that Nigerians coming from Nigeria feel they are capable of anything. . . . [T]hey don’t feel they can’t do chemistry or engineering or anything because they are Black.
Superiority complexes can be invidious, but in a society rife with prejudice they can also provide what sociologists have described as “an ethnic armor” enabling some minorities “to cope psychologically, even in the face of discrimination and exclusion.”
Helene Cooper had this kind of armor. She experienced numerous racist episodes after arriving in South Carolina as a fourteen-year-old. What made her proof against them, as she tells her story, was the internalized sense of superiority she brought with her from Liberia, where her family belonged to the elite “Congo people,” descendants of the freed American slaves who founded the country, as distinct from the “Country people,” a derogatory term for “native” Liberians. On top of that, her family were “Honorables,” an even higher distinction. “You could have a Ph.D. from Harvard but if you were a Country man . . . you were still outranked in Liberian society by an Honorable with a two-bit degree from some community college in Memphis, Tennessee.” Thus when Cooper’s freshman roommate, “a white girl from Seagrove, North Carolina, who didn’t want to room with a black girl,” transferred out of their room, Cooper “called my father and told him, and we both laughed about it on the phone. I felt no outrage. . . . It was completely incomprehensible to me that she could be that much of an idiot.”
The way Cooper warded off the blows of American racism—fending off one brand of ethnocentrism with another—is surprisingly common among America’s disproportionately successful groups. Especially among minorities, this strategy tends to function much more as a defensive shield of self-protection than as a weapon of contempt against others.
—
T O CONCLUDE, every one of America’s disproportionately successful groups has a deeply ingrained superiority complex, whether rooted in theology, history, or imported social hierarchies that most Americans know nothing about. If a disproportionately successful group could be found in the United States
without
a superiority complex, that would be a counterexample, undercutting the Triple Package thesis.
But superiority complexes are hard to maintain. As one generation passes to the next, group identity and ethnic pride come under attack. All the forces of assimilation work against it, including the homogenizing pull of American culture. For racial minorities, there will be the additional assaults of prejudice and discrimination. America’s ideals of equality will come into play as well, eroding superiority claims. Second- and third-generation Americans may begin (perhaps correctly) to see their parents’ superiority complex as bigoted or racist and reject it for that reason. As nature abhors a vacuum, so America abhors a superiority complex—except its own. Yet disproportionate success in the United States comes to groups who, in the face of these pressures, find a way to maintain belief in their own superiority.
Superiority alone, however, is merely complacent. The titled nobility of Victorian England had plenty of superiority but were not famously hardworking; even when in financial straits, they would have found employment or entrepreneurship contemptible. For thisreason, important as they are, the stereotype boost experiments capture only a piece of the Triple Package dynamic. Only when superiority comes together with the other elements of the Triple Package does it generate drive, grit, and systematic disproportionate group success.
CHAPTER 4
INSECURITY
W E TURN NOW TO the second component of the Triple Package,
insecurity
.
It’s been almost two hundred years since the French nobleman Alexis de Tocqueville noticed a peculiar difference between America and Europe. There were places in the “Old World,” he
Superiority complexes can be invidious, but in a society rife with prejudice they can also provide what sociologists have described as “an ethnic armor” enabling some minorities “to cope psychologically, even in the face of discrimination and exclusion.”
Helene Cooper had this kind of armor. She experienced numerous racist episodes after arriving in South Carolina as a fourteen-year-old. What made her proof against them, as she tells her story, was the internalized sense of superiority she brought with her from Liberia, where her family belonged to the elite “Congo people,” descendants of the freed American slaves who founded the country, as distinct from the “Country people,” a derogatory term for “native” Liberians. On top of that, her family were “Honorables,” an even higher distinction. “You could have a Ph.D. from Harvard but if you were a Country man . . . you were still outranked in Liberian society by an Honorable with a two-bit degree from some community college in Memphis, Tennessee.” Thus when Cooper’s freshman roommate, “a white girl from Seagrove, North Carolina, who didn’t want to room with a black girl,” transferred out of their room, Cooper “called my father and told him, and we both laughed about it on the phone. I felt no outrage. . . . It was completely incomprehensible to me that she could be that much of an idiot.”
The way Cooper warded off the blows of American racism—fending off one brand of ethnocentrism with another—is surprisingly common among America’s disproportionately successful groups. Especially among minorities, this strategy tends to function much more as a defensive shield of self-protection than as a weapon of contempt against others.
—
T O CONCLUDE, every one of America’s disproportionately successful groups has a deeply ingrained superiority complex, whether rooted in theology, history, or imported social hierarchies that most Americans know nothing about. If a disproportionately successful group could be found in the United States
without
a superiority complex, that would be a counterexample, undercutting the Triple Package thesis.
But superiority complexes are hard to maintain. As one generation passes to the next, group identity and ethnic pride come under attack. All the forces of assimilation work against it, including the homogenizing pull of American culture. For racial minorities, there will be the additional assaults of prejudice and discrimination. America’s ideals of equality will come into play as well, eroding superiority claims. Second- and third-generation Americans may begin (perhaps correctly) to see their parents’ superiority complex as bigoted or racist and reject it for that reason. As nature abhors a vacuum, so America abhors a superiority complex—except its own. Yet disproportionate success in the United States comes to groups who, in the face of these pressures, find a way to maintain belief in their own superiority.
Superiority alone, however, is merely complacent. The titled nobility of Victorian England had plenty of superiority but were not famously hardworking; even when in financial straits, they would have found employment or entrepreneurship contemptible. For thisreason, important as they are, the stereotype boost experiments capture only a piece of the Triple Package dynamic. Only when superiority comes together with the other elements of the Triple Package does it generate drive, grit, and systematic disproportionate group success.
CHAPTER 4
INSECURITY
W E TURN NOW TO the second component of the Triple Package,
insecurity
.
It’s been almost two hundred years since the French nobleman Alexis de Tocqueville noticed a peculiar difference between America and Europe. There were places in the “Old World,” he
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