The model minority is losing patience • Hacker News Board

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#51

Post by linkydinkandyou » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 1:35 PM UTC

A similar thing happened--and still happens--to Jews (which is why there are so many Jewish Nobel Prize Winners from schools like "City University of New York"). The Economist blames other factors, though.

"Racial prejudice of the sort that Jews faced may or may not be part of the problem, but affirmative action certainly is. Top universities tend to admit blacks and Hispanics with lower scores because of their history of disadvantage; and once the legacies, the sports stars, the politically well-connected and the rich people likely to donate new buildings (few of whom tend to be Asian) have been allotted their places, the number for people who are just high achievers is limited. Since the Ivies will not stop giving places to the privileged, because their finances depend on the generosity of the rich, the argument homes in on affirmative action."

The Truth, which is hard to swallow for some people, is well summarized in the book "The Bell Curve." Fact is, in a pure meritocracy, some groups of people ("races") would be represented more than others. And its impossible to face this fact in America without getting shouted down.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#52

Post by jessaustin » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 1:38 PM UTC

_yosefk wrote: post #27

protomyth wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Americans view everything in life through the race and skin color lens. It's becoming really exhausting and frustrating to deal with. As a popular TV program put it, it's America's original sin. Also, it factors into targeted politics that is in vogue. Separate everyone into groups and target them with specific (and sometimes conflicting) messages. It works, so I wouldn't expect a change.

Isn't it everyone's original sin? Which nation did not conquer the land it occupies today from some other nation? Which nation did not have the institution of slavery?

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 that after slavery was ended we maintained a system of laws and cultural norms that kept the former slaves and their descendants separate from and disadvantaged to other citizens. That is our sin. It functions so that racist institutions and the habit of racism reinforce each other, and even pull other races such as Native Americans into the Other category. That didn't happen in Mexico or Brazil or many other places in which multiple races had had a problematic history but then learned to coexist, if not on an equal footing then also not on a so aggressively unequal one.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#53

Post by wozniacki » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 1:38 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…

From the horse's mouth:

  “We could fill our class twice over with valedictorians,” Harvard President
  Drew Gilpin Faust told an audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival, sponsored 
  by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, on Monday. That means admissions 
  officers rely on intangibles like interesting essays or particularly unusual
  recommendations to decide who comprises the 5.9 percent of applicants who 
  get in. 

  Faust's top tip for raising a Harvard man or woman: “Make your children
  interesting!”

  For parents and students alike, that’s both good news and bad news. The bad 
  news is that of course it’s much easier to say that than to actually make it
  happen, though Faust recommended encouraging children to follow their 
  passions as a way to develop an interesting personality. It’s much easier to 
  complete a checklist, however daunting, than to actually be interesting.[1]

[1] How to Get Into Harvard

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/how-to-...

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#54

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 1:40 PM UTC

rsy96 wrote: post #42

huac wrote: post #16

A really good point noted in this article, and ignored in the comments, is that of the 'bamboo ceiling.' Yes, there are lots of Asians in tech. But they are generally programmers and rarely in managerial positions.

Depends on how one defines Asians. Chinese are rare among the higher ranks in tech, but many corporations have Indians (India is in Asia, right?) as their CEO.

[deleted]

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#55

Post by gaoshan » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 1:40 PM UTC

The points I see missing from that very accomplished young man's application to these top schools are the essay(s), any interviews he may have done and any sort of philanthropic or leadership roles he may have been involved in. These are all important, now more so than ever.

It is entirely possible that he did not demonstrate, through these other avenues, the desired qualities of a student from the schools he was rejected by. Getting into such schools isn't simply a matter of racking up points by following some formula and quite a few kids do not seem to realize this.

When a school has a flood of equally polished test scores and fantastic accomplishments it can result in other criteria playing the deciding role. Perhaps he didn't meet these other criteria? They are not discussed in the article so no way to know. I personally suspect this, much more than mere ethnicity, as I know they matter greatly in the application process at such schools.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#56

Post by GBond » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 1:42 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #11

"Since the Ivies will not stop giving places to the privileged, because their finances depend on the generosity of the rich, the argument homes in on affirmative action" I was surprised by the paragraph before this, when it claimed affirmative action was holding back Asians, when immediately after it listed a whole bunch of less deserving groups that were taking up spaces. At least this line acknowledges it, though I…

There were Asian-American based advocacy groups that disagreed with California Prop 209. Their stance was Affirmative Action would intact a societal change beyond academia in the long term.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#57

Post by ap22213 » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 1:43 PM UTC

huac wrote: post #16

A really good point noted in this article, and ignored in the comments, is that of the 'bamboo ceiling.' Yes, there are lots of Asians in tech. But they are generally programmers and rarely in managerial positions.

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 Americans, who are trained from youth to be tolerant and accepting, many immigrants are not.

Unfortunately, even with training, most people will still be biased toward hiring people like themselves.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#58

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 1:43 PM UTC

dudul wrote: post #7

Wait? Are you saying that affirmative actions are discriminating high performers in favor of lower achievers? Holy shit, I didn't see that one coming. "The higher socioeconomic status of Asian parents provided part of the explanation, but only a small part. Their data suggested that Asian outperformance is thanks in large part to hard work." So Asians' higher socioeconomic status only play a small part in their succe…

[deleted]

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#59

Post by jstalin » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 1:43 PM UTC

Fix the title please. It should probably read "discriminated against," otherwise it appears as though the Asians did the discriminating.

Re: The model minority is losing patience

#60

Post by ryanmonroe » Sat, Oct 03, 2015, 1:48 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…

> 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 that if we know a ball is e.g. Red, we can conclude something about the probability that it's e.g. heavy. Clearly that's not the case, why would it be? Unless you just assume a priori that the characteristics are distributed in a way that's correlated with ball color, there's no reason we should think there's an association between color and e.g. weight.