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Comment by thegreyone | Hacker News Reader

Does "white" include jews? Make em seperate, and watch that percentage halve, at least.

I've often found it confusing why we look at African Americans as a separate group, but then group so many as "White" or "Asian"?

Why not just separate people by their majority national heritage?

While I agree with your first sentence, separation by national heritage is impossible for many demographics in the U.S., including both white and black Americans.

But yeah, I think abstracting 60% of the world population as a monolithic "Asian" category is disingenuous and betrays the lived experiences of Asians from historically disadvantaged and poor countries. I think the Gates Foundation is on a good track by considering Asian students for their full ride scholarship, alongside Native American, Hispanic, and Black peers, by analyzing the specific lived experience of the applicant (a Southeast Asian refugee has lived a different life than the "steretypical" Asian American applicant).

Many white subgroups have been historically disadvantages (albeit not specifically within US policy)

eg: Scottish, Irish, Jewish people immediately come to mind

Personally I think it'd be better to avoid using skin color/race as an indicator of need and instead just look at need in isolation. A poor person needs help paying for school regardless of their skin color.

I agree, it's just that for many Americans, including white Americans from disadvantaged groups, tracing national heritage is hard. Need and class-based considerations make sense to me, though. I think that starts getting on the right track. Anthony Jack from Harvard argues a similar framework would actually assist in advancing racially-discriminated groups like black Americans in his work on "the privileged poor" and class-blind racial affirmative action. I recommend reading his work.

This idea that there was historical disadvantage to the Irish comes from a single photograph of a sign that says "Irish Need Not Apply". This is the equivalent of putting an individual Tweet from 2016 saying "Kill All White Men" in history textbooks as some sort of meaningful thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment brings up more points

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