Outliers

While at a bar in Boston, some of my field hockey teammates struck up a conversation about the nature of race. Betsy and I took the stance that race is just a social construct and not actual science. There is nothing in my DNA that is different than Betsy's DNA just because I'm Asian and she's white. However, some teammates believed that there were inherent differences in people due to race. For example, the stereotype of Asians doing well in math and Ethiopians beating out anyone in a long distance race came to mind. If race has no true meaning other than a simplified way for humans to categorize people based on looks, then why do these stereotypes often hold true?

I couldn't figure out how to justify my position and it was completely frustrating. If society believes there are differences between races because of inherent genetics, then we fall into a trap. This is the same trap we saw in our early American laws that stated black people were 3/5 of white people because blacks were considered inherently different because of their race. We know now that this is not true. However, I still couldn't think of a logical answer to explain that race and science do not go together.

I wish I had read Outliers before this conversation about race because the book indirectly answers my question. Outliers is a book about how unusual success stories come true. Malcolm Gladwell uses Canadian pro hockey players, Bill Gates, The Beatles, and J. Robert Oppenheimer to explain success stories. With all of these outliers. Gladwell states that all four cases had extraordinary circumstances in addition to 10,000 hours of practice, which led to their success. Without being aware, most people know these outliers after their success and assume that anyone can reach that high level of success. For example, I had a former student who explained that getting a D in class was okay because Bill Gates did not graduate from college and he's rich. Unfortunately, my student, and I assume many others, failed to understand the history, circumstances, and hard work that led up to Bill Gates' success. The reasons for his success is a completely complicated story that involves growing up at the right time, having access to a state of the art computer, sneaking out in the middle of the night in high school to use this one-of-a-kind computer, and having hours of programming practice (the magic number is roughly 10,000 hours by the time Gates went to college).

Luckily, Gladwell explains the outliers of Asians and math, which helps my race argument. There is an Asian history, or legacy as Gladwell explains, that explains why Asians are good at math and it has nothing to do with genetics. First, Asian kids are in school more days in the year than Western kids because of a legacy that revolves around harvesting. Asian society developed a rice growing culture and Western culture developed a culture of growing wheat. Apparently, rice harvesting and wheat harvesting are completely different; rice is harvested year round and does not depend on weather whereas wheat is only harvested in the summer and is very dependent on good weather. As a result, schooling in Asia developed into a year-round school because rice could be harvested at any time. Children did not need to be pulled out of school because of good weather or the time of year. On the other hand, in Western society, summers were always off because, traditionally speaking, children had to leave school in order to harvest the family wheat. To this day, the American school system is based off our early tradition of harvesting wheat. And, as studies show, having less school days or hours results in less learning.

Besides number of school days, Asian languages allow for better retention and easier manipulation of math language. In Asian languages, the first ten numbers are all one syllable. After ten, the numbers are added together. The easiest translation is that eleven is called ten and one. This is true for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (Ah! It all made sense to me while I counted numbers in Korean in my head. Counting in Korean is easier). This math language system allows Asians not only to remember a higher sequence of numbers, but it is extremely easy for children to learn. Consequently, children in Asia are counting higher and using math earlier than children in America because of the math language. Think about it, the words eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen are not only difficult to say, but are difficult for a child to learn because it does not follow a pattern. Wouldn't it make sense if eleven was eleventeen, or better yet, eleven was just called ten and one? Instead, like many rules in our English language (good/better/best?), there are odd rules and endings even in our math language.

After having learned this information, I had a break through. Success stories aren't based on race. Success stories are based on the right circumstances, access to materials, ability to practice, and cultural legacies. This isn't to say that all hope should be given up because we, here in America, do not have a rice growing cultural legacy. But, being aware of these ideas is a good start and certainly understanding that race does not account for success is fantastic.