The Achievement Gap Between African-Americans and Asian American

398 Words2 Pages
Achievement Gap between African-Americans and Asian American I would not label the Professor who referred to the achievement gap between African-Americans and Asian American as racists as I don’t have enough information to make an informed assessment of his character, but I would say that the Professor’s research is faulty because it is based on False Analogy. In argument from analogy, perceived similarities between two things/people/phenomena are used as a basis to make some general conclusions. Comparing Asian-American with African-Americans is a false analogy because while both groups have faced the discrimination, the context and experience of such discrimination are different between the two groups. African-Americans were brought here as slaves while most Asian-Americans came to American as free persons in search of better opportunities. Endemic discrimination began for African-Americans when the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, to aid in the production of such lucrative crops as tobacco. True, Asian-Americans experienced some discrimination for their ‘yellow’ skin, and I am not minimizing the discrimination they faced, but to compare the kind of institutionalized discrimination that African-Americans faced for centuries (and still continue to face in disguise) to the nature of discrimination faced by Asian-Americans is intellectually dishonest, if not out rightly fraudulent. It would be a Proper Analogy to compare Asian-Americans to other immigrant groups such as Black immigrants from Africa. You will find that the mind-set of these two groups is similar even though their skin color is different. They both left their home countries in search of better opportunities in America, and for the most part, both groups are ‘doing well’ in America. Having said this, the way to progress for

More about The Achievement Gap Between African-Americans and Asian American

Open Document