If Western civilization had always been on the right side of history compared to other civilizations then I’d agree with you but it has always been a devotion to science and learning that has led man to flourish. Muslims today may be stoning their women as if it was still the middle ages but during the middle ages, it was the muslims that were who were enlightened relative to to their benighted “western” neighbors.
I agree that teh west holds the torch these days but it is not by virtue of being the western civilization that they hold the torch, it is our dedication to science and justice that propels us… perhaps in SPITE of our culture rather than because of it.
I hear you but how many resources do we need to divert to those who are not ready to take advantage of those resources versus those who would benefit greatly from those additional resources.
There is a great debate in some school districts where you have large immigrant Asian populations side by side with other minority poopulations. There are different priorities for how education dollars are spent and I would suggest that you spend those dollars where they do the most good.
IMHO, education should be a great equalizer in opportunity, not necessarily in effect. Its unfortunate that not every child has a higly involved parent but to the extent you want tosciety to get the most bang for the buck, do you spend that incremental education dolalr buying a new chemistry lab or hiring someone who can teach American History in a foreign language?
Dearth of education and opportunity as well as prejudice and oppression were significantly higher in the 1950’s and 1960’s and yet there was a much lower level of single parenthood. Heck abortion wasn’t even illegal then so if you got pregnant and you were poor, you were likely to have a child.
Part of it might be how our welfare system undermined the poor (largely black) family, part of it might be the breakdown of families generally.
Because in recent times they’ve faced less opposition. Racial prejudice assigns them the stereotype of being smart & hard workers, while it assigns people of suspected Mexican ancestry the stereotype of being stupid & lazy, and blacks of being stupid and violent.
Damuri, I quite agree, it all boils down to the notion of admitting that education, by definition is elitist, in spite of any wishful thinking. Some students are far better than others, whatever the domain, whatever the reason. Should a state privilege brilliance? The answer is evidently yes, but how does one reconcile with "equality, eventually “equal opportunity”? As of today, the collectivity must grab immediately “the best” creating another social desiquilibrium, but we need that cookie.
I’m not at all sure that this is true. Do you havea cite? Cuz I have about a half page of cites for studies that correlate IQ with socioeconomic status, I thought it was well established fact. It might just be coincidence but it is highly likely that there is some sort of causation between socioeconomic status and IQ.
Perhaps you are correct. Perhaps we no longer want “the tired, the poor/the huddled masses yearning to breathe free”
Frankly, I think we should staple a greencard to every engineering degree and certainly to every masters or doctorate in math, science or engineering.
I think it would be a sad day for America when we clsoe our doors to the huddled masses and say “no vacancy” except for the exceptionally well qualified.
Biologically, there are populations of genetically similar or related peoples. However, there are no populations that are large enough to match the definition of “race.” Ever since Linnaeus, the word race has been employed to identify a very small number, (usually between three and six), of very large groups of people with a perceived (genetic*) relationship. The separation was based on phenotypical descriptions. The biological reality is that among these perceived races, there is rather little actual relation. The various populations within the perceived races are frequently quite separate, genetically, and there are a number of traits that cross the “racial” boundaries.
As such, the word “race” provides no meaningful biological or medical information regarding the individuals, or even the groups, that are perceived to be part of these purported races:
[ul]
[li]Sickle Cell Anemia occurs among peoples on three different continents, based on a prevalence of Malaria, and is absent on those continents to the extent that Malaria is absent, yet it gets trotted out as an example of a “racial” disease local to Africa.[/li][li]The dominance of sprinters whose ancestors came from populations in West Africa is used to support a claim of “racial” biology, yet that dominance does not extend to people from Eastern or Southern Africa who are lumped together in the same “race.”[/li][li]BiDil is held up as an example of a drug that is more efficacious for “black” users, but the original study that suggested that claim has been re-analyzed to demonstrate that the blacks who did better than the whites included in that study suffered from a different constellation of environmental factors than their white counterparts and a number of studies (E.g., that of James F. Wilson et al. in Nature Genetics 29), have begun to demonstrate that specific genetic marker testing works far better than perceived race in determining who will respond well to a host of medicines. **[/li][li]Noah Rosenberg et al. reported in the December, 2002 Science that they had discovered that they could identify various populations by analyzing for clusters of alleles and that by including enough clusters, they could indicate the general geographic region from which a person’s ancestors came. At a gross analysis, those populations could be grouped by continent. However, all the various alleles actually appeared among all the populations and persons in the same statistical group did not even have to share the same alleles. While the study demonstrated that the closer people live near each other the more likely they carry similar “junk DNA,” no actual relationship by “race” was shown.[/li][/ul]
The word race does, however, provide a handle on which social and political decisions might be made. It is a social construct.
Linnaeus and Blumenbach were clearly not using genetics as their criteria, but they were addressing the relationship of descendance that we now describe using genetic biology.
** Given that the environmental factors are more prevalent in the black communities, the use of BiDil is warranted, although I hope that it will be administered using actual genetic typing and consideration of environemtal factors rather than the less effective “self reported race” method.
Historic prejudice in colonial India had a lot to do with the color of the person’s skin. Did Inidans change their genetic make-up in the decades between colonial rule and today?
Historic prejudice against Asians in America had a lot to do with the color of their skin.
Prejudice was not the logical result of a clear eyed evaluation of the facts, it was racism.
If you beleive IQ tests, Jews and Asians as a whole were morons before WWII. If you believe IQ tests, subsaharan Africa is populated by people who are barely smart enough to avoid drowning in their own drool. I’m not saying there’s nothing to all this stuff but you seem to be looking for confirmation of beliefs you already hold.
Bullshit, people hate them for being different. They hated Jews of all sorts Ashkenazic or otherwise because they were different, not because they had cerebral version of penis envy. If Jews had absolutely average intelligence, we would have found some other distinction on which to base our hatred. Or are you under the impression that anti-semitism was reserved for Ashkenazi Jews and that Sephardic Jews and Mizrahi Jews were welcomed with open arms because their IQ more or less tracks white IQ?
Were Asians always considered smart and hard working? Well, how the hell did THAT happen? There was a time when people were lynching Chinese at a pretty alarming rate (relative to population) and we were passing laws to keep the darn varmints out of the country so its not like there was some sort of natural affinity for Asians. Asians were testing at close to moron levels on IQ tests and it took affirmative action to get significant Asian populations into good colleges.
Wait so are you saying that race is not granular enough or that race is meaningless?
Because I think the Japanese would consider themselves a race (I think the Germans might as well). I think that a lot of people consider race to be more granular than white/black/Asian/hispanic/etc.,
The thing is “Having exposure to and familiarity with other cultures” is not the same thing as “Thinking those cultures are perfect and above criticism”, which is what the proponents of Multiculturalism often intend it to mean IMHO.
Japanese and Germans and Irish and Jews and a lot of people consider themselves “a race” and that is actually where the word originated. It identified a people who considered themselves to be related as a people. However, when it was borrowed by early attempts at scientific categorization, it picked up a separate meaning. It is currently used in “scientific” jargon to make broad and inaccurate generalizations about groups people with the pretense that there is some biological reality to those claims.
It is not difficult to find statements by members of “the German race” or “the Irish (or Milesian) race” or “the Jewish race” that employ the older meaning. However, those remarks tend to be reflections of ethnic or cultural traits that refer to historical events rather than an actual assertion of some biological reality. When employed in casual conversation in the U.S., today, it pretty much always refers to the three, four, five, or six “races” that earlier ethnologists perceived in humanity. You will not find many, (if any), discussions on this board about the “superiority” of the Irish Race or the Japanese Race, (outside ironic references to Japanese social attitudes), but you can find hundreds of threads in which there are lots of attempts to describe the good or bad qualities of the white race, the black race, the Eastern Asian race, and so on. Those latter races are social constructs.
As populations that maintain some level of distinctiveness, they are physically quite real. White parents do not suddenly give birth to Australian Aborigine babies. It just doesn’t happen. Forensic anthropologists can identify which group these individuals come from too.
What is your point? I began my post with the statement that human populations exist. No one is denying that we can identify people from different locations in the world. There is a rather large leap, however, from noting that we can identify, (using either forensic pathology or DNA testing), Markanis, Sindhis, and Pathans, to claiming that Markanis, Sindhis, and Pathans are directly related to Italians, Tuscans, and Sardinians in ways that they are not related to Yoruba or Han peoples. Identifying the populations, (in this case, taken from the Rosenberg study), fails to establish the “races” to which previous generations have assigned them.
I grew up in a major metroplitan city, located in a modern western country, in a neighborhood full of immigrants. A girl in the apartment building down the street received a “female circumcision”. When I talked to the kids in school who were related to her, they told me about how it’s “normal” and that there is nothing wrong with it. I didn’t think much of it, 'cause I didn’t really understand what had happened, but the adults around me sure seemed to get upset.
Recently, there have been people in my city, who have been proposing their own “alternative law” based on Islamic code/rules. They had a few protests/marches downtown. They got some lawyers, and tried to petition the government to allow them (eg give them legal authority) to run a “court system” that would charge people, have “trials”, and hand out sentences. Who was to enforce these sentences… I have no idea. It got shot down pretty quick though, thankfully.
When I was in university, I had a classmate who was born in this same city. As we became friends, I went over to his house and met his family. His parents spoke very poor english. His uncle was there too, and he spoke none. I was shocked to discover that the uncle was actually born here in this city too! His parents had immigrated and settled in a very culturally isolated “ethnic ghetto”. Eventually this ghetto became a rather successful commercial centre over time, providing all the amenities one could ever want. He never left this part of town, and never made any friends outside of this part of town. He never had to, and no one ever forced him to go to school, or learn the language.
What’s my problem with this you ask? Plenty.
Let’s condsider the circumcision issue. Some cultures believe this is good. Do we as a modern western culture/society accept this? Can we take a firm moral stand on this? Should we? I believe we should! Should we go overseas and stop them from doing it? Some think yes, some think no… but should we allow it to happen here? Should we cave into any sort of pressure to make this a legal medical procedure?* No.* We have laws against this, and they want to break/bend/change these laws. If they can democratically do so… well… that’s probably a whole different topic for debate. But in this particular case, our democratic system would shoot them down. When they came here, they accepted our rules and laws, and they knowingly broke them. If they didn’t know, well… that’s their fault for not learning the rules… or our fault for not teaching them.
As for the idea of having Islamic law… well, that’s also a very similar issue. If they want those laws, they should move to a country that has them. According to them, the country they left actually did, so perhaps they should have thought about that before leaving and coming here. If people could democratically change our laws to allow bigamy and stoning… well, more power to them. In that case I’d have to move to a different country. But just as for circumcision: perhaps we shouldn’t allow certain laws because they go against “basic human rights”. If we have a referendum/vote and 60% decide that we should send Jews into ovens… well, I’m not sure that’s a good enough reason for the government to go “Okay! The population has spoken! Their will be done!”
The language issue is a part of a bigger problem of integration. This person did not integrate. He seemed happy, and had a good life. But would he have had a better life if he had integrated? I suppose he didn’t think so, because clearly he didn’t make much effort to do so, and he didn’t seem to find a need to do so either since all of his needs were met within the local community. Did the government fail in educating him? He claims to have never went to school - and I can believe that since back in those days he and his parents probably could have gotten away with it.
I suppose I don’t view this 3rd situation as that bad… but I believe it’s better for a society if all members can work together and communicate effectively. Isolating cultural groups is *usually *bad for the greater society. It can breed hate, fear, violence, etc, especially if these groups aren’t doing too well economically. In this particular example, they were fine economically… but I can imagine much hardship on his part if he was poor and turned to a criminal life for income purposes. How would he have dealt with our justice system if he couldn’t even speak the language and understand our rules and customs, etc? He would have felt persecuted and angry and not able to defend himself. His lack of incorporation into the great society of our city meant 2 things: We did not benefit from his skills/abilities, and he didn’t benefit from ours. (Other than through the flow of tax dollars, which some might argue is plenty enough.)
As touched on above, we should not compromise our laws to accomodate traditions and custom of other cultures. We should have no flexibility when it comes to: murder, polygamy, female circumcision, freedom of speech.
A bunch of kids beat up some poor kid in my neighborhood a while back for making silly jokes about Mohammed and Islam. The kids thought they were perfectly entitled to do this. They were born in this country, yet their parents (or someone) had given them the idea that this is okay. Hrmm… clearly not enough cultural integration going on, if you ask me.
Either we are not trying hard enough to educate and reach out to them, or they are trying too hard to resist our laws, rules, and customs. If it is the former, then I can’t help but ask, why did they come here?!? (Obvious answer to that question is economics.)
To be fair, it was just 1.5 generations. He was born immediately after his parents landed here. And yes, this was an isolated example (NPI) meant to show that this paticular community was so isolated, that this was even possible! In my opinion, this clearly signifies a failure either on their part, or ours as a society. (Though it could be argued that there was nothing wrong with this particular situation at all.)