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Scientists Call for Academic Shutdown in Support of Black Lives

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17 pointsbubmiw9 comments

Is there a theory for why south and east asians are over-represented in the sciences, and how this fits into white supremacy?

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

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.

Its not so black-and-white. Depends on geography, history and economics, largely. Attempts to assume simple rules or disprove simplistic claims, are not very useful or valid.

If the original article is claiming that white supremacy is the cause of the under-representation of blacks in STEM, it is reasonable to ask why white supremacy does not also lead to an under-representation of other minorities.

It's a badly thought-out article that's basically a random link farm surrounded by text, rather than any kind of research.

The first paragraph links to textbooks from the 1870s, and conflates STEM and academia as the same thing.

It's one of those things where you know less after reading it than when you started.

My comment above is more coherent. STEM jobs generally require a college degree, so ensure underpresented groups finish high school and can afford to enroll in college.

Large companies in the US are required to report employee demographic information, so qualified applicants are very welcome there.

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.

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.

Where's the comments? Mods deleting posts?

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