On 10/28/07, Doyle Saylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > What I think though is class matters, that nothing about being a smart > mathematician can prove anything in class society except class matters. >
It is a bit more complex than that. Sabri, for instance, considered it noteworthy that a black Ethiopian man was one of the best mathematicians he knows. The reason it is noteworthy is the fact that Africans are *hugely* under-represented in the math and scientific communities. This is also true in India where upper-caste Brahmins utterly dominate the intellectual classes, the prestigious tech and management universities and the Civil service. The admission process into these institutions are not biased in any way and are as near to a blind meritocracy as it is possible to get. These gross distortions cry out for an explanation. The genetic 'explanation' is immediately exposed as nonsense the moment you try to formulate it, but on the other hand saying it is 'social' or 'cultural' factors is a mere tautology and explains nothing. Lets be realistic here: no one seriously thinks that non-whites are inferior based on the statistical evidence of the Bell Curve. On its own that evidence is meagre and I doubt James Watson would be saying the things he is saying on that basis. The real reason why this racial inferiority myth persists is because of the anecdotal evidence, the obvious distortions we see everyday. In other words why are there so few black mathematicians? -raghu.
