Racial discrimination in Malaysia

Great Debates
81

I can give you Thailand’s example. Chinese began arriving here in large numbers in the later 19th century. But they did not come here to be dirt farmers; they could have stayed in China for that. With all of the farming being done by the Thais, the Chinese began to be middlemen in commerce, handling, for example, rice shipments for the Thai owners. Most Thais had next to no education, and these Chinese immigrants tended to be better educated, either formally or informally.

As these first Chinese immigrants prospered in business, their relatives and other Chinese began arriving. Again, they did not come to be farmers. They set up in business and became so successful that they came to be known as the “Jews of the East,” and in the 1930s one Thai statesman famously got up before parliament and pointed to Hitler as a prime example of what should be done to the Chinese in Thailand.

Fast-forward a bit to the Chinese-communist takeover in 1949. Thailand was subsequently so fearful of the domino effect that laws were passed banning Thais of Chinese from military and government service. This left only business, at which they continued to excel. Today there are no such restrictions on Thais of Chinese heritage, but the most successful businessmen and the highest of high society are still all Chinese Thais.

BTW: I have not inspected the entire thread closely, so forgive me if this has been mentioned. But this anti-Chinese bias played a large part in Singapore’s splitting away to become its own country in the 1960s.

82

The only “evidence” you have is tautology. Why should I accept that there’s a genetic basis for the NBA’s racial makeup, when you haven’t presented any science? I’m not in the habit of accepting theories just on someone’s insistence.

These are just more earnest assertions, presented with nothing to back them up. Not even an anecdote!

So here’s mine: I went to an integrated high school that was about half white and black. The basketball team was mostly black. The soccer team was mostly white. Interesting observation, right? Understanding why the two races distributed along these lines gets to the heart of the “nurture” question. It wasn’t because the white kids couldn’t hack it in basketball, that they played soccer. They didn’t even bother trying out for basketball. Why? Because it was a “black” game. And the blacks played basketball and not soccer for the same reason. Soccer was a “white” game. Both flocked to the sports their friends played. “Nuture” was not equal because social pressures were different. A white kid who wanted to join the basketball team and not the soccer team was going to be looked down upon by his peers. So you can’t tell me that white kids have an advantage with it comes to pro-basketball nurture. I’ve seen it with my own eyes that they do not. White kids who would have made good basketball players gravitated to other sports.

What makes you think white kids practice basketball with as much dedication as black kids, anyway? Kids in the suburbs (read: white) seem to be more diverse in their sports of choice. Baseball, swimming, tennis, soccer, rugby, hockey, football, and basketball. Black kids, on the other hand, especially those who are in the inner city where there isn’t a lot green space, don’t split their time up playing all these different sports. It’s mostly basketball and football. So between a white kid who is a jack of all trades but a master of none, and the black kid who devotes most of sports time to dribbing basketballs…who do you think is going to have an advantage?

Sure there are explanations. You just have to think a little and stop taking the easy way out.

So you say. But you have no evidence of this. It’s silly to extrapolate spectactorship to actual practice of the sport. I watch TV shows all the time. That doesn’t mean I would like to be an actor. It also doesn’t mean I’d encourage my kids to make careers in acting. In fact, I’d probably discourage them from pursuing that dream because of the long odds.

Just because whites like to watch basketball, doesn’t mean they are as passionate about playing the sport and getting to the top as blacks are. This is a potential disparity in nuture that you have to rule out before concluding its genetics.

Skepticism in a evidence-deficient theory is the cornerstone of science. You can submit all the insinuations you want, with all the underlined words you can muster, but don’t be surprised when scientists take one look at your theories and conclude that it is you who has the skewed agenda.

83

I should add to the above that this has been the general experience with the Chinese diaspora, that wherever they landed they went straight into business and earned the enmity and distrust of the locals.

There is also an emphasis in Thailand on education by the Chinese Thais that does not exist as much among ethnic Thais, especially upcountry, although this is quite not as true now as it used to be.

84

Guess we just gotta keep trying harder on the nurturing, then.
Best wishes.

85

I spent a lot of time doing business in peninsular Malaysia in the 1990s. (I also wrote a booklet called “The Road to Profit: Investing in Malaysian Property” and therefore did some research into business and society. My booklet, of course, painted the rosiest possible picture of the country.)

IIRC, the ethnic Malays, known locally as “Bumiputera”, who made up the majority agrarian classes, and urban poor, were given various “positive discrimination” concessions to counteract the anti-Chinese race riots of the 1960s.

For example, by law, every foreign-owned joint venture has to have a 30% stake owned by a “Bumi” - which situation reminds me of Arab involvement in foreign-run businesses in the Middle East (namely workshy, inexperienced, but raking in the profits regardless, purely because they can - this impression, again, is my observation, not borne out by any data).

There is also an honorific and hereditary system of “royalty”, which which comes state governance, that is dominated by Bumis. There are a great number of “Bumis” in positions of federal power - all Malaysian prime ministers have been Bumi, for example. And political dissent is famously not tolerated, despite the country’s lip-service to democracy. Political Bumis have a reputation (note again I only say reputation) for corruption, laziness, etc. Nothing I saw in my travels there disabused this notion with regard to the politicians and dignitaries I met. I used to hang out with the former Dato’ of Johor Bahru and he was one dodgy bastard, making a small fortune from investing state money for personal profit. But a small sample size.

The ethnic Chinese, of whom some were part of the historical diaspora, but the majority of which were invited in by the British to stimulate local economies, are predominantly mercantile Cantonese from the merchant classes in southern China - in other words their predecessors weren’t necessarily peasants at the time they migrated. Cantonese people have joked to me that they and the Jews are always the first people to arrive at any new geographical economic opportunity and get things running, and I think there’s a grain of truth in that (anyone know if there’s a link with that anecdote and the popularity of Mah Jongg among American Jews?).

The greatest amount of racism I saw there, though, was from both groups towards the minority ethnic Indians. They were employed almost exclusively in menial roles - cleaners, street sweepers, toilet attendants, and were largely ignored or barely tolerated by the people I met there. I found that aspect particularly shocking.

The above is anecdotal and is merely generally representative. I also met lazy Chinese and hard-working Bumis and Indians in positions of power, but they were in the minority in my experience.

None of the above do I attribute to genetics - it’s cultural in my opinion. The overwhelming influence of family and culture, merchant-class Jews and Chinese for example, on any given individual I feel sure would counteract any minor fluctuations in genetic characteristics.

BTW there is nothing I have ever read to indicate that Malaya “kicked out” Singapore. I had always thought that Singapore left Malaya voluntarily to avoid the pro-Bumi laws on a majority Chinese state.

86

Correction to my own post following a bit of fact-checking. It was “voluntary” in as much as much as the Federation of Malaysia (not Malaya) made conditions intolerable for Lee Kuan Yew’s government. Apologies.

87

Not that I agree with CP on this issue, but 20% isn’t all that much, and would probably give a result like we see-- scores intermediate between Africans and Europeans. Also, there is quite a bit of a spread, so the best experiment would look at groups of precise spreads in ancestry (1/4, 1/2, 3/4, for example) and see what the correlation to IQ was.

88

I think I should apologize for being flippant here.
I’m sorry.

I might recommend, instead, Jon Entine’s book **Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About **http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/158648026X/geneexpressio-20

*From Scientific American’s Review:

"Few issues are as provocative and as poorly understood as biological differences among the races. So loaded are statements suggesting racial superiority or inferiority that, for the most part, an anxious hush surrounds the topic…
He opens Taboo with the firm conclusion that “to the degree that it is a purely scientific debate, the evidence of black superiority in athletics is persuasive and decisively confirmed on the playing field. Elite athletes who trace most or all of their ancestry to Africa are by and large better than the competition.” While acknowledging that success in sports is a “bio-social phenomenon,” he asserts that “there is extensive and persuasive research that elite black athletes have a phenotypic advantage-a distinctive skeletal system and musculature, metabolic structures, and other characteristics forged over tens of thousands of years of evolution. While people of African descent have spent most of their evolutionary history near to where they originated, the rest of the world’s populations have had to modify their African adaptations after migrating to far different regions and climates.” Entine adds that “preliminary research suggests that different phenotypes are at least partially encoded in the genes-conferring genotypic differences, which may result in an advantage in some sports.” Such differences are, of course, mediated by experience, from prenatal health to education. In other words, environment and culture can amplify or diminish tiny genetic variations. Considering the variance within each geographic, racial and ethnic population, such differences “may appear minuscule, but at the elite level, they are the stuff of champions.” *

You can read the rest of Scientific American reviewer’s comments on the site.

89

I don’t how you choose to interpret this but the elite level of anything is a tiny, tiny fraction of the whole. Does this bolster your argument that the chinese are genetically superior at excelling in business than the malaysians? Surely if you’re thinking, really thinking about these things you would say; “NO!”

90

Skillsets reflect a continuum. It’s not as if everyone is about average and then there’s just this tiny subset that somehow sits above all the rest, leaving the remaining portion of cohorts equal.

I don’t need my genetic argument “bolstered.” It’s the outcome itself despite equivalent opportunity that is the argument.

The discussion boils down to whether or not opportunity can be controlled for, not whether the outcome is unequal, and not whether or not the difference is significant. With sports, for example (which is what that quote was about), the difference is seen at every level, and is obvious despite equal opportunity (actually, better opportunity for the white and asian cohort with superior outcome for the black cohort).

Put another way, one would see superior performance at every (adult) level for the athletes who were the elite of that group. At high school, college, minor and professional league, church league, park league, pick-up leagues–you get it–the best would be black.

I leave it to someone looking at outcomes to decide how significant the difference is; it’s not that hard to see. Just look around.

It’s true the quote says the phenotypic differences “may appear miniscule” (reviewer’s paraphrase). OK; but you can make your own mind up on just how “miniscule” that difference is by looking at outcomes. I’d be hard-pressed to use the same descriptive when I look at the extraordinary over-representation in a sport so sought-after by other less capable and more populous cohorts.

In any case it’s refreshing to see any willingness to address an issue that has for so long been so misunderstood and so flash-point, in my opinion.

We are not that far away from settling genetic issues to the scientific satisfaction of all, and as we unravel the genome, it seems to me (assuming I am right in the first place) that we will be best-positioned to handle the genetic underpinnings of our differences if we have already accepted them and moved past that.

91

Following your line of reasoning, the severly low numbers of blacks in hockey is because their hand eye coordination is only suited to basketball. Also following this logic they not present in large numbers in professional road cycling because again their hand eye coordination is only suited to basketball.
Here’s where your genetic notions about the NBA do not make much sense:

Where are all of the basket ball super stars from Africa? The continent should be overflowing with them and they along with the USA should dominate the sport in the olympics but that’s not what really happens. Angola was 12th in 2008 Olympics behind Iran which was 11th.

92

I don’t think there are that many black curlers, either… :dubious:

I’m not aware that the feeder loops for blacks into ice hockey are similar to the ones for basketball…if they are you may have a point. I don’t know that much about urban schools where american blacks are concentrated, however. Do you know something I do not? If it’s the case that ice hockey is pursued with the same passion as basketball all the way into high school, then perhaps you could post some evidence to that effect.

For overrepresentation to be construed as evidence of a genetic advantage, nurture must be normalized, as I’ve pointed out many times. It is not the case that genetic advantage alone will necessarily overcome inadequate nurture.

For my proof case for basketball I have offered the following points, which you seem to either disagree with, or find hard to grasp:

  1. There are more white than black candidates who want to become basketball stars to begin with due to raw numbers
  2. Whites have vastly superior nurture (family support, coaching, opportunity, equipment, etc).
  3. Whites have equivalent motivation and desire to place the NBA as their top priority and leave an NBA track only for second-choice options when they are outperformed.
  4. Blacks are nevertheless substantially overrepresented.

It is an inferior position, in my view, to pretend that blacks have an equivalent motivation/superior nurture/more candidates when it comes to hockey. It would be an equally weak argument to pretend that the nurturing of african blacks leaves them in a position to become NBA stars. With most sports, somewhere around puberty is a critical time to take the most promising athletes and groom them for championship performance.

I find your analysis lacking and your use of it further proof that it is a mindset and not an independent analysis of the obvious which leads to the belief that there is minimal evidence for genetic differences in the skillset for basketball.

93

I don’t know that you’ve necessarily demonstrated points 1 through 3.

94

If we really are going to talk about differences in athletic ability (and abandoning the OP topic, mutter mutter), I think sprinting is a better sport to use as a metric. It requires relatively little skill, but depend very highly on what kind of body you have. It also doesn’t need fancy facilities, so there’s less of a rich-country bias.

Of the 364 timesthat human beings have run under 10.00 seconds, only once was by somebody not of largely or completely West African descent – Patrick Johnson of Australia, who is half Irish, half Australian Aborigine. (A Polish and a Japanese man have run ten flat.)

95

See, this is where I pretty much stop trying.

You cannot possibly think there are more blacks than whites, either in absolute numbers or in various basketball programs from childhood on (until the difference in skill levels filters out whites).
You cannot possibly think blacks have better coaching, better facilities, fewer distractions (such as feeding their families or drugs or crime or transportation to the gym…) or have more stable social structures permitting them opportunity to develop at basketball.
You cannot possibly think that whites somehow voluntarily abrogate the fame and fortune of an NBA career to go slog it out in business…

and yet…there is this post of yours, pretending to the point of silliness that maybe all those things are true. Pardon; your bias is not only showing, it’s showing you have no hope of seeing what is in front of your face.

96

Maybe white guys aren’t that interested in playing pro ball? Maybe white guys have more opportunities available to them.

Maybe black youth are easier to recruit for possible the same reasons more blacks regardless of income are steered toward sub-prime mortages.

Maybe it’s the same reason that rappers are primarily black and there’s no reason why white rappers wouldn’t be just as good or better and they, whites, do much better on standardized tests so that should give them an advantage when it comes to word-smithing, rhyming and stuff.

97

All this stuff about basketball is rather besides the point. For the sake of discussion, let’s say blacks do have some genetic advantage when it comes to sports. How in the hell is that evidence that Malays are innately less intelligent from Chinese?

Remember the developmental psychological experiment from years ago? Have little kids look at two glasses of equal volume but of different heights. Ask them with one holds more. The kids will almost universally pick the tallest glass, even after you physically demonstrate that the glasses have the same capacity. To their minds, it’s “obvious and plain” that the taller glass is bigger. Alternative hypothesis aren’t considered because they’ve been programmed to see size as only being a function of height. Fortunately, most people are able to grow past this error as their minds mature.

Offered for consideration.

98

The debate fundamentally centers around whether two human cohorts that large can be genetically different as an explanation for differing outcomes. In debating questions of intelligence or other skillsets, one finds that the first roadblock is a mindset that any such differences simply cannot exist. It’s a line drawn in the sand; a refusal to acknowledge such a possibility, or at least that such cohort differences can be anything but trivial.

To get folks past the notion that cohort differences cannot exist and cannot be substantial for various skillsets, it’s easiest to the NBA and basketball as a proof case for the general concept. It’s very true, as you point out, that we have hypotheses which are incorrect, and errors past which we need to grow. One of the modern hypotheses that is incorrect is that all groups are genetically equal for those genes which underpin skillsets affecting social outcomes.

Considering all human groups to be genetically equal is one of those mindsets which is wrong, and we as a society need to grow past that. The evidence stares us in the face, and unraveling the genome corroborates what is plainly true. You have requested such evidence in this thread and when presented with a proof case that large cohorts can be different, have only now begun to come around to at least being able to say “for the sake of discussion, let’s say that blacks do have some genetic advantage when it comes to sports…” That’s a start in changing your mindset that human groups must necessarily be equal at a group level.

When we can put genetic differences on the table as a possibility, we can begin to objectively evaluate all possibilities for differing outcomes. Until we put everything on the table and analyze with an absolutely open scientific mind, we make assumptions and create policies that may have utterly erroneous premises.

You requested, btw, in an earlier post, some specific studies on genetic differences. There are many, many out there; I refer you in particular to some of the ones in chapter 19 of Jon Entine’s book Taboo.

I offer an example here, from the Journal of Applied Physiology:
In this study, the oxidative enzyme capacity of black athletes was about 1.5x higher than white runners: http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/86/3/915

You may also be interested in reading more about the ACTN3 gene as a specific example of a gene which varies in prevalence by race and affects athletic performance: Alpha-actinin-3 - Wikipedia

While I do not wish to hijack the Malaysian thread into a discussion of genetic studies on black/white differences in genes underpinning various aspects of athleticism, to the best of my knowledge, every peer-reviewed article I’ve seen using black and white as the cohorts shows some sort of difference in physiology or gene prevalence. This is true even at the elite level where, presumably, nurturing differences are either trivial or favor whites.

I offer the observation that nature keeps nothing sacred about any human trait or skillset, and that as we continue to unfold how genes make us what we are it is inevitable that traits of intelligence, personality, impulsiveness, aggression, altruism…–in short, all that we are–have as their underpinnings genetic code. Where there are group differences immutable to nurture, the differences are hard-coded.

99

Sorry; missed window.

One more cite re ACTN:

http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v16/n3/full/5201964a.html

100

That’s not what the debate is about. Your first post in thread this was an assertion that genetics are responsible for the outcome discussed in the OP. There was no “can” about it. You read the OP and jumped to a particular conclusion based on very limited information. The NBA offers no support for this belief of yours.

You posit that detractors believe that genetic differences “cannot exist” between two populations. This is a baldface strawman, if only because absolute statements seem to be only coming from your side of the debate. See the bolded part here:

When someone rejects cultural/enviromental explanations in favor of genetic theories, to what should we attribute their motives?