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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 conte

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 black people dominate in basketball and athletics does it mean their race is genetically and physically superior to others? When asians dominate academically does it mean asians are genetically more intelligent? I don't know the answer to these questions. It may be that asians just work harder... but I do know one thing: All races are NOT equal. Political correctness states that although races look different, all races are otherwise equal. Although this idea permeates the cultural reality of the United States, there is no logical universe where this makes sense. If races look different, then the possibility of other metrics being different is a logical induction. What does this mean? The implications are scary. Historical mistreatment of black people have made this concept a very touchy issue in the united states. While it is of my personal opinion that asians are academically successful mainly due to hard work, I do believe that the heart of the issue that articles like this discuss is this: We live in a culture where we are taught that all races are equal, this is not the logical reality and subconsciously we all know it. It's what causes the discrimination in the first place and it's what causes defensive comments like this to be posted.

fennecfoxen 11y ago
> All races are NOT equal. Political correctness states that although races look different all races are equal. If we want to be all philosophical about it we'd say that people of all races must be equal under the law or that they are all endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights or something like that.
- dudul 11y ago
  > all races must be equal under the law So... the opposite of affirmative actions, right?
ryanmonroe 11y ago
> 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.
- crimsonalucard 11y ago
  I'm basically saying that if one trait (appearance) can be different than other traits can be different as well. In the abstract universe I'm referring to, imagine a bunch of balls and cubes. The balls have no sides and the cubes have six. We live in a culture that says this is the only difference between balls and cubes, otherwise balls and cubes are completely equal. This statement is not true, because balls can roll down a hill faster than cubes. Outside of the world of mathematics words are used to refer to a fuzzy category of traits. If one trait in this category is different from another category then the possibility exists that another trait is also different, inductively speaking.
  - ryanmonroe 11y ago
    >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 crush people's faces into different racial-typical shapes and change the color of their skin to some racial-typical tone. Would this cause their intelligence to change? Obviously not. So how is this different than people with different physical characteristics from birth? Race categorizations are made by humans according to how people look. From wikipedia's definition "Race, as a social construct, is a group of people who share similar and distinct physical characteristics." You're saying that these physical characteristics somehow also indicate how people behave (outside of social conditioning). There is really no reason to conclude that. I think this wiki section on race along with the sources mentioned are useful here. >There is a wide consensus that the racial categories that are common in everyday usage are socially constructed, and that racial groups cannot be biologically defined.[22][23][24][25][26][27] Nonetheless, some scholars argue that racial categories obviously correlate with biological traits (e.g. phenotype) to some degree, and that certain genetic markers have varying frequencies among human populations, some of which correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings. For this reason, there is no current consensus about whether racial categories can be considered to have significance for understanding human genetic variation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)#Complications_and_various_definitions_of_the_concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)#Co...
1stop 11y ago
I think that's a bit literal. No one thinks all races are equal in a genetic sense, it is obvious they are different. They should be 'treated' equally is the thing we are taught. We all have our unique genetic advantages and disadvantages, but there shouldn't be social disadvantage based on genetics. It is good we are taught this, because it requires social change. Also to answer your points directly, they do not at all suggest races are not equal. "Asian" isn't a race, and "Working harder" is a cultural/social quality not a genetic quality. Same with black people dominating basketball, could just as easily be explained with social qualities rather than genetic. Really you have presented weak hypothesises in the form of rhetorical questions. Otherwise, by your same reasoning: White men people are genetically superior at leading, running companies, space travel, research, etc... Where as the truth, I suspect, lies in the context of their social situation, not their race.
- jrochkind1 11y ago
  > 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.
  - andrepd 11y ago
    No? Why? It isn't racist to say Africans have darker skin or different shaped faces to Caucasians, you know. It's a fact.
    - jrochkind1 11y ago
      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.
  - barry-cotter 11y ago
    East Africans from/near the Ethiopian plateau, Tibetans and Andean Indians all have large adaptations to living at high altitude. West Eurasians have lactose tolerance persisting into.adulthood. Eskimos/Inuit have altered metabolism of digestion of fats and proteins compared to the rest of the human race. Aboriginal Australians have adaptations to conserve calories by letting their limbs/extremities drop to much lower temperatures than their cores at night. West Africans are more muscular than any other racial/ancestry group with the possible exception of some Polynesians. That is literally off the top of my head. There's much more in The Ten Thousand Year Explosion, Cochran and Harpending. I regret I haven't read it but the reviews were good. If you're interested in this any good human genetics textbook will do. As a reality check on human diversity just remember the only species with more diversity in size and morphology are dogs.
andrepd 11y ago
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.
- Natsu 11y ago
  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.
  - mazerackham 11y ago
    I think one of the main reasons for keeping affirmative action deals specifically with the systematic oppression and marginalization of Black people in America (that as Ferguson and other black related police deaths show, is STILL happening now). I think this article is showing that Asians are tired of unfairly paying the cost of that affirmative action, with college being a zero sum game.

fennecfoxen 11y ago

> All races are NOT equal. Political correctness states that although races look different all races are equal. If we want to be all philosophical about it we'd say that people of all races must be equal under the law or that they are all endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights or something like that.

dudul 11y ago
> all races must be equal under the law So... the opposite of affirmative actions, right?

ryanmonroe 11y ago

> 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.

crimsonalucard 11y ago
I'm basically saying that if one trait (appearance) can be different than other traits can be different as well. In the abstract universe I'm referring to, imagine a bunch of balls and cubes. The balls have no sides and the cubes have six. We live in a culture that says this is the only difference between balls and cubes, otherwise balls and cubes are completely equal. This statement is not true, because balls can roll down a hill faster than cubes. Outside of the world of mathematics words are used to refer to a fuzzy category of traits. If one trait in this category is different from another category then the possibility exists that another trait is also different, inductively speaking.
- ryanmonroe 11y ago
  >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 crush people's faces into different racial-typical shapes and change the color of their skin to some racial-typical tone. Would this cause their intelligence to change? Obviously not. So how is this different than people with different physical characteristics from birth? Race categorizations are made by humans according to how people look. From wikipedia's definition "Race, as a social construct, is a group of people who share similar and distinct physical characteristics." You're saying that these physical characteristics somehow also indicate how people behave (outside of social conditioning). There is really no reason to conclude that. I think this wiki section on race along with the sources mentioned are useful here. >There is a wide consensus that the racial categories that are common in everyday usage are socially constructed, and that racial groups cannot be biologically defined.[22][23][24][25][26][27] Nonetheless, some scholars argue that racial categories obviously correlate with biological traits (e.g. phenotype) to some degree, and that certain genetic markers have varying frequencies among human populations, some of which correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings. For this reason, there is no current consensus about whether racial categories can be considered to have significance for understanding human genetic variation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)#Complications_and_various_definitions_of_the_concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)#Co...

1stop 11y ago

I think that's a bit literal. No one thinks all races are equal in a genetic sense, it is obvious they are different. They should be 'treated' equally is the thing we are taught. We all have our unique genetic advantages and disadvantages, but there shouldn't be social disadvantage based on genetics. It is good we are taught this, because it requires social change. Also to answer your points directly, they do not at all suggest races are not equal. "Asian" isn't a race, and "Working harder" is a cultural/social quality not a genetic quality. Same with black people dominating basketball, could just as easily be explained with social qualities rather than genetic. Really you have presented weak hypothesises in the form of rhetorical questions. Otherwise, by your same reasoning: White men people are genetically superior at leading, running companies, space travel, research, etc... Where as the truth, I suspect, lies in the context of their social situation, not their race.

jrochkind1 11y ago
> 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.
- andrepd 11y ago
  No? Why? It isn't racist to say Africans have darker skin or different shaped faces to Caucasians, you know. It's a fact.
  - jrochkind1 11y ago
    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.
- barry-cotter 11y ago
  East Africans from/near the Ethiopian plateau, Tibetans and Andean Indians all have large adaptations to living at high altitude. West Eurasians have lactose tolerance persisting into.adulthood. Eskimos/Inuit have altered metabolism of digestion of fats and proteins compared to the rest of the human race. Aboriginal Australians have adaptations to conserve calories by letting their limbs/extremities drop to much lower temperatures than their cores at night. West Africans are more muscular than any other racial/ancestry group with the possible exception of some Polynesians. That is literally off the top of my head. There's much more in The Ten Thousand Year Explosion, Cochran and Harpending. I regret I haven't read it but the reviews were good. If you're interested in this any good human genetics textbook will do. As a reality check on human diversity just remember the only species with more diversity in size and morphology are dogs.

andrepd 11y ago

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.

Natsu 11y ago
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.
- mazerackham 11y ago
  I think one of the main reasons for keeping affirmative action deals specifically with the systematic oppression and marginalization of Black people in America (that as Ferguson and other black related police deaths show, is STILL happening now). I think this article is showing that Asians are tired of unfairly paying the cost of that affirmative action, with college being a zero sum game.