Calling all Asians: How racist is this idea?

Started by jouzinka, February 05, 2014, 12:15:16 PM

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Neysha

Quote from: ValthazarElite on February 07, 2014, 08:47:04 PM
Or to just accept that it's okay to have fun and explore other cultures, be attracted to other ways of life, and not worry about every little thing being construed as racism.

I definitely see some elements of this discussion using the term racism so extensively and broadly as to practically cheapen the term until it's almost worthless.
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Kythia

Quote from: lilhobbit37 on February 07, 2014, 11:44:58 PM
My point is Irish vs. French for example are as different as Chinese vs. Japanese.

Both have distinct ethnic backgrounds which ARE different, both races have distinct features which are different, yet as a whole are lumped together because both have the same skin tone, similar to people lumping all asians together.

They're simply not.  To take an obvious example, both Eire and Brittany in France are Celtic nations.  So, sure, we can adjust your statement to" Irish and parts of France vs. other parts of France are as..." but that essentially boils down to "Parts of France vs. Other parts of France are as different as...." and makes claiming "French" as an ethnicity untenable.  And that's without getting in to Normandy, Piedmont, etc.

I'll cheerfully accept that the same problem applies to "Chinese", for example, which is crying out for subdivisions and clarity.  Han and Mongol are clearly two different groups.  But that doesn't seem to be the point you're making, in fact it seems to be the exact opposite.

Quote from: ValthazarElite on February 07, 2014, 10:03:36 PM
He's referring to the existing populations of those countries for several generations, prior to the recent waves of immigration over the past half-century.  In other words, "white-British" or "white-French" - even though those white populations themselves derive their origins from multiple regions of Europe, if you look far back enough.

That wasn't the impression I got.  From "I work with death certificates and we have separate origin boxes for each Asian race, each African race, each Spanish race.

But white is white. Not french, not Irish, not English, not dutch. Just Caucasian/white.

Why is it that we are expected to be able to tell the different cultures of every race except white?"

it seems he is very much referring to country of origin as opposed to anything else ("Dutch" rather than "Dutch or Flanders"  which would be the obvious split if he was talking about the culture, "Irish" as opposed to "Celtic" etc.)
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lilhobbit37

I wasn't referring to country of origin. I was refering to ethnicity.

I apologize if I don't know the exact ethnic name for the different european ethnicities but that is exactly my point. White is white and no one is expected to know all those, while ethnicities of asian, hispanic, or african origin are pushed on us. We are expected to know all the differences between each ethnicity but all white are equal in the eyes of the world.

Which just is NOT true. There are very different ethnicities within the caucasian population of the world.

And that was my point.

Kythia

There are equally big distinctions within "Chinese" that you're not expected to know.  I think the Caucasian ones are just more obvious to you through familiarity. 
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Valthazar

#54
lilhobbit, my gut feeling is that until European-Americans begin to actively celebrate their unique national heritages in the open, you'll continue to see "Caucasians" lumped together. 

Most Korean-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Indian-Americans, etc. in the United States have a very unique understanding of their heritage, and seek to actively promote it in society.  Until Polish-Americans, French-Americans, Russian-Americans begin to actively do the same on a broad, societal level, it is unlikely to see a shift.  Currently, it seems that most Europeans have no issues having their cultures grouped together under one category.  Whether or not that is true in their hearts, is another story.

Kythia

#55
Quote from: ValthazarElite on February 08, 2014, 09:29:07 AM
Most Korean-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Indian-Americans, etc...

Funnily enough, I think Val has put his finger on the point here with "Indian-Americans".  There are roughly one and a quarter billion people in India, there are roughly one billion white people in the world.  Your tick boxes are about the same, you're just over-emphasising differences.  It makes perfect sense to have a tick box for "Indian" that hides the massive diversity of that country, it makes sense to have a tick box for Caucasian. 
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Valthazar

Quote from: Kythia on February 08, 2014, 09:48:31 AM
Funnily enough, I think Val has put his finger on the point here with "Indian-Americans".  There are roughly one and a quarter billion people in India, there are roughly one billion white people in the world.  Your tick boxes are about the same, you're just over-emphasising differences.  It makes perfect sense to have a tick box for "Indian" that hides the massive diversity of that country, it makes sense to have a tick box for Caucasian.

Ideally, one shouldn't determine their independent variables in conducting research, based purely on how prevalent the representation in each group will be.  The US government is notorious for doing this, however.  Even the National Crime Victimization Survey that the FBI uses is biased in that sense.

Under the category of "perpetrators of crime" are the race categories: White, Black, Other, and Unknown.  Many Hispanics get thrown into the White category when reporting crime.  The categories for victims are much more specific with their categorizations, but I'll need to look into what exactly they are.

Kythia

Quote from: ValthazarElite on February 08, 2014, 10:10:27 AM
Ideally, one shouldn't determine their independent variables in conducting research, based purely on how prevalent the representation in each group will be.  The US government is notorious for doing this, however.  Even the National Crime Victimization Survey that the FBI uses is biased in that sense.

Under the category of "perpetrators of crime" are the race categories: White, Black, Other, and Unknown.  Many Hispanics get thrown into the White category when reporting crime.  The categories for victims are much more specific with their categorizations, but I'll need to look into what exactly they are.

Well, many Hispanics are White, so that makes sense.  But I'm sorry, you've lost me a little?  Not clear on what your point is?

My point was that you will happily identify as "Indian American", a heritage that includes roughly the same number of people as the disputed "White" category and don't seem to feel that involves grouping your culture together with other inappropriately (whether or not that's true in your heart is another story :P).  Lil hobbit seems to be overlooking how huge and diverse some of the non-white categories in fact are.  I return to "Chinese" and the 1.35 billion from many different backgrounds he thinks is fine grained vs. the roughly 7 million Irish he seems to think are an equivalent tick box.
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lilhobbit37

#58
Except the whole reason the racism issue comes up is that these people are minorities. If what you are saying is true, then white is the minority and all the minority races need to stop whining about being minority.

And my point wasn't that we don't have a tick box. It's that we don't have a place at all to break it down further. Again, asian, hispanic, etc, have a seperate box where they can put Other: and then specify which asian or whatever ethnicity they are.

White does not have that. It's simply white. Don't matter what ethnicity, you are simply white.

Valthazar

#59
Quote from: Kythia on February 08, 2014, 10:17:43 AMWell, many Hispanics are White, so that makes sense.  But I'm sorry, you've lost me a little?  Not clear on what your point is?

My point is, we can very easily study how black crime has evolved from the 1950s to today, for example.  However, it is very challenging to study how white crime has evolved over that time span, considering that a sizable portion of American crime today is perpetrated by Latin American gang activity.  In addition, it makes it very difficult to empirically demonstrate the adverse effects of illegal immigration, when the categorizations are so broad.

According to your reasoning then, why is it that Hispanics are a separate category as victims, for many types of crimes?  Clearly, our society does not perceptually view them as white - whether true or not.

Quote from: Kythia on February 08, 2014, 10:17:43 AMMy point was that you will happily identify as "Indian American", a heritage that includes roughly the same number of people as the disputed "White" category and don't seem to feel that involves grouping your culture together with other inappropriately (whether or not that's true in your heart is another story :P).  Lil hobbit seems to be overlooking how huge and diverse some of the non-white categories in fact are.  I return to "Chinese" and the 1.35 billion from many different backgrounds he thinks is fine grained vs. the roughly 7 million Irish he seems to think are an equivalent tick box.

I'm content with the Indian-American categorization (actually, I consider myself simply American, but that's another story), only because we're still comparatively the minority in the US.  In India, you better believe that they will be taking into account the smaller segments of Indian ethnic origin.  Given that Caucasians are the majority in the US, one would imagine that along similar lines, the categories would reflect the ethnic diversity, but lilhobbit is indicating that this is not the case.

Kythia

Quote from: ValthazarElite on February 08, 2014, 10:29:07 AM
Given that Caucasians are the majority in the US, one would imagine that along similar lines, the categories would reflect the ethnic diversity, but lilhobbit is indicating that this is not the case.

Quote from: ValthazarElite on February 08, 2014, 10:10:27 AM
Ideally, one shouldn't determine their independent variables in conducting research, based purely on how prevalent the representation in each group will be.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you not now arguing against yourself?
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Valthazar

Quote from: Kythia on February 08, 2014, 10:31:04 AM
Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you not now arguing against yourself?

No, I'm not - there's merit to both points you quoted.  On one hand, it is important to define independent variables by uniqueness, but on the other hand, I am noting that the trend around the world has been for the dominant racial/cultural group of a country to naturally be more keen to differentiate the sub-ethnicities of its country (as in India, for example).  Otherwise, there's a tendency for people like lilhobbit, who represent the 'indigenous' group (at least prior to the last 50 years), to feel alienated by their own government.

Ephiral

Quote from: ValthazarElite on February 08, 2014, 10:29:07 AM
My point is, we can very easily study how black crime has evolved from the 1950s to today, for example.  However, it is very challenging to study how white crime has evolved over that time span, considering that a sizable portion of American crime today is perpetrated by Latin American gang activity.  In addition, it makes it very difficult to empirically demonstrate the adverse effects of illegal immigration, when the categorizations are so broad.

Um. You're aware that you're saying "The data for Latin-American crime is unavailable because it's conflated with whites" and "We know that a lot of crime is Latin-Ameican in origin" in the same paragraph, right? Given that, I'd say [citation needed] on your assertions about the prevalence of Hispanic criminals.

Kythia

Quote from: ValthazarElite on February 08, 2014, 10:36:35 AM
No, I'm not - there's merit to both points you quoted.  On one hand, it is important to define independent variables by uniqueness, but on the other hand, I am noting that the trend around the world has been for the dominant racial/cultural group of a country to naturally be more keen to differentiate the sub-ethnicities of its country (as in India, for example).  Otherwise, there's a tendency for people like lilhobbit, who represent the 'indigenous' group (at least prior to the last 50 years), to feel alienated by their own government.

Hmmm.  So where do you come down. Should the us government use less than ideal methods and be crticised by you on that front,  or make "indigenous" people feel alienated by using ideal methods and be criticised by you for that. While there may be merit,  you can't have this both ways.
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Valthazar

Quote from: Ephiral on February 08, 2014, 10:43:59 AM
Um. You're aware that you're saying "The data for Latin-American crime is unavailable because it's conflated with whites" and "We know that a lot of crime is Latin-Ameican in origin" in the same paragraph, right? Given that, I'd say [citation needed] on your assertions about the prevalence of Hispanic criminals.

I was purely referring to the NCVS reporting categorization being biased - as a governmental statistical reporting method.  Other reporting agencies have empirically published Hispanic crime rates.  According to a 2009 report by the Pew Hispanic Center, in 2007 Latinos "accounted for 40% of all sentenced federal offenders-more than triple their share (13%) of the total U.S. adult population". This was an increase from 24% in 1991. 72% of the Latino offenders were not U.S. citizens.

http://www.pewhispanic.org/2009/02/18/a-rising-share-hispanics-and-federal-crime/


Ephiral

Quote from: ValthazarElite on February 08, 2014, 10:48:35 AM
I was purely referring to the NCVS reporting categorization being biased - as a governmental statistical reporting method.  Other reporting agencies have empirically published Hispanic crime rates.  According to a 2009 report by the Pew Hispanic Center, in 2007 Latinos "accounted for 40% of all sentenced federal offenders-more than triple their share (13%) of the total U.S. adult population". This was an increase from 24% in 1991. 72% of the Latino offenders were not U.S. citizens.

http://www.pewhispanic.org/2009/02/18/a-rising-share-hispanics-and-federal-crime/
Thank you; I do appreciate the cite. That said... well, this speaks to the prevalence of sentencing, not the prevalence of criminals or crime. There are other explanations for this data, and I'd say your assertion is not justified based on this alone.

Valthazar

Quote from: Kythia on February 08, 2014, 10:47:38 AM
Hmmm.  So where do you come down. Should the us government use less than ideal methods and be crticised by you on that front,  or make "indigenous" people feel alienated by using ideal methods and be criticised by you for that. While there may be merit,  you can't have this both ways.

If it were up to me, I'd just get rid of all these ethnicity forms on job and college applications.  In this day and age, when we claim to evaluate people by the content of their character, and not their exterior, we still try to maintain quotas for some reason.  I kid you not, there is now talk at my institution of needing to set a minimum quota for male students, because the females have better grades (a situation taking place at many universities).  Let's just evaluate people for what they offer.

Quote from: Ephiral on February 08, 2014, 11:01:04 AM
Thank you; I do appreciate the cite. That said... well, this speaks to the prevalence of sentencing, not the prevalence of criminals or crime. There are other explanations for this data, and I'd say your assertion is not justified based on this alone.

I am interested to hear your explanation of the data.

Kythia

Quote from: ValthazarElite on February 08, 2014, 11:03:27 AM
If it were up to me, I'd just get rid of all these ethnicity forms on job and college applications.  In this day and age, when we claim to evaluate people by the content of their character, and not their exterior, we still try to maintain quotas for some reason.  I kid you not, there is now talk at my institution of needing to set a minimum quota for male students, because the females have better grades (a situation taking place at many universities).  Let's just evaluate people for what they offer.

Which would be fine if the playing field was level.  But without monitoring, we'll never know.  Is the fact that demograph X is over-represented in field Y a matter of them simply having more to offer or of them having external advantages which, if offered to all, would eliminate that overrepresentation.  We'll never know under your proposed system.

I'm radically in favour of quotas, incidentally, but that would be taking the conversation way too far off topic.
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Oniya

Quote from: ValthazarElite on February 08, 2014, 11:03:27 AM
I am interested to hear your explanation of the data.

Among other things, there's the tendency in some districts for non-Caucasians to be questioned more aggressively if they are brought in as suspects.  There's a stereotype of African-Americans as being 'thugs', and Hispanics as being 'gang members' or 'illegals'.  When Cayley Anthony was initially just a 'missing child', Casey claimed that she had left her with a lady named Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez - and the woman (who actually existed and didn't even know the Anthonys) wen through hell to recover her reputation.  Susan Smith said that 'a black man' carjacked her and drove off with her kids in the back seat.  She'd actually driven the car into a reservoir and drowned them herself.  The point is that people were ready to believe these depictions, and someone without the education about their rights or the finances to hire a good lawyer can get convicted for things they didn't do.
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Ephiral

Quote from: ValthazarElite on February 08, 2014, 11:03:27 AMI am interested to hear your explanation of the data.
The most immediately obvious would be far higher rates of poverty among Hispanic populations. You specifically cite a very sizeable portion of the incarcerated as undocumented, which tends to correlate extremely strongly with poverty and abusive conditions. There's also the matter of racial bias in the justice system, which is a well-documented problem in certain areas of high Hispanic population. (Sheriff Arpaio, I'm looking in your direction.)

In short, equating "high incarceraton" to "high criminality" makes two blatantly false assumptions - that socioeconomic conditions are equal across the board, and that the justice system is perfect.

Valthazar

Quote from: Oniya on February 08, 2014, 12:08:29 PM
Among other things, there's the tendency in some districts for non-Caucasians to be questioned more aggressively if they are brought in as suspects.  There's a stereotype of African-Americans as being 'thugs', and Hispanics as being 'gang members' or 'illegals'.

I don't deny any of this, there is a lot of truth to what you are saying.  But if indeed some of those statistical trends I posted are in fact true, what sort of evidence would you need to acknowledge that there is a higher criminal rate among certain populations in the US?  I am not sure how we will ever be able to ensure that such perceptual biases are statistically removed, but we can't let that prevent us from studying trends over time.

Valthazar

Quote from: Ephiral on February 08, 2014, 12:12:49 PM
The most immediately obvious would be far higher rates of poverty among Hispanic populations. You specifically cite a very sizeable portion of the incarcerated as undocumented, which tends to correlate extremely strongly with poverty and abusive conditions. There's also the matter of racial bias in the justice system, which is a well-documented problem in certain areas of high Hispanic population. (Sheriff Arpaio, I'm looking in your direction.)

In short, equating "high incarceraton" to "high criminality" makes two blatantly false assumptions - that socioeconomic conditions are equal across the board, and that the justice system is perfect.

Oh, I know poverty is a major player, that's what fuels gangs after all.  I wasn't trying to suggest that one ethnic group is more criminal than another by nature, that would be a ridiculous assertion.  But studying growing criminal presence among certain ethnic groups, such as poverty-stricken illegal immigrants, can guide public policy.

But this thread has gotten so far off topic, and I apologize for that.

Oniya

Quote from: ValthazarElite on February 08, 2014, 12:18:05 PM
I don't deny any of this, there is a lot of truth to what you are saying.  But if indeed some of those statistical trends I posted are in fact true, what sort of evidence would you need to acknowledge that there is a higher criminal rate among certain populations in the US?  I am not sure how we will ever be able to ensure that such perceptual biases are statistically removed, but we can't let that prevent us from studying trends over time.

Among other things, running the statistics based on more varied criteria.  You'd also have to define 'population' to some extent.  People living in a backwater town in the middle of Amish country are going to have different crime rates and categories than people of equivalent race and income level living in the low-income areas around a major city.
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Ephiral

Quote from: ValthazarElite on February 08, 2014, 12:20:23 PM
Oh, I know poverty is a major player, that's what fuels gangs after all.  I wasn't trying to suggest that one ethnic group is more criminal than another by nature, that would be a ridiculous assertion.  But studying growing criminal presence among certain ethnic groups, such as poverty-stricken illegal immigrants, can guide public policy.
It would - but that's explicitly not what's being studied in the data you cited. Again, there's an important distinction between "incarceration" and "criminality". I seem to recall you explicitly admitting in another thread that poverty has other effects here - such as, say, barring access to the best legal defenses.

Valthazar

Quote from: Ephiral on February 08, 2014, 12:41:57 PM
It would - but that's explicitly not what's being studied in the data you cited. Again, there's an important distinction between "incarceration" and "criminality". I seem to recall you explicitly admitting in another thread that poverty has other effects here - such as, say, barring access to the best legal defenses.

I know, I completely agree.  However, I asked earlier what more appropriate data could be used to avoid these biases, and truly zone in to truly understand criminality among poverty-stricken Hispanics and illegal immigrants.  Oniya mentioned the need for more varied criteria - which is certainly true.  Though as you can imagine, it is difficult to obtain such data, especially when the demographic is undocumented in the first place.  Illegal immigration is a big public policy issue right now, so if you have an alternate data source that could be used to learn more about criminality among these specific demographics, I would be interested to check it out.