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I agree with the gist of what you are saying, but I think your terminology is confusing and not in conformance with the terminology normally used in the social sciences. What your refer to as relative standards would normally be referred to as individual standards and what you refer to as absolute standards would be referred to group standards. I think it's important to change your terminology for three reasons: first, by using the normative terminology, you hook into a whole body of sociological literature and amplify your argument by invoking that literature. Second, there's multiple standards within a group as well as different standards between groups that can be compared against each other rather than thinking of a single absolute standard that reflects whether there is cooperation or not within a group. So, for example, we might compare the group standards for athleticism within the Asian-American group to the group standards within the Afro-American group. Are there differences, if so, what do they reflect? Third, group standards are born within historical contexts of time and place. For example, what is the history behind the group expectation within New York City that policman and firemen will be disporportionatedly Irish? Was is always this way or was this the result of anti-draft activity during the Civil War?
Lastly, I do want to commend your emphasis on the group point of view of standards. I definitely agree. For example, most of the Asian-American community does not realize that if admissions at Stanford University undergraduate program were based on SAT and grades alone, Stanford College would be 73% Asian female, not just Asian, but Asian female. Instead, we think that if our daughter did not get into Stanford, then there must be something wrong with her - she did not do enough sports, her scores were not high enough, her SAT's were not perfect when in fact, the number of Asian females that will be accepted to Stanford was set before any of them even applied. Similary, in a school like Stuyvesant High School in New York City, Harvard has a preset limit of 10 students that they will accept from Stuyvesant no matter whether you are Einstein or Ghandi. Given the fact that Stuyvesant student body is over half Asian, that means we are again looking at a quota system stacked up against Asian-American students from the git-go. I won't even go into the admissions policy of Princeton which has set an artificially low limit on the percentage of Asian-American students it will accept for years. In the 20th century, these limits were placed on Jewish applicants, but now it's Asian students. So, yes, let's understand what the nature of our group standards are and the historical context in which they arise. These group standards are what we should be fighting to raise. Someday, someone will challenge these unAmerican restrictions on our rights to achieve.
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Subject: How do you measure your career success? This is my first communication with you as the President of 80-20 See if you approve of my first attempt below. Post your feedback by For today, let's talk about "How Do You Measure Your Career Success?" Most of us are smart, well educated, and have good work-ethics. How The apparent reason is that we lack political maturity and unity. The Something in our culture has induced most of us to measure our Do you agree that climbing ladders in America depends heavily on net- We need to adopt an ABSOLUTE standard of measuring our career What is the absolute standard? How would that help? In an absolute standard of measuring career success, one sets a goal e.g. When AsAms switch from a relative to an absolute standard of Post your feedback & comments please. It's time that Asian Americans In addition, a relative standard is a self-imposed limitation on one's PREVIEW for next email: "How to switch to an absolute standard & win." ANNOUNCEMENT: S. B. Woo will keynote an AAJA/NAAAP banquet on |