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Triple Packages

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Yale Law professor Amy Chua, aka “Tiger Mom,” and her husband, fellow Yale professor Jed Rubenfeld, have come up with “The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America” to postulate that certain groups are destined for success in the United States as measured by income, occupational status and test scores. Empathy does not count.

The Triple Package comprise:
superiority complex - self regard of their culture as exceptional;
insecurity - about being able to live up to group expectations;
impulse control - ability to resist the temptation to take one’s eye off the prize.

Writing for TIME, Calcutta born American Suketu Mehta called it the new racism. She says the language of racism is no longer about skin color, it's about "cultural traits". She's not proud that Indians, aside from Chinese, are the new racialists' favorite model minority.

If Indians are so great, what explains India? The country, she writes, is a sorry mess, with the largest population of poor, sick and illiterate people in the world, its economy diving, its politics abysmally corrupt. For decades, those who could afford to get out did. If India shared a border with the U.S. and it were possible for its poorest residents to cross over on foot, talk-show hosts would be railing against them just as they do against Mexicans.

It's not conformity that makes for greatness, she pointed out. It's an individual striking out against the expectations of his culture, as exemplified by Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropping out of Harvard. That line of argument can be used against group think too. Our curse here is that a select coterie is suppressing other groups with

The Triple Whammy:
superiority complex - of the get-out-of-my-uncaring-face elitist crowd;
insecurity - clinging to gerrymandering and the GRC for fear of being voted out;
impulse control - tenacity to hang on to million dollar salaries whatever the Gini coefficient may be.


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