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We were pleased to hear of the new book by a favorite past Village contributor, C.N. Le, director of Asian American Studies at U. Mass Amherst and the mastermind behind the excellent web site, Asian-Nation.org. Longtime readers may recall that Dr. Le, a sociology and statistics expert, tends to appear on the Village to help put some sense to numbers when new elections surveys, Census, employment and Asian American demographic data, although he has also written extensively on other aspects of (h)APA society and Vietnamese American culture.
In his new book, which uses comprehensive data from the U.S. Census, Dr. Le broadens the idea of assimilation to include socioeconomic and institutional examples of integration by analyzing outcomes such as income, occupational prestige, small business ownership, residential segregation, and intermarriage for five Asian American groups, with an emphasis on Vietnamese. The results show that many Asian Americans, especially Vietnamese Americans, have historically and continue to encounter several disadvantages, particularly compared to Whites, when it comes to achieving structural integration.
Nonetheless, Dr. Le observes, many have been able to overcome such initial challenges in a relatively short amount of time by using collective resources and maintaining ethnic solidarity to weave together a pattern of achievement, mobility, and tradition. In analyzing the interconnections between history, institutional conditions, and community solidarity, Dr. Le's book serves as a valuable reference point and resource for students, policymakers, and Americans from all backgrounds.
In this, the book adds hard evidence to the growing body of research and publications that have recently begun to chip away at the myth of Asian Americans-as-monolithic-Model-Minority. Other research we've covered include, most recently, a UCLA study on APA undergraduate educational attainment in particular.
Dr. Le's book was released by LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC as part of a New Americans series.
