Breaking down the Asian category (part 2)

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>I'm a Chinese and I'm really annoyed when people classify everyone from the Asia continent as "Asians" as if we are the same in every way. Because we are not. It's obvious since if you take an Indian and put him next to a Japanese the Indian will appear noticable darker and "different".</p>

<p>Samething goes between a Chinese and a Filipino. They simply don't look the same.</p>

<p>people from Asia can be broken down into 3 completely different, unrelated groups:</p>

<p>1) Northeastern Asians (the "main" Asian, made up exclusively of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese)</p>

<p>2) Southeastern Asians (Filipinos, Malays, Indonesians...)</p>

<p>3) Indians (it's questionable if they should even be classified as "asian". They are more Arabic).</p>

<p>It turns there are big performance gaps between people too: if you read here:</p>

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_IQ%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_IQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>interesting but controversial...</p>

<p>but anyway, next time, please remember that Asians are different. MIT should also know this. It's really unfair to apply Chinese academic standard to a native Hawaiian because they are not the same. Asians are different from other Asians, and definately different from "pacific islanders" like Hawaiians and others.</p>

<p>It's unfortunate that SAT classfied people as "Asians and pacific islanders". This is extremely ignorant. That's like saying Indians are the same as blacks because they all have dark skin and live near the equator.</p>

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<p>I don't trust IQ tests.. I have taken several and my scores range from 138-157, which is a terribly huge gap.</p>

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<p>As an Indian...considering the at best ethnocentric and at worst racist nature of your post, I'm very glad that you cleared up that you aren't the same race as me. I was worried there for a second <em>whew</em></p>

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<p>He's right. Saying Asian is incredibly broad.</p>

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<p>Yes. But this seems more of a "I don't want to be associated with THOSE people!" kind of thing.</p>

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<p>I wouldn't want to be associated with an Indian. Like the dirt I say. Harumph.
:-|</p>

<p>I'm kidding, in case anyone takes offense. </p>

<p>I don't even get why we debate race. When we're all living in the same country under basically the same conditions (economic status not considered), what does it matter? What should it matter?</p>

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<p>You're absolutely right...it doesn't. Well, unless you read OP's link. Which is crap.</p>

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<p>megalomaniac, I'm sorry that link offended you. I think they totally underestimated India's IQ. Indians are very successful in the US and are having fast economic growth at home.</p>

<p>But overall, I think the book is fairly accurate as a whole. There's proof of it all around us.</p>

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<p>I was being tongue-in-cheek about the Indian part...</p>

<p>Honestly, I just take issue with making race out to be anything at all significant. I don't see how it matters. I disapprove of schools asking that question, actually, so I am with you on that. I invariably put, Other and Human on standardized tests, and I put prefer not to respond on all of apps.</p>

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<p>Oh, come on. That article is wishful thinking supported by flawed statistics.</p>

<p>Read The</a> Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould if you want to read something good on the validity and usefulness of IQ.</p>

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<p>How big is Mismeasure? I read Structure of Evolutionary Theory last summer, and it took forever.</p>

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<p>Hahaha, Mismeasure is very short in comparison to Structure of Evolutionary Theory.</p>

<p>EDIT: Although I suppose almost anything, other than the complete works of Shakespeare or the Bible, would be shorter than Structure of Evolutionary Theory.</p>

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<p>flawed or not, it makes sense and correspond with the happenings around us.</p>

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<p>mollie, Dostoevsky feels longer, as does Joyce. They are unbearably turgid.</p>

<p>joejia, the hell it does.</p>

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<p>So why do colleges use affirmative action between different races even when they come from the same neighborhood and the school?</p>

<p>What I don't understand is why MIT would take a "underrepresented minority" student over a white student even when the minority student is not qualified. That happens even if the minority student went to exactly the same school as the white kid and experienced no disadvantages whatsoever.</p>

<p>Heck, the Jews and the Orientals and Indians started poor and were "disadvantaged" and "prejudiced against" when they first came here, but they still did awesome. Now they are OVERrepresented at top schools and MIT is starting to reject them and use "reverse discrimination".</p>

<p>So obviously, success have nothing to do with whether you are disadvantaged or prejudiced against or whatever! You have to change the prejudice yourself rather than asking others to treat you equally. Otherwise, that's just communism and we all know communism destroys innovation and competitiveness. Just like what MIT is doing right now by wasting all their precious spots on underqualified women and underrepresented minorities. </p>

<p>Because guess what? Employers tend not to hire people that took advantage of affirmative action because they don't want underqualified workers. Do you really want some underqualified engineer to design the 120 mph rollercoaster?</p>

<p>So we should take away affirmative action and treat everyone equally.</p>

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<p>I have several problems right now, and I will try my best to express them in a calm and respectful manner.</p>

<p>I make no promises.</p>

<p>Joejia:</p>

<p>First of all, using the "Asian" label is the same as using the "Caucasian" label. There's a big difference between someone from Norway and someone from Italy.</p>

<p>Second, you claim to be highly offended by racist labeling, yet you turn right around and make racist accusations based on IQ.</p>

<p>Third, no one at MIT is unqualified. I don't know where you got that idea but it is just plain wrong. Yes, it might be true that when given two equally qualified candidates MIT might choose a black student over a white student (just as an example, I don't actually know), but that is NOT the same thing as accepting a completely unqualified applicant based on race. </p>

<p>And fourth, this statement: "Just like what MIT is doing right now by wasting all their precious spots on underqualified women and underrepresented minorities." is highly offensive. How dare you claim that I am "wasting" a "precious spot" at MIT? Since when do you get to be the judge of that?</p>

<p>No one at MIT is unqualifed and I am so sick of people telling me that my accomplishments mean nothing simply because my body contains both a bright mind and a set of ovaries. What a concept. I worked hard, earned good grades and test scores, and went through a LOT to get to where I am and I will not sit here and listen to you tell me that all of that means nothing because you have preconceived notions about me because of my gender.</p>

<p>I suggest that before you begin a huge racism/affirmative action argument, you sit down and think long and hard about the prejudices you hold in your own heart.</p>

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<p>I'm not sure how you can say we have to separate Asian people and then you just group them together in smaller groups...seems a bit off to me. Secondly, if we're talking about how represented ethnic groups are at the college level, I'm pretty sure every Asian ethnicity is over-represented, and that there isn't a huge difference in representation among Asian ethnicities, though I could be wrong. So if we're just talking about admission, I think "Asian" is a pretty fair grouping.</p>

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<p>Lauren. You're completely wrong about what he said. He never said that your accomplishments mean nothing because you're female - you, as an individual, might have achieved lots. But he's saying that the school should look at those achievements without looking at sex or race.</p>

<p>Look past defending your sex and actually read what he said.</p>

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<p>Alright. Let's reclarify a few things.</p>

<p>Europeans are generally very similiar in appearance, culture, etc...therefore you have the European Union (EU), which works great. A German can feel a lot of affinity toward a French or other European.</p>

<p>But Asia is different. Right now they are trying to creat an "East Asian Community", between China, Japan, and Korea, and even that's hard to due to different cultures, perceptions, history, etc...</p>

<p>Southeastern Asian nations are not considered to be part of the "East Asian community". They have their own organization called ASEAN. (Association of Southeast Asian Nations)</p>

<p>As to Pacific Islanders such as Hawaiians, Fijians they are even more different.</p>

<p>Therefore, it's highly inappropriate to treat all "Asians" as they are the same, as in "Asians and Pacific Islanders".</p>

<p>I wasn't making racist accusations on IQ. I said it was "debatable". I was only pointing people to that link done by professional researchers. A lot of people are trying to understand questions like why Japanese cars are able to dominate the US market only 20 years after they were treated like trash. Why Korean Samsung is able to dominate the LCD and memory cheap arena when 10 years ago they were laughingstocks. People wants to understand why Germany and Japan and Italy are able to become the most advanced, high tech and rich nations in the world today when after WW2 they were in ashes. People want to understand why China today is undergoing the fastest economic growth in the world immediately after they get rid of Communism. Conversely, Western nations are trying to understand why Sub-Sahara Africa can't even provide safe drinking water after all these years and after billions of debts have been cancelled. Those are very important global questions that determines humanity's future.</p>

<p>We can't just turn on a blind eye to such an important topic just because it's controversial.</p>

<p>BTW, I'm sure there are VERY capable females at MIT, many of them even better than a lot of males at science. But it just seems to me that MIT would look at a application and say, "ooh, a female, let's see how we can fit her in". Because I know a lot of so-so female students that got into MIT and everyone was bewildered. Then I know a lot of awesome males that got rejected and everyone was so shocked. I guess that's how I formed my conclusion.</p>

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<p>Ph3onix, he did say her MIT degree was worthless because she's female, in another thread, just for clarification.</p>

<p>And joejia, I really have to hope you were making a joke with your last post:</p>

<p>"Europeans are generally very similiar in appearance, culture, etc...therefore you have the European Union (EU), which works great. A German can feel a lot of affinity toward a French or other European."</p>

<p>That sounds to me like you're insinuating that the EU was created because a lot of them look similar. I can barely respond to this. I mean, ***. EU is a POLITICAL UNION. It was created for POLITICAL PURPOSE, not because "OMG, A LOT OF US ARE WHITE". </p>

<p>I'm sorry, I'm going to stop before I really go off...</p>