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Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

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Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#221

Post by opportune »

I wanted to go to Harvard, and didn't get in, so I went to a slightly less prestigious school instead. I had perfect test scores and grades so I potentially could have been part of this lawsuit, and I used to be super bothered by affirmative action.

But now I don't really care. Even if you don't get into your favorite top school, if you're actually a strong applicant you're likely to get into at least one, or if not, somewhere like Berkeley. Not getting into the tippy-top schools only hurts you if you want to do high octane finance (which these days is less attractive than tech IMO), and maybe puts you slightly behind where you could have been regarding internships or where you land your first job/grad school.

I felt like I had "caught up" to where I would have likely been if I had got into Harvard by the time I hit 23. I had to work a bit harder and smarter than if more opportunities were handed to me on a silver platter, since I went to a slightly worse school, but it wasn't a big deal. Meanwhile there are probably people who got into Harvard for which it was actually a completely make-or-break, life-changing event in their lives. Arguably, they deserved, and certainly needed it, more than someone like me.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#222

Post by _ooqq »

umvi wrote: post #19

It's like we have these two irreconcilable ideas: - Diversity is good - Discrimination is bad When 50% of the world's population is from China/India, how do you both promote diversity and not discriminate?

What I'm seeing happen is that unis (and other affected institutions) are trying to get rid of diversity of opinion in favor of diversity of skin color/ethnicity, and... I find that reasoning nothing but racist.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#223

Post by matthewrobertso »

dcolkitt wrote: post #158
jdoliner wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These numbers are next to meaningless, Harvard doesn't just accept people from the US, so we should be looking at population percentages of the world. I assume that people who don't fit in any category are shunted into one of them based on skin color. For example a Jamaican is, I assume, counted in the African American bucket, and compared against the African American population, even though they're neither American…

> While about 8 percent, or about 530, of Harvard's undergraduates were black, Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., the chairman of Harvard's African and African-American studies department, pointed out that the majority of them -- perhaps as many as two-thirds -- were West Indian and African immigrants or their children, or to a lesser extent, children of biracial couples. > They said th…

This article is over 15 years old, are the statistics it cites still accurate?

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#224

Post by charliesharding »

shawnz wrote: post #181
charliesharding wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't feel helpful to be viewed as an individual as opposed to simply a member of a group? Not every person with x skin color has the same experiences... You're taking racism and running the other way with it instead of just rejecting the premise of viewing people as tribe members as flawed. You shouldn't judge people by the groups they happen to belong to. Individuals should be judged on a case-by-base basis.

I don't think you're seeing what the parent is saying. What you are suggesting isn't actionable. We already have legislation to make discrimination illegal and it hasn't been effective at stopping it.

Of course it is - the action is to stop discrimination of any kind. And yes, yes it has been effective. Hate crimes have dropped off precipitously and minority unemployment is at an all time low. Continuing to play this reverse-discrimination game will foment resentment, especially in the group that is "allowed to be discriminated against" according to the political flavor of the times (particularly the ones that aren't winning in society) thus creating the monster that you sought to destroy.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#225

Post by [deleted] »

jdoliner wrote: post #110
deogeo wrote: post #37

For perspective, here are the Harvard vs US demographics, sorted by most to least represented [1,2,3,4]: Jewish: 14.0% vs 2.6% (5.38x) Asian American: 25.3% vs 5.3% (4.77x) Native Hawaiian: 0.6% vs 0.2% (3.00x) Native American: 1.8% vs 0.7% (2.57x) African American: 14.3% vs 12.7% (1.13x) Hispanic or Latino: 12.2% vs 17.6% (0.69x) non-Jewish white: 33.0% vs 58.9% (0.56x) [1] https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/adm…

These numbers are next to meaningless, Harvard doesn't just accept people from the US, so we should be looking at population percentages of the world. I assume that people who don't fit in any category are shunted into one of them based on skin color. For example a Jamaican is, I assume, counted in the African American bucket, and compared against the African American population, even though they're neither American…

[deleted]

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#226

Post by TulliusCicero »

slg wrote: post #119
umvi wrote: post #19

It's like we have these two irreconcilable ideas: - Diversity is good - Discrimination is bad When 50% of the world's population is from China/India, how do you both promote diversity and not discriminate?

I think the debate from progressives is the definition of the term discriminate. We all agree choosing an unqualified person over a person who is qualified based on their race is discrimination. However is it discrimination to choose the diverse candidate when presented with two candidates that are equally qualified in every other regard? Because that is often the situation. There is no shortage of people who are qua…

This only makes sense if you're looking at it as a binary thing: qualified vs not-qualified.

But the reality is that it's more of a spectrum, and in general universities usually want to take the most qualified people they can, just like companies want to get the most qualified job applicants.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#227

Post by nordsieck »

Invictus0 wrote: post #179
dcolkitt wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While about 8 percent, or about 530, of Harvard's undergraduates were black, Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., the chairman of Harvard's African and African-American studies department, pointed out that the majority of them -- perhaps as many as two-thirds -- were West Indian and African immigrants or their children, or to a lesser extent, children of biracial couples. > They said th…

Other commenters have attributed that disparity to the African American community's limited access to quality K-12 education rather than a problem of Harvard admissions.

> the African American community's limited access to quality K-12 education

Is that a claim that their schools are worse at educating students than schools in Africa?

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#229

Post by ARandomerDude »

zhugeIiang wrote: post #177
ARandomerDude wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine the uproar if you had instead said > Whites should just boycott Harvard. Overall quality of Harvard grads will drop and Harvard will become nothing.

Why not both?

If by "why not both?" you mean "why aren't people outraged about both comments?" then I agree completely. That's why I said what I did. People seem to think racism against whites isn't racism. By reversing the roles, hopefully it's more obvious that it's equally wrong.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#230

Post by dwoozle »

defen wrote: post #199
dwoozle wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why set a minimum bar at “qualified”? If you try out for an NBA team they won’t say “you are really fucking good at basketball, you’re not as good as these guys but you’re diverse so you’re hired.” You get scarce positions by outcompeting people, not by clearing a bar and then getting selected for your race.

Basketball is zero-sum, undergrad college admissions mostly aren't. As long as Harvard lets in enough students who are "good enough" to not fail out or besmirch their reputation, it can continue indefinitely as a prestige-generating institution. Put another way - the "Michael Jordan" of undergraduate academics doesn't really exist (in other words, there is no individual undergraduate you could admit who would instant…

Of course there are — they are the “Michael Jordans” of the world... not only Michael Jordan himself, but all of the top accomplished people in the world... presidents, Nobel Prize winners, CEOs, famous authors... Harvard is prestigious because they admit people who later do those things. The content of the curriculum is largely the same as other colleges.

Harvard is looking for people who have the highest probability of becoming prestige generators, the same way that NBA teams are looking for people with the highest probability of being points generators. Sure, the assessment methods for Harvard are much more coarse, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

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