The model minority is losing patience • Hacker News Board

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#141

Post by ryanmonroe » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 4:48 PM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #138

ryanmonroe wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 cru…

> So how is this different than people with different physical characteristics from birth? That's because skin color and facial features are directly caused by the DNA. They are just different manifestations of the same trait. DNA is also known to correlate with intelligence. Just like flattening round balls will make them slower, picking embryos with gene combinations known to correlate with higher intelligence will…

>DNA is also known to correlate with intelligence.

But not with race. You can't tell which race someone is by their DNA, because, and here's the key point I think people are missing, race is a social construct based on appearance, not a biological reality.

>picking embryos with gene combinations known to correlate with higher intelligence will cause the resulting humans to have higher intelligence on average. But imagine if genes correlated with higher intelligence occurred million times as often among genotypes of white people than among genotypes of black people. Would then picking embryos based on skin color genes instead of intelligence genes themselves produced more (on average) intelligent people? Obviously yes.

Sure, if you assume from the start that skin color genes are correlated with intelligence genes then it follows that skin color is correlated with intelligence. I'm saying there's no reason to make that assumption to begin with.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#142

Post by Natsu » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 4:50 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #96

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…

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.

Which is among the reasons it's so terrible to select applicants to higher education based on the race listed on their application form. It's not 'equality of opportunity' if we see people binning an application because someone is Asian, which is something we do see statistically.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#143

Post by jrochkind1 » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 5:06 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #87

jrochkind1 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

No? Why? It isn't racist to say Africans have darker skin or different shaped faces to Caucasians, you know. It's a fact.

Ah, I guess it depends on what you mean by 'equal'.

But I also think that's probably less of a fact than you think, depending on what you mean by it. There are certainly some people identified as being 'Caucasian' who have darker skin than some people identified as 'African', for instance.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#144

Post by 9872 » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 5:13 PM UTC

ap22213 wrote: post #135

9872 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still assuming you have a brain. Based on your comments here, there's no reason to believe that's justified.

Did I write something that was offensive? If I did, please point it out; otherwise, why the ad hominem?

Ad hominem would be discrediting your story because you don't have a brain. I'm just amusedly pointing out that the logical conclusion of your story is simply that you don't have one. Offensiveness doesn't come into the picture.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#145

Post by canjobear » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 5:26 PM UTC

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…

The claim of identity politics isn't that we must be seen through those labels, but rather that in present society we _actually are_ always seen through those labels and we should acknowledge it in our language. Only by acknowledging it can we begin to fight it.

I don't necessarily agree or disagree, but that's the claim as I understand it.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#146

Post by iamcurious » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 5:43 PM UTC

holychiz wrote: post #136

nailer wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also entirely possible that, on average, Asian people are more intelligent than other groups. We won't really know for a long time, as discussing such things is taboo.

I'm Asian and I don't think it's possible. Jews on the other hand are confirmed with the most Nobel prizes per capita. :)

That might be due to culture.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#147

Post by heptathorp » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 5:43 PM UTC

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…

Well, she's half-right. There is no such thing as reverse racism. It's just plain racism.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#148

Post by pointeroffact » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 6:02 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #79

pointeroffact wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in other words, use unclear and vague criteria to judge admissions that just happen to massively disadvantage asian americans. it's strange that Faust is not condemned for her absurd and racist suggestion that asian american applicants are on average much less "interesting" people.

That's a rather pithy way to interpret what was said. Here's an alternate interpretation: be different from all the other applicants. If you have the same grades, the same extracurriculars, and the same things to talk about in an essay, you're not going to be different from everyone else and thus won't get in. And that's the nature of being different - you can't quantify it until you see it. Having gone to a high-per…

the point is that holistic can be easily used as a cover for race based discrimination and that this is what is happening at harvard and elite universities. when you look at the quantitative disadvantage for asian applicants in terms of SAT/GPA, I think it's clear that homogeneity cannot explain this away. it's also a little absurd that they publicly place so much emphasis on diversity and "interesting" applicants when the actual student body of ivy league colleges is filled with bland wealthy strivers of all races.

the interpretation in your last paragraph is even worse in a way for faust and harvard: only children with the right parental financial resources and support would have been able to "Build an airplane, climb a famous mountain, invent something, be a sailor, race sled dogs" before the age of 18. it is also hard to see why an academic institution cares so much about such things.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#149

Post by pointeroffact » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 6:09 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #82

pointeroffact wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in other words, use unclear and vague criteria to judge admissions that just happen to massively disadvantage asian americans. it's strange that Faust is not condemned for her absurd and racist suggestion that asian american applicants are on average much less "interesting" people.

>absurd and racist suggestion that asian american applicants are on average much less "interesting" people Talk about putting words in one's mouth...

this follows directly from what she said.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#150

Post by superuser2 » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 6:10 PM UTC

crimsonalucard wrote: post #49

skywhopper wrote: post #35

I'm not sure what to think about this topic, but articles like this don't help me decide, when they do things like: * Dumping data from an advocacy group into a sidebar chart without doing any critical analysis of the data. The ratios of professionals to managers and executives are meaningless without factoring age cohort ratios into the data. * Comparing Asian student admission rates between Ivy League universities…

>* Implicitly accepting the idea that SAT or ACT scores are the only metric on which students ought to be judged for making admissions decisions. (Okay they mentioned "extracurriculars" and I was amused by the Northwestern person who said recruiters were looking for people who played lacrosse and rowed crew. But all the data mentioned were based on test scores alone.) What other metrics are you referring to besides a…

Admissions offices curate the incoming class. In doing so, they have multiple objectives: maintain a high standard of intellectual ability and engagement, admit a heterogeneous student body so that people are exposed to others who are not like them, and preserve the particular character of the institution (a specific brandy of nerdy at Columbia/Chicago, the hacker ethos at MIT, etc).

An admitted class that's mostly homogeneous (in race, interests, gender, whatever) is just as much of a failure as an admitted class that's stupid.

The purpose of an elite college's admissions office is not to admit the top N students on some metrics, nor is elite college your "just reward" for being in the top N percent of your year on some metrics.

As with tech employment, there is an element of having the specialization an employer wants, an element of "culture fit," and an element of being able to do the song-and-dance that appeases the gatekeepers (the SAT is a lot like a coding interview).

As with dating, it's not "academic performance in, admissions out." The college has a personality too, and it has to like you.