5 ms·

"Asian" is not a race.

by atg2 11y ago

tptacek 11y ago
What's your point? Neither is "military veteran".
dragonwriter 11y ago
Asian is as much a race as White or Black is. (All races are social constructed with culturally-ascribed boundaries, so really, anything that is generally perceived and treated as a race is a race; even if you restrict it to three "classical" races, White, Black, and Asian are pretty much the modern names for Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid.)
- atg2 11y ago
  My point is, what about all the other people? The world is not divided into White, Black, Asian and Spanish-speaking. There are Indians, Central Asians, Arabs, Persians... Even 19th century racialists in their ignorant understanding of the world didn't lump 2/3 of the world's population into a miscellaneous category.
  - pavel_lishin 11y ago
    Having an event for black and hispanic folks doesn't preclude them from having an event for asian folks. Not every event has to be pan-inclusive.
    - atg2 11y ago
      You say that like making an event 'inclusive' is some kind of chore. In fact, what we're talking about is stopping people at the door because they have the wrong skin color.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        That is not at all what is being done here; in fact, that's a grievous misrepresentation of what they're doing.
        atg2 11y ago
        Why? That is literally what they're doing. As I read it, there are extended services available to those with black skin, but if you have brown skin, then "fuck off".
        tptacek 11y ago
        And extending an invitation for a 20 minute phone call is worse than traveling across the country to do a recruiting event at an elite college with minuscule Latino and African American enrollment how? The "fuck off" is a nice rhetorical touch, too.
      - djtriptych 11y ago
        Yeah what would Black and Hispanic people know about that?
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        > In fact, what we're talking about is stopping people at the door because they have the wrong skin color. What makes you think that YC is categorizing by skin color rather than, as is more typical, self-identification?
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > My point is, what about all the other people? The common racial categories today (of which others are subcategories) are (though different names are sometimes used) Black, White, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Native American. Sometimes Pacific Islanders are considered a separate high-level group, rather than part of a top-level group with Asian. [0] (Hispanic is an ethnic group that is usually treated as cutting across racial groups.) > There are Indians, Central Asians, Arabs, Persians... In terms of the usual racial categories, that's Asian, Asian, White, and White. > Even 19th century racialists in their ignorant understanding of the world didn't lump 2/3 of the world's population into a miscellaneous category. Actually, I'm pretty sure the old Mongoloid from the long-dominant threefold racial category -- which is the closest parallel in the old scheme to the modern Asian category but is even broader -- certainly did so even more than one could argue that "Asian" does in the dominant modern scheme. [0] See, e.g., the categories used by the US Census (and the US government more generally, which do break out Pacific Islanders separately) http://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html http://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
Neither is black or hispanic. The entire debate around 'race' in the US I find is riddled with outdated concepts and semantics. In many developed countries's dialogue on these issues the semantics rarely touch on race anymore as it's quite meaningless and scientifically untenable. Instead when we talk about different peoples in socioeconomic debates by referring to various ethnicities (which are quite flexible, you can group people on ethnic bases by culture, religion, language and indeed nationalities or continental heritage like Asian although it's not recommended as there are obviously gigantic differences between say China, Japan and Indonesia that too broad terms become meaningless, too). The US is one of the few developed countries that really uses the word 'race' a lot and still defines people by race. Here in the Netherlands the only time we refer to the word race is when we use the word 'racism', the only word that really stuck and encompasses discrimination on ethnic basis, not race. The notion of typifying people as 'black' or 'white' in the Netherlands is not-done.
- djtriptych 11y ago
  It's not an accident that America has particular problems with Black/White and Hispanic/White race relations. Comparisons of race relations in America to race relations anywhere else need to be quite careful to identify the correspondences. The claim that race is too murky a concept to pin down is generally invoked in cases like this; observed preferential treatment for historically disadvantaged races. If race can't exist, the argument implies, neither can racism. Always ask who wins if we allow ourselves to believe this. The truth is that racism does exist, and we can test for it using methods that are repeatable in experiment. Race is not "meaningless" in this country, and anyone claiming so is selling you something.
  - IkmoIkmo 11y ago
    Bullshit. Black people aren't discriminated because they're from a 'black race', there is no black race. They're discriminated against because their skin color is black. Discrimination on the basis of skin color can (and obviously does) exist without the existence of an concept of race. As for hispanic, that's an ethnonym, i.e. an ethnic group, that's exactly my point. This is how we talk in say the Netherlands about what you call the 'racial debate', on the basis of ethnicities like hispanic. And these ethnicities can indeed comprise of black peoples, and within that context we can and do, all the time, talk about racism and discrimination, but that's wholly different from the notion that the human race has different subraces, a black, white, yellow whatever, that's a ridiculously silly and outdated sociological model and anyone claiming otherwise is terribly ignorant. As for 'who wins if we allow ourselves to believe', really? Do you really base your beliefs on who wins, rather than on what is true?

"Asian" is not a race.

by atg2 11y ago

"Asian" is not a race.

tptacek 11y ago

What's your point? Neither is "military veteran".

dragonwriter 11y ago

Asian is as much a race as White or Black is. (All races are social constructed with culturally-ascribed boundaries, so really, anything that is generally perceived and treated as a race is a race; even if you restrict it to three "classical" races, White, Black, and Asian are pretty much the modern names for Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid.)

atg2 11y ago
My point is, what about all the other people? The world is not divided into White, Black, Asian and Spanish-speaking. There are Indians, Central Asians, Arabs, Persians... Even 19th century racialists in their ignorant understanding of the world didn't lump 2/3 of the world's population into a miscellaneous category.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  Having an event for black and hispanic folks doesn't preclude them from having an event for asian folks. Not every event has to be pan-inclusive.
  - atg2 11y ago
    You say that like making an event 'inclusive' is some kind of chore. In fact, what we're talking about is stopping people at the door because they have the wrong skin color.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      That is not at all what is being done here; in fact, that's a grievous misrepresentation of what they're doing.
      - atg2 11y ago
        Why? That is literally what they're doing. As I read it, there are extended services available to those with black skin, but if you have brown skin, then "fuck off".
        tptacek 11y ago
        And extending an invitation for a 20 minute phone call is worse than traveling across the country to do a recruiting event at an elite college with minuscule Latino and African American enrollment how? The "fuck off" is a nice rhetorical touch, too.
    - djtriptych 11y ago
      Yeah what would Black and Hispanic people know about that?
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > In fact, what we're talking about is stopping people at the door because they have the wrong skin color. What makes you think that YC is categorizing by skin color rather than, as is more typical, self-identification?
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > My point is, what about all the other people? The common racial categories today (of which others are subcategories) are (though different names are sometimes used) Black, White, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Native American. Sometimes Pacific Islanders are considered a separate high-level group, rather than part of a top-level group with Asian. [0] (Hispanic is an ethnic group that is usually treated as cutting across racial groups.) > There are Indians, Central Asians, Arabs, Persians... In terms of the usual racial categories, that's Asian, Asian, White, and White. > Even 19th century racialists in their ignorant understanding of the world didn't lump 2/3 of the world's population into a miscellaneous category. Actually, I'm pretty sure the old Mongoloid from the long-dominant threefold racial category -- which is the closest parallel in the old scheme to the modern Asian category but is even broader -- certainly did so even more than one could argue that "Asian" does in the dominant modern scheme. [0] See, e.g., the categories used by the US Census (and the US government more generally, which do break out Pacific Islanders separately) http://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html http://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html

IkmoIkmo 11y ago

Neither is black or hispanic. The entire debate around 'race' in the US I find is riddled with outdated concepts and semantics. In many developed countries's dialogue on these issues the semantics rarely touch on race anymore as it's quite meaningless and scientifically untenable. Instead when we talk about different peoples in socioeconomic debates by referring to various ethnicities (which are quite flexible, you can group people on ethnic bases by culture, religion, language and indeed nationalities or continental heritage like Asian although it's not recommended as there are obviously gigantic differences between say China, Japan and Indonesia that too broad terms become meaningless, too). The US is one of the few developed countries that really uses the word 'race' a lot and still defines people by race. Here in the Netherlands the only time we refer to the word race is when we use the word 'racism', the only word that really stuck and encompasses discrimination on ethnic basis, not race. The notion of typifying people as 'black' or 'white' in the Netherlands is not-done.

djtriptych 11y ago
It's not an accident that America has particular problems with Black/White and Hispanic/White race relations. Comparisons of race relations in America to race relations anywhere else need to be quite careful to identify the correspondences. The claim that race is too murky a concept to pin down is generally invoked in cases like this; observed preferential treatment for historically disadvantaged races. If race can't exist, the argument implies, neither can racism. Always ask who wins if we allow ourselves to believe this. The truth is that racism does exist, and we can test for it using methods that are repeatable in experiment. Race is not "meaningless" in this country, and anyone claiming so is selling you something.
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  Bullshit. Black people aren't discriminated because they're from a 'black race', there is no black race. They're discriminated against because their skin color is black. Discrimination on the basis of skin color can (and obviously does) exist without the existence of an concept of race. As for hispanic, that's an ethnonym, i.e. an ethnic group, that's exactly my point. This is how we talk in say the Netherlands about what you call the 'racial debate', on the basis of ethnicities like hispanic. And these ethnicities can indeed comprise of black peoples, and within that context we can and do, all the time, talk about racism and discrimination, but that's wholly different from the notion that the human race has different subraces, a black, white, yellow whatever, that's a ridiculously silly and outdated sociological model and anyone claiming otherwise is terribly ignorant. As for 'who wins if we allow ourselves to believe', really? Do you really base your beliefs on who wins, rather than on what is true?