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Comment by sixplusone | Hacker News Reader

> america to become.

Have you not heard of the Protestant Work Ethic? and how Europeans complain that Americans work too much, and don't all have 6 weeks vacation?

Asians have been discriminated against, but instead of whining about it they got to work to become the best. Now they're being punished for not sitting around waiting for handouts.

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But they are not being punished! They are extremely represented (except for politics), much more than their population would indicate. The amount of Asians I've seen in elite schools like Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford is just mind blowing. Pure "merit" based would be a system which would solely rely on test scores/grades, which would give enormous advantage to people raised by "tiger parents." Elite schools are ideally made to find potential talents with the ability to impact society in a big way through original contributions, these people are not always the people with the best examination scores.

They are being punished by setting the bar higher for them based on ethnicity. So for an asian, you have to be the tigerest of tigers to get admitted, making the problem you describe even worse.

The strategy adapted by the Chinese, due to their small numbers, was to work harder than the next group. Only now are the number of Chinese significant enough to mount a political challenge to the status quo.

Blacks, for all their problems, have the votes to change the system electorally. But while there have been some success, there are strong oppositions from the status quo, and their progress has been hampered by political apathy from within that resulted from push back that slowed or killed further progress.

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