8 ms·

Racism is not good for society. You cannot justify holding Asian-Americans to a higher level because "they can handle it." Asians are part of society too, and

Racism is not good for society. You cannot justify holding Asian-Americans to a higher level because "they can handle it." Asians are part of society too, and yet Asian-American children have dramatically different and more stressful childhoods than their counterparts - a constant churn of studying, stress, and pressure, compared to the relatively carefree childhoods of their peers. It disgusts me that you can say "this is good for America" - are Asian-American children not Americans? Asian-American children have to go through a nightmare to have a chance at opportunities comparable to their peers, simply because of the color of their skin. This is the literal definition of racism.

Mavvie 5y ago
I haven't formed a strong opinion on affirmative action yet. > You cannot justify holding Asian-Americans to a higher level because "they can handle it." The person you're replying to didn't say anything like that. > It disgusts me that you can say "this is good for America" when Asian-American children have to go through a nightmare to have a chance at opportunities comparable to their peers, simply because of the color of their skin. I agree, but I think I understand what they meant. They're suggesting that the benefit to society of having more diversity in the higher educated (and then higher income, etc) brackets outweighs the harm to society from unfair admissions. It's certainly a way start rebalancing the race distribution of the "upper classes" of society.
- notch656a 5y ago
  How do we know what 'race' someone is, do we just ask them or do we test for DNA. The more you drill down into the race question the more absurd it seems, and you quickly realize people either mean culture or some DNA pseudo-science.
  - SamReidHughes 5y ago
    Both those ways of determining race get the same answer 99.9999% of the time.
    - notch656a 5y ago
      Taking at face they're 99.9999% the same, are you opting towards the self selection option, the DNA option, or some combination of the two? Can you walk me through which DNA algorithm you're referring to that matches self-reported 'race' 99.9999% of the time?
      - SamReidHughes 5y ago
        I'm not a bioinformaticist. Try the 23andme algorithm, or whatever they used in the research that compared self-reported race to genetically measured ancestry. (The objective definition of your race is defined by where your ancestors come from, which, due to how babies get made, can be measured from your DNA. You can read more about this "DNA pseudo-science" here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiosis ) College admissions departments already check to see if applicants are lying about race, e.g. by looking up their social media. Instead of scanning DNA, they could ask for some documentary evidence if they think an applicant is lying.
        Mordisquitos 5y ago
        I am a biologist and a bioinformatician, though not currently active in those fields. There is no such thing as an "objective definition of race", and claiming that so-called race can be determined from one's DNA is indeed pseudo-science.
        SamReidHughes 5y ago
        Then why can you tell what race people are by looking at them? I claimed you can predict 99.9999% of people's self-identified race from their DNA. Is that wrong? How high does that number have to be before you'd call it non-pseudo-science?
        carrionpigeon 5y ago
        > claiming that so-called race can be determined from one's DNA is indeed pseudo-science. That's taking it way too far. Genotyping populations identifies variation, and in cases where populations that have been reproductively isolated for tens of thousands of years (e.g. western Europeans and west/central Africans) are now in proximity, there will be substantial variation that is idiosyncratic to each population. In the US, reproductively isolated populations were suddenly placed in the same territory, and taboos on inter-racial mating persisted until very recently (50% toleration in the mid-1990s). One can accurately tell whether an American is phenotypically white versus black (or mixed) by DNA. That isn't to say that our ability to predict accurately black-vs-white will remain. The more race-mixing, the less ability to accurately categorize. We'll instead move to a situation similar to the one in which 'white' people find themselves today, where they are mixes of x percent of a variety of populations and not categorically 'Dutch,' 'Irish,' 'Finnish,' etc. Race is a sociological concept, yes, but it reflects reality in that people are visibly different. These differences are genetic in origin. It just so happens that in some cases, (e.g. two reproductively isolated and visibly distinct populations suddenly in contact with one another), these social categorizations will map to biological ones. In other cases where there is convergent evolution in terms of physical appearance, they won't.
  - carrionpigeon 5y ago
    I remember reading about Brazil resorting to head measurements to see if one were one's claimed race and were not cheating to get an advantage. Just a cursory search seems to show the practice is ongoing. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/09/29/495665329/for-affirmative-action-brazil-sets-up-controversial-boards-to-determine-race https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/09/29/495665329/... https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/05/brazils-new-problem-with-blackness-affirmative-action/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/05/brazils-new-problem-wit...
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    Just because a measure is imperfect it doesn't mean it's pseudoscience. Sure, race is not fully concrete but denying that there are any differences between people of sufficiently different populations is just demonstratably wrong.
    - notch656a 5y ago
      The pseudo-science comes when claims are made as fact without evidence. >of sufficiently different populations is just demonstratably wrong. The difficult lies in translating 'race' to 'populations.' A population of 'people born in India' is extremely well defined and lends itself to stochastic and scientific analysis. Many ideas of race are not so well defined, and can't be put into clearly laid out population of persons. The slight of hand here is your use of the word 'population' when we were speaking of 'race.'
  - Mavvie 5y ago
    Yeah, I agree with this. At a high level it sounds obvious ("there's black people, white people, asian people, aboriginal people, ..."), but it gets impossibly complicated (and invasive) when you look closer.
- lenkite 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, when will your affirmative action actually stop ? At what magical point will diversity be considered as "complete" ?
  - SyzygistSix 5y ago
    According to tandymodel100, the user with all the dead comments, when the upper echelons of society match the racial demographics. I'm not sure why their comments are dead. I don't necessarily agree, but it's a valid point of view.
giveyouareply 5y ago
On the flip side, the selection process (I dont think I'd call it racism). Special admission can benefit marginalized low income communities if one of their students gets a step up. For example, a student of low socioeconomic status (or from under representative race). Let's say they qualify for a special admission. They train hard for years to become a doctor. It may be advantageous to have a doctor that can look back at where they grew up, hopefully putting resources in future to help others in their community. Not only that, those marginalized communities can lose trust in the system, so seeing people who do 'make it' can be a motivator for others. I do understand the predicament though. It's a shame we can't increase the number of spaces available. At some point there has to be a cut off. a hard decision to make.
- SamReidHughes 5y ago
  This was a nice argument in 1980, but 40 years later it got kind of stale.

Mavvie 5y ago

I haven't formed a strong opinion on affirmative action yet. > You cannot justify holding Asian-Americans to a higher level because "they can handle it." The person you're replying to didn't say anything like that. > It disgusts me that you can say "this is good for America" when Asian-American children have to go through a nightmare to have a chance at opportunities comparable to their peers, simply because of the color of their skin. I agree, but I think I understand what they meant. They're suggesting that the benefit to society of having more diversity in the higher educated (and then higher income, etc) brackets outweighs the harm to society from unfair admissions. It's certainly a way start rebalancing the race distribution of the "upper classes" of society.

notch656a 5y ago
How do we know what 'race' someone is, do we just ask them or do we test for DNA. The more you drill down into the race question the more absurd it seems, and you quickly realize people either mean culture or some DNA pseudo-science.
- SamReidHughes 5y ago
  Both those ways of determining race get the same answer 99.9999% of the time.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    Taking at face they're 99.9999% the same, are you opting towards the self selection option, the DNA option, or some combination of the two? Can you walk me through which DNA algorithm you're referring to that matches self-reported 'race' 99.9999% of the time?
    - SamReidHughes 5y ago
      I'm not a bioinformaticist. Try the 23andme algorithm, or whatever they used in the research that compared self-reported race to genetically measured ancestry. (The objective definition of your race is defined by where your ancestors come from, which, due to how babies get made, can be measured from your DNA. You can read more about this "DNA pseudo-science" here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiosis ) College admissions departments already check to see if applicants are lying about race, e.g. by looking up their social media. Instead of scanning DNA, they could ask for some documentary evidence if they think an applicant is lying.
      - Mordisquitos 5y ago
        I am a biologist and a bioinformatician, though not currently active in those fields. There is no such thing as an "objective definition of race", and claiming that so-called race can be determined from one's DNA is indeed pseudo-science.
        SamReidHughes 5y ago
        Then why can you tell what race people are by looking at them? I claimed you can predict 99.9999% of people's self-identified race from their DNA. Is that wrong? How high does that number have to be before you'd call it non-pseudo-science?
        carrionpigeon 5y ago
        > claiming that so-called race can be determined from one's DNA is indeed pseudo-science. That's taking it way too far. Genotyping populations identifies variation, and in cases where populations that have been reproductively isolated for tens of thousands of years (e.g. western Europeans and west/central Africans) are now in proximity, there will be substantial variation that is idiosyncratic to each population. In the US, reproductively isolated populations were suddenly placed in the same territory, and taboos on inter-racial mating persisted until very recently (50% toleration in the mid-1990s). One can accurately tell whether an American is phenotypically white versus black (or mixed) by DNA. That isn't to say that our ability to predict accurately black-vs-white will remain. The more race-mixing, the less ability to accurately categorize. We'll instead move to a situation similar to the one in which 'white' people find themselves today, where they are mixes of x percent of a variety of populations and not categorically 'Dutch,' 'Irish,' 'Finnish,' etc. Race is a sociological concept, yes, but it reflects reality in that people are visibly different. These differences are genetic in origin. It just so happens that in some cases, (e.g. two reproductively isolated and visibly distinct populations suddenly in contact with one another), these social categorizations will map to biological ones. In other cases where there is convergent evolution in terms of physical appearance, they won't.
- carrionpigeon 5y ago
  I remember reading about Brazil resorting to head measurements to see if one were one's claimed race and were not cheating to get an advantage. Just a cursory search seems to show the practice is ongoing. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/09/29/495665329/for-affirmative-action-brazil-sets-up-controversial-boards-to-determine-race https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/09/29/495665329/... https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/05/brazils-new-problem-with-blackness-affirmative-action/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/05/brazils-new-problem-wit...
- Tenoke 5y ago
  Just because a measure is imperfect it doesn't mean it's pseudoscience. Sure, race is not fully concrete but denying that there are any differences between people of sufficiently different populations is just demonstratably wrong.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    The pseudo-science comes when claims are made as fact without evidence. >of sufficiently different populations is just demonstratably wrong. The difficult lies in translating 'race' to 'populations.' A population of 'people born in India' is extremely well defined and lends itself to stochastic and scientific analysis. Many ideas of race are not so well defined, and can't be put into clearly laid out population of persons. The slight of hand here is your use of the word 'population' when we were speaking of 'race.'
- Mavvie 5y ago
  Yeah, I agree with this. At a high level it sounds obvious ("there's black people, white people, asian people, aboriginal people, ..."), but it gets impossibly complicated (and invasive) when you look closer.
lenkite 5y ago
Out of curiosity, when will your affirmative action actually stop ? At what magical point will diversity be considered as "complete" ?
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  According to tandymodel100, the user with all the dead comments, when the upper echelons of society match the racial demographics. I'm not sure why their comments are dead. I don't necessarily agree, but it's a valid point of view.

giveyouareply 5y ago

On the flip side, the selection process (I dont think I'd call it racism). Special admission can benefit marginalized low income communities if one of their students gets a step up. For example, a student of low socioeconomic status (or from under representative race). Let's say they qualify for a special admission. They train hard for years to become a doctor. It may be advantageous to have a doctor that can look back at where they grew up, hopefully putting resources in future to help others in their community. Not only that, those marginalized communities can lose trust in the system, so seeing people who do 'make it' can be a motivator for others. I do understand the predicament though. It's a shame we can't increase the number of spaces available. At some point there has to be a cut off. a hard decision to make.

SamReidHughes 5y ago
This was a nice argument in 1980, but 40 years later it got kind of stale.