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The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

#31

Post by wutbrodo »

BookmarkSaver wrote: post #14
themgt wrote: post #9

This is such incredibly poor agenda-driven "journalism", with cherry-picked data used to (poorly) attack a sort of straw man argument: Asian Americans seem to offer proof that minorities can prosper — and even leapfrog whites — if they work hard and jump through the right hoops. For that reason, Asian Americans have often been invoked as a way to excuse the income gaps between whites and blacks or whites and Hispanic…

There is also this, by the same author: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/19/the-r... Basically, when you control for education level, Asians come out just behind whites while black and Hispanic minorities still get shafted. And that this didn't used to be the case, that Asians used to have a similar gap, which indicates that Americans have simply gotten less racist towards them. Presumably on such…

> Basically, when you control for education level, Asians come out just behind whites while black and Hispanic minorities still get shafted.

The Post conveniently leaves out important parts of the paper's findings because it contradicts the conclusion they wanted to draw:

The process of institutional economic discrimination against Asians in America was equal to and in many cases stronger than that against black Americans. Hillger's paper argues that, once institutional discrimination was lifted, high-gradient societal discrimination was no match for market forces (suppressed wages for the same productivity from an Asian employee is an opportunity for easy arbitrage by a competent capitalist). These market forces did not have a similar convergence-to-white-income effect on the black labor pool, and Hillger's paper uses measures of productivity not dependent on education to at largely explain the variation.

I'm of the opinion that statistical discrimination is pretty messed up too, so this doesn't mean everything is right with the world and no further problems with racism exist. I also get that many people think that statistical racial discrimination is warranted, which leads to the kind of mental backflips necessary to write an article like this. But that doesn't change the fact that pretending that productivity differences are irrelevant is simply bad reporting by the Post: At best, it's shockingly shoddy and at worst it's simply dishonest.

Hillger's original paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8J_qdFYwNJ6TXdRVkM5S3lMNUU...

Some more concise analysis with excerpts from the paper: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/11/upw...

Re: The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

#33

Post by ajamesm »

eric_b wrote: post #27
ajamesm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what are those potential underlying causes and possible solutions, if the elephants in the room are IQ and culture? clicks post history https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159996 "What has been emerging especially now that genetic sequencing is becoming rapidly cheaper and more advanced at picking human genomes out of the genetic diaspora found in old fossils, is a much more complicated picture. The Chinese obv…

I'm not sure if you realize it - but your comment is the problem, not the original poster. Sometimes facts don't fit a political narrative. Comments like yours are what have polarized the nation. Your knee-jerk reaction to anything that disagrees with your position is to name-call and shame. Not very good form.

The problem is so-called "race realists" boiling complex sociological issues down by way of lazy and fallacious thinking, and then not-so-subtly implying that there is a racial basis for intelligence and human worth.

The snarky "checkmated by FACTS, you emotional liberal!" narrative doesn't work when STUDY after STUDY fails to find any meaningful correlation.

Re: The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

#34

Post by wahern »

RoboticFoot wrote: post #15
scythe wrote: post #11

It has to be noted that Asian people still drastically out-earn black people and are roughly "equal" with white people by city. Really the data shows that discrimination is more anti-black than it is pro-white (I think it would be helpful if Hispanics could be stratified by generation). It's also revealing of the author's personal biases that he considers living in expensive coastal cities to be a disadvantage. In ne…

> Really the data shows that discrimination is more anti-black than it is pro-white Or it shows that there is something about the statistically average black person that makes them less successful than the statistically average asian person. I don't claim to know what the difference is, but this is a fairly obvious inference to make. I'd actually say this is, a priori, a lot more likely than "everyone coincidentally…

Black culture is Southern white culture. I don't mean to diminish the many unique aspects of black culture (some historic, some modern), but any New Englander who sat at the dinner table of a working-class black family in a major Northern city, and then at a dinner table of a working-class white family in the rural Deep South, would have an eerily similar cultural experience. Presuming, of course, either family still regularly sat down for dinner together, or even lived as a family unit.

It's only to be expected then that not only do Asians lead blacks in educational attainment, they lead whites, too. And while I don't have the data, I wouldn't be surprised if this difference was greater relative to rural whites, and greater still relative to rural Southern whites.

If you don't understand that--as long as you remain convinced that Black culture is substantially distinct and uniquely (if at all) inferior--then it's easy to dismiss racism. But once you begin to see that, not only does the reality and the pervasiveness of systemic racism in this country become clear (especially the institutional racism of the Deep South), but the notion of a singular white culture disintegrates, and the concept of Americana fragments. All of a sudden the world is way more complex; even the relevant questions, let alone answers, become difficult to identify. That's no fun so I'm not surprised people remain willfully blind to it.

Re: The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

#35

Post by wutbrodo »

JPKab wrote: post #29
themgt wrote: post #9

This is such incredibly poor agenda-driven "journalism", with cherry-picked data used to (poorly) attack a sort of straw man argument: Asian Americans seem to offer proof that minorities can prosper — and even leapfrog whites — if they work hard and jump through the right hoops. For that reason, Asian Americans have often been invoked as a way to excuse the income gaps between whites and blacks or whites and Hispanic…

You're on the money. Sadly, the only way to even discuss culture's role without being labelled a bigot is to discuss the cultural differences within white Americans. When you're talking about how cultural traits prevalent in Appalachian communities like the one I grew up in exacerbate inequality, suddenly you have an audience. See the author J.D. Vance who wrote 'Hillbilly Elegy', and has subsequently become a darlin…

> Thing is, if we're honest, it's a lot easier to become popular as a minister or a politician when you tell a disenfranchised group of people that they are victims of someone else than to tell them they need to fix their own culture.

It's not just that it's easier to become popular this way: political figures that are _already popular_ but even pay lip service to cultural effects are sharply criticized by intellectuals. Just look at the spate of articles recently (and throughout his presidency) faulting Barack Obama for the handful of times that he's mentioned the potential for culture to have an effect. He's also been unusually candid for a national politician in talking about the direct effects of racism, so the usual complaint that talking about culture is only a tactic for ignoring actual racism falls flat.

Re: The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

#36

Post by kmicklas »

paganel wrote: post #12

> It's easy and cheap to virtue-signal your care for this difficult problem, but the elephants in the room here are IQ and culture I don't care about IQ, but supposedly you can't tell black people to just open a book (or two, or three) and to spend more time on studying because that's racist. It is their culture to sing and care only about Italian hyper-cars and jewels (we've come a long way since the days of Public…

This is blatant racism. The OP was at least thinly veiled.

Re: The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

#37

Post by kmicklas »

themgt wrote: post #9

This is such incredibly poor agenda-driven "journalism", with cherry-picked data used to (poorly) attack a sort of straw man argument: Asian Americans seem to offer proof that minorities can prosper — and even leapfrog whites — if they work hard and jump through the right hoops. For that reason, Asian Americans have often been invoked as a way to excuse the income gaps between whites and blacks or whites and Hispanic…

Thinly veiled racism is thinly veiled.

Re: The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

#38

Post by kmicklas »

ajamesm wrote: post #26
themgt wrote: post #9

This is such incredibly poor agenda-driven "journalism", with cherry-picked data used to (poorly) attack a sort of straw man argument: Asian Americans seem to offer proof that minorities can prosper — and even leapfrog whites — if they work hard and jump through the right hoops. For that reason, Asian Americans have often been invoked as a way to excuse the income gaps between whites and blacks or whites and Hispanic…

So what are those potential underlying causes and possible solutions, if the elephants in the room are IQ and culture? clicks post history https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159996 "What has been emerging especially now that genetic sequencing is becoming rapidly cheaper and more advanced at picking human genomes out of the genetic diaspora found in old fossils, is a much more complicated picture. The Chinese obv…

Don't you know you'll get downvoted for pointing out racism on hacker news?

Re: The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

#39

Post by wutbrodo »

ajamesm wrote: post #33
eric_b wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you realize it - but your comment is the problem, not the original poster. Sometimes facts don't fit a political narrative. Comments like yours are what have polarized the nation. Your knee-jerk reaction to anything that disagrees with your position is to name-call and shame. Not very good form.

The problem is so-called "race realists" boiling complex sociological issues down by way of lazy and fallacious thinking, and then not-so-subtly implying that there is a racial basis for intelligence and human worth. The snarky "checkmated by FACTS, you emotional liberal!" narrative doesn't work when STUDY after STUDY fails to find any meaningful correlation.

> when STUDY after STUDY fails to find any meaningful correlation.

This seems like a far more productive avenue of criticism than "you're a nazi CHECKMATE". This is barely one degree of separation from political conversations like: "Government action? Nice try, STALIN"

Re: The Asian American ‘advantage’ that is actually an illusion

#40

Post by eric_b »

ajamesm wrote: post #33
eric_b wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you realize it - but your comment is the problem, not the original poster. Sometimes facts don't fit a political narrative. Comments like yours are what have polarized the nation. Your knee-jerk reaction to anything that disagrees with your position is to name-call and shame. Not very good form.

The problem is so-called "race realists" boiling complex sociological issues down by way of lazy and fallacious thinking, and then not-so-subtly implying that there is a racial basis for intelligence and human worth. The snarky "checkmated by FACTS, you emotional liberal!" narrative doesn't work when STUDY after STUDY fails to find any meaningful correlation.

On the basis of race and IQ I admit I am mostly ignorant of the arguments. A quick Wiki search reveals there are plenty of studies that have shown a correlation (whether the methodology was sound is under attack it seems). So while there may or may not be a correlation, it's certainly being debated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

That said, I don't think anyone is arguing we should resort to genocide, segregation, eugenics or any of those previous "solutions". I believe people are arguing that unless we can talk candidly about factors for the growing divide, we will never fix anything.

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