Can someone point out the material difference(s) between the Asian quotas, which Harvard is stridently defending, and the Jewish quotas which were repealed and roundly reviled?
Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
201–210 of 228 posts
Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "We would not need affirmative action if [reality was different]." > Ergo, we need affirmative action. Logical fallacy. "I have a good immune system, so I would not need medicine if I got a cold." Doesn't mean I need medicine right now, when I'm not sick at all. EDIT: The example seems to be confusing people, so here's a more formal explanation: if (reality is different) then not (we need affirmative action) Does n…
The inverse of your example sentence would be something like - "I don't have a good immune system, so I would need medicine if I got a cold" - which makes sense, and is analogous to "Reality is not different, so we do need affirmative action."
Got it, thanks for the explanations!
Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually not at all clear if it's legal hence the court battle. In fact AA is literally legalized discrimination that benefits Minorities so you really don't know what you are talking about.
The use of gender and racial quotas in University admissions is unconstitutional, decided by the Supreme Court case Gratz v. Bollinger in 2003.
Indeed. Harvard's legal argument isn't that they are racially discriminating and that it's legal. They know it's not.
Their argument is what you'd expect from an institution that is racially discriminating, but trying to weasel out of its culpability: they try to hide their systematic bias in the most subjective and ambiguous candidate score - the "personality" ratings.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/opinion/harvard-asian-ame...
> The report by the plaintiff’s expert witness, the Duke University economist Peter Arcidiacono, revealed that Harvard evaluated applicants on the extent to which they possessed the following traits: likability, helpfulness, courage, kindness, positive personality, people like to be around them, the person is widely respected. Asian-Americans, who had the highest scores in both the academic and extracurricular ratings, lagged far behind all other racial groups in the degree to which they received high ratings on the personality score.
> “Asian-American applicants receive a 2 or better on the personal score more than 20% of the time only in the top academic index decile. By contrast, white applicants receive a 2 or better on the personal score more than 20% of the time in the top six deciles,” wrote Mr. Arcidiacono. “Hispanics receive such personal scores more than 20% of the time in the top seven deciles, and African Americans receive such scores more than 20% of the time in the top eight deciles.”
> Even if the very worst stereotypes about Asians were true on average, it beggars belief that one could arrive at divergences as dramatic as the ones Mr. Arcidiacono documents by means of unbiased evaluation.
Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
My interpretation of your statement is that you're arguing for Harvard's business prerogative to turn business knobs to achieve business outcomes. But do you not agree that there is moral wisdom in striking race as a consideration from the market? There are all sorts of scenarios where there are natural incentives to discriminate on race; perhaps a bank can improve their model on creditworthiness if they considered r…
>But do you not agree that there is moral wisdom in striking race as a consideration from the market? Sure, but not when done naively. Naive "anti-racism" policies generally serve to cement the current status-quo, which is why they have so much support these days. This is only to argue against the idea that being race blind across the board is a moral imperative. The issue is what responsibility does Harvard have to…
> Presumably you have no issue with this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
There's definitely a bit of gray in there for me.
Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My view on it is that all ethnicities are necessarily equal (no race is smarter than any other) I'm curious as to why you think that should necessarily be the case.
I'm referring to things that affect ability (things like skin color are different but not unequal in this regard). Even if certain small communities had some variations they become meaningless once you reach the scale of "asian", "european", or even just "chinese" so once your are talking about a group of any significant size it averages out. I used the term "necessarily" because by statistics on that large of a samp…
I'm skeptical. There are clear physical distinctions between different races. Africans clearly have blacker skin, a different facial structure, and different hair types compared to Nordics.
Unless one is going to argue that there are no genetic differences between individuals in the brain, it seems unlikely to me that different races don't have different brains in some fashion.
Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great point and I'm glad you brought this up. Like I mentioned, America has many gaping wounds which I believe can be traced back to institutional racism. When talking about the prevalence of black kids raised under single family homes we have to take into account why these kids may be raised that way. Is it a character flaw of black families? I don't think so. I'm black and familial ties run DEEP in almost every fam…
This article/issue is about non-white applicants (Asian Americans) who are being discriminated against in the admissions process. And not just at Harvard but other elite schools, med schools, etc. It's bizarre how many comments here are focusing on traditional white vs. black issues when this is entirely about a non-white group who is being discriminated against under affirmative action because their superior test sc…
It is in fact not difficult to explain carceral inequality through the prism of white supremacy, as "whiteness" is a fluid concept largely defined in specific opposition to "black" people; historically, it's adapted as needed to embrace formerly "non-white" people (the Irish, Italians, Jewish people) in solidarity against encroaching black people (for instance, during the Great Migration).
A useful thing to keep in mind is that "black", as in "African American", actually is a sort of synthesized ethnicity (their original cultures having been stripped from them in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade)... but "white" is not. There are Irish people and there are Slavic people and there are Sicilian people, and their cultures are not in fact all that similar. "White" just means what it needs to mean.
All you need to add to your mental model of "white" and "black" to fit low Asian American incarceration into it is the idea that Asians will soon attain "honorary white" status. That's not a message board concept; the transition of Asians from "model minority" to "white people" is much discussed in the real world as well.
Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
#207This is totally against "test takers". Knowing the rules will make them better at taking tests but Harvard wants to be about something else. I may sure be downvoted to say that from my experience asians are the great test takers, and gotta also add that they have amazing rote memory, one of the best imho.
Please don't perpetuate stereotypes like this. This sentence has a clear discriminatory undertone implying that asians are less capable of creative/critical thinking.
Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disappointed in ACLU's stance. Why not apply the same logic to other parts of admission and ensure Asian students receive equal share of sport scholarships.
Harvard doesn't offer sports scholarships.
Along with other school propaganda like "MIT doesn't do legacy", "Ivy League doesn't offer sports scholarships" is essentially false. The implication is that the ivy leagues don't give a "free pass" to students for athletic reasons, when they do.
To their credit, they aren't willing to sacrifice all pretense of "student-athletes" compared to some other schools. But there are definitely plenty of students that only get admission due to their athletic ability.
Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Especially since the alumni interviewers who actually meet the candidates give Asian candidates basically the same marks for personality as White candidates.
But are the students who meet with alumni a representative sample? If I were a socially inept applicant I would take my chances without the interview.
It's not just alumni. Asian applicants were rated basically the same on "Personality" scores from teacher letters, counselor letters, alumni interviews, etc. Everything except their final grade (which is the only place that includes essays, I believe).
However, I find it incredibly unlikely that asian applicants are so bad at writing essays that it's singlehandedly tanking their personality score that drastically.
Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
#210The subtext of the hand-wringing over this case is that somehow Asians have earned or deserve their spot in Harvard for having X GPA or Y SAT scores, and thus it is "unfair" for people with lower GPA/SATs to be admitted over them. But this is just flat out wrong. The issue is that admissions to top universities isn't strictly meritocratic. Or to put it another way, "merit" in this context isn't simply GPA and SAT sco…
It most definitely is a moral issue when students are racially discriminated against. There is a trade-off between racial diversity and racial discrimination. What you're saying here is that non-Asian leaders who are individually worse leaders take the spot of Asian leaders who are individually better leaders because the race of non-Asian leaders makes them better leaders.
I think his argument is if you have the same number of great leaders per capita in each race. Then maybe at the margin you should take in an African American who scored better than 98% of his peers over an Asian who scored better than 90% of his peers.(for instance Asians have 30x the number of individuals per capita who score an 800 on an SAT compared to African Americans.)