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Asian American Discrimination in Harvard Admissions [pdf]

(public.econ.duke.edu)
376 points undefined1 | 2 comments | 25 Apr 20 00:54 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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mantap ◴[25 Apr 20 02:29 UTC] No.22975036[source]▶
By "Asian American" do they mean Americans of Chinese descent or what? Does it include Filipinos? Thai? Afghans? It is an odd term.
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aspenmayer ◴[25 Apr 20 02:50 UTC] No.22975146[source]▶
What about people from India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh? They are distinctly Asian, yet also curiously absent from the public conception of Asian races. I think this shows how race has more to do with the viewer’s reading of race into the subject and especially physical characteristics of the subject perceived as racial traits by the viewer, and less to do with nationality or geography or citizenship. People call it like they see it, quickly and dimly in some cases.
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SpicyLemonZest ◴[25 Apr 20 04:20 UTC] No.22975521[source]▶
I'm pretty confident that nobody in the world, no matter how they perceive race, would consider Jerry Yang and Sundar Pichai to be the same race.
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1. adchari ◴[25 Apr 20 15:49 UTC] No.22978965{3}[source]▶
But they're a lot easier to group together than any other races. Like most other races, they have similar cultural values (parents/family is the most important thing, education is a close second), they have some shared experience (India was under British control for a period of time, China and Southeast Asia were both at least under European influence, if not control (See: Vietnam)).

So how would you group them? People from the Middle East at least share a common religion, even with many North Africans, and are arguably a significant subgroup of "Asians" overall, but the average Indian is a lot closer to the average East Asian individual in general. Buddhist ideas are stemmed from Indian religious ideas, and plenty of shared cultural beliefs exist.

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2. aspenmayer ◴[25 Apr 20 16:15 UTC] No.22979134[source]▶
Why do we need to group them? It would be a very different society if group membership were opt-in similar to Circles in Google+. Reminds me of the society in Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Not that this would be a better society. But definitely would have different failure modes and novel solutions. You can get the whole book DRM free direct from the author below.

https://locusmag.com/2016/03/cory-doctorow-wealth-inequality...

https://craphound.com/category/down/