Tiger Mom Amy Chua Touts Superiority Of Certain Cultural Groups In New Book

The controversial “Tiger Mom” is at it again, this time claiming that certain nationalities and religions, referred to as cultural groups, are superior to everyone else in terms of achievement.

Although the book in question, The Triple Package, doesn’t official come out until next month, Tiger Mom — a.k.a. Yale Law Professor Amy Chua — is already being blasted across social media for either being a publicity troll or a racist or perhaps both.

Chua generated a lot of national media buzz in 2011 for her book called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which advocated strict parenting techniques.

The premise of her latest book apparently is that eight specific groups achieve greater success that the rest of the population. “It may be taboo to say, but some groups in America do better than others… Even as headlines proclaim the death of upward mobility in America, the truth is that the old-fashioned American Dream is very much alive–but some groups have a cultural edge, which enables them to take advantage of opportunity far more than others,” the Amazon page for the book states.

The high-achieving groups based on metrics including income, job status, test scores according to the book are Jews, Indians, Chinese, Iranians, Lebanese-Americans, Nigerians, Cuban exiles, and Mormons. Their success, according to Chua and co-author (husband Jed Rubenfeld), is the result of three common — but somewhat contradictory — traits: a superiority complex, insecurity, and impulse control.

The New York Post blasted the book for being based merely on “specious stats and anecdotal evidence”: “And so begins their cat-and-mouse polemic, in which they claim they’re courageously agitating for a greater good: the revival of America itself as a ‘Triple Package Culture.’ It’s a series of shock-arguments wrapped in self-help tropes, and it’s meant to do what racist arguments do: scare people.”

Do you think that Tiger Mom Amy Chua’s theories on cultural superiority are way off base if not racist?

[thumbnail image credit: Qalandariyya]

Added: Taiwan CGI studio Next Media Animation takes a dim view of Tiger Mom Amy Chua’s super-groups theory: