101–110 of 174 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me guess: it is a purely functional university?
Yes, instead of the students learning anything, when you send a student to the university you're returned a new student which is almost the same only with more knowledge.
Where is my misunderstanding?
I want to comment on the anti Affirmative Action arguments here. I went to a really prestigious high school in New York City. For the summer of my junior year, our AP Computer Science teacher hooked up a few of us with internships at the finance firms, specifically in tech (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, etc.). Now, sure, I did really well and studied really hard to get into my high school. However, I did practically…
Because you're not the person AA hurts. AA doesnt hurt top 1% people, it hurts say top 10% people who are in the wrong ethnic group and lose out to people in the correct ethnic group. Just ask a lower class Asian person with top 10% MCAT scores, and why he lost a med school spot to a middle class URM person with top 20% scores.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> silicon valley white Interesting term. Does that basically mean Asian (both eastern and southeastern) and White?
My prediction is in 20 years Asian will be considered part of white. Maybe it's just being in the Silicon Valley bubble, but it already feels much of the way there. (Not trying to offend anyone, but feel safer with throwaway account.)
It's hard to pin this down because there's a powerful cultural normalization effect around "whiteness"; we accept the notion that there are "white", "black", "latino", and "Asian" people, in part due to history and in part because breaking "white" down further would be cumbersome.
But it's worth remembering that while there really is a sui generis "black" culture (the US African American culture, a product of displacing millions of Africans and stripping them of their original culture), there isn't "white culture". Irish and German people don't have that much in common culturally: they don't share a language, they don't eat the same food, they don't listen to the same music, they don't have the same folklore.
Since one important sense of the concept of "whiteness" is "membership in favored ethnicity", it's not unreasonable to predict that it will eventually expand to include non-European ethnicities, too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My prediction is in 20 years Asian will be considered part of white. Maybe it's just being in the Silicon Valley bubble, but it already feels much of the way there. (Not trying to offend anyone, but feel safer with throwaway account.)
This isn't a crazy prediction. "White" means a lot less than people pretend it does. Before the 20th Century, it excluded many European ethnicities. At various points, the Irish, Italians, Greeks, and Jewish people have been "non-white". Solidarity among the relatively fair-skinned only became a thing during the fight to perpetuate Jim Crow, and as a response to the Great Migration. It's hard to pin this down because…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
Is this legal? Is this really a school that only allows people of a certain race? I don't mean scholarships or other affirmative action type stuff. An actual entire school that excludes based on race? Where is my misunderstanding?
No.
I'm very happy to see this. I grew up in a town that, before I was born, decided to actively integrate (from being an historically all white, wealthy suburb) and I'm certain I'm better off for growing up in a diverse community. I'm in mountain view now and it's all "silicon valley white", and something actively needs to be done. I worry when I realize my kid can go a week or more without seeing a black person, and I'…
> it's all "silicon valley white" You don't consider the thousands of immigrants who grew up in completely different cultures with different primary languages in Asia and Europe as diversity? Instead, you consider the American born Black person whose primary language is English and who grew up with American culture as "diversity"?
The problem here is the word "diversity", which is very easily hijacked to distort discussions. I think we're all pretty much on the same page that the concern being addressed here is the exclusion of specific, prominent ethnicities from SFBA tech culture, not the absolute number of different ethnicities being represented.
1) Join forces to donate to educational institutions specifically to increase the number of students they enroll. If there are X spots being reserved for AA, then ask the school to add X additional spots not usable for AA. Donate specifically for them to build additional dorms, classrooms, etc.
For some schools, their endowment is so large, they don't really need the donation, they just need pressure. I think pressuring them to expand should be more likely than pressuring them to end AA.
2) Invest in poor communities. AA stems from the desire to end a cycle of poverty. If we worked to "upgrade" poor communities then the need for AA would greatly decrease. So invest to improve K-12, housing, and businesses in poor communities.
I use the word "invest" because real estate in poor areas is usually under market. I think you can make a really good return if you build high quality housing. Just make sure you are willing to sell/rent to the current residents at below market prices. You should still be able to make a profit from the housing you build that is sold/rented to the middle class looking for better deals in your "upgraded" community.
There doesn't have to be a zero-sum battle between those who benefit from AA and those who don't.