Their predecessors enacted municipal laws like requirements that all new homes be single-family and protested proposals for public transportation lines to reach their towns. They don’t realize that many affluent suburbs were actually established as havens for middle-class whites to escape urban life at a time of urban school integration. Most residents of affluent suburbs, Asian and white alike, are also unaware of the history that created these bubbles of opportunity for their children in the first place. The competition in towns like Woodcrest blinds families to the dearth of opportunities available for children living beyond their town’s borders: the lack of financial resources for parents to pay for private tutoring, music lessons, and sports coaching the lack of transportation to after-school math classes and club soccer, if those are even available in the first place and school cultures that reward conformity over speaking your mind. In other words, nearly all graduates of Woodcrest High School were poised to win at the game of life, whether or not they finished at the top in the college admissions game. The one exception were Black and Latinx graduates whose parents did not have a college degree, probably because those students were more likely to need the social networks they built in college to get to their first job opportunities. A study by other economists compared young adults with similar SAT scores who went to different colleges and found that, for most, their incomes in their 20s didn’t differ. And attending a more selective college may not matter so much for graduates of Woodcrest High School anyway. Nine in 10 graduates of Woodcrest High School go on to four-year colleges right after high school, compared to just 44% of high school graduates in the U.S. They live in a town that is good at getting people into the upper-middle class, even those who aren’t the most academically inclined.Ī national study of intergenerational mobility by economists at Harvard found that nearly half of those who grew up in Woodcrest a generation ago now earn incomes that put them in the top 20% of incomes in the U.S. That’s because nearly all children in towns like Woodcrest are incredibly privileged, whether or not they play club baseball, are enrolled in multiple AP classes every year, or earn straight As.
In their frustrations over fair ways to get their child to gold, versus silver or bronze, they didn’t see that everyone in their town was virtually assured a medal. They were all engaged in a “race at the top,” but failed to see how they already existed at the top. Still, as I stepped back, I realized that the concentration of university degrees and ones mostly from fancy colleges, led families in Woodcrest to a distorted sense of their position in society. While I did sign up one of my children for after-school math (but not one that gives any homework), I have also pushed each of them to find and excel in a sport they love. But I also felt empathy for the white, U.S.-born parents I spoke with, who reminded me that I am not my parents. I felt empathy for the immigrant parents, who reminded me so much of my own Indian immigrant parents in their emphasis on extra math outside of school, advanced academic classes in the summer, and more. I felt relieved that my own town did not feel nearly as competitive for my children and I wondered what I would do if I lived in a town like theirs. Nowhere are these tensions more obvious than in the college application process, for which parents see their children in competition with their peers at school.Īs I listened to parents express these tensions in Woodcrest, I empathized with their situation. But the trend is undeniable and it can lead to tensions between Asian and white parents striving to help their kids get ahead. Of course, there is much variation - valedictorians who are white, Asian Americans who struggle academically. In many places across the country, Asian American kids are outperforming their peers of all other racial groups academically, including whites.
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