In complex areas like the study of racial inequality, a fundamentalism has taken hold that discourages sound methodology and the use of reliable evidence about the roots of social problems.
We are not talking about mere differences in interpretation of results, which are common. We are talking about mistakes so clear that they should cause research to be seriously questioned or even disregarded. A great deal of research — we will focus on examinations of Asian American class mobility — rigs its statistical methods in order to arrive at ideologically preferred conclusions....
Consider The Myth of the Model Minority (Routledge, 2008), in which Rosalind S. Chou and Joe R. Feagin assert that “when researchers have examined Japanese and other Asian American workers in comparison with white workers with similar jobs, educational credentials, and years of job experience, the Asian American workers are found to be paid less, on average, and are less likely to be promoted to managerial positions.” But Chou and Feagin’s claim lacks any serious empirical evidence. Instead of directly citing published research from peer-reviewed journals, Chou and Feagin instead based their conclusion on a book by Tim Wise, a self-proclaimed “prominent antiracist” journalist who has no graduate training or any professional experience with evaluating labor market or socioeconomic data.
Wise, in turn, references an old newspaper article published in The Washington Post in 1992 — and summarizes it incorrectly. The Post piece exaggerates a few informal comments made by a demographer referring to some exploratory cross-tabulations of education level by race and income. An outdated and statistically naïve newspaper article thus becomes the sole evidence that Chou and Feagin reference for their conclusion that Asian American workers are underpaid. Meanwhile, Chou and Feagin ignore many recent analyses published in social-science journals using much better statistical methods and more recent data — but which do not reach Chou and Feagin’s desired conclusion.
This sort of cherry-picking is common in the literature. Another instance is provided by the historian Ellen D. Wu, who asserts in The Color of Success (Princeton University Press, 2015) that “the statistics” showing high income among Asian Americans are “misleading.” She claims that the household incomes for Asian Americans are higher because they have more workers per household and live in high cost-of-living areas, but Asian Americans supposedly receive lower returns on schooling. As evidence for these assertions, Wu cites a report that offers basic descriptive statistics on the demography and education of Asian Americans. There is no multivariate analysis of earnings or income data anywhere in the report. In other words, the evidence that Wu cites doesn’t even attempt to control for anything. Indeed, there are very few income statistics anywhere in that report. Nevertheless, this is the study Wu treats as the definitive analysis of Asian American incomes, supposedly proving her conclusion that “the statistics” are “misleading.”
These kinds of distortions and tricks are common in work on the causes of socioeconomic disparities. According to the now sacrosanct vision of stratification in American society, Asian Americans face endemic social- and labor-market discrimination because they are deemed to be “people of color” in a society organized to enforce “white privilege.” On this view, all references to the “model minority” model — which attempts to explain high rates of income and achievement among Asian Americans by reference to Asian cultural effects — are false, a mere myth. But the major tenets of the Model-Minority-as-Myth argument are themselves basically false.
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