Compelled to Excel
Vivian Louie, a Chinese-American wrote a book called “Compelled to Excel: Immigration, Education, and Opportunity among Chinese Americans” that tries to in her mind answer the “model minority” myth of Asian-Americans when it comes to academic achievement. She does not think that the culture of Chinese Americans pushing them to succeed has much to do with it. She instead focuses more on the large within-group differences in lower and upper class Asian-Americans in terms of income, neighborhood, and parents’ occupation.
Of course children of a higher socio-economic status have a significant advantage as it gives access to more resources, but I don’t think that culture can be simply thrown out the window. For example, even the author herself finds that all the people she interviewed saw education as a family matter, and reported their parents instilled more discipline in them than in children of other backgrounds. Many African-Americans would be blown away at a child that feels like a failure because they “only” got a degree at an average college.
How can one deny that a culture, that in one case in the book, makes a child of five cry at night worrying that they will be a bum in the streets if he does not work hard, does not push people harder? Is it not cultural that a person feels like a failure for going to a less than elite college in spite of not knowing English early in life and growing up in poverty? With that in mind, what effect would a culture in which family is nearly non-existent have?
The most interesting part to me is the factor that she says all the parents she interviewed said that they felt that they must push their children much harder in a racist society as a strategy for survival. Perhaps African-Americans can learn from that strategy.
A friend of mine (An Asian-American Muslim) wrote an email to me on this subject:
In Grade School, I knew a girl who was Taiwanese and she was brilliant in all subjects and her parents didn’t speak a lick of English. So how did she become so smart? Could be in her genes, but I know that her parents pushed her very hard to excel and that was all that they could do to help. They were poor so it wasn’t like she had tutors helping her. Even when I was growing up, my mother spoke very little English and my dad was always working but my parents pushed me to excel and I did.
That brings this question. Economically speaking, is it better to be born poor and smart than rich and stupid? The thing is that when I point out these things to many African-American Muslims, they go into denial mode and/or point out a significant exception or two (A doctor here, an engineer there) and try to make it the rule to deny that the problem exists.
Can someone please tell me why is it that some Muslims (particularly Black American ones) are so staunch about wanting to deny that very real issues exist? Why the strong desire to keep their head in the sand? Why deny problems that are sometimes right outside of the very masjid they may regularly attend ? They think that they can cocoon themselves into some kind of Islamic alternative universe and ignore all the ills that surround them. Why has this been made into a taboo?
They ask “What good can come from talking about this?” Let’s see…Solving some problems maybe? You know what making this subject taboo, and ignoring the problems has done? It has destroyed our ability to talk about almost any subject that involves the different groups within the American Muslim Community, their cultural (and other) differences and how these differences affect us as individuals and as groups.
Why can we not encourage and push African-American Muslim children? They need to be told that they will have to work extremely hard and will have to scrape, scratch and claw for everything that they get in life, Insha Allah. If we accept the fact that different groups of people can and do react to the same conditions differently, then perhaps we can begin to solve some problems. We can then begin to understand why we can’t give bankrupt answers that cause African-American brothers to move overseas with $200, no skills and the thinking that good intentions alone will be enough for him to raise 4-5 children in a completely foreign environment. What causes several African-American Muslim men to think that it is ok for him to take three wives and put them all on welfare? Why do so many of them think this way? Why do we not see large numbers of White converts, Pakistanis and Arabs behaving this way in America? Why do the children of Pakistani and Arabs consistently do better academically than the children of African-Americans in school and go to college and graduate more often?
Why not look into why bad habits from before Islam are given good “Islamic” labels. Laziness and Under-achievement become ”Asceticism” and “Sacrifice”. A work-a-holic Pakistani Doctor with a large Muslim family that spends all his extra time with may be in need of some true asceticism and sacrifice. But an African-American man who got out of jail, got married recently, has poor work ethic, spends little to no quality time with his family, and is barely hanging on to a menial job does not need to be given a message that is for a workaholic and/or one who loves spending time with his family. All you have done is given him the excuse that he is looking for with an “Islamic” label to go with it. So, in one case you could have success. In the other you could have complete disaster.
This is a small example of how different people, from different backgrounds react differently to the same message or the same conditions. We will not be able to come up with solutions to these massive social problems until the conversation has opened up.
Filed under: Children's Issues, Practical Solutions, Race
I think that, if you look at the history of great people, it is full of hard-workers who had to struggle and there is a benefit and blessing in struggling. The young people of today, rich or poor, want instant gratification and do not want to struggle, and thus mediocrity is all they can ever hope for in whatever form that takes. Young Asian-Americans who struggle, South Asian Muslims included, tend to succeed; but I think a key component for the African-American Muslim to this whole strategy is population-clustering.
Umar,
Good point in that many young people are less hard working.
Population clustering is already being done with African-American Muslims in Philly, New York and New Jersey to some extent. The problem is that beyond the clustering and establishment of a masjid, nothing is done. The masjid is often seen as the end and not the means to more.
You will find that, unlike other Muslim ethnicities, very few of them own the businesses in the neighborhood and rarely is an Islamic school or any other Islamic infrastructure established. This is often a problem for families with children. Many would like to stay near a certain masjid and help improve the situation in the inner city, but with family, one often has to move to an area (often in the suburbs) where they will have access to Islamic Schools, youth programs, etc. Here in the DC area, that means moving to Virginia or Maryland.
As salaamu alaikum,
You might want to check out this story about excellence being nothing more than just hard work.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/magazine/07wwln_freak.html?ex=1148097600&en=f8b1bddcec05ddcc&ei=5070
Abu Abdir Rahman
wa alaykum as-salaam
I looked at the article, and there is no doubt the place of hard work in excellence, but Allah has given some people more abilities and gifts in certain areas than others.
He mentioned Michael Jordan who anyone who followed basketball knows was a notorious hard worker, but had he not been given size (he is 6' 6" tall) we may have never heard of him.
Likewise, anyone who has taught children for any length of time knows that they are given varying mental talents.
Yes hard work is definitely part of the equation, but we certainly can't discount what Allah has given
Tariq wrote:
Why not look into why bad habits from before Islam are given good “Islamic” labels. Laziness and Under-achievement become “Asceticism” and “Sacrifice”
They also go from hanging out on the street corner in jahiliyyah to hanging out in the masjid in Islam, with little difference
I was thinking about this recently. The self segregation with African Americans perpetuates the massive low expectations in our community. My husband is self employed and some African Americans Muslims comment they can't believe he is still in business and profitable. Its like they've seen failure so much that they think that is all we are capable of.
Whats helped us is that we have a very diverse group of friends so we see what the possibitlie are as far as business success and acheivement. Also I read lots of business books and listen to business shows on talk radio. I have been exposed to so much that I never knew growing up. Basically the jist is that you have to be patient, willing to sacrifice and work hard now in order to achieve success in the future. Basically what Islam teaches. Insha Allah these are things I can impart to my children so that they know that there is nothing they are not capable of acheiving by the will of Allah of course and alot of hard work.
Um Abdillah:
I guess you could say they are "Compelled to Fail". Other Muslim cultures do a large degree of segregation as well, but don't have that kind of cultural baggage to pull them down. I'm not sure it is entirely intentional in the case of African-American Muslims.
African-American Muslims look for an affordable place for a masjid, which is often in "the hood", and they will congregate around that place and stop there rarely taken initiative to revitalize the neighborhood and open businesses etc.
A group of Pakistanis, for example (even poor ones) can open a masjid, congregate around it, and soon you will see a school and business all around that neighborhood owned by them. Ditto other cultures who will uplift a similarly downtrodden neighborhood, but rarely will you see this with African American Muslims.
And finally, having diverse friends often allows for a lot of "cultural borrowing" to happen where one can get other ideas and perspectives on everything from solving problems, child rearing to cuisine.
I looked at that link to the Cosby speech, why does he have to make that comment about the men. I mean Morehouse is right across the street and I happen to know that the men tend to be very successful and constitute the a large percentage of Black doctors, businessmen etc. If we keep having this low expectations of Black men, its going to just perpetuate low achievement.
But the fact that the overwhelming majority of Black college graduates are women is going to have serious ramifications. I’d be curious to see how you view creating an AA Islamic community given this type of educational desparity. What is this going to mean for AA Muslim women? The way I’ve seen it handled and the marriage sustained was that the women had to put their careers on hold or significantly downsize and married men who earned less than they could. I dont know how many Muslim men can handle a woman making more than them. The big issue is the rearing of children which is best done by the mother, so are many AA Muslim families never going to have a chance at economic success given these numbers. Is it just he qadr of Allah?
Its pretty complicated….
I dont know about that Bro. Tariq. Most AA Muslims want to improve the areas around the Masjid but I think the knowledge and resources were not there in most cases. I know in Philly, UMM started many projects and began to clean up the neighborhood in South Philly. But they had the resource of Kenny Gamble (Luqman Abdul-Haqq). Atlanta Masjid has always had a couple of businesses around the masjid.
Honestly I dont think Immigrant communites are doing all that much better given the money many communities have. There is still not much done to bring the youth to masjid and they are bogged down with alot of back home politics.
Yea, Bill Cosby was hard on the men. I know that he doesn't discount the fact that 40,000 AA men graduate from college each year, but the fact is that AA women are still way ahead of the men in that area.
And the thing is that this is carrying over to the Muslims, because we are seeing that the AA Muslim women are beginning to be more educated and having the same problems finding suitable husbands. In my mind, they (Muslim and non-Muslim) need to start "exploring their options" with men of other ethnicities and not settle.
As for AA Muslims, yes they TALK about doing that, but it just doesn't happen for the most part. I'm not saying that it NEVER happens. Yes, there are some noteworthy examples in Atlanta and other places, but I still have yet to see a thriving AA Muslim neighborhood on par with a Devon street in Chicago, for example, where you see rows of businesses and other stuff.
I'm not saying that the immigrant communities do not have problems. This is why all the Muslims really need to come together eventually instead of importing more people from "back home" and moving more toward "balkanization".
The ideal, in my mind, is that we need to all come together somehow and learn from each other through "cultural borrowing" where we can learn from each others' experiences, integrate them into our culture, and eventually melt into one American Muslim identity that would be a hybrid of many other Muslim cultures.
But that can't be done, in my opinion, as long as we ignore problems and ignore exactly what makes us different. If we begin to understand the reason for differences, then we can start to solve the problems of separation and actually go about the business of coming together.
As long as we sweep it under the rug, it won't happen.
And certainly Allah knows best
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Why not let people retain much of their own culture but embrace the best of each culture?No reactionary separatism nor reactionary assimilation either.