Having visited China as well as Indonesia, and noted that the rural Chinese in China appear to have a culture remarkably similar to that of the Malay - that is, a pesant farming culture - and were, at the time of visit (two decades ago) no better off than the average Malay - indeed worse off - I’d say that “genetically superior” isn’t an adequate explanation.
Why are the “overseas Chinese” not peasants themselves, you ask? Well, the answer is pretty obvious - the Chinese that travel to a foreign country are those who, for whatever reason, wished to cease being pesants; and once there, there is little opportunity to set themselves up as pesant farmers - the lands they travelled to mostly already had farmers.
To my mind the issue is not race, it is class, culture and history, and I seriously doubt that one could plausably argue that a person is doomed to be a member of a particular class because of their genetics.
Since when did Malays and Chinese belong to a difference race?
This thread is surreal.
I have to say it’s arguments like this one that make it quite difficult for me to take the “Race A are intellectually inferior to Race B” advocates seriously. If even a pea-brained black woman like myself can spot the ridiculousness in the above, it’s no wonder that you and others who go around espousing these evidence-deficient theories are having a hard time finding acceptance in academia. It has nothing to do with politically correctness. It has to do with intellectual rigor and it’s lack thereof (which ironically is what you’re acribing to others…and really, can it get any better than that?)
Everyone knows the religious person who, when faced with a phenomenon that to them (but not necessarily to scientists) seems to lack a natural explanation, automatically jumps to the “God did it” theory. CP, your thought process is just as funny and just as irrational.
There is no evidence that Malays and ethnic Chinese have any significant genetic differences. But you conclude this to be the source of the economic disparity. There is evidence that Malays and ethnic Chinese have different cultures. But you don’t believe this to be the source of the disparity.
Can you really not see why any scientist who takes pride in the letters behind his/her name would support this paradigm of thinking?
I am not familiar with the literature on the genetics and intelligence of different Asian populations, but the first sentence I quote is fatuous. There are not a fixed number of races; rather, “races” are different extended families that are inbred to some degree, and can be represented as discrete genetic clusters. What we commonly refer to as races are actually collections of different subgroups. One example, which I’ve pointed out before, is this genetic map of Europe, which shows that you can isolate different Europeans (French, Germans, Italians, Poles, etc) based on their genomes, despite their all being of the same “Caucasian” (or White?) race in common parlance.
Now this does not mean that the difference in achievement between Malays and Chinese are definitely genetic, but it is foolish to rule it out based on your kneejerk unscientific reaction. Culture is definitely also a possibility.
But getting back to the questions asked in the OP, what do you think should be done about these persistent differentials? Forgetting for a minute the uncertainty of the root cause, is it permissible to discriminate against a persistently oppressed minority if they have the temerity to actually succeed? Again, this is a question of political philosophy much more than it is another rehashed nature/nurture argument.
Race, being a social construct, means that we can surely say that Chinese and Malays are different “races”. Scientifically, of course, there are no races of humans. But there are genetically distinct ethnic groups and “Chinese” and “Maylays” qualify in the same way that “Turks” and “Kurds” would qualify.
Such discrimination tends to be rife with unintended consequences. The situation I am most familiar with is the discrimination against Jewish doctors here in Canada in the first half of the 20th century (the concern was that too many doctors were Jewish, so in order to get into medical school Jews had to have much better scores than non-Jews). The predictable effect was to increase the perceived value and skills of Jewish doctors.
A similar notion was mooted in the 1980s concerning Asians in engineering, which thankfully went nowhere.
I haven’t ruled anything out. If anyone has done that sort of thing it’s CP, who declared that any explanation other than genetic is wrong. If you want to talk about kneejerk unscientific reactions and all, see his post.
And it’s one thing to say there are genetic differences. It’s another to say that the genetic differences of two closely related ethnic groups are signficant enough to make that a more likely explanation for a societal observation rather than something less biological, such as culture.
In regards to your OP, I don’t think I know enough about AA (either in intent or application) in Malaysia to know if it’s justified. But like monstro I don’t understand why you pointed to blacks and whites in the US to make your case, since blacks aren’t comparable to Malays (who are the “privileged majority” while blacks aren’t) and whites aren’t comparable to ethnic Chinese (who are the “discriminated minority”). Just curious: why didn’t you use American whites and Asians as a comparison? The analogy fits and the questions you raise have cross-applicability. Asians in the U.S. outperform whites in some areas and don’t in others. Asians also benefit from Affirmative action in some areas and don’t in other areas.
The evidence that they are genetically different is the immutability of the outcome in the face of (over-) correcting for opportunity, even at a policy level…
Let’s put it this way: the fact that the “ethnic chinese” population is outperforming the rest of the population in malaysia reflects the fact that they are more capable based on their genes. That an effort would be made to given the non-ethnic chinese population a leg up (per the OP) reflects that there are two distinct populations which can be distinguished for the purposes of giving the majority Malay population a leg up.
It’s a strawman and a confusion to simply attack the notion of “race.” Race is definitely poorly defined for reasons that have been discussed extensively here. What is correct is that populations which excel at the population (group…cohort…) level are differently enabled at a genetic level for those qualities which express the phenotypes required for that skillset. It is for this reason that efforts at ameliorating the situation do not readily produce different outcomes.
I’m perfectly OK with calling the whole human race a single race. But it’s clear that there are populations within it that are differently enabled at a group level, and the evidence for that is the persistence of differing outcomes even when nurture is normalized between groups. You could have a massive no-expense-spared initiative to get asians, whites and inuits proportionately represented in the NBA and it would still fail…
Chief Pendant: I don’t think you can compare overall success in the economic sphere with success at a given sport, like basketball. There are many, many factors that contribute to success in the economic sphere and it is entirely unclear that genetics, at the group level, is a significant factor even if it may be at the individual level. Success in professional a sport like basketball is going to be clearly disproportionate to those groups which are genetically predisposed to taller height. That is something one can easily control for, whereas the ingredients that add up to success in business are not.
That’s not evidence of gene superiority.That just mean that whatever “it” is, “it” is strong enough to override articificial handcaps. In theory, one could still be smarter genetically and come out on bottom if they are sufficiently discriminated against.
An assertion is not a proof, but rather an assertion. You might as well be saying with the same matter-of-factness that because we can’t pinpoint one single reason why some people get Alzheimers and some don’t, that’s evidence that “God did it”. Instead of a God-of-the-gaps logic, you practice a genetics-of-the-gaps logic.
As an epidemiologist whose job comes down to designing population-based studies that are intended to elucidate the source of group disparities, I can tell you this: you absolutely, 100% wrong. I can also tell you have no practical experience in this area, because of the way you reach your conclusions. And I’m not saying this to be mean, honestly. If I were up here trying argue about quantam mechanics to a physicist, I’d expect him to be just as frank and harsh with me.
Based on your logic, if there’s one population that is obese and there’s another skinny, there can only be one explanation. Genetics. Nevermind diet, nevermind exercise, nevermind values and attitudes towards food and body image. It’s gotta be genetic.
I expect that you will balk at this characterization. But please explain how economic performance is any different than weight with respect to conclusions about group disparities and genetics.
You can’t for control for nurture in a cross sectional study.
Forensic and physical anthropologists still find race a useful concept.
If someone told you that the difference between a Clydesdale and an Arabian stallion was merely a “social construct,” you’d immediately see that he was talking nonsense. But if the same person talks such rubbish about human beings, you regard it as an obvious, scientifically proven fact that no intelligent person would question.
Well, I would say that race is a social construct, but that doesn’t mean that races don’t exist.
The idea of a chair is a social construct. If the universe had no humans, it would have no idea of a chair-shaped object as something you sit down on. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that the idea of “chairs” is incorrect or useless.
Yes and no. They find ethnic groups to be a useful concept. Scientifically, race = subspecies and we simply don’t have subspecies of humans by the normal, scientific definition of that term.
He would be. Those are carefully controlled breeds of horses.
There are no carefully controlled breeds of human beings. You can draw distinct lines between Arabian and Clydesdale horses, but you cannot draw distinct lines between populations of humans. That is a scientific fact.
I’ve read that before, and I do find it interesting, but it does not support the statement that races exist in any scientifically meaningful way.
So far, I’ve seen exactly zero evidence that the cause of the difference isn’t based on culture and history.
Indeed, looking at the matter logically, it seems most unlikely that the difference in relative success could be due to genetics.
If it was based on genetics, would not the average Chinese peasant still in China be smarter than the average Malasian peasant, and so better off? Yet for most of the 20th century, the exact reverse has been true (and for all I know it still is).
Surely there is no genetic difference between Chinese in China and Chinese in Malaysia (except that the latter may have interbred to an extent with the Malays!).
I’m not sure if anyone has touched on this, but there is a very large population of “Overseas Chinese” who form a significant trading network throughout Asia (and other places). They may be fully integrated into their local cultures but are able to draw on that international network that simply isn’t available to other ethnic groups.
I for one cannot believe that the economic success of any particular group (whether they form a “race” or not) can be easily traced to genetic differences.
Look at GDP. If (say) the Chinese were “genetically superior” to Malays, and genetic superiority was a good explaination for economic success, why are the Chinese in China itself so much poorer than the average Malay in Malaysia?
China: 5,963
Malaysia: 14,072
Or for that matter - why are the Chinese in China so much worse off than the Chinese in Taiwan?
It is a total strawman to say that genetic differences are completely, 100% deterministic; if nothing else someone dying of starvation will not be discovering new organic syntheses. But that does not mean that genetics are never a constraint, and I would again encourage people to get back to the topic of what should be done policywise in the case of Malaysia.
The problem is that genetic differences between racial or other identifiable groups appear to be zero percent deterministic, insofar as the matter can actually be tested in real world conditions - at least in the case of the Chinese and Malays. Why bother with them, if they don’t seem to make any difference at all to actual success or failure?
Isn’t it better to discuss history and culture, which appear to be pretty well 100% of the factors which actually matter?
I disagree that the matter is not relevant to the case of policy. If the issue is one of genetic differences, obviously that will drive a certain policy agenda; if it is a matter of history and culture, it will drive a different one - genetics cannot be altered but culture can be.
Policy is a pretty blunt instrument, as shown by the straightforward quotas currently in place. What would your proposal be in either case (genetic vs. environment)?