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What is the ethnicity of Robert E. Lee?</p>
<p>“There is no way to check for discrimination” seems to blend into “please dont check”.</p>
<p>Half the OpEders defending the HYPs admit it is happening (see HuffPo). If only all were so honest.</p>
<p>Harvard physics professor Howard Georgi has worked to increase the number of women in physics, as he describes in</p>
<p>[Views From An Affirmative Activist](<a href=“http://www.aas.org/cswa/status/2000/JANUARY2000/Georgi.html”>http://www.aas.org/cswa/status/2000/JANUARY2000/Georgi.html</a>) .
Graduate students and graduate admissions:
Three things stand out:
- I had to learn how to work with women graduate students;
- Having a significant number
of women in the graduate school class makes a big difference; and - The GRE physics subject
test discriminates against women — this is a long one.</p>
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<p>I have not read the whole article yet and am not saying I agree with it.</p>
<p>
Since you like to point out ineffective argumentative techniques, I will point out that this is a thinly veiled ad hominem attack. It is, of course, the last refuge of somebody who has run out of substantive arguments.</p>
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<p>No one is denying that there is a boost given to URM, though it is not a uniform boost and it is not a guarantee of anything. But there is a huge, huge difference between “wanting to encourage more of X” and “discriminating against Y.”</p>
<p>Wanting to encourage more women in physics or engineering is not “discriminating against men.” Wanting to encourage more men to go into the humanities departments at a small LAC is not “discriminating against women.” Unless you have some smoking gun that suggests that adcoms are deliberately saying - this guy’s qualified, but he’s Asian, and I don’t want no more Asians around here, your evidence is thin, very thin. We’re all so, so, so very sorry that at sub-10% acceptance rate places, all your dreams can’t be realized, but that’s how life goes. </p>
<p>And frankly - while this is a can of worms I’m opening here - having the attitude of entitlement and not understanding why diversity is a good thing and only valuing stats uber alles – IS part of the stereotype that people don’t respond well to. If you don’t want to be tagged with the stereotype, maybe you shouldn’t demonstrate it.</p>
<p>Re Hunt #1221: The reason that I posted a link to the Yale Physics faculty is that JHS in post #1158 pointed out that Yale did not have a faculty member who was a Jew until 1947. It looks to me as though they do not have anyone in physics who is Chinese-American even now. As you point out, this need not reflect discrimination at the hiring stage. However, I think that it is possible that some subtle forms of stereotyping are affecting the hiring, without reaching to discrimination; the issue might be letters of recommendation or the type of grad-student or post-doc mentoring that the students have. There has been an entire generation of Chinese-American STEM students already, many of whom have reached tenured faculty age.</p>
<p>I think that bald people tend to be over-represented among physics faculty. Also, people with beards.</p>
<p>^ they hired a guy thinking he is a woman. he misled them with a ponytail.</p>
<p>lol, texaspg–maybe they were just expanding the non-bald demographic</p>
<p>And with regard to the “OpEders” who “admit” that discrimination is happening: They can opine and editorialize all they want, just as we can. Their “admissions” are not evidence of anything.</p>
<p>QuantMech: I took a look at the Harvard, Stanford, and Chicago Math and Physics departments, and just for some comparison SUNY Buffalo, too, and they are nowhere near as stark as Yale, Illinois, Tufts. And I looked at Caltech, which actually seems to fall somewhere between the first group and the second group. But I have to say I was struck by your pictures, and by the obvious difference between the ethnic composition of grad students and faculty.</p>
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</p>
<p>Something is either white, or it is not. Something that is 50% white is not white, it is half white, and by definition “non-white”. If I paint half your house white and half of it black is it white? No. You need to tweak your logic a bit. And do your homework.</p>
<p>Plus I think you need to read a bit more because all the media made a huge deal out of the election of the first non-white president. I guess you missed it.</p>
<p>Hope this clears it up for you.</p>
<p>BTW - I was making a joke, the mere fact you want to argue about it is a little ridiculous.</p>
<p>"But I have to say I was struck by your pictures, and by the obvious difference between the ethnic composition of grad students and faculty. "</p>
<p>This is true in my STEM field as well, where ~50% first authors (grad students, postdocs) of top-venue publications are of Asian descent, but with only 5-10% last authors (faculty advisers).</p>
<p>Aww, a lot of spinmeisters on this thread trying to prove (smokescreen) that everything is all right in spite of evidence to the contrary. If you are the beneficiary of discrimination, you would want the party to continue, wouldn’t you? The absence of Asian Faculty at these schools proves that the racial discrimination is widespread both in admissions and faculty recruitment. You can run from facts and truth, but you can’t hide. The trumping of merit will hurt the progress of the country and I think we already see the evidence of it where we are racing towards the second world.</p>
<p>@bovertine, According to your own argument, you negated your own argument that Obama is non-white. Awesome.</p>
<p>
This proves you can’t read.</p>
<p>Something is either white, or it is non-white.</p>
<p>If something is 50% white it is not white.</p>
<p>Therefore it is non-white.</p>
<p>Are you on break from middle school?</p>
<p>
There’s a great YouTube channel called “Red State Update” in which a couple of guys pretend to be Southern good ol’ boys. Here’s one of my favorite exchanges from one of their bits:
Dunlap: “Jackie, you know some people say Obama isn’t really black.”
Jackie: “What, are they blind?”</p>
<p>'Nuff said, in my opinion.</p>
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It always gets back to the idea that “merit” means scores. You’d better pray that the elite schools don’t de-emphasize scores more than they already do. If they did, Asian admissions would plummet.</p>
<p>@bovertine, #1232</p>
<p>This is really offensive, bovertine, which reminds me of the sickening hypodescent rules such as the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 in Virginia that defined as black a person with any known African ancestry. I hope that you did not actually mean it.</p>
<p>I believe that President Obama is considered as a black president by the media because he considers himself being culturally black.</p>
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What in the world are you talking about? I am trying to define a term. I am not talking about the level of blood in people, and anybody with a bit of sense would see that. You need to be criticizing Joshua who brought up this nonsense about 50% and 49.9%. That’s what I was responding to. THe fact that you brought it to this level speaks more about your way of thinking.</p>
<p>Do you consider President Obama to be a white President? White meaning not culturally African American if that’s more to your liking. I consider him to be the first minority President. I don’t think that’s radical or offensive.</p>
<p>I do not feel the need to criticize JoshuaM because what he said was nonsense but not offensive. Yours, on the other hand, could be interpreted as offensive.</p>
<p>BTW, while I voted for and celebrated the election of President Obama, he is my president and I do not care which race he falls into.</p>
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<p>There are so many offensive URM comments and assumptions underlying this asian discrimination argument and THIS is what you comment on? Please.</p>
<p>Let’s just say that Oprah and Will Smith and most african americans were overjoyed at Obama’s election, to the point of tears, not because he was another white male president.</p>
<p>:rolleyes:</p>
<p>Oh, and now I get the name, “PC” hope. ohhhh. sorry. didn’t realize that was your “thing.”</p>
<p>
You’re almost hilariously biased. I suspect your reading of something offensive into my comments, when Joshua was the one who brought up the obnoxious notion of classifying a person based on some sort of blood percent analysis has a lot to do with the fact that you agree with Joshua on other issues.</p>
<p>That said, if anyone construes what I wrote in any way to support some sort of classification of people based on some sort of blood titration, let me disabuse them of that notion. If that’s how people interpreted what I wrote, yes, that would be offensive. But I assure you, that’s not what I meant, and I think you have to really stretch and do some selective reading contortions to be offended.</p>