Comment by chimpanzee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chimpanzee | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

You brought up “racism” when you cracked about gp somehow displaying anti-American racism.

Suggesting uneducated immigrants are a major problem is a common trope of racist discussion even if the word “race” is not specifically used. Especially in the context of a system that is currently trying to kick out immigrants who have voluntarily entered our educational system.

And our population is among the most educated in relation to which countries? Half the country is below a 6th grade reading level. A quarter is below a 3rd grade level. Abysmal for a developed country.

It’s inappropriate to compare the US education level to countries that have historically struggled economically and politically, especially when their struggles have been only exacerbated by self-serving US interference. And when enforced illiteracy is often used as a weapon to keep people down. Granted, GP made the first mistake there it seems, and you responded in kind. (Though I’m not sure because he is specifically comparing the lower percentiles. I haven’t seen data on that.)

But more to the point, you’ve previously claimed that your passion for these topics is due to a belief that ethnic identity and DEI is a threat to your children and to the American individualist culture. Yet, here you are bashing immigrants when neither ethnic identity, DEI, nor American individualism are being discussed.

> Suggesting uneducated immigrants are a major problem

@JumpCrisscross said uneducated Americans are a problem. If that’s true, then immigration must really be a problem, because most of it is from countries with much worse education. If you think “uneducated” people are a problem, then own that. Don’t hide behind this “punch up versus punch down” bullshit where it’s okay to call Americans uneducated but not people who are objectively more uneducated than Americans.

Look at the PISA scores I posted up thread. The U.S. performs around the same as Sweden. It’s not hanging with the very top, but it does fine compared to big western countries. And it vastly outperforms every Latin American country.

Uneducated immigrants are a far smaller group than uneducated natives. Believing that they are nonetheless the bigger problem is a sign of a racist perspective, albeit not a guarantee of one, perhaps it’s simply anti-immigration.

Additionally most immigrants don’t vote, so it doesn’t account for the current circus. When they do vote, they’ve become citizens by passing a test that many native Americans couldn’t pass.

Uneducation is a problem in general. Doesn’t matter who it is, immigrant or native. But uneducation is fixable problem if we as a society/culture wanted to fix it. We are currently working towards the exact opposite goal and doing it faster than ever.

PISA is not the only measurement. And it is not used by many countries, particularly Asian countries. It isn’t hard to look up other stats on US reading levels.

And again, comparing education levels outside of a historical context of politics and economics is not helpful, to say the least. And it says nothing about an individual’s ability or willingness to become educated once the opportunity presents itself, especially if they’ve already self-selected by making the effort to enter an environment that offers said opportunity. That should be obvious to a person who values and desires to protect American individualism, as you claim to be.

> Uneducated immigrants are a far smaller group than uneducated natives.

Work out the score distributions implied by the national PISA scores and you’ll see this isn’t true. Countries like El Salvador and Guatemala are more than a standard deviation below the U.S., meaning the average person from those countries would be in the bottom 10% of the U.S. scores. And the immigrants from those countries are less educated than average. So immigrants are going to be quite a disproportionate share of the bottom 10% of the U.S. education-wise.

> Believing that they are nonetheless the bigger problem is a sign of a racist perspective, albeit not a guarantee of one, perhaps it’s simply anti-immigration.

Just use your brain without trying to label everything. If you think uneducated people are a social problem, then it logically follows that it’s a problem to have low-skill immigration from places with more uneducated populations. And contrary to your point above, you don’t actually have to care about whatever historical circumstances caused them to be less educated. That doesn’t change the effect on American society.

> PISA is not the only measurement. And it is not used by many countries, particularly Asian countries. It isn’t hard to look up other stats on US reading levels

PISA is the most commonly used test for international comparisons.

Recognizing a duck as a duck is using my brain. My mistake is trying to teach it to sing rather than quack.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com