Not at all naive. Asians used to face prejudice arguably as severe as that faced by blacks. Once discriminatory laws were lifted, they began a remarkable ascendancy--one that was in large part [1] due to the market re-pricing the value of Asian labor: " One explanation for rapid Asian upward mobility is, therefore, that earnings gaps driven by prejudice rather than productivity could not persist in a post-war labor market that eliminated most forms of legal discrimination against non-white workers"