We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14145034 and marked it off-topic.

It is not a miracle. Indians immigrating to US are more educated than the general US population [1] (40.6% have graduate degree, 32.3% have bachelor's).

Have you also thought about why Indian American kids win spelling bee's or Jews win Nobel Prize disproportionately when compared to their population?

Comparing Indians or Asians to blacks is not fair. They are mostly recent immigrants (except few brought in as labourers) and did not have to suffer through the horrors of slavery which left blacks with broken family structure and other things (It is complex, like housing seggregation where the black neighbourhoods did not increase in wealth when compared to white neighbourhoods, criminal justice system)

[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/30/5-facts-abou...

So, this is a topic I've very passionate about. I work quite of few H1Bs. Most of them have Masters degrees from India. The QA team is 80% H1Bs, all with Masters degrees from India. Of the 8 QA engineers, only 1 writes code. The others did do some programming when they got their undergrad and graduate degrees in India, but for some reason, none of the 7 write code. None, zero. Can't even get them to press the F12 key, look at the details of a failed request, and add it to the bug. To me this says three things, either the schools in India are horrible, there is lots of cheating going on, or lack of passion in a chosen career renders all advance degrees to null.

So, you do realize that Indians have been coming to the USA for a long time? You do realize that there were pioneers from India in the USA that fought for rights that you are just dismiss as trivial. Here, read something - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Bhagat_Singh_...

Lastly just because someone has more degrees doesn't make them smarter or more intelligent.

I said most Indians are recent immigrants (not all). I cared about most Indians because when you are speaking about median income it is the most that matters not outliers. How is the Bhagat Singh case is anyway related to when you are speaking about median income?

I did not say more degrees makes you smarter but there is a direct correlation between education and income. That was the point being discussed

> Have you also thought about why Indian American kids win spelling bee's

Because their parents and education system still focus on rote learning, we moved on from that waste of time decades ago.

Asians are good at Math than Americans. Is that rote learning too ?

> we moved on from that waste of time decades ago.

No wonder Asians are taking over.

You'll have to be more specific. Quite a lot of what schools consider math is rote learning, from time tables in early years to forumalas in later ones.

You pushed what was already a flamewar into seriously worse territory with your comments here. We don't want uncivil comments like "You make me laugh" at the best of times, let alone in nasty spats about race.

Just because the rest of society is going crazy about this stuff doesn't mean you get to ditch your manners here. We've warned you about this before. If you want to keep posting here, please fix it.

> You make me laugh. Indians are nowhere close to Jews. Sure, Indians make up 1% of the US population, but they also make up almost one fifth of Earth's population as a whole. There are more than one billion Indians on Earth.

The problem really is that you are comparing a geographic (Indian) to followers of a religion (Jews). Indians can be Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Atheists, Christians or even Jews. It's wrong to compare 1 billion Indians of various ethnicities, cultures and religions with followers of a single religion - Jews.

> Of course you will see a generally smart group of people when you specifically only let in the top 0.0001% of the Indian population to begin with.

Also saying that top 0.0001% of Indian populace go to the US is another fallacy. Firstly, you are making an assumption that the top 0.0001% of Indian populace apply to the US in the first place. There is no data to back this up. Secondly, most of the top/successful Indian businessman are from India and not Indian-Americans. Sure, Indian-Americans are on average more successful and wealthy than the average Indian on account of being in an already developed country. That does not mean they are crème de la crème. There is not even a single Indian-American who is as successful, influential or powerful as Ratan Tata, Anil/Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani, Azim Premji or even Narayan Murthy. Show me one Indian-American founded company that can compete with the scale of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku6SAMsyHbo

>The problem really is that you are comparing a geographic (Indian) to followers of a religion (Jews).

Wrong. Keep telling yourself what you want to hear. I'm talking about Jewish ancestry (i.e., genetics), not Jewish faith. Essentially all of the genius Ashkenazi Jews were non-practicing:

- John Von Neumann

- Albert Einstein

- Bobby Fischer

- Richard Feynman

- Sigmund Freud

- Hans Bethe

- Eugene Wigner

- Milton Friedman

- Karl Marx

- Noam Chomsky

- Scarlett Johansson

You can even read this astounding section on Wikipeida: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews#Notable_Ashkena...

> I'm talking about Jewish ancestry (i.e., genetics), not Jewish faith

This has nothing to do with genetics. If genetics was at play, you would have had Jews inventing and discovering prior to 20th century too. That is not the case (at least not comparable to amount of discoveries/inventions that happened in the 20th/21st century). This was because the Jews had a level playing field. The section of Wikipedia you quote also confirms the same: "In those societies where they have been free to enter any profession, they have a record of high occupational achievement, entering professions and fields of commerce where higher education is required". The important part is "free to enter any profession". Were Indians "free to enter any profession" during the 19th-20th century?

The Jews have been migrating to the West for centuries (since at least the 17th century). Indians have been doing so only for the past 40-50 years. Those Indians who were lucky enough to get to travel to the West for education opted to become Barristers to fight the British Colonial rule legally (studying Science/Technology was the last priority for most Indians during that time). Formal education was also denied to majority of Indians during the British Raj (which wasn't the case for Jews in the West). It wasn't as easy for Indians to migrate to the West as it was for the Jews (as wealth, language barrier and travel risks played a huge role). Getting access to quality education was pretty much impossible for Indians until we gained Independence from the British Raj in 1947. I can actually turn around and say that it is quite astonishing that Indians have been so successful considering we gained freedom only 70 years ago.

I'm sure our future generations (2-3 centuries from now) would be studying about Indians in the same way as we are studying about Ashkenazi Jews today. I'm hoping they wouldn't label it as genetics and instead simply attribute it to access to quality education, wealth, prosperity, freedom and liberty.

>I'm sure our future generations (2-3 centuries from now) would be studying about Indians in the same way as we are studying about Ashkenazi Jews today.

That is truly repulsive, man. I'm not sure why you have such a wet dream about being the smartest and most successful race/ethnicity/whatever, but I want nothing to do with it. It's honestly really off-putting.

Also, you're COMPLETELY wrong about Jews having a level playing field prior to the 17th century. Jews were prohibited from nearly every trade in the middle ages.

> Also, you're COMPLETELY wrong about Jews having a level playing field prior to the 17th century. Jews were prohibited from nearly every trade in the middle ages.

I said in the 19th-20th century. You have trouble reading my answers because you have a prejudiced mind. I never said prior to 17th century. So do not twist my answers to your liking (First you changed from "Jews" to "Jewish ancestry" after calling you out on your ridiculous comparison between Indians and Jews and now this). Jews had 3 centuries (starting from 17th century) to adapt and learn all the best things in various fields. Be it science, arts, philosophy etc. Indians have had only 70 years. This is a hard fact and no one can deny this.

> That is truly repulsive, man. I'm not sure why you have such a wet dream about being the smartest and most successful race/ethnicity/whatever, but I want nothing to do with it. It's honestly really off-putting.

We aren't. I'm clearly telling you that we had only 70 years to get to where we are today and we'll need 2-3 centuries more to make it (which is clearly why I said future generations 2-3 centuries from now). And I'm proud of it. It's repulsive to your prejudiced mind that's not my problem. I'm glad that my comments are off-putting to bigots.

> That is truly repulsive, man. I'm not sure why you have such a wet dream about being the smartest and most successful race/ethnicity/whatever, but I want nothing to do with it. It's honestly really off-putting.

And what is more retarded is that you say exactly opposite to what I said: "I'm hoping they wouldn't label it as genetics and instead simply attribute it to access to quality education, wealth, prosperity, freedom and liberty."

I clearly state that it shouldn't be attributed to genetics. Only those who think their race/ethnicity/whatever is superior talk about genetics. You have a wet dream about Jews being a superior race. Read every answer of yours and you'll realize that I'm right. The fact is that most Jews were in the right place at the right time. Given the same opportunity to Indians we would have achieved the same. If you go back in history, you'll find that Science and Mathematics was way more advanced in Ancient India (called Bharat) than in any other country in the World. It was no coincidence that many nations tried to invade India. Even America was founded mainly because Christopher Columbus mistook it for India. Our civilization was destroyed by the invaders (first Islamic invasions and then followed by the British). Our thirst for knowledge, science, philosophy, astronomy and spirituality was replaced by defending our borders and fighting endless battles. We have suffered more than even the Jews. Read about the Biggest Holocaust in World History (And it's a Jew website.. Irony just died a painful death huh?): http://www.jewsnews.co.il/2014/12/31/islamic-india-the-bigge...

And just so you know, there was a great Indian physicist by the name of Satyendra Nath Bose (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendra_Nath_Bose) whose work was even appreciated by Einstein. Quoting directly from Wiki: "Einstein, recognising the importance of the paper, translated it into German himself and submitted it on Bose's behalf to the prestigious Zeitschrift für Physik. As a result of this recognition, Bose was able to work for two years in European X-ray and crystallography laboratories, during which he worked with Louis de Broglie, Marie Curie, and Einstein"

Quoting from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_statisti...

"Bose adapted this lecture into a short article called "Planck's Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta"[1][2] and submitted it to the Philosophical Magazine. However, the referee's report was negative, and the paper was rejected. Undaunted, he sent the manuscript to Albert Einstein requesting publication in the Zeitschrift für Physik. Einstein immediately agreed, personally translated the article from English into German (Bose had earlier translated Einstein's article on the theory of General Relativity from German to English), and saw to it that it was published. Bose's theory achieved respect when Einstein sent his own paper in support of Bose's to Zeitschrift für Physik, asking that they be published together. This was done in 1924.[3]"

The worst part was that Nobel Prize was awarded for research related to concepts of Higgs-Boson, Bose-Einstein statistics and Bose-Einstein condensate. However, Bose himself was never awarded the Nobel Prize.

Quoting from the same article: "SN Bose's work on particle statistics (c. 1922), which clarified the behaviour of photons (the particles of light in an enclosure) and opened the door to new ideas on statistics of Microsystems that obey the rules of quantum theory, was one of the top ten achievements of 20th century Indian science and could be considered in the Nobel Prize class.[33]

When Bose himself was once asked that question, he simply replied, “I have got all the recognition I deserve”— probably because in the realms of science to which he belonged, what is important is not a Nobel, but whether one’s name will live on in scientific discussions in the decades to come.[34]"

There are many such Indian scientists in the 20th century who made immense contributions to Science and Technology but were never recognized by the West. Maybe it's racism, maybe it's indifference. But I'm sure the future generations will recognize these contributions without any prejudice whatsoever.

Is it cronyism or is it "you will see a generally smart group of people when you specifically only let in the top 0.0001% of the Indian population to begin with"?

Or is it both? Or maybe Indians are lizard people that eat babies.

thank you cscurmudgeon. Only you seem to get it. I included Jews to prove that being model minority is quite complex and not all minorities can be compared. I think most missed the point and went into genetics which i don't believe in. I was expecting people to understand that if your parents are educated, you are more likely to be educated which proves to be the case for Jews and Indians in US.

I'm genuinely curious to know what you are implying here. Indians in the US are making highest median income because of some kind of racism/cronyism favoring them? I always thought it's because a significant percentage (not all) who immigrate are at the top already

Or a combination of both. It is something I've noticed, companies with indians doing the hiring end up with a lot of indians, companies with chinese doing the hiring end up with a lot of chinese. It's rare to find indians in a chinese software shop and vise versa.

White people don't have a monopoly on racism.

I never said white people have monopoly on racism. Like your ancedata, my experience with white people have been completely unracist, very welcoming and acknowledging talent. Believe me, I've seen indian racism first hand back home, and it's as ugly as it can get. "Racism", somehow, seems to be hardwired in humans, given its prevalence.

Also, ancedata, I've seen engineering departments evenly split between Indian and Chinese, marketing and sales mostly towards Caucasian.

So, my two cents. Individuals enjoy working with other Individuals from similar backgrounds. I worked for a very well know software company on the west coast for 15 years. In that company, there were groups you didn't interview in, because they were controlled by the "Indian Mafia". There weren't any teams of all native born Americans. There were a lot of teams of just men, but that changed a lot towards the last few years in the company. In my current job, I was asked to sit in some interviews by lead/mid-level engineers. The lead engineer couldn't make it to the interview, not sure why. One of the engineers started by asking what the candidates immigration status was. The candidate said they were a GC. The engineer said, we don't need to continue this interview, we only want H1Bs. Of course in my 20+ years, I had never actually witnessed someone asking a question that could end up as a lawsuit. Of course I let HR know and they barred that engineer from conducting interviews. But it took the HR about six months to realize that the interviewers were looking for any reason to reject anyone not H1B from India. They barred them all from interviewing and made it so that HR could over rule any rejected candidate. Most of other companies I had been at, this would have been grounds for immediate dismissal.

Looking at the distribution of h1b's from the Asian subcontinent it would be interesting to break it down by caste.

Maybe Caste needs to be added to the protected classes as we did in the UK I know one of the MP's that was involved in this

> I can say without a doubt in my mind that there is enormous cronyism and nepotism going on in the US.

And do you have any evidence that is more than anecdotal?

FWIW (not much) I am finishing up a CS PhD, and there are many Indian students in our grad department, and many Chinese in undergrad. Haven't seen much favoritism towards these groups at either grad or undergrad (by my observations TAing) over the 5 years I've been here.

It's crazy to me that not only you think there is epidemic cronyism, but that you also have "no doubt" about your beliefs...