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What is the mainstream Progressive justification for discriminating against Asians?
by TeeMassive 5y ago
What is the mainstream Progressive justification for discriminating against Asians?
- _v7gu 5y ago"Bad personality scores", according to Harvard.
- kristianov 5y agoThat they are Honorary Whites.
- woodruffw 5y agoNobody believes this, unless that's a particularly tortured way of describing the model minority[1] phenomenon. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_minority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_minority
- bpodgursky 5y ago"White adjacent" is a real term used non-ironically by (at least some) progressives to describe Asians and some Middle Eastern groups.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoI was recently informed that the term BIPOC is for every non white person except south and east and southeast Asians. That one threw me for a loop. Perhaps there should just be a word for descendants of people with lower socioeconomic status/power/opportunities.
- syspec 5y agoWhoever told you that is an idiot, and the term biopic is also idiotic. It basically means EVERYONE except white people - I think that does more harm that good
- JohnWhigham 5y agoPerhaps there should just be a word for descendants of people with lower socioeconomic status/power/opportunities. That'd be getting too close to the actual problem in society, we can't have that!
- woodruffw 5y agoI've heard "White adjacent" before, including someone using it to describe me. I think that phrase, however you might feel about it, has a substantially different connotation than "Honorary White."
- SyzygistSix 5y agoAs stupid as the term seems the idea that they don't have the same problems that other minority communities currently have and enjoy the same degree of accomplishment and privilege (as much as I hate to use that word) as white people isn't entirely invalid.
- _v7gu 5y ago> Nobody believes this Citation needed for that one.
- rand85632 5y agoReverend Jessie Jackson counts Asians as being White
- distantaidenn 5y agoWhat weight does Jessie Jackson's opinion hold? Believe it or not, he's often a target of jokes in Black America.
- woodruffw 5y agoThere is no "mainstream Progressive (sic) justification" for discriminating against Asians, because there is no progressive political platform built on discriminating against Asians. Many progressives believe in affirmative action, which doesn't say anything about the particulars of the groups that aren't being explicitly included. Nobody at all is interested in exclusion; they are interested in more inclusion.
- gruez 5y ago>Many progressives believe in affirmative action, which doesn't say anything about the particulars of the groups that aren't being explicitly included. Nobody at all is interested in exclusion; they are interested in more inclusion. Seems like a cop-out to me, especially when dealing with scarce resources (ie. admission slots). The policy of "more inclusion" by giving preferential treatment to one group, ends up excluding everyone else. edit: reworded "Your policy" to "The policy" to avoid making it about the parent.
- woodruffw 5y ago> Seems like a cop-out to me, especially when dealing with scarce resources (ie. admission slots). Your policy of "more inclusion" by giving preferential treatment to one group, ends up excluding everyone else. I never agreed to artificial scarcity in the form of admission slots, and so I'm not interested in defending any particular consequence of that system.
- gruez 5y agoSorry for being unclear, the "cop-out" was a criticism with that position (ie. that we can do stuff because they're "inclusive" but ignore the consequences), not with you specifically.
- woodruffw 5y agoYep, this demonstrates (IMO) the actual problem: we want to have our cake (an artificially elite educational system) and eat it too. I want to an artificially elite high school (one of the best in the country), and I would much rather see everyone and not just the presumed elite treated the way I was.
- colordrops 5y agoThere often isn't a coherent logical explication of the policies and ideas being pushed around racial justice. Or, there is, but it involves many things that can't be said out loud, so the reasoning is obfuscated and distracted from.
- jquery 5y ago
- gruez 5y ago"It's not racism if you're being discriminated against but have power" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52993306 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52993306 >On 28 May, Ms Mitchum emailed Merriam-Webster to point out that racism is "both prejudice combined with social and institutional power. It is a system of advantage based on skin colour".
- tuna-piano 5y agoNo 17 year old college applicant has power. What would you call treating a 17 year old different based on their skin color? If we can't use the word racism anymore, then I'll call it bigoted.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- _v7gu 5y agoExcept the legacy admits, who are always miraculously exepmt from the increasing "equality" in college applications.
- SyzygistSix 5y agoIt is indeed racial discrimination, but it isn't institutional racism. There is a very definite difference between the two. Lots of people on many sides of the issue like to conflate the two when it is convenient, and some are just ignorant of the difference.
- CryptoPunk 5y agoI haven't encountered any. When confronted with the evidence of anti-Asian discrimination, I see mostly denials that it is happening, with claims that performance on standardized tests is not a measure of competency, and thus that the admittence rate for Asians being disproportionately low relative to their standardized test results is not a sign of unfair discrimination.
- Animats 5y agoclaims that performance on standardized tests is not a measure of competency That's mostly an attempt to get around this: Average US Asian IQ: 105. Average US White IQ: 99. Average US Black IQ: 85-90. Most comments focus on the black-white gap, but the Asian/non-Asian is substantial. [1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-black-white-test-score-gap-why-it-persists-and-what-can-be-done/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-black-white-test-scor... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence
- thaumasiotes 5y agoThose average figures hide something pretty interesting. IQ scores are defined against a white norm of 100. They are often broken down into components, with "verbal" and "spatial visualization" components being very common. By definition, the white average is 100 on these components. Blacks have a lower average, but (compared to the white profile) they look "flat"; their reasoning scores are similar to their verbal scores are similar to their spatial scores. Ashkenazi Jews also look flat, but with elevated averages. East Asians aren't like that. The average figure represents a verbal score that is depressed relative to whites, but an elevated reasoning score and an extremely elevated spatial score. The difference in profile has been widely noted in popular culture. (For example: https://ifunny.co/picture/asians-because-your-calculus-sure-as-hell-isn-t-gonna-3YVYaPV52 https://ifunny.co/picture/asians-because-your-calculus-sure-... .) But it doesn't seem to come up much in IQ discussions. (Native Americans have a profile similar to East Asians, but with low scores.)
- Animats 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- goodoldneon 5y agoThe goal isn't to disadvantage Asians in particular. It's about balancing demographics by giving advantages to under-represented groups, which inherently means giving disadvantages to over-represented groups. Affirmative action is messy because it's getting in the middle of zero sum games (e.g. college admissions and hiring). But diversity is a significant problem in many parts of American society, and just about every proposed solution is messy, ineffective, or both.
- com2kid 5y agoAmerica needs to build more colleges. Based on current wtf pricing and demand, 2xing the number might do it.
- mschuster91 5y agoOr fix the demand side. Right now, megacorps are abusing colleges as a filter to weed out people who can't cope with high stress environments or keep deadlines and, even more egregious, load the cost for a lot of what used to be employer-paid on-the-job training onto the students via student loans. A "bullshit job" should not require a college degree.
- gruez 5y agoHow would that "fix" look like? Awareness campaigns? "ban the box"?
- mschuster91 5y agoBan companies from requiring college degrees unless they can prove a college degree and the associated skills/knowledge are mandatory to fulfill the job.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- randomifcpfan 5y ago
- renewiltord 5y agoThe truth is unspeakable because it is unpalatable in its full form, but one can attempt to guess that it comes from the idea that, in a vacuum, all races would be represented equally at universities and that any deviation from that presents an outcome resulting from humans artificially inducing changes in the total population applying. i.e. the idea that if a high number of Asians are making it in despite low prevalence in the total population, then it is because we have created a system that serves them disproportionately (and therefore unfairly).
- refurb 5y agoAccording to the recalled head of San Francisco's School Board, anyone who succeeds in the current system are using "white supremacist" thinking to get ahead: "“Don’t Asian Americans know they are on his list as well?” Collins wrote, using asterisks in place of a racial slur. “Do they think they won’t be deported? profiled? beaten? Being a house n(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)r is still being a n(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)r. You’re still considered ‘the help.’”" https://apnews.com/article/race-and-ethnicity-school-boards-san-francisco-0f13b0a16562f4e30bdc575a84285a6b https://apnews.com/article/race-and-ethnicity-school-boards-... Of course the more likely reason is that this is nothing more than a power grab and any data point that suggests minorities can succeed in the current system is an arrow at the heart of their political theories.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lazide 5y agoThey’re too successful as a group and it makes everyone else look bad (near as I can tell)
- SyzygistSix 5y agoI think it is "their community is not continuing to suffer the problems of lack of success and achievement that other minorities are."
- lazide 5y ago6 of one, half dozen of another. Have you ever worked at a place where you were doing (objectively) well, perhaps by introducing new tech, or optimizing existing processes, or even just because you were working your ass off, but your coworkers were angry because they weren’t doing so well and you were causing problems for them? If so, was that healthy? Did it serve the companies (or long term groups) interests?
- thehappypm 5y agoSuccessful demographics are evil. They must have become successful via exploiting others.
- gruez 5y agoSome people believe that a certain group of people have "undue influence over the media, banking and politics"[1]. What is that group? The answer might surprise you, it's quite versatile! *obligatory disclaimer that I'm not equating the groups of people or their mistreatment, nor condoning any of their mistreatment. [1] taken from wikipedia
- jjcc 5y agoI think somehow it's based on the idea of "give more opportunities to the weak" which seems more humane. It's not the policy only in the State. Believe or not, there's a similar policy in China that if a student is ethnic minority then s/he can get extra scores on the university entry exam named GaoKao which is equivalent to SAT. To take advantage of the preferential treatment, there are quite some fake "minority" students who might have some blood of ethnic minorities. The favorable treatment is not limited to GaoKao. Personally I'm not totally against the policy in general. It's true that weak groups need to be taken care of. But there are many problems: 1.It doesn't reflect the real academic capability for the students who got extra scores. Eventually some of them can not catch up the pace of normal courses. 2.It created another stereo type and bias towards those students. The are considered to be less competent but actually some of them are excellent. 3.There's no social problem like eastern Asia countries that the minorities are very small group. No body complain. In US it's a totally different situation that could cause tension.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> Believe or not, there's a similar policy in China that if a student is ethnic minority then s/he can get extra scores on the university entry exam named GaoKao which is equivalent to SAT. I was amused, looking up the admission thresholds for 清华, to see that Uyghur applicants get their scores docked by an amount that I assume equals the boost they got for being Uyghur. No such readjustment seems to be applied for Mongols, Tujia, or etc.
- analog31 5y agoThat's a leading question. I live in a town that's associated with progressivism, and know a lot of people who would not object to being called progressives. Honestly I haven't heard anybody endorsing discrimination against Asians, much less justifying it.
- chmod600 5y agoThe basic idea is that there are lots of positive feedback loops, so initial conditions matter, and people can end up in a spiral up or down. The theory goes that adjusting things along the way can correct for those positive feedback loops. There are two big problems though: One is that it tries to correct by using race as a proxy. Middle class black americans and African immigrants get the advantages, poor asians get left out no matter how hard they work, and poor black americans get forgotten. The second mistake is assuming that the tweaks are effective and don't have unintended consequences.
- yibg 5y agoThe rationale also seems strange to me. If we're talking in economic terms, Chinese Americans (taking one subgroup) didn't start out wealthy but rather historically were a poor, marginalized group (etc Chinese exclusion act). So at least in that case initial conditions didn't seem to matter.
- colordrops 5y agoInitial conditions don't just include amount of wealth and oppression, but also culture. This is a much more sensitive subject though that most aren't willing to touch publicly.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- TulliusCicero 5y agoThere isn't one. The progressive response is generally deflection. I'm a progressive myself (albeit one that disagrees with the party line on this particular issue), and it's blatantly obvious that progressives that support anti-Asian discrimination like this are well aware of how messed up it is and how bad it looks, so they try to deflect, rather than engage directly.
- pinephoneguy 5y agoThey're capable and are therefore oppressive.
- Miner49er 5y agoIt's not about discriminating against Asians, it's about ensuring that they aren't being racist against black and Hispanic students. Without these policies, Harvard would likely have significant less black and Hispanic students. AFAIK, that's the progressive justification. They think if schools don't have similar demographics to the country as a whole, or the area they are located in, then some form of racism (using the critical theory definition here) is occurring.