The model minority is losing patience • Hacker News Board

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#91

Post by ap22213 » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 2:28 PM UTC

beachstartup wrote: post #78

ap22213 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a white in tech, I sometimes sense that I'm being discriminated against by Asian / Asian-American hiring managers. For instance, I've never been offered a position by an Asian, whereas I'm rarely not offered a position by a non-Asian. What kind of concerns me is that so many of the big tech companies have disproportionately more Asians, and many Asians cultures are known to be as racist or more racist. Unlike Amer…

> I've never been offered a position by an Asian so... this feels like discrimination, which is understandable. > whereas I'm rarely not offered a position by a non-Asian. ... but does this feel like preferential treatment? because that's the logic you are presenting here. "when i don't get hired, it's because of discrimination. when i do get hired, it's because i'm a good hire, not because someone else was discrimin…

Certainly a valid point, but I decided against pointing it out, since because of market demands, pretty much anyone with a brain can get a job in tech, currently.

That a particularly skilled and experienced candidate was being rejected so frequently either pointed to an innate bias, more selective criteria, or inflexibility in pay. Maybe all three.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#92

Post by andrepd » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 2:28 PM UTC

ryanmonroe wrote: post #60

crimsonalucard wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title may refer asians as a minority. However, while asians definitely aren't a minority in the context of the world, they still are a minority in the context of the united states and Europe. All of that, however, is completely irrelevant of the issue. What is the issue? Vanity? No. The issue is racism. When a race delivers quantitative metrics that beats other races out of the water, what does it mean? When blac…

> If races look different, then the possibility of other metrics being different is a logical induction. This doesn't follow. It becomes more clear why if you put it in more abstract terms. Take a bunch of balls, half red, half blue. Now assume some half of these balls are heavy (say 10lbs) and some half are light (say 2 lbs). Assume the balls have a bunch of other characteristics this way. Now what you're saying is…

You can talk about red and blue balls all you want, but what matters is the real world. It's not inconceivable that like there are physical differences between the races, that there can be other differences as well. Refusing to see this isn't reasonable.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#93

Post by ryanmonroe » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 2:29 PM UTC

crimsonalucard wrote: post #81

ryanmonroe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If races look different, then the possibility of other metrics being different is a logical induction. This doesn't follow. It becomes more clear why if you put it in more abstract terms. Take a bunch of balls, half red, half blue. Now assume some half of these balls are heavy (say 10lbs) and some half are light (say 2 lbs). Assume the balls have a bunch of other characteristics this way. Now what you're saying is…

I'm basically saying that if one trait (appearance) can be different than other traits can be different as well. In the abstract universe I'm referring to, imagine a bunch of balls and cubes. The balls have no sides and the cubes have six. We live in a culture that says this is the only difference between balls and cubes, otherwise balls and cubes are completely equal. This statement is not true, because balls can ro…

>This statement is not true, because balls can roll down a hill faster than cubes.

Yeah but that's because ability to roll down is directly caused by the observable geometry. They are just different properties of the same trait. Skin tone or facial structure cannot cause someone to be intelligent. If you flattened the sides of the round balls, they'd be just as slow. But imagine there's some new way to painlessly crush people's faces into different racial-typical shapes and change the color of their skin to some racial-typical tone. Would this cause their intelligence to change? Obviously not. So how is this different than people with different physical characteristics from birth?

Race categorizations are made by humans according to how people look. From wikipedia's definition "Race, as a social construct, is a group of people who share similar and distinct physical characteristics." You're saying that these physical characteristics somehow also indicate how people behave (outside of social conditioning). There is really no reason to conclude that.

I think this wiki section on race along with the sources mentioned are useful here.

>There is a wide consensus that the racial categories that are common in everyday usage are socially constructed, and that racial groups cannot be biologically defined.[22][23][24][25][26][27] Nonetheless, some scholars argue that racial categories obviously correlate with biological traits (e.g. phenotype) to some degree, and that certain genetic markers have varying frequencies among human populations, some of which correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings. For this reason, there is no current consensus about whether racial categories can be considered to have significance for understanding human genetic variation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)#Co...

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#94

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 2:33 PM UTC

joshAg wrote: post #40

ryanlol wrote: post #19

So uh, why aren't admissions implemented as an algorithm that reviews academic performance? Minor human intervention could be used to prevent mistakes by the algorithm... Or not, humans make mistakes too. But machines don't intentionally discriminate.

Well, two major issues: The first is technical: how does one guarantee that the algorithm is actually fair? And that of course hinges on how one defines 'fair'. Many of the measures that appear objective aren't. There is a growing amount of evidence that the method in which a test is administered can have a statistically significant impact on how different races and sexes perform [1][2]. On top of that, there is evid…

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Re: The model minority is losing patience

#95

Post by golemotron » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 2:33 PM UTC

chiaro wrote: post #63

golemotron wrote: post #6

I was talking to someone just out of college the other day and she was adamant that reverse racism doesn't exist. To her it isn't racism unless it happens to a group lower in a power ordering. The exact position of groups in that ordering wasn't clear but it was clear that Asians were higher than other groups. Identity politics is a very dehumanizing philosophy. It tells us that we must be seen through a label we can…

That's just a misunderstanding over the definition. Racism as a subject of study in the humanities refers to these societal power structures, and it was this definition and usage she was probably cleaving to. The world would definitely be a better if we didn't recognize labels, but since I kind of hit the trifecta as far as race, gender etc goes, I fit into society just fine. Those who feel marginalised by society fo…

It's very hard to believe that this redefinition of the word racism was done innocently. On its face racism is act of distinguishing people by race for favor or disfavor. When it is redefined as it has been in the humanities it leaves a vacuum. There's no longer a word for the concept that racism originally referred to.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#96

Post by andrepd » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 2:34 PM UTC

crimsonalucard wrote: post #38

bsdpython wrote: post #8

I'll be very happy when everyone can just stop worrying about what race everyone else is. I understand the issue, but at what point does it sound ridiculous to even use the term minority when there are 1B+ Chinese and not much less Indian descendants around the world? In the tech world it is certainly ridiculous. Trying to micro-categorize who is a minority in what context has to qualify as some sort of vanity.

The title may refer asians as a minority. However, while asians definitely aren't a minority in the context of the world, they still are a minority in the context of the united states and Europe. All of that, however, is completely irrelevant of the issue. What is the issue? Vanity? No. The issue is racism. When a race delivers quantitative metrics that beats other races out of the water, what does it mean? When blac…

It's about equality of opportunities, not equality of outcome. We want to make sure that everyone regardless of race has the same shot at being an NBA player, though not necessarily that at the end of the day there is perfect proportional representation of whites, asians, blacks, etc.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#97

Post by golemotron » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 2:35 PM UTC

huac wrote: post #10

golemotron wrote: post #6

I was talking to someone just out of college the other day and she was adamant that reverse racism doesn't exist. To her it isn't racism unless it happens to a group lower in a power ordering. The exact position of groups in that ordering wasn't clear but it was clear that Asians were higher than other groups. Identity politics is a very dehumanizing philosophy. It tells us that we must be seen through a label we can…

You have it backwards - just because others see us through a particular, limiting lens, doesn't mean that we are defined in that way. Understanding that these stereotypes exist is in no way dehumanizing.

Maybe you should ask the people referred to in the article.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#98

Post by barry-cotter » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 2:35 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #76

1stop wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a bit literal. No one thinks all races are equal in a genetic sense, it is obvious they are different. They should be 'treated' equally is the thing we are taught. We all have our unique genetic advantages and disadvantages, but there shouldn't be social disadvantage based on genetics. It is good we are taught this, because it requires social change. Also to answer your points directly, they do not at…

> No one thinks all races are equal in a genetic sense, it is obvious they are different. I don't find that at all obvious.

East Africans from/near the Ethiopian plateau, Tibetans and Andean Indians all have large adaptations to living at high altitude. West Eurasians have lactose tolerance persisting into.adulthood. Eskimos/Inuit have altered metabolism of digestion of fats and proteins compared to the rest of the human race. Aboriginal Australians have adaptations to conserve calories by letting their limbs/extremities drop to much lower temperatures than their cores at night. West Africans are more muscular than any other racial/ancestry group with the possible exception of some Polynesians.

That is literally off the top of my head. There's much more in The Ten Thousand Year Explosion, Cochran and Harpending. I regret I haven't read it but the reviews were good. If you're interested in this any good human genetics textbook will do.

As a reality check on human diversity just remember the only species with more diversity in size and morphology are dogs.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#99

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 2:37 PM UTC

notNow wrote: post #13

Americans view everything in life through the race and skin color lens. It's becoming really exhausting and frustrating to deal with. The other day I was watching a video on YT for the Daily Show after Trevor Noah took the helm. While all what I was just concerned about was the possibility that Trevor not to be up to the job and not to be able to fill Jon's shoes, in other words, he might not be funny, esp. since Jon…

[deleted]

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#100

Post by jessaustin » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 2:41 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #88

jessaustin wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forcibly occupying land that is occupied by others is not necessarily driven by racism. Often it is hunger, or something else. Slavery in many locations was not something done to other races, but to other closely-related tribes, long enough ago that no one remembers the difference between those tribes. USA is somewhat unique in that we enslaved people who were easily distinguishable from the rest of us, and also in t…

I don't think the US (or it's colonial forebears) forcibly occupying the land occupied by others, or importing others as enslaved laborers -- was _driven_ by racism either, especially at it's origin. It was driven by economic profit, same as usual. Europeans didn't conquer the Americas because they hated Native Americans, they did it because they wanted the land and it's resources. They didn't import slaves, original…

Yes I agree with all of this.

Your reference to the integration of the conquered reminds me of James C. Scott's studies of the states of Southeast Asia. As he explains it, the limiting factor on the wealth of kings was the number of subjects they had working the land. So when they went to war, it was primarily to capture more people they could enserf. There was actually a regular intergenerational cycle. Grandparents could have been (the equivalent of) serfs, some of their grandchildren might have had some sort of sub-chief of a sub-village position, others might have been conscripted to fight a war to round up more farm labor, while others yet might have run off to the hills to stay out of reach of the state.