As a math teacher and a special education teacher, I enjoyed this read.

Thank you for talking about the effect of positive stereotypes.

It reminds me very much of the talk around fixed mindsets vs growth mindset. Being Asian is a fixed quality, and this association with math talent with being Asian, gives the illusion of math also being a fixed ability rather than something that can be developed.

It’s been shown in education that students who have a fixed mindset “I’m either born good or I’m n just not good at something” rather than growth mindset have less success in school, even when they are judged to be good at something.

Americans are famous for our fixed mindset around mathematics, while other cultures don’t.
As a child I struggled heavily with math, but I worked very hard at it and eventually got a pure math degree form UC Berkeley.
My father was someone who was very talented in many areas, writing, math, science, etc. he grew up with a very fixed mindset, but was very smart. He wasn’t really challenged academically until college. At that point, he had no idea how to handle academic challenge, and eventually dropped out, believing learning just want for him. At someone everyone struggles somewhere in learning something, teaching growth mindset, that we can improve with hard work, asking for help, etc, is such a valuable skill that should be taught early on. Very talented people struggle with this, because if it all comes easy, how will they learn to improve?