Non-diversity and the spelling bee

Jeff Jacoby below may be right that it is all hard work but that looks doubtful to me.  It's too big a coincidence.  Indians are very verbal and I think we are seeing that.  Talk is one of India's major exports.  Helplines for large organizations are often outsourced to India

THE SCRIPPS National Spelling Bee makes news every year, but this year's competition was epic: For the first time ever, it ended with not one spelling champion or even two co-champions, but with eight winners. Winnowed down from 562 starting contestants, the final eight spellers had proved unconquerable through 20 rounds. "We're throwing the dictionary at you," said Jacques Bailly, the Spelling Bee's official pronouncer, "and so far, you are showing this dictionary who is boss."

That was after the 17th round. Three rounds later, all eight contestants were still in the running — and the judges had run out of challenging words. Whereupon they ruled that each member of what Bailly called "the most phenomenal assemblage of super-spellers" in the Bee's history would take home a first prize trophy and an accompanying $50,000 check.

These were the winners, along with the final word each spelled correctly:

Rishik Gandhasri: auslaut.

Erin Howard: erysipelas.

Saketh Sundar: bougainvillea.

Shruthika Padhy: aiguillette.

Sohum Sukhatankar: pendeloque.

Abhijay Kodali: palama.

Christopher Serrao: cernuous.

Rohan Raja: odylic.

In case a glance at the kids' names doesn't make it obvious, all but one of the champions is of Indian descent. Since 1999, the children of immigrants from South Asia have usually crushed the world's most prestigious spelling bee. Is that a problem? Should we be lamenting the lack of diversity in the top ranks of competitive student spellers? Ought Scripps and ESPN (which broadcasts the annual spelling bee) manipulate the rules — the way Harvard, for example, has manipulated its admissions standards — to ensure that more non-Asians make it to the final rounds?

Certainly not.

Indian-American kids haven't become the royalty of competitive spelling because their race or color gives them an advantage. There is no "Asian privilege" that explains the failure of white, black, or Latino kids to capture the trophy. Awesome spelling skills aren't coded in DNA from the Indian subcontinent. High-level spelling competition is a meritocracy; the only way to win is by spelling more words correctly than any other player. And the only way to get that good at spelling rare and difficult words is to work at it — hard.

Many Indian American children devote extraordinary time and effort to training for spelling bees: They memorize word lists, study etymology, familiarize themselves with prefixes and roots, take guidance from coaches, and compete in regional contests.

"The training regimen can be ruthless," Kodali told CNN. "I study like four to five hours on weekdays. But when the competition became near, I ramped it up and I studied as much as I could, maybe like an extra one or two hours, and 10 hours on the weekends."

Such rigor, diligence, and patience has nothing to do with genetics or superficial "diversity." It has everything to do with motivation. And what fuels that motivation is a combination of culture, social expectations, family encouragement, and ethnic solidarity. "Spelling bees have become a vital part of the Indian American experience," anthropologist Shalini Shankar has written. "There is community prestige in placing competitively in spelling bees and great familial pride for having participated in something so challenging at a young age." Nor does it hurt that many of "these young word nerds," as Shankar calls them, have a "vast social network of friends who also love spelling."

The disproportionate success of Indians in world-class competitive spelling ought to elicit only admiration. But there's no denying that it flies in the face of America's vast diversity-industrial complex, which endlessly reinforces and endorses a great fallacy: that statistical disparities between racial and ethnic groups, or men and women, are proof of invidious discrimination and inequality.

Bigotry and injustice are only too real, of course, but they have no more to do with the dominance of Indians in spelling competitions than with the dominance of Kenyans in distance running, or of Russians in chess, or of African Americans in the NBA. Or, for that matter, of men in commercial fishing and logging. Or of women in veterinary medicine and child care. Or of Southerners in military service, or of Jews among Nobel laureates, or of Catholics on the Supreme Court, or of any of a thousand-and-one other examples that could be shown of extreme statistical disparities among categories of people.

Women are dramatically overrepresented in the field of veterinary medicine, while the vast majority of loggers are men. Statistical disparities among groups are normal, not evidence of discrimination or injustice.

"Human beings are not random events," economist and social scholar Thomas Sowell observes. "Individuals and groups have different histories, cultures, skills, and attitudes."

What is true of high-stress spelling bees is true of workplaces and investments and college applications and entertainment: People do not randomly sort themselves out by color, background, and sex. Group disparities are not, as a rule, evil. They are normal, the result of a myriad of human choices, preferences, interests, and motivations.

The Scripps Spelling Bee "octo-champs" are amazing spellers who worked fantastically hard to achieve something wonderful, for which they deserve applause and admiration. True, they aren't a diverse amalgam of races, colors, and ethnicities. Who cares?

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Johns Hopkins Research: No Evidence People Are Born Gay or Transgender

Scholars at Johns Hopkins University released a new report on Monday which argues that there is not sufficient evidence to suggest that lesbian, gay, or transgender people are born with this sexual orientation or gender identity.

"The idea there that sexual orientation is fluid, that people change as people grow," Lawrence Mayer, a co-author of the report and a scholar-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University's psychiatry department, as well as a professor of statistics and biostatistics at Arizona State University, told The Christian Post. "There are probably some people that identify as hetrosexual [sic] that then later on identified as homosexual, so it goes both ways. The importance there is the fluidity and flexibility that these things change in time."

The three-part, 143-page report, which appeared in the Fall 2016 edition of The New Atlantis, also investigated other commonly accepted ideas about homosexuality and transgenderism. Mayer and his co-author Paul McHugh, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins, challenged the claim that discrimination and social stigma are the only reasons why homosexual and transgender people suffer higher rates of mental health problems and are more likely to commit suicide.

The study breaks down in three parts: First, Mayer and McHugh examined whether homosexuality is an inherited trait, and concluded that people are not simply "born that way." Second, they looked at the causes of the poor mental health associated with gay and transgender people, concluding that social stress does not explain all of it. Finally, they studied transgenderism, concluding that it is not innate and that transgender "treatments" are associated with negative outcomes.

The report found insufficient evidence to back up the idea that people are born with innate sexual attractions. Mayer and McHugh examined past studies which show a modest association between genetic factors and sexual orientation, but these studies have not been able to pinpoint particular genes responsible. Other hypothesized biological causes, such as prenatal development and hormones, have also been linked to sexual orientation, but that evidence is also limited.

"Studies of the brains of homosexuals and heterosexuals have found some differences, but have not demonstrated that these differences are inborn rather than the result of environmental factors that influenced both psychological and neurobiological traits," the report explained. "One environmental factor that appears to be correlated with non-heterosexuality is child sexual abuse victimization, which may also contribute to the higher rates."

The report cited the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, which tracked the sexual orientation of children aged 7 to 12 in 1994-1995 and again in 2007-2008. Eighty percent of male respondents who had reported same-sex attraction and both-sex attraction in childhood later identified as exclusively heterosexual, while more than half of the females who reported both-sex attraction as children reported exclusive attraction to men as adults.

Mayer and McHugh also analyzed twins. They pointed to a 2010 study by psychiatric epidemiologist Niklas Långström which analyzed 3,826 identical and fraternal same-sex twin pairs. Both twins had at least one same-sex partner in only 18 percent of male identical twins, and 11 percent of male fraternal twins. For women, both twins had at least one homosexual partner in 22 percent of identical twins and 17 percent of fraternal twins.

"Summarizing the studies of twins, we can say that there is no reliable scientific evidence that sexual orientation is determined by a person's genes," the researchers wrote. "But there is evidence that genes play a role in influencing sexual orientation."

"So the question 'Are gay people born that way?' requires clarification. There is virtually no evidence that anyone, gay or straight, is 'born that way' if it means that their sexual orientation was genetically determined," the report explained (emphasis added). "But there is some evidence from the twin studies that certain genetic profiles probably increase the likelihood the person later identifies as gay or engages in same-sex sexual behavior."

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‘Are you a feminist?’ has become a religious test

Raab isn’t the only public figure to be attacked for not embracing the f-word.

In order to get on in British polite society these days, to be retweeted by the right-on journos and lauded by the commentariat, it is advised that you join the feminist club. Calling yourself a feminist has pretty much become mandatory for anyone who wants to be part of public life. From politicians to soap stars, the feminist label is a must-have.

And if there’s one thing contemporary feminists love, it is chastising those who refuse to toe the line. One of the more than a dozen Conservative leadership hopefuls, Dominic Raab, has been denounced as a heretic for refusing to call himself a feminist. In 2011, he wrote an article for Politics Home in which he argued that feminists were ‘now among the most obnoxious bigots’ for not recognising that ‘from the cradle to the grave, men are getting a raw deal’. In an interview last week, Raab said that he stood by his comments, saying he would ‘probably not’ call himself a feminist, ‘but I would describe myself as someone who is a champion of equality and meritocracy’.

Though comparing feminists to bigots might have been a little OTT, Raab’s 2011 article was really a criticism of the growing, unhelpful obsession with gender espoused by leading feminists. It even had some good lines in it, pointing to the incoherence of some fashionable positions on gender: ‘If you buy into the whole Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus theory of gender difference – with all its pseudo science – you can’t then complain about inequalities of outcome that flow both ways from those essentially sexist distinctions.’

Instead of taking him up on his (rather wrongheaded) view of men’s victimhood, Raab was mocked by fellow candidates, given the dictionary definition of feminism by news anchors, and denounced in thinkpieces. Apparently it is incredibly damaging for a politician to criticise feminism.

He is not the only one to feel the heat for refusing to call himself a feminist. Many female celebrities have suffered similar chastisements, and many of them have been forced to backtrack. Years ago, Beyoncé was castigated for saying, ‘Why do you have to label yourself anything? I’m just a woman, and I love being a woman.’ She later repented by inserting some lines from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s famous ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ speech on to a track. Demi Moore, Susan Sarandon and Sarah Jessica Parker have all been criticised for calling themselves ‘humanists’ rather than feminists. Lady Gaga once said, ‘I’m not a feminist. I hail men, I love men, I celebrate American male culture – beer, bars, and muscle cars.’ She later backtracked and said she was a ‘little bit’ of a feminist.

Now, prominent women’s criticisms of feminism vary. Some are ridiculous – such as when Geri Halliwell was denounced in 2007 for describing feminism as ‘bra-burning lesbianism’ and ‘very unglamorous’. But others are far more serious. Monica Lewinsky said that, ‘given my experience of being passed around like gender-politics cocktail food, I don’t identify myself as a Feminist, capital F’. She says feminist leaders have failed to articulate a ‘position that was not essentially anti-woman’ during the Bill Clinton scandal.

Regardless, none of these women said they should get back in the kitchen and start making up some sandwiches. Most of them went out of their way to assure reporters that they really believed in gender equality – just that they prefer not to use the f-word. Despite the outrage at their comments, they’re not alone. A recent YouGov poll found that only 34 per cent of women in the UK identify as feminists. A poll two years previously, carried out by the well-respected feminist organisation the Fawcett Society, found that only seven per cent of women identified as feminists. Yet, again, the vast majority of people surveyed agreed that women and men should be equal.

That ‘are you a feminist?’ has become a kind of religious test is strange, not least when it comes to men. Raab has been criticised for not calling himself a feminist, but it is infinitely more irritating when men go out of their way to declare themselves a ‘male feminist’ or ‘feminist ally’. After all, many contemporary feminists want men to ‘sit down’, ‘shut up’, ‘check their privilege’, and listen to their female betters. One shouldn’t generalise, but, in my experience, most men who go along with this self-flagellation are just trying to curry favour with a bunch of pretty feminists. It’s feminism for dating purposes.

Raab went too far when he threw around the word bigot – a lot of today’s feminists are just embarrassing. Which is part of the reason most women don’t call themselves feminists. Plus, when Theresa May can be cheered for wearing a ‘this is what a feminist looks like’ t-shirt, it is clear feminism has lost all meaning. Nowadays, it just seems to be about being nice to women. Never mind the labels, what women do care about is whether or not people in power will deliver change that will materially better their lives. I don’t care if Raab is a feminist – will he get behind the idea of free childcare for all? I couldn’t give two burning bras if Taylor Swift is a feminist or not – will she march with women to decriminalise abortion?

These are the questions we should be asking, rather than demanding to know why someone doesn’t consider himself a feminist.

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Turkeys voting for Christmas

Bettina Arndt 

I have a fun video for you – my interview with UK journalist Peter Lloyd, author of the 2015 book Stand By Your Manhood which did a great job pulling together all the evidence about what was happening to men in our society and presenting it in a most entertaining manner.

Peter was prompted to write his book in response to the ‘dismissive, patronising and skewed narrative about heterosexual men’ now standard fare in mainstream media. His book demonstrated that it has become normal to consider masculinity as entirely negative and problematic and to present boys as ‘defective girls, damaged by default’ who need to be medicated, educated and socialised out of their masculinity.

His book exposes modern feminists’ determination to promote the idea that this privileged generation of women is still somehow oppressed. He’s now a media favourite on UK television panel shows representing the token male taking on the feminist ideologues. I’m showing you his famous ‘sticks and stones’ video, which has well over a million views on YouTube, where you’ll see his feminist antagonist having a total melt-down. Very funny.

Revealing the real Ita Buttrose

We include an extract from the first interview Peter did with Australian media soon after his book came out – with a morning television show, Studio 10. Anyone deluding themselves that the new Chair of the ABC, Ita Buttrose, will do anything about the appalling anti-male bias in that organisation, should look at Ita’s sneering treatment of Peter and his book.

You’ll hear Peter’s hilarious line about men who support feminism being like ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’  – a very apt description of another member of that Studio 10 panel, Daily Telegraph writer, Joe Hildebrand. You’ll see him in action virtue-signalling to his dim-witted feminist panellists by treating Peter in the most patronising manner.

That was four years ago but just a few weeks back a most amazing thing happened. Joe Hildebrand has been ‘red-pilled’, having finally seen the light about our male-bashing culture. A brutal murder of a homeless woman in Melbourne - by another homeless man – led the Assistant Commissioner of Police to make an inane comment that this was ‘all about men’s behaviour.’  Amazingly Hildebrand bucked and objected to this comment – both on television and in a newspaper column – saying the behaviour of this man had nothing to do with him.

Anyway, I am sure you will enjoy my discussion with Peter about all this – and many other issues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7oKw34Kx7w

Email from Bettina: bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au