11 ms·
》I was the only Hispanic faculty at my department, had 13k+ citations, 2 books, & papers in Nature, Science, & PNAS Author complains about merit, but list his
by throw3838 5y ago
》I was the only Hispanic faculty at my department, had 13k+ citations, 2 books, & papers in Nature, Science, & PNAS
Author complains about merit, but list his race BEFORE his credentials.
- nawgz 5y agoYes, he is leading the reader to the conclusion he drew by illustrating first his otherness and then his high performance. I don't see how this would serve as a counter-example to the claim "merit doesn't matter as much as <being in the in-group>" or whatever he claims supplants merit.
- sofixa 5y agoMinor nitpick: Hispanic is really not a race, even in the American world where Caucasian (which is always hilarious to me because, you know, the Caucasus is a real place) and "black" are ( and they aren't).
- LudwigNagasena 5y agoWhat is “really” a race anyway? Why wouldn’t Hispanic be a real race, but being black be?
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoScientifically, "Black" is probably less of a race than "Hispanic" in a global context, possibly that's reversed if you focus just on USA though. And neither are really races as science says were all the human race, just if you were going to say genetic similarity is 'race' that would be the case because of the vast diversity in African genetics that happen to have dark skin (which isnt even necessary to be 'black' in the usa.)
- snicker7 5y agoRace is a social construct invented by colonizers (whites) as a way to categorize and other-ize everyone else. It has no biological or ethnic or cultural meaning. Race is not an inherent thing, but a complex relationship between groups of people with unequal power and privileges.
- liaukovv 5y ago
- dekhn 5y agoNo, that's not what he's saying. Put in a scientific context, it's correct to say that people whose genetic history is derived entirely from african ancestors are biologically distinct from people whose ancestor left africa a long time ago and then evolved in the regions they resided for long periods. We see this from genomic sequences as well as visible phenotypes (which is what most racial classifications are based on).
- liaukovv 5y ago
- snicker7 5y ago
- theandrewbailey 5y agoWhat about the non-white people who distinguish between themselves and other non-white people? Are they suddenly white?
- throwaway599281 5y agoHispanic is just a bad name for the category as it is not a race as a descendent of portuguese or spanish, or any other european people, with no intermixture with native americans, or vice-versa, are both hispanics. Hence why Americans have to distinguish between white or non-white hispanics.
- LudwigNagasena 5y ago>Hispanic is just a bad name for the category as it is not a race as a descendent of portuguese or spanish, or any other european people, with no intermixture with native americans, or vice-versa, are both hispanics. How is it any less meaningful than "black" that comprises ethnicities and mixes of ethnicities that vary far more than all(!) people outside of sub-Saharan Africa (in pre-globalization sense) taken together. >Hence why Americans have to distinguish between white or non-white hispanics. They also distinguish brown from black, African-American from black and god knows what else.
- CRConrad 5y ago> They also distinguish brown from black, What, I thought that was just South Africa (under Apartheid)? > African-American from black I thought those were synonyms? > and god knows what else. Yeah, for a country ostensibly attempting to get away from its old racist ways, the USA seems remarkably fixated on the minutiae of distinguishing and registering "race".
- dragonwriter 5y ago> > African-American from black > I thought those were synonyms? No, despite what the staff of my then-college’s newspaper apparently were thinking when writing about a visit by Winnie Mandela to the US, “African-American” and “black” are not synonyms.
- CRConrad 5y agoDuh, true, of course. I've seen (and laughed at) the same thing, "African-American" being used about immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa in Sweden, people who had never been near America. But what I (must have) meant to write was, "African-American" is pretty much the mandatory term to use for American Blacks, right? (<-- And should "Blacks" really be capitalised there?)
- snicker7 5y agoIn the United States, you can be white Hispanic and non-white Hispanic. The term Hispanic just refers to anyone with heritage from a Spanish speaking country in the Americas. It is neither a race nor an ethnicity.
- LudwigNagasena 5y ago>anyone with heritage from >It is neither a race nor an ethnicity. I wonder what you think race and ethnicity refer to if not heritage.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- snicker7 5y agoCountries in Latin America are composed of many races, nationalities, and ethnicities. They intersect, but are not equivalent.
- CRConrad 5y agoSure, race and ethnicity refer to heritage. But "hispanic" apparently means only... Well, les'see: A heritage from Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America. Countries which contain different races and ethnicities. So that leaves only a heritage of... the Spanish language, AFAICS. A linguistic heritage, not a racial or ethnic one.
- lern_too_spel 5y agoIt's a race as much as "person from English speaking coubtry" is a race. It encompasses white Spaniards, black Dominicans, and indigenous people from Central and South America who don't necessarily speak Spanish themselves. There are two dictionary definitions of race: people sharing common biological features, and people in the same ethnic group. The biological features one clearly doesn't work. An ethnic group is a group of people who share a common cultural background or descent, but the cultures and descents of these people are very different.
- nefitty 5y agoI consider my race to be Hispanic. I otherwise would have no race, right?
- spacechild1 5y ago> I otherwise would have no race, right? Yes, you don't have a race. There are no human races.
- CRConrad 5y ago> There are no human races. That's mostly down to a weird quirk of English, which uses the word "race" for both ~"breed" and "species", so you can say "There are no 'races', we're all just the Human Race!". In most other languages, where "race" means only ~"breed" and not "species", that's as silly as saying "There are no 'breeds', all dogs are just the Dog Species!" Yeah, sure, but a Dachshund is quite different from a Great Dane in many ways (and, yes, of course quite similar in many more), so the statement is nonsense. They're both the Dog species, but different breeds. Limit the word to mean only ~"breed" and it does kind of make sense for humans, too: There are definitely sub-groups of us, the members of which share many similar physical characteristics within the group and differ in these characteristics between the groups, because of long genetic isolation. If you look at it calmly you realise that's not a big problem in and of itself -- the problems come when you start claiming some of these groups are inherently superior or inferior to each other: One can admit that an African differs from an Asian, while still realising that a blanket statement saying an African is "better" than an Asian or vice versa is as silly as a blanket statement saying a Dachshund is "better" than a Great Dane or vice versa. I'm not sure, but it often feels like this linguistic oddity makes the whole subject so much more inflamed and harder to discuss in the English-speaking world.
- guerrilla 5y agoWhy do you need a race?
- nefitty 5y agoAt the very least, representation in government. People who share my ethnicity have unique social problems that don't apply to any other "race". I don't need a race, but the people who share my background need to be discernible on a census.
- dr_dshiv 5y agoWhy is this? What’s the basis? I always laugh at the term cockasian. Hehe. Who comes up with this stuff?
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoAppropriately for your pun, the guy who came up with the term caucasian did so because he thought the perfect specimens of young male beauty came from the caucauses.
- guerrilla 5y agoPliny the Elder's Natural History (77–79 AD) derives the name of the Caucasus from Scythian kroy-khasis ("ice-shining, white with snow").[9] German linguist Paul Kretschmer notes that the Latvian word Kruvesis also means "ice".[10][11] In the Tale of Past Years (1113 AD), it is stated that Old East Slavic Кавкасийскыѣ горы (Kavkasijskyě gory) came from Ancient Greek Καύκασος (Kaúkasos; later Greek pronunciation Káfkasos)),[12] which, according to M. A. Yuyukin, is a compound word that can be interpreted as the "Seagull's Mountain" (καύ-: καύαξ, καύηξ, ηκος ο, κήξ, κηϋξ "a kind of seagull" + the reconstructed \*κάσος η "mountain" or "rock" richly attested both in place and personal names).[13] In Georgian tradition, the term Caucasus is derived from Caucas (Georgian: კავკასოსი Kawḳasosi), the son of the Biblical Togarmah and legendary forefather of Nakh peoples.[14][15] According to German philologists Otto Schrader and Alfons A. Nehring, the Ancient Greek word Καύκασος (Kaukasos) is connected to Gothic Hauhs ("high") as well as Lithuanian Kaũkas ("hillock") and Kaukarà ("hill, top").[12][16] British linguist Adrian Room points out that Kau- also means "mountain" in Pelasgian.[17]
- LudwigNagasena 5y agoIt’s actually a very funny term if you are from Russia. Because in Russia Caucasian means someone from Caucasian mountains and they are often considered “black” as opposed to Europeans and Asians by the general xenophobic wisdom.
- spacechild1 5y agoThere are no human races. The very practice of talking about human races as if they exist is itself already racist. It always boggles my mind how talking about race seems to be completely normal and acceptable in the US...
- d_tr 5y ago> ... is itself already racist. Does it not depend on the intent? The word "racism" implies some kind of bad intent if I am not mistaken. You might have a useless or uninformed piece of conversation around race (whatever the word "race" is supposed to mean; I really do not exactly know nor do I care) but this does not imply that there is racism involved.
- spacechild1 5y agoThe problem is that using the term “race“ affirmatively legitimizes the concept of human race. Not only does it have no basis in reality, it can be extremely harmful, as history has shown.
- guerrilla 5y agoIt could be argued that doing all of that despite being a member of an oppressed group would be more meritorious than not. Swimming a mile is one thing, swimming a mile upstream is another.
- ALittleLight 5y agoWhat is the innate disadvantage you think Hispanics have in academics?
- guerrilla 5y agoIs this really a good faith question? Like all other Hispanics in white dominated environments they face everything from casual racism to outright discrimination.
- pqs 5y agoMany hispanics are white. This US racial categories are pure madness, quite useless in fact, and they do more harm than good.
- guerrilla 5y agoFair point. Let's pretend I hedged for that :)
- WalterBright 5y agoThe best prof I had at Caltech was Professor Ricardo Gomez. He had a long ponytail, wore leathers, and rode his chopper to work. Without him, I would have likely flunked out.
- native_samples 5y agoYes, being a Hispanic at MIT is soooo tough. After all, when he got a meeting with the president: "We had our conversation in Spanish, and I think that afforded some candor that would not have been there otherwise." Being able to talk to the Hispanic President of MIT in his own native language and getting benefits from that is not exactly screaming discrimination, is it.
- thunkshift1 5y agoThats some bs nitpicking
- throwaway5486nv 5y agoThat's the point of the article. Credentials did not matter.
- jsnodlin 5y ago
- dang 5y agoPlease don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."