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Comment by anewguy | Hacker News Reader

"Underrepresentation does not equal racism" contradicts the academic party line ("systemic racism"). If a white person said something like that, they would get a lecture in "denying privilege". If an asian person said it, he would be ignored.

But I agree that the author's way of thinking is far healthier for any given individual. Which is why the author is so successful.

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What do you mean by "academic party line"? The university system is not a party (let alone a communist party). Phrases like "denying privilege" are not general to all of academia, they are specific to certain people. What is your interest in portraying all academics as people who deliver lectures in denying privilege (or whatever)?

Leave the people who develop knowledge and disseminate it for the rest of society alone with your political agenda.

I have never heard an academic in a race-studies, Sociology, or Communications department seriously grapple with criticisms of the "systemic racism" hypothesis for the white/black performance gap, and nor have I heard any other hypothesis offered. Students and professors outside those departments dutifully recite the same theories. As far as I can see, academia is a den of groupthink and cultural Marxism when it comes to such issues.

Steven Pinker is a highly influential academic who criticizes positions like "underrepresentation implies discrimination". See for example his best-seller The Blank Slate (2002).

It doesn't contradict "systemic racism", it clarifies it. i.e. "a college degree does not equal intelligence"

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