialist interpretation of culture),

but rather they construct remarkably different notions of

what a good education and academic success mean

depending on the frame is accessible to them, and that

which they adopt.

Ethnic Capital and Ethnic Resources

Having certain values is a necessary, although insufficient,

condition to enact a frame; for frames to be effective, they

need support and reinforcement mechanisms. This is where

ethnicity comes in. Because of immigration selectivity,

newcomers arrive in the United States with different levels

of group SES, or what Borjas (1992) defines as ‘‘ethnic

capital.’’ High levels of ethnic capital in an immigrant

group give parents and their children a competitive

advantage (even when parents hail from low-SES back-

grounds) because groups with high ethnic capital create

and provide access to invaluable ethnic resources. The

availability of and access to ethnic resources—which are

often created by middle-class group members of the first

generation—help the second generation to achieve mobil-

ity outcomes in spite of low parental human capital and

poor socioeconomic status. Ethnic capital functions in three

critical ways.

Race Soc Probl (2014) 6:38–55 41

123

First, ethnic capital results in the creation of tangible

resources in the ethnic economy. Developed by highly

selected members of an immigrant group, the ethnic

economy generates tangible resources—such as jobs,

housing, and opportunities for self-employment for immi-

grant adults; and educational resources, such as after-

school tutoring, supplementary educational programs, and

college preparation classes for children (Lee 2002; Zhou

and Cho 2010). These tangible resources are especially

useful for immigrants and their children from poor and

working-class backgrounds.

Second, ethnic capital facilitates social networking.

Through their participation in the ethnic economy, low-

SES group members link into socioeconomically diverse

ethnic networks that include middle-class coethnics. As a

result, poor and working-class coethnics have access to

intangible resources, including relevant information to

facilitate their children’s educational attainment. For

example, information about high school rankings, neigh-

borhoods with strong school districts, AP classes, tutoring,

and the college admissions process are often disseminated

through ethnic channels—both formally through ethnic

newspapers and media, and informally through kin and

coethnic friendship circles—thereby making the informa-

tion available across class lines (Kasinitz et al. 2009; Zhou

and Cho 2010).

Third, high ethnic capital results in a large number of

visible role models who serve as mobility prototypes for

less advantaged coethnics (Fernández-Kelly 2008; Merton

1949; Zuckerman 1988). As a result, high-achieving co-

ethnics—rather than middle-class whites—have become

the reference group by which the children of Asian

immigrants chart and measure their progress (Jiménez and

Horowitz 2013; Lee and Zhou 2013). Consequently, they

adopt a frame for achievement that expands their oppor-

tunity horizons in ways that exceed that which would have

been predicted by the status attainment and cultural capital

models.

Data and Methods

The data on which our analysis is based are drawn from a

qualitative study of adult children of immigrants, who were

randomly selected from the survey of Immigration and

Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles

(IIMMLA). 2

The chief purpose of our qualitative study is

to examine how members of today’s 1.5 and second gen-

eration define ‘‘success,’’ how their prospects and out-

comes of ‘‘success’’ are affected by national origin, class,

and gender, how they construct the meaning of ‘‘a good

education’’ and ‘‘a good job,’’ and how they choose to

identify themselves. We define the second generation as

those who are US born with at least one foreign-born

parent, and define the 1.5 generation as those who are

foreign-born, but who immigrated to the United States

prior to age thirteen. Our data for the current analysis

include 82 face-to-face, life history interviews with 1.5-

and second-generation Chinese and Vietnamese. While the

82 cases are randomly drawn from the IIMMLA sample,

the cases are not directly drawn from source populations in

metropolitan Los Angeles. As a result, we note a word of

caution about the representativeness and generalizability of

our findings.

Lasting, on average, between one and a half and

2 hours, the in-depth interviews were structured, but most

questions were open-ended; this allowed the respondents to

speak at length and in detail about their answers, and also

provided the interviewers free reign to ask unanticipated

follow-up questions. The interviews were tape-recorded

and conducted by trained graduate research assistants, who

wrote five to eight single-spaced pages of detailed field

notes immediately following each interview, which helped

us to identify thematic patterns before the formal coding

process began. The interviews were transcribed verbatim,

coded by question and by theme using ATLIS.ti software,

and then analyzed and re-analyzed for notable and con-

sistent patterns.

Taking advantage of the in-depth interview method, we

focused on the contexts under which the respondents

made choices about their educational and occupational

trajectories—data that we were unable to glean from the

IIMMLA survey. The interviews covered a wide scope of

topics related to inter- and intragenerational mobility,

ranging from educational and employment decisions, high

school and college experiences, supplementary education,

family and work histories, familial resources and obliga-

tions, neighborhood and community resources, role mod-

els and reference groups, to in-group and out-group

perceptions. Because the study centered on how the

respondents defined success, we inquired about how they

measured ‘‘a good education’’ and ‘‘a good job,’’ and the

2 IIMMLA is a multi-investigator study that examines the patterns of

intra- and intergenerational mobility among the adult children of

immigrants in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. It includes a

telephone survey of 4,800 randomly selected respondents in five

counties of Los Angeles metropolitan region (Los Angeles, Orange,

San Bernardino, Riverside, and Ventura). It targets 1.5- and second-

Footnote 2 continued

generation Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans, Filipinos, Mexicans, Sal-

vadorans, and Guatemalans between the ages of 20 and 39 from

geographically, socioeconomically, and racially/ethnically diverse

neighborhoods. It also contains samples of third-plus-generation

(native-born of native-born parentage) Mexican Americans, non-

Hispanic blacks, and non-Hispanic whites for comparison.

42 Race Soc Probl (2014) 6:38–55

123

factors that played into their decision-making processes.

The answers provided insight into the frame the respon-

dents adopted when measuring success, how their frame

affected the decisions they made about their educational

and occupational pathways, and which reference group

they turned to when charting their educational and occu-

pational pursuits.

Los Angeles is a strategic research site to study the 1.5

and second generation because 62 % of its residents are

immigrants or the children of immigrants. Among the

various ethnic groups in LA, we choose to compare 1.5-

and second-generation Chinese and Vietnamese because

both are East Asian and share a Confucian philosophical

worldview (Wang 2002). Along with other East Asian

ethnic groups such as Japanese and Koreans, Chinese and

the Vietnamese have also been touted as a ‘‘model

minority,’’ whose success is often attributed to their

‘‘superior’’ cultural values, work ethic, entrepreneurial

spirit, and strong family cohesion (Ngo and Lee 2007).

There are also considerable differences between these

Asian groups. The Chinese are the largest Asian ethnic

group in the United States, accounting for nearly 23 % of

the Asian population. They are also the largest Asian

ethnic group in metropolitan Los Angeles with a

migration history that dates back longer than most other

national-origin groups. In addition, Chinese immigrants

in LA are diverse with respect to socioeconomic back-

ground (even among those who hail from mainland

China alone); they include low-skilled urban workers and

uneducated rural peasants whose profiles are similar to

the low-skilled Vietnamese, as well as highly educated

professionals whose human capital exceeds native-born

whites. Some highly educated Chinese immigrants

experience downward mobility upon arrival in the United

States because their pre-immigrant skills, experience, and

education may not translate into comparable jobs in the

American labor market due to language and cultural

barriers. In such cases, low SES (as measured by income

or occupational status) is not an accurate reflection of

low human capital.

We include the Vietnamese because they are the largest

non-European refugee group in the United States and

concentrate predominantly in metropolitan Los Angeles

(Bloemraad 2006; Zhou and Bankston 1998). Unlike the

long history of Chinese immigration to the United States,

Vietnamese immigration is of a much more recent vintage.

Most Vietnamese refugees had minimal formal education,

few marketable skills, little English-language proficiency,

and scant knowledge of the ways of an advanced Western

society. Compounding their class disadvantage was their

emotional distress, anxiety, and the severe trauma experi-

enced during their precarious exit from their home country,

which was exacerbated by their often uncertain, lengthy

stays in refugee camps (Rumbaut 2005). Lacking a pre-

existing ethnic community that could assist their accul-

turation and incorporation in their new host society, the

Vietnamese relied exclusively on the US government and

individual or institutional sponsors who determined where

they would settle and the resources they were given (Zhou

and Bankston 1998).

The Vietnamese provide a useful comparison with the

Chinese because while these groups differ with respect to

migration experiences, socioeconomic backgrounds, and

immigration selectivity, the children of Vietnamese

immigrants exhibit educational outcomes that are much

more similar to the children of Chinese immigrants than to

native-born whites and blacks. The dissimilar socioeco-

nomic backgrounds of these two immigrant groups and the

convergent educational outcomes of their adult children

allow us to assess how ethnic capital influences the cultural

frames of academic achievement among 1.5- and second-

generation Chinese and Vietnamese.

Results

1.5- and Second-Generation Chinese and Vietnamese

at a Glance

Descriptive analyses from the IIMMLA survey data reveal

discernible patterns of difference among LA’s immigrant

and second-generation Chinese and Vietnamese popula-

tions. We also include third-plus-generation non-Hispanic

blacks and non-Hispanic whites as a useful reference.

Table 1 provides a glimpse of some demographic and

family characteristics, revealing several notable patterns.

First, Vietnamese are relatively young with the median age

of 25 years, compared to Chinese (27), blacks (31), and

whites (30). They also have a higher percentage of 1.5

generation in their population; this, along with their young

age, reflects the relative recency of Vietnamese immigra-

tion to the United States.

Second, Chinese immigrant parents exhibit much higher

levels of human and financial capital than the other groups;

they are more highly educated, more likely to be English-

proficient, and more likely to own a home—SES resources

that translate into intergenerational advantages for their

children. Over 60 % of Chinese immigrant fathers and over

40 % of Chinese immigrant mothers in IIMMLA survey

have a bachelor’s degree, which exceeds the educational

attainment of native-born blacks and whites, and reflects

the high selectivity of Chinese immigration. By contrast,

Vietnamese immigrants evince lower levels of educational

attainment than native-born whites and blacks, especially

Vietnamese mothers, more than 30 % of whom have not

graduated from high school.

Race Soc Probl (2014) 6:38–55 43

123

Third, both 1.5- and second-generation Chinese and

Vietnamese were more likely to grow up in two-parent,

married households compared to their native-born white

and black counterparts. This is salient because previous

research has shown that children who grow up in single-

parent homes are less likely to finish high school and attend

college, less likely to find and maintain a steady job, and

more likely to become teenage mothers (McLanahan and

Bumpass 1988; McLanahan and Sandefur 1994).

Table 2 illustrates other cross-sectional outcomes in

educational attainment and labor market status among the

four groups. The 1.5- and second-generation Chinese out-

pace all groups on educational and socioeconomic mea-

sures, reflecting the intergenerational transmission of

parental advantage. Forty-two percent of 1.5- and second-

generation Chinese have earned a BA, and another 22 %

have attained a graduate degree (22 %)—these figures far

exceed those of native-born blacks (19 and 5 %) and

whites (32 and 14 %). Moreover, none of the 1.5- and

second-generation Chinese have dropped out of high

school, and 18 % hold a professional occupation.

What is most striking, however, is the educational

attainment of the 1.5- and second-generation Vietnamese,

who, within one generation, surpass native-born blacks and

whites. Neither the status attainment model nor the cultural

capital model can explain why 1.5- and second-generation

Vietnamese attain higher educational outcomes than native-

Table 1 Selected characteristics by generation

and race/ethnicity: Los Angeles

metropolitan region

Source: IIMMLA (see Footnote

#2)

Characteristics 1.5 and second generation Third-plus generation

Chinese Vietnamese Black White

Female 43.5 49.9 53.7 50.6

Median age 27.0 25.0 31.0 30.0

Citizenship status

Citizen by birth 45.3 29.4 100.0 100.0

Citizen through naturalization 49.8 64.3 – –

Permanent resident 4.4 6.1 – –

Undocumented status 0.5 0.2 – –

Parental SES

Father with no English proficiency 7.0 7.9 – –

Mother with no English proficiency 7.8 12.0 – –

Father with no high school diploma 7.5 15.6 10.9 3.5

Mother with no high school diploma 12.2 30.5 9.0 4.4

Father with a bachelor’s degree or more 61.3 31.9 35.0 46.5

Mother with a bachelor’s degree or more 42.3 16.1 28.0 36.3

Parent ever been undocumented 1.0 0.6 – –

Parent owning a home 86.5 58.8 67.5 89.2

Family situation

Both parents married 85.5 83.6 43.3 51.9

Grew up living with both parents 85.6 83.1 45.4 64.8

Total 400 401 401 402

Table 2 Divergent outcomes by generation and race/ethnicity: Los Angeles metropolitan region

Outcomes 1.5 and second

generation

Third-plus

generation

Chinese Vietnamese Black White

Education

No high school diploma 0.0 1.0 6.7 3.7

High school diploma 4.5 6.7 24.2 17.7

Some college 32.4 44.1 45.1 32.5

Bachelor’s degree 41.5 37.7 18.8 31.8

Graduate degrees 21.6 10.5 5.2 14.3

Labor market status

Professional occupations 17.9 14.0 4.6 9.6

Earnings

$20,000 or less 43.6 53.3 73.7 60.2

$20,001–$50,000 48.4 39.0 24.7 33.9

Over $50,000 8.0 7.7 1.7 5.9

Family situation

Married 26.0 24.4 25.9 44.6

Mean age when first

child was born

30.2 27.5 22.3 25.4

Having children

at teen age

0.0 2.2 12.0 2.9

Incarceration 1.8 3.2 19.3 10.6

Total 400 401 401 402

Source: IIMMLA (see Footnote #2)

44 Race Soc Probl (2014) 6:38–55

123

born whites and blacks, given their immigrant parents’ lower

levels of education and lack of middle-class cultural capital.

As Table 2 shows, 38 % of 1.5- and second-generation

Vietnamese have attained a BA and another 11 % have

earned a graduate degree. Moreover, 14 % hold a profes-

sional occupation. 3

The young median age of the 1.5- and

second-generation Vietnamese (25 years) is also salient

because most of the respondents had just finished college

and some had not yet completed their education at the time

of the IIMMLA survey, indicating that the percentage who

earn bachelor’s and graduate degrees and the percentage

who hold professional occupations will climb higher in the

near future.

That the educational outcomes of the 1.5- and second-

generation Vietnamese surpass that of native-born whites

and blacks in just one generation, and move in the direction

of the 1.5- and second-generation Chinese suggests that race

or ethnicity may affect educational outcomes in ways that the

status attainment model has failed to predict and in ways that

existing cultural models have overlooked. In the following

pages, we turn to the in-depth, life history interviews of our

respondents to illustrate how the children of Chinese and

Vietnamese immigrants construct a strict success frame, and

how this frame is supported by ethnic resources to produce

unexpected and exceptional educational outcomes.

The Success Frame

‘‘A is for Average, and B is an Asian Fail’’

Cultural sociologists define a frame as a lens through which

individuals interpret and make sense of their lives and their

social reality. The frame that individuals adopt depends on

that which is accessible to them, which, in turn, influences

their opportunity horizons (what they believe is possible),

their expectations, and their trajectories. Applying the

concept of frames to our research, we find that 1.5- and

second-generation Chinese and Vietnamese respondents

framed ‘‘a good education’’ similarly, despite the dissimilar

educational backgrounds of their immigrant parents. For

the Chinese and Vietnamese respondents, high school was

mandatory, college was an obligation, and only after

earning an advanced degree does one deserve kudos. For

example, Caroline, a 35-year-old second-generation Chi-

nese woman who works in the film industry noted that her

mother (who holds a BA) believes it is ludicrous that

graduating from high school is cause for celebration, as she

described her mother’s educational expectations for her

children,

The idea of graduating from high school for my

mother was not a great congratulatory day. I was

happy, but you know what? My mother was very

blunt, she said, ‘‘This is a good day, but it’s not that

special.’’

She said to me that a lot of Westerners in American

society value high school. She finds it absurd that

graduating from high school is made into a big deal

because you should graduate high school; everyone

should. It’s not necessarily a privilege; it’s an obliga-

tion. You must go to high school, and you must finish.

It’s a further obligation that you go to college and get a

bachelor’s degree. Thereafter, if you get a Ph.D. or a

Master’s, that’s the big thing; that’s the icing on the

cake with a cherry on top, and that’s what she values.

Not only was college an expectation for the 1.5- and

second-generation Chinese and Vietnamese respondents, but

both groups also adopted a similar frame for what ‘‘doing

well in school’’ means: getting straight A’s, graduating as

valedictorian or salutatorian, getting into one of the top UC

(University of California) schools or an Ivy, and pursuing

some type of graduate education in order work in one of the

‘‘four professions’’: doctor, lawyer, pharmacist, or engineer.

So exacting is the frame for ‘‘doing well in school’’ that our

Asian respondents described the value of grades on an Asian

scale as ‘‘A is for average, and B is an Asian fail.’’

Not only does the ‘‘Asian fail’’ descriptor reveal the

exacting parameters of the success frame, but it also

reveals the racialization of the frame. Regardless of whe-

ther the Chinese and Vietnamese respondents agreed with

the success frame, each was aware of it, and most racial-

ized academic achievement as ‘‘the Asian thing.’’ For

example, Debra, a 1.5-generation Chinese woman explains,

Doing well in school is the Asian thing. You just see

a lot more Asians being valedictorians, being top ten,

never getting in trouble with the teachers, and

entering into the good UC’s and the Ivy League

schools. And I even heard jokes from my best friend,

this Caucasian girl, she liked hanging around with

Asians because she knew that Asians were good

students. The ones that I hung around with ended up

at Harvard, Stanford, Cal.

The coding of academic excellence as ‘‘the Asian thing’’

is not unique to Los Angeles; Jiménez and Horowitz (2013)

also find that academic achievement is racially coded as

Asian in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the influx of

highly skilled immigrants from east and south Asia has

redefined the meaning and association of academic

achievement. In Silicon Valley’s high schools, Asians are

cast as high-achieving, hard-working, and successful, while

whites are stereotyped as low-achieving, lazy, and all too

3 We examined these measures based on the 2000 US Census data for

the Los Angeles region and found similar trends regarding intergroup

differences.

Race Soc Probl (2014) 6:38–55 45

123

willing to settle for mediocrity—essentially flipping the

traditional US hierarchy between the native-born white

host society and the new Asian second-generation

population.

Most remarkable was the consistency with which the

Chinese and Vietnamese respondents recounted this

frame, regardless of parental education, occupation, class

background, and migration history. Second-generation

Vietnamese whose parents arrived as refugees, had only a

fourth-grade education, do not speak English, and work in

ethnic restaurants were just as likely to recount this frame

as second-generation Chinese whose parents have

advanced degrees and work as doctors and engineers. For

example, when we asked Maryann, a 24-year-old second-

generation Vietnamese woman who grew up in the

housing projects in downtown LA how she defines suc-

cess, she relayed, ‘‘getting into one of the top schools,’’

which, by her account, includes ‘‘UCLA, Berkeley, Yale,

Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford,’’ and then working in

one of the ‘‘top professions’’ such as ‘‘doctor or lawyer.’’

When we asked Maryann how she knew about the top

schools and top professions, she answered, ‘‘Other par-

ents, like their friends who have kids. We know a few

families who have kids who have gone to Yale, and

they’re doctors now, and they’re doing really well for

themselves.’’

Maryann’s parents have only a sixth-grade education,

work in Chinatown’s garment factories, speak no English,

and live in LA’s housing projects surrounded by Mexican

immigrant neighbors who are similarly disadvantaged. Yet

despite Maryann’s poor parental human capital, disadvan-

taged family background, and residential segregation from

more privileged coethnics, she readily recounted a success

frame that mirrored that of her middle-class coethnic and

Chinese peers. Low parental human capital did not stunt

Maryann’s opportunity horizon, nor did it truncate her

educational expectations because she benefited from

intangible ethnic resources—parental networks that pointed

to mobility prototypes who conveyed the meaning of the

success frame and realistic possibility of attaining it.

While Maryann did not graduate from one of the ‘‘top

schools’’ that she listed, she did graduate from a Cal State

university and is now a substitute teacher while she works

toward her MA in Education. Despite the extraordinary

intergenerational mobility that she has attained, Maryann

feels that she departed from the success frame because she

earned only a 3.5 GPA and graduated from a Cal State

University rather than a UC. By Maryann’s account, her

GPA ‘‘wasn’t great’’ and she describes herself as ‘‘an

average person’’ who was ‘‘never really focused on

school,’’ especially compared to her twin sister, who

earned top billing as the high school valedictorian and

graduated from UC Berkeley.

Maryann was not unique among the Chinese and Viet-

namese respondents who described themselves as ‘‘aver-

age’’ because they did not fit the exacting frame for

academic success. Those who graduated with GPAs of 3.5

and 3.6 consistently pointed to coethnic and panethnic

peers whose GPAs exceeded 4.0, and earned admission to

top public and private universities. So precise is the frame

for academic success that even among those whose GPAs

exceeded 4.0 felt that they were not as academically suc-

cessful as they or their parents would have liked. For

example, Hannah is a 25-year-old second-generation

Vietnamese woman who graduated third in her high school

class with a GPA of 4.21, was voted ‘‘most likely to suc-

ceed’’ by her peers, and earned admission to UCLA and

Berkeley. Despite Hannah’s stellar accomplishments, when

we asked whether she and her parents were proud of her

academic achievement in high school, she casually replied,

‘‘It would have been better if I was first or second.’’

Supporting the Success Frame

‘‘The Chinese Yellow Book’’ and Supplementary Education

Simply adopting a frame is insufficient to usher a particular

outcome; for frames to be effective, they need individual

and institutional support, as well as consistent reinforce-

ment. The Chinese and Vietnamese immigrant parents

reinforce the narrow frame for academic success by pro-

actively accessing the tangible resources that they learn

about through formal and informal ethnic networks.

Regardless of their education, these immigrant parents

quickly learn that in order to support the success frame,

they need to buy or rent homes or apartments in neigh-

borhoods based foremost on the strength of the public

school district, they need to demand that their children are

placed in the Honor’s and AP tracks in high school, and

they need to provide supplementary education and tutoring

to insure that they are. Christopher and Jason’s cases

illustrate precisely how their working-class immigrant

parents supported the success frame, despite their poor

human capital, limited economic resources, and lack of

dominant cultural capital.

Christopher—A Transfer of Guardianship Christopher is

a 27-year-old second-generation Vietnamese whose refu-

gee parents have only a fourth-grade education; yet, despite

their poor human capital, Christopher graduated from the

University of Texas with a degree in computer science. He

now works as a financial analyst for a management con-

sulting firm and earns an annual salary of $70,000, which is

more than his parents’ combined earnings. Despite his

family’s low socioeconomic status, Christopher benefited

from having high-achieving cousins who served as his

46 Race Soc Probl (2014) 6:38–55

123

academic role models and mobility prototypes whose paths

he could emulate. In addition, at the advice of their friends,

Christopher’s parents (who live in a low-income, pre-

dominantly Vietnamese immigrant community in West-

minster) transferred legal guardianship of their son to one

of their coethnic friends so that he could attend a more

competitive public high school in an affluent neighborhood

in Orange County. Not only did the transfer offer Chris-

topher a more resource-rich high school education, but it

also shielded him from his potential involvement in Viet-

namese gangs, which was a serious concern in his parents’

poor neighborhood.

Hence, Christopher’s parents benefited from their ethnic

capital and intangible resources; they tapped into their

class-diverse ethnic networks to learn how they could

provide Christopher a better education. And in spite of

their socioeconomic disadvantage, they provided Christo-

pher with the tangible and intangible resources to support

the success frame, which put him on equitable footing with

his middle-class coethnic peers.

Jason and Hannah—The Role of Supplementary Educa-

tion Like Christopher, Jason, a 25-year-old second-gen-

eration Chinese, grew up in a working-class neighborhood

in Long Beach, but as soon as his parents could afford to do

so, they moved their family to a modest home in Cerritos.

Jason’s parents selected Cerritos because they learned from

the ‘‘Chinese Yellow Book’’ that Cerritos High School

‘‘ranks in the teens.’’ The ‘‘Chinese Yellow Book’’ is a

two-inch thick, 1,500-page long telephone directory that is

published annually and lists ethnic businesses in Southern

California, as well as the rankings of the region’s public

high schools and the nation’s best universities. When Jason

initially moved to Cerritos and took the junior high school

admissions examination, he was placed in the school’s

‘‘regular’’ track rather than AP academic track. Dismayed

and concerned, Jason’s parents immediately tapped into

their ethnic networks to inquire about after-school Chinese

academies and promptly enrolled their son in one near his

school. When Jason took the examination for high school,

he was placed in the AP track.

His parents’ efforts, along with Jason’s hard work, paid

off; Jason graduated in the top 10 % of his high school and

was admitted into all of the UC campuses to which he

applied. Although his parents wanted him to go to Berke-

ley, he chose UCLA because he could save money by

living at home. In addition, because he was able to apply

his high school AP credits to college, he graduated from

UCLA in 3 years and is now attending a law school.

Supplementary education—including after-school

tutoring, college preparation classes, academic enrichment

courses, and taking classes ahead of schedule—was not

unique to Jason’s experience. For many of the Chinese and

Vietnamese respondents, supplementary education was

such an integral part of their adolescence that they hardly

characterized it as supplementary; this is just what their

parents had them do as an insurance policy so that they

would excel in high school. For example, Hannah, the

25-year-old second-generation Vietnamese woman who

graduated third in her class with a 4.21 GPA, admitted that

her summers were reserved for summer school and

tutoring,

Summertime, besides going to summer school every

single year, we also did tutoring classes to get ahead.

I believe it was my junior year summer, I was taking

classes at community college for calculus or some-

thing like that. And then younger than that, like in

junior high and stuff, we were taking a class ahead,

like math classes. Like, if we were going to take

geometry, then we were doing it in the summertime

already, or algebra in the summertime, the summer

before. In the Asian community, I think everyone

does tutoring.

When we pressed further and asked Hannah why her

mother insisted on having her and her siblings enroll in

summer school classes and tutoring, she explained, ‘‘She

just knew that doing these tutoring classes would help us be

ahead of our class and get better grades so that we could go

to college.’’ But Hannah specified that it was not just a

question of attending any college, but, rather, a prestigious

college. Hannah’s parents’ insistence on supplementary

education for their children resulted in exceptional aca-

demic outcomes: she graduated from UCLA and is cur-

rently applying to pharmacy schools; her sister is enrolled

in pharmacy school, and her brother is in medical school.

The Costs and Consequences of the Success Frame

The Achievement Paradox

While the success frame and the ethnic resources utilized to

support it help poor and working-class 1.5- and second-

generation Chinese and Vietnamese override their class

disadvantage and produce higher educational outcomes

than would have been predicted based on parental SES, it

comes with costs and consequences. Because they turn to

high-achieving coethnics as their reference group, those

who do not fit the narrow success frame feel like outliers,

and, in some cases, like failures, because their educational

outcomes depart from what they perceive is the norm for

coethnics and Asian Americans more generally. Many of

the respondents were not satisfied with their own

achievements, regardless of how much education they

attained or how much they earn in their current position,

because they compared their accomplishments to a

Race Soc Probl (2014) 6:38–55 47

123

reference group that includes even higher-achieving co-

ethnics—including their siblings, cousins, friends, and

peers—rather than to non-Hispanic whites or the US mean.

Regardless of what they have achieved, they (or their

parents) know someone who has achieved more, and

therefore, they measure their achievements upward, against

an exceptionally high bar. The dissatisfaction with their

academic and professional achievements (which exceeds

the norm for native-born white Americans) points to the

‘‘achievement paradox’’ that many 1.5- and second-gen-

eration Chinese and Vietnamese experience, as the cases of

Carolyn, Sarah, and Jemmy illuminate.

Carolyn—‘‘The Black Sheep’’ Carolyn is a 35-year-old

second-generation Chinese woman, who earned a BA in

Film Studies from a Cal State school and currently works

as a visual effects coordinator for movies. Armed with

human capital, her parents immigrated to the United States

from Taiwan; her father holds a graduate degree and her

mother a Bachelor’s.

By Carolyn’s account, she did not excel in high school

and earned ‘‘only a 3.3’’ GPA. Despite her ‘‘low GPA,’’ she

always knew that she would go to college, not only because

her parents are highly educated, but also because her aunts,

uncles, and cousins are college-educated, most of whom

attended elite universities like MIT, Stanford, and Cornell.

Carolyn’s high school record was not competitive enough

to earn her admission into any of the UC schools to which

she applied, but it did earn her a spot at a Cal State school.

During college, she took a film class on a whim and

enjoyed it so much that she decided to major in it. After

graduating, she landed a job as a production assistant—no

easy feat in the fiercely competitive entertainment industry

in Los Angeles.

Carolyn has worked in the film industry for most of her

adult life and has moved up the ranks from production

assistant to visual effects coordinator, for which she earns a

salary of $60,000. Because she works on films, she travels

extensively—a perk of her job that she relishes—and

because Carolyn aspires to make films of her own some-

day, she is acquiring as much experience as she can while

she ‘‘pays her dues.’’ Now that Carolyn earns a steady

income and is able to support herself, her parents are

content, but they do not feel that they have ‘‘bragging

rights’’—that is, they are not proud enough to brag about

her accomplishments to her aunts, uncles, and other family

members. When asked to elaborate on the way her parents

feel about her educational and occupational trajectory,

Carolyn candidly replied,

My parents were disappointed in a few things.

Because I didn’t go to the UC system, they were

disappointed. My brother Robert was a golden child.

He got in, even though it was just Irvine, but Irvine’s

a good school. My parents felt like I could have done

better. I tried my best, but it was a challenge.

In terms of the bragging, you’ll hear it. So and so

went to MIT, and so and so went to Cornell or

Stanford, and you start feeling, as an Asian person,

less and less of yourself because you couldn’t com-

pete with these people, because you’re not bright or

smart enough, and you’re not at that equal level. I

used to feel a lot like that, especially when I was a

production assistant and running around, and I was

already out of college. I should have been happy that

I finished college and I have a degree to show for it,

but I didn’t.

Carolyn is keenly aware that her occupational pursuit

falls out of the success frame, and although she enjoys her

career, she explained that her choice is unconventional by

Chinese standards. She also candidly revealed that she feels

like the ‘‘black sheep’’ of her family, especially compared

to her cousins who graduated from elite, private universi-

ties, and work as doctors and lawyers. Other respondents

echoed Carolyn’s sentiments and described themselves as

‘‘not that smart,’’ ‘‘not smart enough,’’ and even ‘‘dumb’’

compared to their friends and family members who atten-

ded prestigious universities, attained advanced degrees,

and have high-status occupations. Because they compare

themselves to the highest-achieving coethnics who have

attained the success frame, many of the respondents feel

that they are not successful—pointing to the ‘‘achievement

paradox,’’ as Sarah and Jemmy’s cases underscore.

Sarah and Jemmy—The Status of an Advanced Degree

Sarah is a 1.5-generation Chinese woman who graduated

from a UC school and now owns a profitable contracting

and design company from which she earned $160,000 last

year. Sarah described herself as ‘‘a double-minority’’

(female and nonwhite) who works in an industry that is

dominated by white males, which makes her business

ownership and success that much more impressive. Despite

all of Sarah’s markers of success—including a thriving

business and a home in an affluent neighborhood in Los

Angeles—neither she nor her parents view her as suc-

cessful because she has not attained an advanced degree.

When we asked whether she feels successful, Sarah

answered, ‘‘not yet.’’

Compared to her older sister, who graduated from law

school and now works as a lawyer, Sarah feels that she

pales in comparison, as she relayed, ‘‘I don’t have a

graduate degree.’’ Elaborating on this point, Sarah men-

tioned with a touch of embarrassment, ‘‘All of my friends

in high school went to grad school except me.’’ When we

asked why a graduate degree is important, she explained,

48 Race Soc Probl (2014) 6:38–55

123

‘‘The perception among Chinese is that education is the key

to success.’’ What is noteworthy about Sarah’s statement is

that while an advanced degree may not help her in her

chosen profession, she will not feel successful until she has

earned one.

We then asked Sarah whether she feels successful

compared to her friends who are not Chinese. She paused

for a moment as if she had never considered that com-

parison before and finally replied,

Let me think about that for a moment (pause). If I

were to look at my white friends of that same age

range, yes I’m more successful. If I were to look at all

of my friends, yes, I would say so.

While Sarah does not feel successful according to the

strict success frame, she does feel successful vis-à-vis her

white and non-Chinese friends, but, remarkably, she had

never considered making this comparison before we raised

the question. Sarah is not unique in this regard; none of the

1.5- and second-generation Chinese and Vietnamese

respondents considered measuring their success against

native-born whites (or native-born blacks for that matter).

Rather, they turn to high-achieving coethnics as their ref-

erence group—a finding that highlights that native-born

whites are not the standard by which today’s 1.5- and

second-generation Asians measure their success and

achievements.

Like Sarah, Jemmy, a 1.5-generation Chinese male,

measures his success against high-achieving coethnics, and

as a result, he feels that he pales in comparison. Jemmy

graduated from a UC school and now does research in a

laboratory for a scientist and aspires to attain a PhD.

Jemmy had not been accepted into any of the prestigious

PhD programs to which he applied, which has caused him a

great deal of anguish and embarrassment because he

compares himself to his peers, friends, and brother who are

currently in doctoral programs or who have already

attained their PhD degrees. When we asked Jemmy to

whom he compares himself when measuring his success,

he answered

Most of my family, at least who live close by. They

have already gotten their PhD’s a long time ago. My

brother already has his PhD Most of my friends

already have their PhD’s, or are on their way to

getting it.

Less than 1 percent of Americans have a PhD, yet

Jemmy’s reference group includes only those who have a

doctoral degree or are on their way to attaining one, and

because Jemmy was not admitted to any of the doctoral

programs to which he applied, he feels like an abject failure

because he has ‘‘only a BA.’’ But later in the interview,

Jemmy admitted that not all of his family members and

friends have their PhD degrees (in fact, most do not), yet he

does not compare his accomplishments to those who do

not, nor does he consider measuring his success against the

native-born whites or against lower-achieving coethnics.

Instead, he (like most other respondents) compares upward,

and in the process, Jemmy feels unsuccessful, despite his

educational and professional accomplishments.

Coupling Ethnicity and Achievement

So strong is the perception that the success frame is the

norm among Asian Americans that the 1.5- and second-

generation Chinese and Vietnamese who cannot attain it or

choose to buck it find themselves at odds with their

immigrant parents and with their ethnic identities. Because

they couple ethnicity and achievement, and because they

believe that the success frame is a product of their ethnic

culture and a reflection of their ethnic identity, they find

themselves attempting to relinquish their ethnic identities

in the process of contesting the frame. So rather than

challenging and rejecting the frame, the respondents were

more likely to distance themselves from coethnics and their

ethnic identities, as Paul, Andrew, and Lana’s cases

illustrate.

Paul and Andrew—Relinquishing their Ethnic Identi-

ties Paul is a 33-year-old second-generation Chinese who

works as a freelance artist. Paul’s mother died when he was

a young teenager, so he was raised by his single father, who

was not only a strict disciplinarian, but also physically

abusive. Much of the abuse stemmed from the discord

between Paul’s desire to pursue a career in art and his

father’s insistence that Paul pursue a more traditional, high-

status career as a doctor, lawyer, or scientist. According to

Paul’s father, pursuing a career in art is not a prestigious

occupation, and certainly not one that he could ‘‘boast

about,’’ as Paul explained

He didn’t see it as prestigious. It’s nothing he could

boast about. He had other friends whose children

were going to Harvard, and becoming scientists and

doctors and lawyers, and boasting about their

accomplishments. Being an artist seemed like too

much of a step down.

Paul’s father was so adamantly opposed to his son’s

desire to pursue a career in art that he threatened not to pay

for Paul’s college tuition if he accepted admission to the art

academy to which he was admitted. Paul contrived that the

only way to force his father to support his college educa-

tion was to threaten to ask his uncles and grandparents on

his mother’s side for financial assistance, which would

have caused even greater embarrassment to his father.

Faced with the threat, Paul’s father finally relented and

Race Soc Probl (2014) 6:38–55 49

123

reluctantly agreed to pay for his college tuition at the art

academy.

Today, Paul works as a freelance artist who earns a six-

figure salary, which is enough, so that his wife can stay at

home full time to care for their two preschool age children.

He and his wife purchased a home in an affluent Orange

County suburb, yet despite Paul’s productive and pros-

perous career, his decision to become an artist has caused

such a severe rift with his father that the two have not made

amends. Even today, they rarely speak to one another.

Paul attributes his father’s reluctance to support his

career in art to his father’s adherence to Chinese culture,

because, according to Paul, in Chinese culture, ‘‘It’s really

bad to choose to be an artist; it’s really undesirable.’’ Paul

also attributes his refusal to buckle under his father’s

pressure to his ‘‘being more American than Chinese,’’ as

Paul described, ‘‘I didn’t buy into that. I grew up with the

mindset which I attribute to being more American culture,

which is, I can choose to do anything I want; it’s about

individuality of freedom.’’ Furthermore, Paul racializes his

decision to be an artist by describing himself as ‘‘the

whitest Chinese guy you’ll ever meet.’’ Because he

departed from the success frame, Paul feels like an ethnic

outlier.

There are several noteworthy points about the way in

which Paul described his educational and occupational

pursuits. First, Paul attributes his willingness to buck the

success frame as an act that is culturally American rather

than Chinese. Second, because Paul does not fit the success

frame, he distances himself from his ethnicity as far as he is

able by claiming to be the ‘‘whitest Chinese guy you’ll ever

meet;’’ however, by doing so, he reinforces the association

between Chinese ethnicity, achievement, and the success

frame. He has even changed the spelling of his ethnic

surname, so that clients would be unable to detect his

ethnic identity prior to meeting him in person.

Third, while Paul feels no attachment to his Chinese

ethnicity, he is unable to completely relinquish it, as he

insightfully noted, ‘‘I’m an American at heart, but I’m

Chinese, undeniable.’’ Given his phenotype and features,

Paul does not believe that he can claim an unhyphenated

American identity because he cannot physically escape his

racial status. Like other 1.5- and second-generation Chi-

nese and Vietnamese, Paul distances himself from his

ethnic identity as a way to disassociate himself from the

narrow success frame. And like the other respondents who

diverged from the success frame, Paul attempts to reject his

ethnic identity because he believes the two—the success

frame and ethnicity—are inextricably linked.

Many of the 1.5- and second-generation Chinese and

Vietnamese respondents expressed that they do not feel

Chinese, Vietnamese, or Asian because they do not

fit the narrow parameters of the success frame. Andrew

(a 21-year-old second-generation Vietnamese respondent)

is another example; he does not consider himself ‘‘Viet-

namese enough’’ because he has not achieved the accolades

that his younger brother has. Andrew described his brother

as ‘‘everything that I’m not’’ because he excelled in his

high school AP courses, attends an elite UC school as a

Biology major, and is on his way to medical school, as

Andrew described,

My brother is very successful. He managed to do

everything that I wasn’t able to do. He got very high

grades in all AP classes. I just think I didn’t do well

enough. I’m not angry at him, just disappointed I

didn’t meet those goals and expectations.

Andrew’s sense that he is not as successful as his brother

has affected how he chooses to identify; he prefers the

racial label of ‘‘American Asian’’ rather than an ethnic one

as Vietnamese or Vietnamese American because he feels

like a failure compared to his brother. When we asked

Andrew how he thinks other people identify him, he

answered, ‘‘I’m not sure how people see me. If they asked

what I am, I say Vietnamese, but I don’t consider myself

Vietnamese enough’’ and then added that his brother is

‘‘much more Vietnamese than me.’’ Because his brother fits

the success frame, Andrew feels that he is a better, more

accurate reflection of Vietnamese ethnicity. Believing that

he is an outlier in the Vietnamese community, Andrew

feels no connection to his Vietnamese ethnicity and

chooses to avoid contact with coethnics whenever possible.

Like Andrew, Lana also prefers to opt out of her ethnic

identity and chooses the racial label ‘‘Asian American.’’

Lana—Opting out of Ethnicity Lana is a 25-year-old

second-generation Vietnamese woman who lives at home

with her parents. She has completed 4 years of community

college and described her working status as ‘‘self-

employed,’’ by which she means that she does odd jobs

such as babysitting children, taking care of elderly neigh-

bors, and occasionally helping people with film and thea-

trical productions when she has the opportunity. As the

only child of Vietnamese immigrants, Lana has felt the

weight of her parents’ expectations all of her life and feels

that she has failed them miserably. She did not graduate

from a UC school as they had hoped, and she does not hold

a prestigious job as a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or phar-

macist. Since Lana graduated from community college, her

parents have adjusted their expectations and now hope that

she will become a teacher, but Lana has no interest in

becoming a teacher, and, instead, dreams of working

behind the scenes in films. When we asked how her parents

feel about her passion for films, she answered, ‘‘I’m so far

off from what my parents want, so I might as well just

make myself happy.’’

50 Race Soc Probl (2014) 6:38–55

123

As a second-generation Vietnamese whose accom-

plishments are far afield from the success frame, Lana

chooses to have as little contact as possible with the

Vietnamese community, who in her view defines success

by the ‘‘three M’s: Money, Motorola, and Mercedes.’’

Moreover, Lana chooses to identify racially as Asian

American, rather than ethnically as Vietnamese or Viet-

namese American, because she conflates ethnicity with

achievement. Lana opts out of her ethnic identity because

she does not fit the narrow parameters of the success frame,

but in the process of opting out of her ethnic identity, she

(like Paul and Andrew) reifies the association between

ethnicity and achievement.

This self-selection process of preferring a racial versus

ethnic identification has an unintended consequence: it

provides specious support for the association between

ethnicity and achievement. Because the 1.5- and second-

generation Chinese and Vietnamese who do not fit the

success frame are less likely to identify ethnically and are

also less likely to engage with their ethnic communities,

they become less visible to coethnics and also less visible

to non-Asians more generally. By contrast, those who fit

the frame are more likely to identify with and embrace

their ethnic identities, more likely to have contact with

coethnics and their coethnic communities, and as a con-

sequence, they become more visible to coethnics and non-

Asians alike. Their visibility is raised even further when

stories about those who have attained the success frame are

featured in ethnic newspapers and ethnic news programs.

Consequently, the seemingly simple and inconsequential

process of racial versus ethnic identification—and the

resultant behavior that ensues—can transform a once-spe-

cious association into a veritable one, thereby strengthen-

ing the link between ethnicity and achievement.

Previous research has also found that Asian Americans

link ethnicity and achievement (Caplan et al. 1989; Lee

2006; Zhou and Bankston 1998). For example, second-

generation Koreans who did not attend an elite university

and who had not secured high-salaried, professional jobs

were embarrassed by their ‘‘failure,’’ and as a result, they

did not feel authentically Korean or Korean American, and

disassociated themselves from the Korean American

community because they felt like underachieving anoma-

lies (Lee 2006). In addition, the children of Southeast

Asian refugees who failed in school were more likely to

detach themselves from their families and ethnic commu-

nities (Caplan et al. 1989; Zhou and Bankston 1998).

Through this self-selection process, the success frame

endures and remains tangled with ethnicity, despite the

bevy of disconfirming evidence of 1.5- and second-gener-

ation Chinese and Vietnamese who do not fit the frame and

actively resist it. By opting out of their ethnic identities and

removing themselves from their ethnic communities, the

1.5- and second-generation Chinese and Vietnamese who

feel like failures, anomalies, or poor representatives of their

coethnic communities unwittingly reinforce the specious

link between ethnicity and achievement.

Discussion and Conclusions

We began this paper by engaging the Tiger Mother con-

troversy with a vexing question: how do we explain the

exceptional academic outcomes of 1.5- and second-gener-

ation Asian American students, when the status attainment

model and the cultural capital model fall short in offering

adequate answers? The low-SES origins of Vietnamese and

Chinese parents do not hamper their children’s educational

outcomes in the same way that it obstructs the educational

outcomes of other racial/ethnic minority groups. The

Vietnamese arrive in the United States as disadvantaged

refugees with less than a high school education, few labor

market skills, and little command of the English language,

yet their children evince higher educational outcomes than

their native-born white and black peers. Furthermore,

rather than converging to the white middle-class norm, the

children of Vietnamese immigrants exhibit educational

outcomes that are more similar to their 1.5- and second-

generation Chinese counterparts.

The exceptional academic outcomes of the children of

Asian immigrants have led to the resurgence of racial/ethnic

stereotypes about the Asian ‘‘Tiger Mother,’’ Asian parents’

rigid and authoritarian child-rearing practices, and Asian

culture to explain their children’s academic achievement

(Chua 2011). Chua is not alone in the way she conceives the

role of culture. Unable to explain the academic outcomes of

some Asian Americans, pundits like David Brooks (2012)

and scholars like Charles Murray (2012) point to Asian

cultural values—Asians are more hard-working and,

therefore, more high-achieving than other students. Even

the majority of our 1.5- and second-generation Chinese and

Vietnamese respondents attributed their academic

achievements to their racial/ethnic culture by claiming that

‘‘Asians value education more than other groups.’’

Culture and ethnicity matter, but not in the way that the

Tiger Mother and many of our respondents claim it does.

Treating culture as a core set of racially/ethnically intrinsic,

comprehensive, and unchanging values, and linking these

values to outcomes provides a glib explanation, but a

specious one. In our research, we reject the notion of cul-

ture as static and intrinsic to race or ethnicity; instead, we

develop a model of cultural frames to illustrate how culture

operates through frames, and how frames are supported by

tangible and intangible ethnic resources.

Our analysis of the in-depth interview data shows that

the 1.5- and second-generation Chinese and Vietnamese

Race Soc Probl (2014) 6:38–55 51

123

share a frame for academic success that entails getting

straight A’s in high school, graduating from an elite uni-

versity, and pursuing an advanced degree. This frame

reflects a particular mobility strategy in which academic

achievement becomes the pragmatic goal in itself because

Chinese and Vietnamese immigrant parents perceive edu-

cation as the only sure path to mobility—a perception that

they have imparted onto their children (Lee and Zhou

2013; Steinberg 1996; Sue and Okazaki 1990).

Given the potential discrimination that they fear their

nonwhite children may experience in fields like writing,

acting, or art, Asian immigrant parents push for the most

conservative approach and shepherd their children into

fields and professions in which they believe their children

will experience the least possibility of bias and discrimi-

nation. Professions in medicine, law, and engineering

require advanced degrees—markers of high education and

skill—which, immigrant parents believe, may shield their

children from potential bias from employers, fellow

employees, peers, customers, and clients. As long as Asian

immigrant parents perceive that their children are suscep-

tible to potential discrimination from their host society,

they will continue to push their second-generation children

into particular professions to shield them from it.

However, Chinese and Vietnamese immigrant parents

recognize that it is not enough to adopt a particular success

frame; in order to realize the frame, they need to support it

with tangible and intangible resources. Consequently, they

choose neighborhoods based on the quality of school dis-

tricts, and parents insist that their children are placed in the

Honor’s or AP tracks in their schools. In addition, parents

provide supplementary education in the form of tutoring,

after-school classes in ethnic and nonethnic academies,

SAT prep courses, and summer school classes in local

community colleges to make sure that their children are a

step ahead of their peers. While the middle-class have

created and charted this educational strategy, the resources

required to follow it are available to poor and working-

class coethnics. Access to these supplementary ethnic

resources explains why the outcomes of the 1.5- and sec-

ond-generation Vietnamese are more similar to the Chinese

rather than to native-born whites or blacks.

While the 1.5- and second-generation Chinese and

Vietnamese respondents framed academic success as ‘‘an

Asian thing,’’ the mechanisms by which these students

achieve success are by no means exclusive to Asian

Americans (Lareau 2003; Smith 2014; Tran, forthcoming).

Lareau (2003) finds that affluent, native-born white and

black parents consciously engage in a process of ‘‘con-

certed cultivation’’ in order to hone their children’s skills

and talents. These parents send their children to elite pri-

vate high schools and pack their children’s schedules with

a slew of after-school activities, including piano, violin,

and tennis, as well as tutoring, and supplementary educa-

tion. Middle-class parents now use their class resources to

invest more money and time in their children than ever

before (Reardon 2011).

While this intensive child-rearing method of ‘‘concerted

cultivation’’ is class-specific among non-Asians, it is not so

among Asian immigrant parents; regardless of class, Chi-

nese and Vietnamese immigrant parents share a success

frame for their children. Furthermore, the openness with

which Asian parents admit to enhancing their children’s

education with tutors, after-school classes, and summer

school compared to the reticence among non-Asian parents

is one reason why achievement is linked with race/eth-

nicity. This is not to de-emphasize the significance of

family SES, which is conducive for the educational

attainment of all children. Rather, we underscore that the

low SES of some Asian immigrant families does not

hamper the educational attainment of their children as it

does with other racial/ethnic minority groups because

immigrant parents actively access the tangible and intan-

gible resources in their ethnic communities to help override

their class disadvantage.

Carter (2005) made a strong case for decoupling race,

culture, and academic achievement; through her extensive

research of low-income African American and Latino

youth, Carter found that these youth did not equate aca-

demic achievement with ‘‘acting white.’’ Instead, African

American and Latino youth associated ‘‘acting white’’ with

cultural styles and tastes in music, dress, food, and speech

patterns. Carter convincingly demonstrated that acting

white is not an anti-achievement ideology, as Fordham and

Ogbu (1986) claimed, but rather a descriptor of a youth’s

adoption of white, middle-class tastes, styles, and speech

patterns. While Carter debunked the association between

‘‘acting white’’ and anti-achievement ideology, pundits,

scholars, and the American public more generally continue

to pair race/ethnicity (and more specifically, racial/ethnic

culture) with academic achievement. Today, however, the

association between academic achievement and race/eth-

nicity has moved beyond the black–white binary; Asian

Americans—rather than whites—have become the model

of academic excellence (see also Jiménez and Horowitz

2013).

While linking ethnicity and achievement may appear to

be positive or advantageous, there are a host of unintended

negative consequences associated with this pairing (Cher-

yan and Bodenhausen 2000; Ho et al. 1998; Lin et al.

2005). To end, we explain why decoupling race/ethnicity

from achievement has positive implications for Asian

Americans, as well as other racial/ethnic groups. First, de-

racializing and de-ethnicizing achievement will provide the

space to acknowledge that most Asian Americans are not

exceptional, and many do not achieve extraordinary

52 Race Soc Probl (2014) 6:38–55

123

educational and occupational outcomes. By recognizing the

disconfirming evidence and accepting the vast heteroge-

neity within the Asian American population, Asian

Americans who do not fit the success frame may not feel

like racial/ethnic outliers or failures when their outcomes

do not squarely fit the frame’s narrow parameters. As a

consequence, they may be less likely to reject their ethnic

identities and less likely to distance themselves from their

coethnics simply because they do not meet the perceived

norm.

Second, decoupling race/ethnicity from achievement

will also have positive implications for self-esteem among

Asian American college students, which is lower compared

to other groups, even controlling for academic perfor-

mance. In a study of college students at elite universities,

Massey et al. (2003) found that while Asian students have

the highest academic outcomes, they exhibit the lowest

levels of self-esteem compared to white, black, and Latino

college students. Moreover, despite their higher GPAs,

they are the least likely to see themselves as good students

(Massey et al. 2003; Sidanius et al. 2010). We posit that

this may be because Asian Americans use high-achieving

coethnics—rather than whites, blacks, or Latinos—as the

reference group by which they measure their success. If

academic achievement is no longer racially coded as ‘‘an

Asian thing,’’ then Asian American students may be more

willing to measure their success against a more reasonable

barometer, which may result in a boost in self-esteem and

self-efficacy.

Third, decoupling race/ethnicity and achievement has

positive implications for other groups, especially blacks

and Latinos who are often stereotyped by teachers and

peers as low-achieving and, consequently, may suffer from

‘‘stereotype threat,’’ which can lead students to underper-

form in competitive academic settings (Deaux et al. 2007;

Massey and Fischer 2005; Steele and Aronson 1995). It

will also benefit white students, who are also deemed as

less academically inclined than their Asian American

counterparts, especially in metropolitan areas that have

experienced high rates of high-skilled Asian immigration,

such as Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area

(Jiménez and Horowitz 2013).

Finally, while we recognize the positive functions of the

success frame, we also highlighted the costs associated with

embracing it too tightly and the advantages associated with

broadening it. Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants (and

other Asians more generally) could consider broadening the

success frame, so that their children do not feel so constricted

in their occupational pursuits. This process has already

begun, as the second generation has come of age, and will

likely continue, if the incorporation experiences of second-

and later-generation European ethnics are a precursor of

what lies ahead for later-generation Asians (Alba and Nee

2003; Foner 2010). That Asian Americans are departing

from the success frame, choosing alternate pathways, and

achieving success on their own terms should give Asian

immigrant parents and their children confidence that

broadening the success frame is not a route to failure; instead,

it may lead to uncharted and fulfilling pathways to success.

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