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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

#81
post #26
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…

Oh, you're a fucking Nazi. Take your phrenology back to Stormfront, buddy.

I am actually not, whatsoever a Nazi nor do I have any affiliation with or respect for Stormfront or other white nationalists, race essentialists and related genocidal nutters. I am frankly quite far left-wing.

I see from your other comments you appear to have done very little reading of the plain facts or evolving research regarding modern genetics, anthropology, intelligence, etc and your willingness to carelessly throw around the most vile names in bad faith means I have zero desire to discuss these topics further with you.

I am simply posting to say no, I will not be slandered as a Nazi by some uninformed jerk on the internet for an honest attempt at opening some debate on very complex and sensitive topics which almost everyone attempts to avoid because of how ugly the debate inevitably becomes, both because of people like you and the Stormfronters on the other side.

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

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you'll get a series of high fives and fist bumps just for criticising "mainstream liberalism," no matter how valid the criticism, because that's in vogue right now. You're living under a rock if you believe nobody is studying or confronting IQ and culture and how it relates to race. It's just it's not really intellectually profound to repeat and rehash the same old "scientific racism" that's been going on f…

Have you ever considered that there's a good reason for that fad? I just graduated from an elite American college, and almost everyone there was extremely condescending about the idea that race and IQ were at all correlated. They felt similarly about racial culture and success. In these powerful people's eyes, the underperformance of non-White and non-Asian races is ~100% the fault of White people and their machinati…

It's telling you created a throwaway to post this.

Of course there's a good reason for that fad - scientific racism is a pseudoscience that was created in order to "prove" the inferiority of races and to justify colonialism, slavery, racism, social Darwinism, and racial eugenics.

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

The correlation between race and IQ is openly "admitted" right there in the into paragraph of the Wikipedia page! If academia is "hiding" it they sure are doing a bad job. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

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

#83
post #75
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you blame culture, but ignore historical practices like redlining, or the obvious correlation with poverty, or the fact that American black people have had scarcely 50 years of equality under the law? That drugs in black communities are treated as crime, but drugs in white communities are seen as a public health crisis? There are hundreds of issues of infinitely more substance than whether black children are c…

A bigot? Really? "There are hundreds of issues of infinitely more substance than whether black children are conceived in wedlock." This is where it's obvious that you are yet another non-black person who has never lived in a predominantly black community or extensively socialized with large groups of black folks in real contexts. I've attended black churches countless times, been a best man and/or a groomsman in two…

Do either of your black friends know you invoke their race in internet arguments?

I've lived in predominantly black neighborhoods and I've stepped over blood trails and crime scene tape to go to work, buddy, if that means credibility to you. I've taken cover during driveby shootings. Safe to say I don't idealize poor, black communities.

My question to you is: what are you going to do about absentee fathers?

If longwinded moralization about family values fixed anything, black communities would all be Beverly Hills by now, but it doesn't, so we have to look at practical and evidence-based approaches, like increasing access to family planning and drug rehab. These are measurable and reliable solutions, whereas the Bill Cosby approach has not yet demonstrated an effect.

These discussions about distressed communities are centered around recognition for identifying one singular problem, rather than holistic approaches to fixing problems in that sphere, so I don't come to HN with high hopes.

Anyway, my regards to your wife and kids.

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

#84
post #29
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…

So what you are saying begs the question, why are there so many absent fathers in the black community?

33% of black men go to prison. That creates a situation where there are far more unattached black females vs males.

What is the optimal mating strategy in an environment where the females vastly outnumber the males?

There is lots of evidence that black men are unfairly targeted by the police. So is the epidemic of absent fathers in the african american community an expected outcome of our current policies? Is this even a cultural issue or an issue that is created through government policy?

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

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of disagree in this case. As a general rule I think ideas should be debated objectively and with facts, but when someone so clearly promotes the idea that there are human races that are genetically distinct and map onto traits like intelligence and success I just think of the legacy that this line of thinking has given us: death, torture, and poverty throughout human history on a scale that's impossible to com…

Slavery and the holocaust were both predicated on the simple idea that one kind of human was superior so I don't feel comfortable sitting around sipping tea and debating that. On the Holocaust I'd argue the opposite point -- it was the denial of Jews genetically having a higher IQ that helped lead to the Holocaust. Jews had a level of wealth and achievement disproportionate to their population. So if you don't believ…

> A certain ethnic group (Jews, Chinese, etc) does better everywhere they go.

How many Jewish populations have been dispersed or annihilated throughout history, and their story lost?

Instead of arguing for scientific racism, would you consider the selection bias inherent in your assumptions.

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

#86
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The snarky "checkmated by FACTS, you emotional liberal!" narrative doesn't work when STUDY after STUDY fails to find any meaningful correlation I think you're the one constructing a narrative. From what I'm aware of, there IS a correlation between race and IQ, and it is strong. And it is borne out by study after study. Stronger than the effects of environment and education. Even in the famous Minnesota transracial…

Says the guy with the trolltastic throwaway account.

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

#87
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…

>This is such incredibly poor agenda-driven "journalism", with cherry-picked data used to (poorly) attack a sort of straw man argument You just described the Washington Post. I mean, they said in their "news" section that the Ron Paul Institute was Russian Propaganda, which was just a part of their McCarthyite agenda against political dissenters[1] I'd avoid anything by the WaPo, it's corporate media fake news. 1 - h…

Ahh "fake news" meaning "It's not something that corresponds to my preexsting political viewpoint", as opposed to the actual definition of "complete and utter fabrication."

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

#88
post #40
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 geno…

It's "debated" by white supremacists and everyone else. It's a completely bankrupt both scientifically and morally, had has been repeatedly discredited. You might as well be talking about the debate about the shape of the earth. The whole house of cards falls down with when you realize that race is a social construct, when no unifying scientific base at all.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_White_People where "white" has been expanded and contracted to mean whatever was politically convenient at the time. This is obvious to anyone with even a cursory observation of contemporary American culture. Barack Obama is "black" even though he's equally "white." Keanu Reeves is "white" even though he has an "asian" parent. Argentinians are "hispanic" despite being light skinned and descendent from Italians and Germans, why? Well they speak Spanish. Even the fragility of whiteness illustrate this fact.

This whole "race realism" is the same discredited scientific racism that has persisted for hundreds of years, and is this is the second (and far more virulent) time this has come up in my adult life. The only twist on this very old idea is that now the "smart asian kid" stereotype throws a wrench in the works, when before you you dismiss asians as a bunch of treacherous lazy opium addicts. Now you have to put them in on a near peer to whites, but but discount them as "smart, but not imaginative. Good followers, not leaders." The whole thing obviously is there to simply reinforce existing stereotypes, and reduce humanity to entries in the D&D Monster Manual.

Even in this forum, and this very thread we've got a guy pointing out this out completely with citations, and he's modded down to oblivion because of the actual racists in this forum (themgt, JPKab, wutbrodo, wallace_f, and no doubt others, including those hiding behind throwaway accounts) find it uncomfortable.

So in conclusion, fuck the fascists.

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

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The snarky "checkmated by FACTS, you emotional liberal!" narrative doesn't work when STUDY after STUDY fails to find any meaningful correlation I think you're the one constructing a narrative. From what I'm aware of, there IS a correlation between race and IQ, and it is strong. And it is borne out by study after study. Stronger than the effects of environment and education. Even in the famous Minnesota transracial…

Says the guy with the trolltastic throwaway account.

That's a great argument you have.

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

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever considered that there's a good reason for that fad? I just graduated from an elite American college, and almost everyone there was extremely condescending about the idea that race and IQ were at all correlated. They felt similarly about racial culture and success. In these powerful people's eyes, the underperformance of non-White and non-Asian races is ~100% the fault of White people and their machinati…

It's telling you created a throwaway to post this. Of course there's a good reason for that fad - scientific racism is a pseudoscience that was created in order to "prove" the inferiority of races and to justify colonialism, slavery, racism, social Darwinism, and racial eugenics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism The correlation between race and IQ is openly "admitted" right there in the into paragraph…

Is there any standardized test where blacks do as well as whites or asians? Did white culture somehow bias the test so that asians score higher than themselves?
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