To visit Arthur Hu's website, click HERE.

Allerlei Home Page

Allerlei: Please give us a short history of yourself and your family.

Arthur Hu: My parents both came from well-to-do educated Chinese families. My father came to the U.S. on a graduate student scholarship, my mother got a Catholic scholarship, both the result of generous Americans. I was the first of seven American born children. Our family moved from Los Angeles to the nearly all-white middle-class Seattle suburb of Renton during the Boeing boom days where we were nearly the only Chinese (or any non-whites for that matter). We were the first (and I think still the only family) at Lindbergh High to send all of their seven kids to MIT, Stanford, or both. Today the district is 18% Asian, and Lindbergh is one of the better high schools in the area, comparable to some of the best suburbs.

I went to MIT, where I thought 5% Asian was a lot (it's now nearly 30%), and since have worked in the computer software industry in Boston, Silicon Valley, and have now returned to the Seattle area.

I met my wife in Boston, she is Chinese from Vietnam, and came during the late 70's as a refugee sponsored by a church. We still send Christmas cards to some of those generous Euro-Americans.

In my personal experience, the vast majority of Americans are decent and generous people. If a few are jerks, they will find a way to make your life miserable, regardless of your color or ethnicity.

Allerlei: How are American liberals implementing "diversity" wrongly?

Arthur Hu: When Martin Luther King gave his speech, there was no such thing as diversity as a criterion for affirmative action. Affirmative action and quotas were originally developed to insure color-blind treatment. It wasn't until people started to figure out that as long as qualification rates are different that you need racial preferences to even things out. Race became a valid selection criterion and goal in and of itself.

Now, with the California judge banning the University of California from selecting without regard to race, we have finally come full circle from a place where discrimination was first allowed, then disallowed. Preferences were first allowed with Bakke, and now are REQUIRED. The law is now so confused that the ACLU can argue that a law banning racial preferences constitutes racial discrimination.

Nobody can figure out that the reason that racial preferences can be illegal while alumni preferences are OK is that the law states that racial discrimination is ILLEGAL. Only judges are warped enough to interpret that as meaning that racial discrimination is mandatory.

I've looked around, and nobody has figured out if Berkeley is more diverse with only 33% whites than if it had 50%. How come black under-representation at Berkeley is absolutely unacceptable when the most under-represented group there are the whites? This is nutty.

Diversity at U Cal is just re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic with too few chairs. All they did was move all the minorities to the fall admissions of the two showcase campuses, when at the system level there are barely any preferences at all. It's just shoving people barely good enough for Riverside into the best campus for show. What's even crazier, the Filipinos are supporting affirmative action because it used to help them, but illegal discrimination in the name of affirmative action is the only way to explain why they now have the lowest admissions rates of any groups on campus, along with "other Asians."

Diversity, as commonly implemented, has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with political points. The real beneficiaries are the politicians who promote these policies, not the people who get in under them.

Allerlei: There is much talk about reducing, or eliminating, immigration entirely. What's the best way to address immigration?

Arthur Hu: There has got to be some adjustment between supply and demand, in my opinion, we should raise standards for admission. I would give preferences to those who can assimilate and be productive with marketable skills and English, and maybe raise the price of admission with something that comes closer to funding what it costs. Numbers should be raised so that if people are going to come there will be some way to do it legally. We should focus on managing the number of people who come here instead of concentrating on trying to keep them out, or kick them all out. I don't see any reason for arbitrarily lowering the number from one number picked out of a hat to some other random number when both are way too low relative to demand. Arguments that current numbers are too high are weak.

Allerlei: You are an advocate for immigration. Let's say you are confronted by a person who wants to eliminate immigration. What would you say to convince this person he is wrong?

Arthur Hu: I've spend the past two years looking into the actual numbers and arguments. The facts are that unemployment is down, not up. Jobs in software are up fifty-percent in just five years, now down. Labor participation is higher than ever. Living standards are higher, not lower.

No industry pays higher for a four-year degree, and no part of the country pays more than Silicon Valley. Some say that immigrants are paid less, equalizing for location and education. But, immigrants are better educated and live in the most expensive areas, so every other survey shows immigrants are paid more, not less. Two jobs have been created for, if not by, each immigrant entering the past thirty years.

Crime is down, not up. The environment is getting cleaner by every measure, not worse. Blacks are getting better educated and getting better jobs, not worse. Asians and Hispanics, on average, are as healthy and live as long, or longer, than the European-Americans. Immigrants generally do assimilate, and I'm for assimilation instead of the race and multicultural wars that people want to wage.

It is interesting that so many whites who oppose affirmative action also oppose immigration. I am for free markets and open competition. I agree with white separatists on issues that are simply unfair to whites, but I disagree that groups cannot or should not get along, or that the interests of one group should dominate over others. I believe in true multiculturalism which makes villains of neither blacks or whites, and where it is wrong to hate - period.

Allerlei: Your skill is in computers. I'm interested in trying my hand at programming. What language is best for programming games?

Arthur Hu: The best overall language remains C and/or C++. C++ has a lot of theoretical advantages, but the industry hasn't completely mastered all of its problems. Visual Basic is good for quick and dirty applications.

Allerlei: You have family relations in China. Do you keep in touch?

Arthur Hu: I don't myself, but my parents do. My wife calls and sends letters to her folks in Vietnam.

Allerlei: What do you think the motivating factors are for racial discrimination Caucasians and Asians?

Arthur Hu: At the surface, the goal is supposed to be fairness to all, but if you look at all the craziness around, it appears that the real root is that it's just as fun to discriminate against Whites and Asians as against Blacks and Hispanics. And, it's legal!

Allerlei: Referring to Prop 209, how much longer do you think the courts will continue to act against the wishes of the electorate?

Arthur Hu: Judges and politicians have always figured out a way to pull the wool over people's eyes, and get around the fact that popular opinion does not support racial preferences. When the people figure this out and get rid of these people, we might get some progress.

Allerlei: You mention that immigration should be kept to people who have marketable skills and English proficiency. Should extended families be allowed?

Arthur Hu: Extended families are fine, but current policy puts them in front of those with skills. Fortunately, as it turns out, many of the outstanding immigrants were actually let in under family, not skills preferences. In fact, I think most of them were, which makes it nearly as damaging to stop family preferences as restricting skilled preferences. It's real hard to tell if a child will turn out to be Time's Man of the Year twenty years from now, like Mr. Ho, or if a couple of wiseguys will end up giving their employees $75,000 bonuses.

Allerlei: In your opinion, what are the biggest obstacles to friendly race relations in this country?

Arthur Hu: My big theme is that you've got to stop hating. During the whole LA riots, the man who looked like he was running on half a brain was the only guy that said anything sensible - Can we get along? Dang it, we're different, and as long as rich people dislike poor people, and the poor dislike the rich, we're going to continue to kill each other over our differences. Until we can deal with the fact that it's OK to be different, rich or poor, and stop having revolutions and riots to protest the fact that one group of people is poor, or persecuting people because they come from a group that isn't as rich or law-abiding as another.

When it's the liberals who are the ones advocating racial preferences, and tolerate quotas and exclusion, and David Duke gets to keep his title of racist just by saying selections should be color-blind, it's pretty clear which side is doing the hating and discriminating today.

Allerlei: It's your belief that people should be treated based on their skills and talents, rather than race. Is it ever OK to be selective about race?

Arthur Hu: If you can justify that, yes, I just want 10% blacks and 50% women just because I like the idea, I wouldn't have so much of a problem. But, it's always framed in terms like "it's evidence of discrimination" unless the proportions are equal. Listen folks, in the absence of discrimination, nobody is equal to anybody else in anything. If anything, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, proportionality is evidence of racial bias and quotas. How else can you explain the University of Washington Law School admitting forty-percent minorities in a state that isn't even fifteen-percent minority? LA fire department hiring only twenty-five-percent white and fifty-percent of the whites are women? Harvard Law School admitting 12% black, exactly the same as the U.S. population? It sure the heck isn't grades and test scores.

If you want preferences, we need a law that says discrimination is legal. Not the current idiotic law that says you can't discriminate, but anytime you let a judge at it, they say the law REQUIRES discrimination in order to comply with quotas.

Allerlei: Your theme is that we've all got to stop hating each other. Is this an obtainable goal?

Arthur Hu: Sure. Lots of people get along, it's just a few troublemakers that wreck it for everybody else. No justice, no peace? Then we're going to be killing each other until the end of time. People aren't equal. Never have been, and probably never will be. Confucianism and the caste system are one way of managing inequality, quotas and pretend equality are another.

Allerlei: What do you make of the environmental arguments against immigration? Those arguments being that the American lifestyle is incredibly resource intense, and that with more people coming here our resources will be depleted.

Arthur Hu: Again, it's a matter of what-if and what actually happens. Why is it that when China's population increases, per capita income goes up and not down? Why is it that the air and water are getting cleaner, not dirtier as the U.S. population increases? Why is it that food and natural resources are cheaper now instead of getting more scarce?

Why is it better to live in a boom-town where the population is growing than in ghost towns where everybody is leaving? Nobody starves because of natural limits, they starve because some idiot centralized government thinks they're smarter than the market.

Everybody is warning that all this stuff is going to happen, and nobody notices that none of these things have happened, or are happening. Read the Population Explosion from the 60's, and cite just ONE of their doomsday scenarios that came true. None of them did, and they're still being held out as prophetic experts.

Allerlei: As the American population continues to grow, each Congressman represents more people. One argument against immigration is that one representative can't accurately represent hundreds of thousands, or millions, of people. Does immigration dilute democracy?

Arthur Hu: Heck, representative democracy dilutes democracy. One to twenty, one to two-hundred, it doesn't really matter much. If it bothers people that much, then just redraw the silly districts. I favor letting immigrants vote since they are just as much affected by the process as anybody else.

Allerlei: Which C compiler is the best?

Arthur Hu: Best in what? My philosophy on best is that fifty zillion flies can't be wrong. The biggest, baddest C compiler for DOS/Windows is Microsoft, and you go with it unless you've got a compelling reason to go with somebody else (like you hate Bill Gates, or something like that).

Allerlei: The Bell Curve merely states that high IQ people will probably do better in life than low IQ people. In my opinion, too much emphasis was placed on the small snippets he made about race. Do you agree with The Bell Curve?

Arthur Hu: The whole problem is that the press concentrated on whether or not IQ race differences are unchangeable. What people glossed over is that intelligence, as measured today, is definitely lower for blacks and many other minorities than whites. Why blacks want to insist that their intelligence and academic merit is equal to whites when it comes to getting into Berkeley, and brag about how low their grades are in order to justify ebonics and desegregation is completely crazy to me. If they would take the Asian approach, they would simply say "we suck" and study more.

There's evidence that shows that blacks, when properly motivated and held to high standards, CAN perform at levels equal to, or exceeding, Asians. The best high school in Chicago is predominantly black, and can boast test scores equal to, or better than, the predominantly Asian Lowell High in San Francisco. Barclay school in Baltimore is full of poor black kids, but they perform at the level of affluent suburbs. A guy named Bosangue ran black kids with below-average test scores through a calculus prep course, and by the time they were done they were out scoring the Asians. And NOBODY outscores the Asians in math.

It's enough to convince me that it's possible, but it happens so infrequently, and is so thoroughly hidden because it threatens the civil rights approach, that it's going to be a long time before people realize that the ONLY approach to equality in education is to abandon all this race-based nonsense and just get the kids to master the !@#$% material.

Most of the Black techies I've had the pleasure of working with are statistically indistinguishable from Whites and Asians in the field. The problem is why doesn't the black population produce proportionally as many as these folks as other race and ethnic groups? In my view, it's a matter of pride and attitude, and it's that darned ethnic pride that keeps blacks from realizing that they've got to get off their duffs if they don't want their kids to be kicked in the butt in algebra, calculus, and English.

Allerlei: If affirmative action was removed, what would be the effect?

Arthur Hu: There would be fewer minorities at the very top, but across the system it wouldn't make much difference since most colleges and schools don't get enough applicants to make racial selection make much difference. The biggest difference is that it would take away a popular source of cheap political points from officials who are the real beneficiaries of affirmative action.

Allerlei: You intimate that Confucianism, the caste system, and quotas are all ineffective ways of handling inequality. What's the best way to handle inequality?

Arthur Hu: Groups are never going to be equal. As soon as they are, the group that was behind will probably move ahead. All you can do is treat people as individuals. Hopefully, an understanding of different groups will help us understand where individuals are coming from, and targeting groups is one way of targeting individuals who have something in common.

People have to be happy with the way things are, otherwise, we'll always be killing and hating each other over who is rich and who is poor. At the same time, it's great to STRIVE to make things more equal. Quotas are just a way to pretend that things are equal.

Allerlei: Referring to Bill Gates, and Microsoft's dominance in almost everything, have you ever intentionally purchased a non-Microsoft computer product just so he can't have the whole pie?

Arthur Hu: I'm not much of a protectionist. I don't personally have a problem with giving my money to the biggest, baddest monopoly as long as the product and service is good.

Allerlei: Look into your crystal ball. What will happen in America during the next 25 years?

Arthur Hu: One-hundred years ago, people thought getting rid of slavery would bring equality.

In 1964, people thought that making discrimination illegal would bring equality.

In 1978, people thought that racial preferences would bring equality.

1996, with CCRI, people are starting to figure out that something is seriously wrong with affirmative action as it has been sold to the public. Maybe I'm just an optimist, but slowly with the rise of the conservative movement, maybe people will finally figure out that the only we'll get equality is when minorities achieve parity in grades, test scores, income, and education. To do this, they'll have to follow the path of the Jews and Asians by getting used to the idea of getting there by working twice as hard, even if it means getting only half as far.

That's equality, not some silly quota instituted by some government edict.