<p>I said racism is mostly gone but I also said the zero prejudice is an impossibility.</p>
<p>And racism is mostly gone and mostly contained. There are few policies that discriminate wholesale against one race over another in society with the exception of AA which ingrains it in numerous institutions. </p>
<p>I’m just being honest. I’m not anti-AA but I’m real about what it is. As a corrective measure it institutes discrimination in favor of one race over another but at some point it ceases to be corrective and becomes punitive. I’m not drawing the line for when that happens - is a corrective measure that lasts for 40 years still corrective or has it become punitive? That’s a separate debate.</p>
<p>As far as the Asian thing going on here, I can say this. I don’t believe there is any statistically significant differences in innate intelligence among the races and remember that not all races are the same either - Asian is Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Thai, etc. - and I think selection bias and small sample sizes relative to the population is likely in play in most of these comparison studies.</p>
<p>That said, I did read a book about 18 years ago about how Chinese or Japanese (I forget which one) raise their kids to excel academically. I followed many of recommendations in the book and am blessed with 2 extraordinarily gifted kids with one heading to an Ivy this Fall. I think there is something to the methods the author laid out in the book. If I remember the name, I’ll post the title. It was considered controversial when it was first published so it was in the news a lot back then.</p>
<p>^^^ In reference to the book i mentioned in an earlier post - The book I read was “Top of the Class: How Asian Parents Raise High Achievers and How You Can Too” by Soo Kim Abboud and Jane Kim.</p>
<p>No, that’s a non-sequitur. SCOTUS has already said there can be a compelling state interest in achieving diversity. The “compelling state interest” standard applies to the goal, not to the means to achieve it. As for the means, they need to show that theirs is the most narrowly-tailored means–essentially, that their chosen means will advance that goal, and no race-neutral policy will be sufficient. They don’t need to show that their chosen means has already achieved the goal. That would be an absurdly difficult test, one SCOTUS has never applied, and is not suggesting in this case. The law can’t and doesn’t demand perfection in achieving the goal; only that the chosen means advances the goal in which the state has a compelling interest, and that race-neutral alternatives will be ineffective.</p>
<p>It is certainly possible for a group to be overrepresented in some desirable place but still have its members be more commonly the victim than the perpetrator of undesirable discrimination. An example would be that black people are overrepresented in some prominent professional sports leagues, but few would say that this indicates a lack of racial discrimination against black people (in sports or otherwise).</p>
<p>Some certainly are, but many others are not, including those involved with gangs, or family businesses or those whom they just don’t do well in school. BTW those who don’t do well in school are quickly pulled out of school and for the good of the family are put to work. Anyway in measuring Asian success, one must also be aware of the cultural divide where the smart kids shine for the family but the average kids are put in the background and rarely counted in such studies.</p>
<p>^sosomenza, there are always hard workers and slackers in any race. it goes without saying. What I was talking about is, based on education/income statistics, Asians in the U.S. as a group are more hardworking and better educated than many other “minority” groups. It’s statistically significant - not just a few families put some kids in the background. This is widely reported. For instance, <a href=“Rise of the Tiger Nation: Asian-American Success - WSJ”>Rise of the Tiger Nation: Asian-American Success - WSJ;
<p>Any of us who remember our immigrant relatives or grew up in areas with heavy first-generation influences, know that newcomers can work exceptionally hard to make their way and to offer advantages to their children. And that this takes many forms. This notion (whether it can be statistically proven or not) that Asians work harder, are smarter or push education to a greater degree, masks the subject in AA: that we have a segment of our population that needs some support in moving forward, in terms of educational opps.</p>
<p>Talking about Asians being a minority in the US doesn’t somehow change our societal obligations to other groups…it just gets us off track. It suggests the bootstrapper thing: if Asians can do it, why can’t Blacks and Hispanics, NA, etc? And, we could debate whether they are underrepresented minorities in the college system.</p>
<p>Superficial reports or rogue reports that make hit and run statements, don’t get you a true picture. They inflame, they sell. On CC, some like to cite this or that as proving some absolute. Same even for some seemingly reputable academic studies- you have to dig a bit broader and deeper to understand even peer reaction, limitation in the work, etc.</p>
<p>Thanks, I will read the book. But by definition the vast majority of people will not be at the top of their class, regardless of how their parents raise them.</p>
<p>@lookforward, i am sure all of your POVs and arguments are very deeply thought out, backed up by empirical evidences and right on target. Different opinions, such as Espenshade and Radford’s in their book “No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life”, are always superficial. </p>
<p>Social engineers always have the right amount sense of righteousness. Isn’t it?</p>
<p>“Why would there be innate differences between whites, blacks and east asians in the case of intelligence?”</p>
<p>Perhaps the right question is “Would there be innate intelligence differences between races if we know in fact there are innate athletic differences between races?”</p>
This, I think, points up one of the problems in these discussions. Asians who are relatively recent immigrants are simply different from African-American, Hispanic, and Native American minorities in the US, who are the heirs of centuries of discrimination. Basically, if you move to the US, you get its benefits, but you also have to share in the costs of fixing its long-term problems, even if you and your ancestors weren’t here to help cause them. These costs are not just financial, but also include some things like the social costs to non-URM groups of affirmative action. I’m not surprised that immigrants don’t like paying this cost, but really, that’s just part of the price of admission.</p>
<p>It can be a shock of a price to pay for many of the people who come here to escape oppression and totalitarianism and war and poverty and death camps and such things. Most probably see the cost as minimal in comparison but still probably shocked that the land of the free ain’t as free as they thought.</p>
That’s a good question, and a really hard one. Where I grew up, there were no Hispanics to speak of, but lots of black people, so my opinions on this mostly focus on African-Americans.</p>
<p>People assume that there is some perpetual trauma caused by hurts and wrongs committed generations ago. Do the great grandchildren of war veterans suffer PTSD? No.</p>
<p>There was a time when black Americans had more stable families, valued hard work and a good education and wouldn’t tolerate black on black violence (95% of blacks are killed by other blacks). NOTE: ~95% of all homicides are intra-racial according to FBI statistics.</p>
<p>There were definitely some lingering social costs due to racism and Jim Crow laws in the north and south however, blacks were safer, better educated and had more intact families before these remedies kicked in then after.</p>
<p>It’s time for us all to stand on our own two feet, end the cycle of dependency, accept social and personal responsibility for our lives and reverse these laws that gives us “so-called” opportunity. While we’re at it, lets end welfare to the fat cats.</p>
<p>Tigerdad- read it and weep: Espenshade himself said, do not draw any conclusions from this study, it is incomplete, it is one stab. The freaking author.</p>
<p>My thoughts, btw, come from some experience with the admissions process. A pocket of “IME.” And time spent checking out certain things said on CC.</p>
<p>We don’t have to go far to find problematic thinking on race. Abigail Fisher is a young woman provided every social/economic advantage. And yet she couldn’t … not didn’t, but couldn’t … gain the admission she felt she deserved. And who did she blame that on? Not her own inadequacies. Not on anyone in Over-Represented groups … she blamed it on minority groups. And not just ANY minority groups … she blamed it on Under-Represented minority groups, even though it was shown that denied applicants from those URM groups were better qualified than she.</p>