“Driving” “Minoritized” Students Out of Stem? How Not to Infer Cause from Correlation - "This study’s headline claim is causal. Its title asks an implicit causal question. “Do intro courses disproportionately drive minoritized students out of STEM pathways?”... Their main findings are: 1. well-established disparities (White men get more STEM degrees than other demographics); 2. everyone is less likely to continue in STEM after receiving a DFW; and 3. “minoritized” students (except Asians) are even less likely to continue than are White males who receive a DFW. I have no reason to doubt the existence of these disparities. The issue is whether any conclusions can be reached about what causes them from the study... The Study Was Not an Experiment. It is entirely observational. All results are, therefore, essentially sophisticated correlations (and remember that whole “inferring cause from correlation” thing as you read on)... Remember that old adage, “you can’t infer cause from correlation”? Well, its good advice for undergrads, because its mostly true, but it’s not quite completely true. You can. It is just very very very very very very hard... You do not need an experiment to know that a correlation between jumping out of an aircraft flying at 10,000 feet without a parachute and death means doing so causes death. We know about gravity and the human inability to withstand crashing into solid ground traveling at around 500mph. We have nothing like this clear mechanism for why students leave STEM (which is probably massively complex and multiply determined). Rohrer (who may not be some sort of Ultimate Authority but who, imho, does some of the best work on causal inference from statistical models) also recommends: instead of reporting a single model and championing it as “the truth,” researchers should consider multiple potentially plausible alternative sets of assumptions and see how assuming any of these scenarios would affect their conclusions. They did not do this. One should minimize the problem of measurement error (a highly technical subject) but: 1. The paper mentions no attempts to do so; 2. a simple manifestation of this is discussed below... here are a few alternative explanations they might have considered but did not:
SES, which differs by racial/ethnic groups, may cause both low STEM grades and withdrawals.
Women and students from underrepresented minority backgrounds may enter STEM with different skills and different interests than do White men. These different skills and interests may lead non-STEM options to be more attractive to those who hold them, regardless of experience in an intro course. Women or students from underrepresented minority backgrounds may be more likely than White male students to seek out and find satisfying majors outside of STEM. This could occur in the complete absence of there being any sort of flaw in STEM intro courses. Something very much like this already explains at least part of why fewer high school girls enter STEM in the first place.
Other potential confounders: differences in mental health, other skillsets, other interests, family support/stability. The list of untested confounders is vast and not restricted to the ones I specifically identified.
Worse, although the paper has a long section on “limitations,” none addressed the problems of causal inference from correlational data. The paper has no evidence that the authors even were aware of the problem. Seven of the 8 tests across two models of whether DWF’s differentially affected White males versus other students were nonsignificant. The 8th had a p-value of .033; in Psychology, p-values above .01 do not have a great replication record... The study was not pre-registered. Although pre-registration is not a silver bullet, in the absence of a publicly-available pre-registered methods and analysis plan, readers cannot know how much flexibility (also known as “p-hacking” or “garden of forking paths”) the researchers exercised while conducting their analysis. We cannot know whether the reported analyses constitute the only ones performed or are selective in some way. Such undisclosed flexibility has an ugly history in social science. They also seem to have purposely created measurement error when they did not need to... It would be useful to start by trying to figure out why students from certain groups differ in their interest and willingness to pursue STEM courses. The authors make this bizarre claim in their discussion: “In an equitable education system, students with comparable high school preparation, intent to study STEM, and who get Cs or better in all their introductory STEM courses ought to have similar probabilities of attaining a STEM degree.” Its bizarre on so many levels, one of the most obvious being that people from different groups often have different backgrounds, experiences, and cultures and this can lead them to be interested in different things. This is so obvious that, when it serves social justicey-interests, it is readily deployed in calls for things like positionality statements. So, no, Virginia, a perfectly fair system would not necessarily produce identical outcomes by group... maybe there is some injustice going on somewhere. Injustice can produce unequal group outcomes. It would just be nice if some evidence of injustice was actually produced, rather than relentlessly overinterpreting statistically souped up correlational evidence of longstanding disparities as causal effects of intro courses “weeding out” minorities in STEM. Remember, this paper was published The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, one of the most prestigious and influential outlets in all of academic peer reviewed publishing. The failure to acknowledge the correlation-causality problem, or to require the authors to walk back their cascade of unjustified causal claims, is an epic failure of peer review"
Correlation only doesn't imply causation when it's convenient for liberals
Why the Left Relies on Statistical Illiteracy - "No rigorous and fair-minded researcher with any understanding of statistics, experimental design, or the irreproducibility crisis would take this study seriously. Indeed, the fact that it passed peer review is yet more evidence that peer review now functions to credential and accelerate groupthink rather than to deter it. Such shoddy research is far too common in the sciences and social sciences. This is a grave enough problem in its own right, but it has more serious consequences for America as a whole. We have delegated policymaking authority to professionals who claim expertise in wide swathes of administrative policy, judicial decisionmaking, and legislation. Those experts who claim the mantle of “Science” are foremost among these would-be professional experts. Such men and women far too frequently subordinate the search for truth to the search to impose a preferred policy. Their shoddy research methods are part and parcel of their desire to forward a political agenda—although it should be emphasized that even researchers without a political agenda now use statistical and experimental methods guaranteed to produce a mass of false results. Conservatives are keenly aware of this problem, because the mass of researchers have tilted to the left for a generation and more. Shoddy research dovetails astonishingly well with radical polemic. But even though conservatives are aware of the problem, they have had limited success in addressing it. Every public policy arena amenable to professional expertise attracts a pile of half-baked research, eagerly cited and repeated until much of public opinion takes it as some sort of proven truth. A healthy skepticism of professional arrogance and self-interest inoculates a portion of the public, and a scattering of professionals such as Lee Jussim can provide critiques of a factitious consensus, but the mass of self-assured, politically-minded, and incompetent professionals have all too great an effect on public policy. The monolithic politicization of science and social-science professionals, alas, is likely to become worse. A growing minority of these professionals have become committed to addressing the intellectual and institutional failures that have led to the irreproducibility crisis, including politicized groupthink. At the same time, unfortunately, the radical advocates in charge of higher education have significantly tightened the politicization of the sciences and the social sciences. They have even begun to censor access to databases that might provide material for research that could undermine the party line. Most importantly, they are endeavoring to screen out graduate students and professors who do not affirm the Woke catechism. There are few enough science and social-science professionals willing to dissent from the progressive party line; soon, our institutions of higher education may graduate none. Academia’s politicization requires a great many reforms... The claim that “minoritized” students are being driven out of STEM education is bunk. But the Woke surely are working to prevent anyone who might doubt such claims from receiving the education to critique them or the credentials to serve in the policy arena. Conservatives must make the continued education of statistically literate experts an absolute priority."
Trust the "science"!
Benedict Cumberbatch could be forced to pay reparations due to slave-owning ancestors - "The actor's fifth great-grandfather, Abraham Cumberbatch, bought the family's sugar plantation in Barbados in 1728, where around 250 slaves were forced to work. The Cumberbatch family had no choice but to give up their plantation after slavery was finally abolished in the 1830s. They were later compensated with £6,000 - around £3.6 million in today's money. And now, it seems as if Barbados are in the 'earliest stages' of proposing legal action towards ancestors of the Cumberbatch estate, The Telegraph has reported. General secretary of the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration David Denny told the publication: "Any descendants of white plantation owners who have benefitted from the slave trade should be asked to pay reparations, including the Cumberbatch family."
Of course, only white people are targeted. Non-white people who benefited from slavery are fine
Meme - Dr Taylor Marshall: "Why are couples in TV commercials almost always interracial"
El Diego: "I been noticing it in commercials. No more straight white guys"
Kathi Brewer: "Sure there are. I keep seeing them on the erectile dysfunction ads."
Meme - Fig @figoreilly: "As a black woman on a national science show, I intentionally wear braids and my curly Afro to normalize black hair in stem. In this pic, I’m wearing cornrows to study plants being sent to space at NASA."
Good luck to NASA dealing with all the contamination from her hair, since she's letting her super long pigtails hang down until they can touch the plants
David Lametti strikes a blow against CRTC censorship - "It has asked the Federal Court of Appeal to set aside a Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission (CRTC) ruling that censured Radio-Canada for broadcasting the N-word, in reference to FLQ terrorist Pierre Vallières’ 1968 jailhouse polemic N–res blancs d’Amerique (White N—ers of America)... The rest of Canada hardly took note of this at all. But it should. This was a rare principled defence of unpopular speech from this government, which otherwise seems bound and determined to clamp down on people saying nasty things on the internet — and not very interested in the constitutional protections and basic Western values against which that agenda grates. The CRTC ruling, handed down in June — with two commissioners’ vigorous dissents attached — ordered Radio-Canada to apologize to the complainant, a Black Quebecer, and to “indicate how it intends to mitigate the impact of the ‘N-word’ in (the) segment,” which was still archived online. (Ironically, the segment was an afternoon-radio discussion about a Concordia University professor who got in trouble for using the N-word in precisely the same context.) The ruling was remarkably incoherent throughout, and never quite got around to saying what it might have considered an appropriate reference to Vallières’ work. At one point it suggests “not repeating” the N-word after the first reference to it and “providing a clear warning at the beginning of the segment” might have sufficed, but at other points it suggests evolving social mores mean any utterance at all is beyond the pale. The majority of commissioners at least acknowledged there was no discriminatory intent to the N-word’s use in this context — a distinction the Radio-Canada ombudsman had earlier employed to side with the broadcaster. But they never made clear what that distinction was worth, let alone what implications deeming the N-word unsayable in any context would have on other forms of ugly-but-newsworthy expression. The majority of commissioners acknowledged that the social context of the N-word is different in French Canada than in English Canada, which — rightly or wrongly — is true: The notion that it must never be uttered in any circumstance is far less accepted among the francophone chattering classes than among the anglos. (It’s no coincidence that the bilingual University of Ottawa, where the two solitudes meet, has been a major flashpoint for this controversy.) But they argued all content on the public airwaves — French and English — must be equally socially acceptable in all parts of the country. Which is crazy, as the dissenters noted: People in Kelowna, Windsor and St. John’s don’t listen to French-language afternoon radio out of Montreal, and the public broadcaster shouldn’t be making radio as if they were. In the end, the attorney general’s argument to the Court of Appeal is almost comically simple: The CRTC simply had no jurisdiction to do any of this... Just as basically, but more chillingly, the AG notes that the CRTC failed “to balance in a proportionate way the objectives of the Broadcasting Act and the values protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” And that’s where this ruling assumes potentially larger significance, even if only symbolically. The Liberals have always been remarkably blasé about targeting “online hate” or “online harms” as part of their anti-internet agenda. They rarely define those terms — they’d prefer you define them to your own liking; it’s easier to build support that way, and deal with the disappointment later — but they clearly connote something much broader than hate speech as defined under the Criminal Code. Who exactly gave them the authority to do that — let alone farm out the censorship project to social-media giants, which was their initial plan — is a question that too rarely gets asked. You have to work bloody hard to get charged with hate speech in this country. Certainly saying the N-word out loud in public, even as an epithet against a real live human being, falls well short of it. The online world shouldn’t be any different just because nasty stuff goes on there."
The Left Won Culture Wars, Now It’s the Bully | National Review - "When all the good civil-right issues have been largely won, go after Christian bakers, celibate nuns, and girls in locker rooms... The unearned moral superiority of America’s celebrity class rests in their open condemnation of flyover Americans as brutish louts, and their self-parodying belief that they are civil-rights heroes. Hollywood (wrongly) believes that it singlehandedly ended segregation; Hollywood (rightly) believes that it had a heavy hand in promoting same-sex marriage. Hollywood sees itself as the moral vanguard... For decades, the Left consistently put front and center its vision of an America in which Republicans were victimizers: Either they were evil racists, or they were John Lithgow–in-Footloose holier-than-thou sexual prudes, or they were old-style Mad Men sexists looking to shove women back into the kitchen. Celebrities helped push these narratives through the stories they told, the movies they filmed, the books they wrote. And Americans accepted the critiques. Americans accepted racial equality. Americans celebrated female empowerment. Americans went libertarian on sexual behavior. And the Left had to go searching for a new civil-rights struggle with which to cram conservatives back into their “victimizer” cubbyhole. There was, however, one problem: All the good civil-rights issues have been dealt with already. And so the Left, which focuses all of its efforts on social issues, was relegated to pushing crime-increasing myths about the evils of cops; the celebrities were forced to pretend that men peeing next to women was the next great Martin Luther King, Jr.–style struggle; Democrats were forced to march on their next target, not merely church involvement in state, but private beliefs of churchgoers. And herein lies the biggest problem facing the American Left: America is the most tolerant country in world history. There are no more serious civil-rights struggles for the Left to push. In fact, the Left now pushes against civil rights in its ignorant search for the new struggle: Religious bakers must be destroyed if they won’t bake a cake for a same-sex wedding; young girls must be forced to go to the same bathroom as middle-aged men, hosts on HGTV must be policed for belief in Scripture regarding sexual sin. No wonder Americans reacted by telling the Left to shove it. #related#That phenomenon could very well continue. The Left has run out of aggressors to target; instead, they’ve become the aggressors, self-righteous morality police dedicated to wiping out dissenting thought"
As Lizzo was called out for ableism, many Black disabled people felt overlooked - "White disabled people in the U.S. and the U.K. were calling out the singer for using the word "spaz," which many consider an ableist slur. Buried among these critiques, however, was the perspective of Black disabled people, who raised points about the need for cultural nuance and an intersectional lens to the situation. "The erasure of Black disabled people, when it comes to a Black entertainer, has been very prominent throughout this whole thing," Thompson, a licensed master social worker, told NPR. The term "spaz" originates from the term "spastic," which has historically been used to describe people with spastic paralysis or cerebral palsy. Often used in a derogatory way to describe people with disabilities, "spaz" or "spaz out" has also been used to refer to someone losing physical control or simply acting "weird" or "uncool." In online conversations, white disabled people in the U.S. and the U.K were speaking about their experiences with the word. Meanwhile, Black people in the U.S. and the U.K. pointed out how the word, which some say is a part of African American Vernacular English, is used differently by Black people within their countries. Thompson wished there were an amplification of Black disabled people who understand the nuances of those who use the word and those who are reclaiming it... Thompson believes that the way people go about critiquing others is very important. In reading the discussions online, she said she noticed they perpetuated anti-Blackness and misogynoir, or misogyny directed at Black women... "I was shocked but not surprised by the way that white disabled people, especially those who claim to be in solidarity with Black disabled people, engaged in the conversation. You are not in solidarity with us if your behavior during this time in addressing Lizzo can be read as problematic [and] offensive""
Apparently "minorities" are allowed to use offensive words.
Identity politics means everything always has to be about you - and you can always attack someone else.
Faith McGregor's rights complaint against Omar Mahrouk resolved - "Months after a Toronto woman filed a human rights complaint against a Muslim barber who would not give her a haircut, the issue has been quietly resolved. During a closed-door mediation session Friday, Faith McGregor and barbershop owner Omar Mahrouk came to an “arrangement” that satisfied them both, thus putting the controversial complaint to rest. Ms. McGregor filed a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal last June after she entered Terminal Barbershop on a whim and was denied a haircut because it is against the barbers’ religion to touch a woman... The complaint made headlines in November as a hot button issue and a textbook example of competing rights — his, the right to freedom of religion and hers the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of gender."
From 2013. A pity this didn't go to the tribunal, as it would expose the hollowness of liberalism. What would the liberals who keep insisting that rights are not like cake (that more for one doesn't mean less for another) say in this instance? Maybe that Muslims have the right to discriminate based on gender but not Christians, because power relations means never having to say you're sorry. Or to blame white people (e.g. colonialism is why Muslims discriminate against women)
Ryerson student journalist claims he was fired from campus newspaper over his Catholic views - "A Toronto student journalist claims he was fired from a Ryerson University student newspaper because he holds strict Roman Catholic views, including adhering to church and biblical teachings about how being gay or transgender is sinful. Jonathan Bradley, who has written for the National Post and a variety of other publications, claims in documents filed with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, that he was fired on the basis of making those views public and this constitutes discrimination on the basis of creed under Ontario human rights law"
Wokeness: once you know it, you’ll hate it - "woke causes don’t register with most Brits. In fact, 59 per cent say they don’t even know what the word ‘woke’ means. Of the 41 per cent of people who say they understand the word ‘woke’, most think it’s a bad thing – just 29 per cent of them see themselves as woke, while 56 per cent do not. The woke and their allies insist that wokeness is a harmless ideology. They say it just means tolerance and fairness. But the polling smashes that myth: most people who know what woke means do not equate it with racial, sexual or gender equality. Similarly, fewer than a quarter think being ‘left wing’ makes you automatically woke. This is no surprise when wokeness has been so heartily embraced by big business, and is often used to punch down on ordinary workers. Instead, people identify wokeness with cancel culture, tearing down statues and support for the BLM movement. In other words, it represents censorship, intolerance and division."
Joel Fish on Twitter - "Scenes from the Joint Mathematics Meeting (the largest annual meeting of mathematicians in the world): A talk entitled "Undergraduate Mathematics Education as a White, Cisheteropatriarchal Space and Opportunities for Disruption to Advance Queer of Color Justice""
Influencer is accused of racism for using 'black hair oil' that has been trending online - "Beauty guru Danielle Athena's hair-washing tutorial with the hyped Mielle Rosemary Mint Scalp and Hair Strengthening Oil sparked a heated debate on Twitter after a woman, dubbed @aprettyPR on Twitter, called out the influencer for stealing from black women. Athena's video opened the flood gates for criticism with some women expressing their distaste despite the oil being advertised by the black-owned brand 'for all hair types.'... Some users worried the trend to promote the oil would increase the price of the product and lead to formula changes... 'Are you upset that she oils her scalp? Or because she supports a black business while doing so? I wanna know where to direct outrage'"
If non-black people don't use it, and the product fails or it's expensive because of its niche market, it will of course be due to "racism" too
Meme - "Top was 3 yrs ago.. A lot has changed for ***/ we blessed"
About one-third of U.S. children are living with an unmarried parent | Pew Research Center - "Nearly half of black children live with a solo mom"
Just over half of black children (living with any parents) live with one parent only. Damn racism!
Burt’s Bees and Black Outrage...Again - "The ad features families in the matching sleepwear, and in the collection that was featured on social media, the bottom right family had a black mother, two black daughters, and no black father to be found. Other photos from the campaign did have a family with a black dad present, but you had to look a little harder to find it…. Art imitating life…but anyway... what Burt’s Bees advertised, a black woman with two black children and no father in sight, is mirroring the majority of black families in America. Not because nonblack people and corporations are shining a light on the collective’s dysfunction means it is not true. Not because you don’t like the representation means it isn’t accurate... Perhaps if more black people turned their outrage from Burt’s Bees and instead focused on glorifying an in-tact family unit, we would go somewhere. If people keep chanting “marriage is just a piece of paper” and hosting elaborate baby showers to replace the wedding that will never happen, this recurrent advertising kerfuffle would not continue to be a yearly trend. So rather than preparing the next e-dragging on social media and cancelling Mr. Burt and his buzzy little bees, how about you have a look at why these big-name companies are marketing this imagery back at our demographic... It is far easier to deny access to your womb to prevent ending up parenting in a fatherless home, than to fly in the face of some bigshot CEO. Rather than getting mad at businesses doing business, it would be a better use of time and energy to pop over to your friendly neighborhood gynecologist and get some reliable birth control. If you don’t want to be portrayed as a single mother, limit the opportunities that would lead to single motherhood as the outcome. Abstinence, 2 forms of birth control, no wedding, no womb – there are many options at your disposal. The only way to stop ads like this from being marketed to us, is to stop it at the source. Set hard lines in the sand as to when and how you bring children into the world. It has to be you, otherwise next year there will be yet another ad with a black woman and her children all by themselves, and a chorus of men online screaming how she should have chosen better...
We shut shit down for this piddly nonsense…
The commenter above isn’t wrong. Black outrage is highly profitable. All corporations have to do is trigger a few black people and the Internet will be aflame with dragging from now until the next pandemic. Free press! But the thing is, corporations know that the collective will get angry, but that anger means nothing. Since we have no proper patriarchy of our own, and we rely on everyone else for everything else, they can do what they want with little recourse.
…But are eerily quiet when it is something that truly matters
Protesting was a pandemic pastime this year, as black people took to the streets for justice. Oddly enough, there have been little to no marches as it pertains to black women who are the victims of domestic violence homicide. Or the PLETHORA of black children that have been murdered in cold blood this year.
The hypocrisy is astounding, and Burt’s Bees advertising is the absolute least of our worries. And yet, here we are...
Bonus: “Well, nonblack men are absentee fathers too!” I hope that as 2021 draws nearer, more black people realize, understand, and internalize that aspiring to get away with what the lowest of nonblack people do, is the very antithesis of “black excellence”. Nonblack men are indeed absentee fathers, and will abandon, abuse, and harm their children just like anybody else. However, THAT DOESN’T MAKE IT OKAY! Why is it that what white and nonblack men are doing is only a concern when it is negative, toxic, and vile? These comparisons are never made when those men are out moving and shaking and making positive impacts. That’s when the excuses come flying right and left. But that’s a post for another time."
So much for art having a duty to represent reality. What liberals mean when they say that is that art has a duty to push the liberal agenda
If you disagree with this black woman, you're racist
MARQUE MEDIA on Twitter - "My GPS keeps sending me through sketchy neighborhoods, but I go along, ‘cause I don’t want my GPS to think I’m racist."
Bertil Hatt's answer to Are Internet trolls also jerks in real life? - Quora - "I’ve been called a troll many times mainly by people very proeminent on-line... That’s the default reaction to me disagreeing with them—all of them. The idea that someone who disagreeing with them isn’t immediately either apologising for being so stupid, or insulting them openly seems new and unorthodox to most. I generally ask questions. That’s borderline pathological... I strongly discourage the use of the word “trolling” because it lumps distinct reactions together, and prevents you from thinking properly about dissent. That kind of approach is a classic manipulative technique, see... “anti-American” that confuse religious fanaticism with democratic goals and social protection... discussion about discrimination tends to be very homogeneous — it's mostly people who deem themselves victims who share history... contradictions are always expressed as attacks on victims. All this come back to the same structure, beautifully summarised by Obama in his Pittsburgh address: there are several sides, each yelling to itself that it is a victim, and the other side doesn't care because it's is barely human; most of the time, the vast majority of people who never experienced any actual damage (except many misunderstandings that they refuse to put in context) claim solidarity with actual victims without listening to them. I came across many people who said things I disagreed with because they lacked context, people who were more used to preach to the choir than to talk to a statistician that can quote data on the fly to put things in perspective, or denounce bias... The longer the debate, the most likely you'll reach a point where the gloves are off, and people misunderstand your opinions, because those are not your opinions anymore, and you are basically trying to unearth deep-rooted prejudice... That forum was about discrimination, one kind in particular, and had all the failures of such forums: lack of empathy for non-members, exagerrated claims, and a massive case of learned victimisation—basically people encouraging each other to suffer from the discrimination, and who actually suffered more from it, rather than to learn how to express it, correct their own prejudice, help other realise the cost of theirs and suggest non-discriminating solutions. Someone, braver than me, came and tried to put light on those issues. The rest is, form its inception, a classic albeit surprisingly short version of many such attempts: the intellectual firepower was used to attack the invader, not help express and integrate external concerns. Still unconvinced that his actions where wrong, the anonymous hostile came back, and the group needed a lore to justify his exclusion. “Troll” was born... the time I was the most generous was “trolling”, because not only I was spending time to help them do something more important that practical issues (make sense of an issue they deemed essential) but I did with the added risk to be considered a nuisance — which usually happens."
"Try to talk to a Black comedian, a feminist, a Chinese apologist, an American the way they talk about “white folks”, “macho pigs”, “barbaric Tibetan theocrats”, “Third-world countries”, quote them word-for-word and you'll be instantly labelled as offensive and misguided"
Little Africa... in little India - "A security supervisor at Mustafa Centre next door said he has seen African men harrass local and foreign women in the vicinity... One coffee-shop assistant, who lives in a hostel above the African stall, said the Africans would drink and get rowdy and make a lot of noise... The Super Star Hotel on Desker Road, a short walk away, used to allow African tourists to settle their bills at the end of their stay. But after a few left without paying, the hotel now asks for payment upfront every day before noon... he would shoo the Africans from the tables near his stall. It is not racism, he insisted; he does it to protect his business. 'If I don't do it, I won't have any tables to do business with. They can sit there the whole day nursing one drink and one person will occupy a big table,' he said. He also claimed he was verbally threatened by Africans unhappy with his actions. One challenged him to a fight in the back alley and brandished a leather belt as a weapon. Another time, a group of Africans involved in a fight rushed into the coffee shop and grabbed empty beer bottles as instant weapons. Business has also fallen by 20 per cent since the African stall was set up, as families stayed away from the area, he claimed. 'Would you bring your wife and children to eat here if you see these big guys quarrelling and fighting?' he said. Mr Ignatius Achugbu, 35, one of the owners of the African stall, said the Bee Hiang Seafood owner was just jealous of his stall's success. But he admits that there are a few bad hats who are giving the Africans a bad name... 'We Africans talk loudly when we get excited. Others who aren't used to it think we're quarrelling or fighting, and they call the police'... The police told The Sunday Times that they do not provide statistics of crime by nationality or location. Nor would they say whether they were receiving more complaints about the Africans in Little India. The Sunday Times made six visits to Sam Leong Road in the past fortnight, both during the day and at night, each visit lasting a few hours. On those visits, police patrol cars were parked on the side streets near Mustafa Centre and police officers patrolled the area on foot... Business aside, the Africans say they have their own complaints of poor behaviour by locals. Mr Matthew Okonkwu, 24, a Nigerian footballer who has been in Singapore for three weeks, recounted an instance when a woman pinched her nose and shot him a dirty look as they passed each other on the street. He said: 'She could not have smelled me from that distance, and besides, I had just showered!'... there have been instances when Singaporeans avoided sitting beside him on the bus or MRT. But he shrugs it off, saying that 'in Singapore, everyone is so tired after work. If they want to stand when there's a seat available, it's their loss'... 'Singapore's a very nice place and the people are generally friendly. You can't stereotype and judge an entire country based on a few unpleasant incidents. That applies, too, to Singaporeans.'"
If you can't stereotype and judge an entire country based on a few unpleasant incidents, you can't stereotype and judge an entire country based on a few pleasant incidents either
