"Race" in College Admissions FAQ & Discussion 4

[u_ername]

<p>AA now is sort of like replacing all the black players in hockey, baseball, basketball etc with asian athletes because they are less represented.</p>

<p>Still, no matter how unfair it is, it’s the college’s right to accept whoever they want.</p>

<p>But then again saying that “race x and race y can’t get in without a boost” is pretty racist in itself. Then again, most leftist ideals are hypocritical.</p>

[amarkov]

<p>I love how everyone assumes that the only people who oppose affirmative action are the asian/white kids who don’t benefit from it.</p>

<p>I’m Hispanic, and guess what? I don’t like it either. Because of affirmative action, my accomplishments from college admissions onwards are going to be suspect. I can’t honestly say I have EVER missed out on some opportunity because of my race; my family is far from poor, and my school is far from some inner-city hellhole. Yet, whenever I accomplish anything, there will be people who say “oh, he didn’t really EARN that, he just got it because of his race”. And I can’t prove them wrong, because when it comes down to it they probably AREN’T wrong.</p>

[galoisien]

<p>

^ No one has ever stated that, nor do college admission officers believe such an hyperbolic statement.

</p>

<p>It’s implicit in the categorisation.</p>

<p>Genetically, many Asian ethnic groups are more distant from each other than some white ethnic groups are from some Asian ethnic groups.</p>

[u_ername]

<p>Not all asians would be negatively affected by AA though, right? I mean a person from Brunei would benefit from it wouldn’t they?</p>

[Killbilly]

<p>

Economics is the study of independent self-interested agents, who sometimes associate with each other, form groups or contracts, and subpopulations…</p>

<p>Genetics is the study of independent self-interested agents (replicators – the classic example is Dawkin’s selfish gene but we can go much further than that), who sometimes associate with each other, form groups or genomes, and are linked to the heritable traits of subpopulations.

Do these self interested genetic actors have a psychological aspect to them that can be studied the same way humans do? Do humans always behave in the way they are programmed like genes would? I think you know the answer to both of these questions. Genetics is a hard science that deals with genes and the way that they behave. Economics is a soft science and knowledge of a soft science will not aid you when trying to do hard science, in most cases.</p>

<p>

Surely if you work in genetics, you know of Maynard Smith’s famous paper: [JSTOR:</a> An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie](<a href=“http://www.jstor.org/pss/77441]JSTOR:”>Game Theory and the Evolution of Behaviour on JSTOR)</p>

<p>(And here’s his follow-up book: [Evolution</a> and the theory of games - Google Books](<a href=“Evolution and the Theory of Games - John Maynard Smith - Google Books”>Evolution and the Theory of Games - John Maynard Smith - Google Books))</p>

<p>Economics, has everything to do with genetics.</p>

<p>

No it really doesn’t.</p>

<p>

Amartya Sen came up with the famous liberal paradox you know – an argument essentially based mathematical proof that uses game theory. The discipline can be applied to both social behaviour (such as social agents dealing with race) and genetics.</p>

<p>For a white, you seem awfully ignorant, because Amartya Sen has co-authored papers with geneticists (namely because geneticists use so much of the same von-Neumann-ish mathematics that economists do).

Accounting also uses math, therefore accounting the same thing as genetics.</p>

<p>All disciplines are similar in some ways. These two are just not that interconnected</p>

[Killbilly]

<p>I’ll respond to your posts, but I wish to make it clear that without empirical evidence I consider it to be worthless.</p>

<p>

If you convince the NSF to give me some funding to pursue a follow-up study, OK.</p>

<p>Actually the existing literature is out there most likely (I just need to be more well-read); so for now let me pursue the Austrian School style of debate.</p>

<p>Let’s take redlining, which is evidence of social antagonism between whites and minorities even when the data is normalised for neighbourhood income. Do you expect that social antagonism to be primarily reflected in <em>just</em> business interests? Or do you think it will affect the non-monetary social relations of a minority family too, living in a prosperous neighbourhood?

I do not know. They probably feel some racial tensions, but the amount to which this influences them is unclear.</p>

<p>

Shunning of minority families by the white majority families in affluent neighbourhoods is a well-documented phenomenon. (I used an anecdote because you were so incredibly naive about it.) I do not think I need to expound on the implications.

If you have data on this I will care. Your anecdotes mean nothing to me.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>You also have a tenuous grasp of population genetics. Some of the “black” African ethnic groups (particularly the Afro-Asiatic ones) are actually more related to Caucasians than some of the African groups to each other! Or did you not know that mtDNA evidence shows that the origins of the Somali people are from the Arabian peninsula? Your white chauvinism is amazing. Please, tell me who your genetics professor is so I can tell him/her what kind of anti-intellectual ignorance you’ve been perpetuating online.

I have never said on here I believe that all people in Africa share the same ancestors, however, there is a large ethnic group that is very closely related with itself and not to other ethnic groups. If you wish I will produce data and prove that this the case.

</p>

<p>You have heard of convergent evolution, right?</p>

<p>You’re the kind of white person who would think that the Chinese ethnicity and the

Excuse me? The kind of white person? That seems like a pretty racist thing to say. And no, I would not think that unless I had seen evidence to prove it. Please avoid making assumptions about me and my “white” nature.</p>

<p>

Japanese ethnicity are related. Linguistic and genetic evidence (Y-haplotype, mtDNA) shows that the Japanese ethnicity has a close affinity with groups from the Ural mountains. In fact, Japanese, Finnish and Hungarian have been proposed to be part of the Ural-Altaic family. The dispute rests on the exact mechanism in which they are related – one school argues straight-out descent from a protolanguage, while the more conservative school argues sprachbund.</p>

<p>There’s very good evidence that the Chinese ethnicity had Indo-European gene flow via the more far-flung nomadic groups (Tocharians and their Indo-Aryan ancestors) and are in fact relatively young as an ethnic group. Linguistic evidence is especially compelling (see Sino-Platonic papers, co-edited by UPenn’s Victor Mair – for Indo-European cognates in Old Chinese.) Khmer and Austronesian substrata can also be found in the Southern Chinese languages. Recent gene flow between China and Japan is in fact, comparatively small (except for that time Japan raped China in 1937.)</p>

<p>But the white categorisation of “East Asian” ignores all this genetic and linguistic evidence, because they see some superficial similarity among East Asians, just like whites often see superficial similarity among black Africans. White categorisation is based on white ignorance. And if the categories are mistaken – what does that say for the studies of such categories that argue a strong genetic explanation for the observed effect sizes?

This seems to be irrelevant.</p>

[Killbilly]

<p>

</p>

<p>Still, no matter how unfair it is, it’s the college’s right to accept whoever they want.

Nearly all colleges accept public funds. Since that is the case, I believe we are well within our rights to demand that they stop considering race.</p>

[u_ername]

<p>public schools aren’t allowed to practise AA… or so I thought?</p>

[galoisien]

<p>I ASKED YOU FOR THE NAME OF YOUR SUPERVISORS SIR</p>

<p>Or are you afraid to show them your opinions?</p>

<p>

Accounting also uses math, therefore accounting the same thing as genetics.

</p>

<p>Wow, I guess you must really be inept? </p>

<p>Accounting uses auditing theorems. Totally different.</p>

<p>Do you actually know anything about genetics and evolutionary biology? </p>

<p>Or is your conception of genetics still in the 1950s? You call economics a “soft science” OK – but it’s considerably much harder than psych (non-neuro). Pareto efficiency – an economic concept – is used all the time in evolutionary biology. </p>

<p>Biological agents sometimes act randomly or irrationally too – you get what are called mixed strategies.</p>

[galoisien]

<p>

If you have data on this I will care. Your anecdotes mean nothing to me.

</p>

<p>The sources in the redlining article are there. Maybe you should check that section called “Citations and references”?</p>

<p>

This seems to be irrelevant.

</p>

<p>No it’s a direct analogy to what your type of white folk like to do – make categorisations based on superficial classifications. The Somalis and West Africans for example, are genetically very distant – in fact the Arabs (along with Jews and other Semites) are closer to the Somalis in genetic distance. Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the Bantu and the Khoi-San yet…</p>

<p>

I do not know. They probably feel some racial tensions, but the amount to which this influences them is unclear.

</p>

<p>So tell me – why do you reject this hypothesis in favour of a genetic explanation?</p>

<p>I would love to see your papers where you map the variance of various suspect loci and linkage disequilibrium values to prove your case. Where’s YOUR genetic data?</p>

[galoisien]

<p>Killbilly – since you’re a fan of genetics, please tell me you’ve at least read Maynard Smith and Price (1973) or the derivative reviews?</p>

<p>Who was your game theory professor? Would he/she think economics is totally unrelated to genetics too?</p>

[afraidtoapply]

<p>KK cool people
If you don’t check the box, how in the world do they know which race do ya belong to?</p>

[Silverzc413]

<p>^ can’t really hide your race if you’re asian because your name gives it away lol.</p>

[galoisien]

<p>Simple solution: legally change your name.</p>

[Silverzc413]

<p>How is that a simple solution? More like an ignorant response. A person’s last name is very important in asian culture, they don’t just go to change their name when they feel like it. But the point is, nobody should be forced to do anything like that just so they’re not put at a disadvantage.</p>

[galoisien]

<p>Dude, I’m Singaporean Chinese. </p>

<p>Know your Asian peers plz and stop stereotyping them</p>

<p>Singaporeans tend to be kiasu – we wouldn’t hesitate to change our last names to gain an advantage.</p>

[afraidtoapply]

<p>uhm no…
In many cases it woldn’t be.
For example, there’s an Asian student in my class. His last name is Nguyen, which is a Vietnamese last name, yet it turns out that he’s half Hispanic. So last name isn’t always correct.</p>

<p>So for all of you, please don’t check that box and college will never find out!</p>

[Silverzc413]

<p>^ I never said it’s always correct, but in your case the kid is obviously going to check hispanic instead of leaving it unchecked. </p>

<p>“Singaporeans tend to be kiasu – we wouldn’t hesitate to change our last names to gain an advantage” </p>

<p>First of all, listen to yourself. BECAUSE OF AA, you’re going to change your last name, just to get on equal grounds because “you don’t like losing”. </p>

<p>Second of all, Singaporeans aren’t representative of the whole Asian population that apply to colleges. Hand out a survey asking asian applicants if they changed their last name, and you’ll see what I mean.</p>

[u_ername]

<p>Anyway, not checking the race is equivalent to being asian or white.</p>

[chaosakita]

<p>

KK cool people
If you don’t check the box, how in the world do they know which race do ya belong to?

</p>

<p>Why in the world would a black or Latino person not check the box?</p>

<p>

Simple solution: legally change your name.

</p>

<p>Yes, we should go through a bunch of trouble just so we can have an advantage in our college applications.</p>

<p>

Dude, I’m Singaporean Chinese.</p>

<p>Know your Asian peers plz and stop stereotyping them</p>

<p>Singaporeans tend to be kiasu – we wouldn’t hesitate to change our last names to gain an advantage.

</p>

<p>Singaporeans are representative of all Asians, trufax.</p>