Director addresses sensitive question
Why do Indian-American kids dominate National Spelling Bee?
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The streak is as impressive as it is difficult to explain. In much the same way that Kenyan runners have owned the Boston Marathon, Indian-American kids have placed a stranglehold on the Scripps National Spelling Bee, winning it now for seven years in a row and all but four of the last 15 years.
The streak has been much discussed and analyzed in recent years — except by the people who actually run the bee. For the first time, Paige Kimble, the bee’s longtime director, agreed last week to address the sensitive question of why Indian-Americans have come to dominate the contest, which gets underway today at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md.
Part of her motivation: the outpouring of ugliness aimed at last year’s cochampions, Sriram Hathwar and Ansun Sujoe, on social media.
“We certainly followed the coverage last year,” Ms. Kimble said, “and we are aware of Twitter posts that are not nice, that indicate that we have a long way to go as a country in embracing all of our immigrant population.”
Even she’s not sure how to explain the extraordinary performance of Indian-American youngsters in the national bee compared with other groups. All bee wannabes devote thousands of hours studying tens of thousands of words. The difference for Indian-American kids, Ms. Kimble said, may be a commitment to pursue the spelling championship over many years.
“How hard a child works is a very individual factor,” said Ms. Kimble, who won the national bee in 1981. “But what might be happening [with Indian-American contestants] is that there might be perseverance for the National Spelling Bee goal over a longer period of time.”
Indeed, of the Indian-American champions over the past 15 years, only one, Pratyush Buddiga, won on a first trip to the national bee in 2002. The others won after multiple trips, including last year’s co-champ Sriram, who made it to the national bee five times before winning, and Kavya Shivashankar in 2009 and Sameer Mishra in 2008, who both won on their fourth trips.
Ms. Kimble and other bee organizers were appalled by the reaction to last year’s contest, when Sriram, then 14, and his co-winner Ansun, then 13, were greeted with a barrage of racist comments on Facebook and Twitter:
“The kids in the spelling bee should only be AMERICAN”
“No American sounding names who won the spelling B. #sad#fail”
“We need an american to win this spelling bee #tiredofindians”
The outburst stung an organization that sees itself as representative of the American ideal of cultural diversity.
Despite the backlash, for Indian-Americans the growing spelling dynasty has become a source of great pride. Indian-Americans account for just under 1 percent of the U.S. population, but make up more than a fifth of the 285 spellers competing this week in the 88th edition of the bee. If recent trends hold, they would account for more than a third of the contest’s 50 semifinalists.
“It’s hard to say it’s a coincidence,” said Shalini Shankar, an anthropology professor at Northwestern University who has spent the past 18 months studying spelling competitions across the country.
Ms. Shankar points out that immigrants from India, who are the parents and grandparents of today’s spellers, are typically welleducated professionals and driven to succeed. She is amused by bee watchers who suggest that a “spelling gene” might explain the domination by Indian-Americans.
“You don’t see lots of spelling bee winners who are the children of assembly line workers or cab drivers, even if they’re South Asian,” she said. “You see children of doctors, you see children of engineers.”