What Drives Success: My Commentary

I'm going to preface this post by stating that there will be many blunt statements put forth in the following paragraphs, probably many of them less than politically correct. However, that's how I found my assigned article to be, so that's how I will be writing.

The article that I read this week discussed stereotypes that are present in American culture, how they make themselves known to society, and the amount of truth that there is to each of them. I found the article both interesting and informative, and also somewhat surprising. I've always known that there are stereotypes out there, most of them shallow and none too pleasant. However, what I didn't know was the grain of truth that lies within most of them.

The article presented these ideas as facts, so that's how I'll speak of them. The facts expressed are mostly along the lines of a correlation between status and ethnicity/religion/race. Immigrants in general are always notoriously either very well off, or some of the poorest in the nation, depending on where in the world they are from. For instance, Africans tend to be placed in the “poor and uneducated” category, while Asians are often put in the “rich and intelligent” one. Nobody that I know of has ever claimed to back those stereotypes with facts, but that's exactly what this article is doing.

I don't really know how I feel about that. After all, it has been my life long goal to not judge people at all, let alone by any physical characteristic. Then again, the facts sometimes line up to disprove prejudices, like in the case of the Nigerians at Harvard. In that case, I have to side with the facts. And, as I don't like to be blind or one-sided, I must therefore also accept that the facts often line up in favour of stereotypes.

Despite the fact that I accept the grain of truth in many stereotypes as proven to me in the article, I'm still sure that I won't let this revelation colour my judgement in the future.

The article in question can be found here.