[simonh]

Oh, please grow up(1).

What specifically in this article are you calling out as casually racist? Was Mr. Lian, who is quoted as saying "Chinese people like Gold" being racist about his own race? My wife has said much the same thing to me. She's Chinese, though now a naturalised Brit.

(1) I apologies to my esteemed HNers for that, but it seems appropriate and if I take a karma hit for it, so be it. It was worth it.

[mikeash]

This article takes a racial stereotype (Asians love gold!) ignores confounding factors (turns out, lots of people like gold, even non-Asians!) trots out a token Asian (some of my best friends are black!) and produces no evidence whatsoever to support its claims.

In fact, the article itself basically admits that the entire premise is full of shit:

"...gold in Asia is perhaps even more fetishized than in the West."

"Perhaps". This entire article, this entire kind of article, is based on a wild guess. Yet this doesn't stop everybody from running with the "Asians love gold!" theme.

Probably two thirds of the people in the iPhone line I was in wanted gold. Yet I don't see any articles saying "Americans love gold!"

Writing crazy and uninformed articles about faraway people while ignoring similar behavior at home? Yep, that's racist.

[simonh]

Get a grip. This is a news article, not a PhD thesis.

Yes, gold is fetishized in the west. However the fact that it's even more fetishized in the East is overwhelmingly obvious to anyone what actually knows what they're talking about. Including actual Chinese people. My Chinese relatives hold a significant amount of their life savings in Gold. This is quite normal over there. In Hohhot, my wife's home town, you can buy small gold bricks in many department stores. They have little sheep stamped on them because that's a lucky sign.

[mikeash]

It's "overwhelmingly obvious" yet nobody can produce any evidence for it, and especially not for the specific claim that the gold iPhone is in more demand in Asia. Even the linked article can't bring itself to straight-out say that gold is more fetishized in Asia. It weasels out of the claim! Is it really "obvious" then?

Until and unless this stuff can be backed up with something resembling actual evidence rather than "everybody knows", articles like these are racist. Calling out a single racial group for behavior everybody is engaging in is pretty obviously so.

[the_watcher]

Throughout this thread, people have posted links to evidence that there is a higher demand for gold in Asia than the rest of the world. Ignoring them doesn't chang e Business Insider's piece definitely could be improved by adding some more context beyond "My friend says.." anecdotes, but not everything that is poorly researched is racist.

[mikeash]

Not everything that is poorly researched is racist. But everything about race that is poorly researched is racist. This is poorly researched, and it's about race, QED.

[the_watcher]

>> But everything about race that is poorly researched is racist.

No, it's not.