
Scientists Call for Academic Shutdown in Support of Black Lives - bubmiw
https://gizmodo.com/scientists-call-for-academic-shutdown-in-support-of-bla-1843944068
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lliamander
Is there a theory for why south and east asians are over-represented in the
sciences, and how this fits into white supremacy?

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redis_mlc
Developing countries like China and India prize STEM studies as they lead to
well-paying careers.

Those may appear to be over-represented in work visas because that's what US
companies want to hire.

Nothing to do with white supremacy.

To expand on what that means, most of the CCP central committee are engineers,
while US representatives have a high percentage of lawyers.

Engineers build things, and lawyers debate things.

So Pudong Airport has a 300 kph maglev train to downtown Shanghai since 2002,
and we don't have any. (There's a nice maglev museum in the Shanghai terminus
that only takes 30 min to 60 min to view.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_maglev_train](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_maglev_train)

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lliamander
I guess I'm asking that, if white supremacy is keeping black people out of the
sciences, why does it not keep people of other ethnic backgrounds out of STEM
professions in the U.S.?

EDIT: clarified my question a bit.

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redis_mlc
I'm originally from Detroit.

I'll take your question on good faith that you genuinely want an answer and
you're not trolling, and talk about Detroit.

Families with a breadwinner in the auto industry, for example, often did very
well, living the American Dream.

But in other cases, generations of family members never graduated from high
school, thus never went to college. The reasons for that are many, including
environment, lack of role models who graduated, and low income.

A lot of pundits want to blame one thing like "lack of personal
responsibility", but like most simplistic statements about complex things,
it's not helpful.

I wouldn't use the words "white supremacy." I would say that after
understanding the issues, those in power and with power could do more. The
political leadership in Detroit hasn't been white for decades, so it's really
a general leadership issue.

For example, if you want more college graduates, then you fully fund school
lunch programs and tutors as a start. Then after that, you look at the
remaining problems, and you iterate on those in a sustained manner for 50
years.

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lliamander
Your assessment makes sense, that there are many environmental factors
contributing to the disparity in representation in STEM. Nor do I think the
"lack of personal responsibility" to be a useful criticism.

I'm heartened by what I see with charter schools and the benefits they seem to
have for minority students. I hope those gains are real and lasting.

My question was prompted by the source article, which posited "white
supremacy" as the cause of the disparity. My expectation is that if white
supremacy were the cause, that all minorities would be under-represented in
STEM, but that does not appear to be the case.

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GillBates666
Where's the comments? Mods deleting posts?

