| Sumario: | A response to a commentary by Christopher Daniel that appears in this issue on the writers' “Asian Americans in the Public Service: Success, Diversity, and Discrimination,” which appeared in Public Administration Review, vol. 54, no. 3, pp. 285-290. Daniel asserts that differences in linguistic abilities, cultural backgrounds, and occupational choices between Asian immigrants and white civil servants probably explain a good deal of the disparities described in the original article. However, a reanalysis of data described in the original article reveals the following: Additional education improved grades more for Asians than for whites; statistical disparities were greater among veterans than nonveterans, even though the former group would include far fewer immigrants with devalued educations; differences in occupational choice in state and local public employment raised rather than lowered Asian men's salaries, as Asian men chose higher-paying majors than white men but still earned less in the federal service; and one-fifth of the Asian respondents thought discrimination was impeding their own careers. Plausible alternative explanations may exist, but a history of racism in the U.S. suggests that the discrimination hypothesis should not be rejected without convincing counterevidence.
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