If you don’t mind a response from a “white” person, here goes…
[/quote]
Absolutely, I don’t mind. That’s the purpose of public discourse.
[quote]
In the absence of affirmative action laws, admission rates at public universities have risen for Asian-American students, while numbers for white, black and Hispanic students have declined, according to a recent study.
1. IMHO, the reason Asians aren’t treated with kid gloves is because most whites don’t see them as having any “handicaps”, especially when compared to blacks and hispanics in this country. For whatever reason, the perception among whites is that Asians can take perfectly good care of themselves and don’t need any assistance.
The very politically incorrect thing to say (and what many of us believe “affirmative action” says) is that blacks and other non-Asian minorities need extra help (if that isn’t racist, I don’t know what is).
Basically, Asians are struggling with the very same issues as whites WRT affirmative action (AA), and many whites might see them as their peers in the fight against AA.
[/quote]
I understand the original intent of some programs like affirmative action was, and that throughout history african americans have endured a enormous amount of crap that america had dished out to them. And frankly, if it weren’t for the civil rights movement, a lot more minorities (asian’s included) would be even more scrwed right now. So in all honestly, I have tremendous respect for what african americans have done for the rest of this society.
My beef with affirmative action is exactly the quote you have stated.
In the absence of affirmative action laws,
admission rates at public universities have risen for Asian-American students, while numbers for white, black and Hispanic students have declined, according to a recent study.
What exactly is wrong with this?
The issue is that where I disagree is that asians and caucasians are not even treated the same when it comes to admission. When the number of applicants
caucasian applicants into engineering, for instance drops, for practical purposes, from my viewpoint and experience, the admission standards have been slanted to consider whites more like minorities than asians. That is there’s a quota seats on how many asians can enter, and then there are seats for everyone else (from an asian american’s applicant viewpoint).
Let’s for sake of argument say right now, every college applicant had a randomly generated number that was used on an application. The first, last name, and ethnicity question was completely absent from a college application. What be the natural outcome? Would it matter? What I don’t get is the following…America is suppose to be a melting point. It’s suppose to treat people regardless of ethnicity equally. The same opportunity *should* be available to them.
By no means am I implying caucasians, african americans, hispanics, or any other non-asians are more lazy or less capable or less smart. Far from it. Some of the most brillant minds in the tech industries have been from caucasians, and african americans, and hispanics. And a lot of my former vp’s CEO’s of companies I’ve worked for where african american and hispanic and white.
But how much is the reason for a lower applicant rate into some of these fields is due to a “lack of interest” versus “unqualified”? For example, as such was the case when the dot.com was imploded, engineering applicants plummeted overall. A lot of people was quoted as saying “I’m going to do an MBA at Stanford instead because there is no longer good money to be made in tech”. However, you still had relatively constant number of asian applicants to those professions. Should we be now backfilling applicants of other ethnicities, if overall there was a personal decision by some of the most qualified applicants that they don’t want to go into engineering? I don’t get it.
I’m not asking for college admissions board to treat asian americans in a “special way”. All I’m asking for is that in an application process, remove then name and ethnicity question off an application, and put those asian and caucasian applicants into the same randomly generated number pool of applicants for consideration. As it stands right now, a lot of asian americans end up competing against each other for the same limited spots, and that’s sort of the problem. As I’ve always challenged some applicants, perhaps the best strategy is for asian american applicants to change their last name before entering high school to something generic like “Smith” or “Johnson” and leave the ethnicity question unchecked.
There are underprivileged people in america. Again, I’m fully supporting a program that would actually address the real underprivileged kids to give then a shot at a better life. But again, some kid in rural south community that has never sent a kid to school has the same disadvantages as some asian kid who’s parents just came off the both and work at the laundry mat, or some inner city kid that is exposed to drugs and gangs. At the same time, I doubt some kid living in La Jolla or Rancho Santa Fe that are 1/100th of a specific minority, yet whose parents can afford private tutors/enrichment classes/etc and afford to send their kids to some private school are “underprivileged”. The stereotype is that all asian kids by default do well in school or that all asian parents have money and resources to give their kids the best opportunity. That’s clearly not the case. Not every asian lives in Carmel Valley or RSF or La Jolla. I’ve been blessed with a much better background that a lot of asians that come here as refugees. And perhaps culturally,in general asians have valued education very very seriously to the point that parents are more willing to make huge sacrifices for their kids if it makes things better for their kids in the future. (Again, not saying people of other ethnicities don’t. See my previous post on why asians try to get into those communities with better school districts, even though they aren’t really that much better off than your W2 wage slaves). Why should an asian kid or and kid of any ethnicity from a qualification perspective who took the time and sacrifice to be better, who has the same citizenship as everyone else, who’s parents pay the same taxes as everyone else, be denied admissions over something as frivolous as race question, which he/she doesn’t have any control over? In play speak, that is “unfair”.
2. As to the cashier who appeared to you to be “racist”…
Nope. Ironically, I encounter more problems at the Carlsbad Costco than I would have imagined. It’s not the sort of ignorance that I’m intolerant of. If a cashier were actually friendly and trying to help out, that would be one thing, of which case politely I would say thanks, we got it.
It’s the body emotion and expression of intolerance that is what gets me. Case in point. I had my daughter in the the shopping cart. Daughter was like 2 and moves around. And at costco, they cart goes on one side and the cashier goes on the other. My daughter starts moving around, and my mom worries she’s gonna fall out, so she stands with the cart in the cart line side, trying to get her out. The cashier snaps at her along the line “you can’t stand her” pointing to the floor of the marking. My mom heard her, but was trying to get my daughter out. 5 secs later, the cashier speaks much louder in an authoritative tone, speaking much slower. YOU…CANT…STAND….HERE…My mom tells her “ok, getting my granddaughter out” as she still tries to get my daughter out. Then the cashier turns to me and says firmly. “Sir, tell your mom so she can understand that she can’t stand there.” WTF????? This is where i dropped the “R” bomb and said, at the top of my voice “Listen Miss, My mom isn’t deaf and my mom heard and understands your damn shitty english…if you were any use, you would be waiting for her finish getting my daughter out. Otherwise, if she falls out, I’ll be happy to sue your ass..Btw I want to speak to your supervisor.”..And I went balistic on the supervisor.
The “spare change” instance happens a lot, where sometimes people are friendly which I ignore, and some come across the same “wtf, do you speak any engrish” intolerance that often happens…
There are plenty other cases when I’m in line speaking to my mom in chinese just because it’s easier, and I guess others around can’t stand the native tough, have told her more or less to “shut up”. And you and I both know why…Sure, cashiers don’t tell a rude patron yapping on a cellphone to “shut up”, and we’re usually pretty considerate to get off the phone when we’re in line, as so many other shoppers don’t do. Would an african american speaking to another african american or a hispanic speaking to another hispanic ever be told to “shut up”?
How would you like it if your went to taiwan, and started speaking english to your mom, and people told you to shut up?
[quote]
3. The “anti-immigrant” feelings WRT labor and wages…
Most Americans aren’t afraid of competition. What they resent is CHEAP foreign labor that threatens our way of life.
If Asians produced higher-quality products/services and charged the same or more, it wouldn’t be a big deal. That would give Americans incentive to work on improvements on our end.
The problem is that Americans are competing, not based ability or quality of work; but based solely on pay. Most of us think Americans produce some of the highest-quality products. When we made things here, they lasted longer, had fewer known toxins, had longer warranties and companies backed their stuff up, because the company’s name actually meant something.
Americans are NOT lazy, but they do not want to compete with countries and people who can live on a fraction of what Americans can live on (prices severely lag wages on the way down, IMO, so price deflation cannot adequately offset wage deflation). We’d rather see laborers in other countries RAISE their standard of living, rather than tear ours down.
How would the Chinese feel if they were happily going about life, making good-quality products and living a decent, middle-class life for many decades. Then, along come the white Americans, literally pouring into thier country, who are willing to work for one-tenth of their wages and who place no demands on the employers (health benefits, labor laws, etc. — protections for which the Chinese fought very hard)? The Chinese businessmen would rejoice, but how would the workers feel?
How would they feel if these foreigners came over and lived a lifestyle which the Chinese worked their way out of over many generations (lived with even more people to a house, had multiple children whom they couldn’t afford to educate, feed or provide medical care for)? How would the Chinese feel if **they** had to pay, with their diminishing wages, for these peoples’ costs?
It’s not racism, it’s self-preservation. One has to understand why the resentment exists in the first place.
[/quote]
Well, it takes 2 to tango. Americans for the longest time have been demanding cheaper products over and over again.
I work in a ludicrous industry…Tech is the only industry to despite inflation, prices of products and services are dropping across the board. A PC for example costs several thousands less than something I bought 10 years ago. Consumerism demanded this. If that’s the case, companies and CEO’s decided to offshore things or move things overseas. Again, I’m an asian american tech worker. Don’t have have the same concerns of all this outsourcing and offshoring as anyone else? Am I really willing to work for a lesser wage than last year, no…So what’s the beef on taking this out on immigrant workers here? Do H1-B applicants “really” get paid less than their non-H1-B counterparts???? How is this any different from a company that fires people 30-40-50 year old workers. And replace them with cheaper college grads? Does mainstream america take it out of the college grad? Frankly, I see a lot more of this that happens these days.
In the past, the way employers work for reducing cost was to outsource and move stuff to india or china. Well, I got news for you. It’s not exactly cost effective to outsource these days. Plummeting dollar and big turnover issues overseas, smart companies are learning it’s much more cost effective to hire a bunch of college grads, get more senior workers to train them, and then fire the senior workers to save cost. So again, who’s the correct target to blame here. People taking the jobs, or people setting the policies?
