Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by TulliusCicero » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 9:19 PM UTC

blhack wrote: post #161

How about: who cares? Isn’t this hacker news? Aren’t we all supposed to be hackers who are upending the existing system? How about we build our own Harvards where anybody who wants to study can come and learn whatever they want? And the network comes from being surrounded by other people who cared enough to learn. We don’t need these places anymore. We’ll find our own funding and do our own research and screw the sys…

You can believe exactly that but still acknowledge that institutions like Harvard have a certain amount of power, and believe that if they use it in a discriminatory way that's bad.

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

#232

Post by throwaway_law » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 9:19 PM UTC

tomschlick wrote: post #201

throwaway_law wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is very clear that race-conscious admissions are systematically racist and discriminatory. Every time the SCOTUS hears one of these cases they acknowledge that, but the justification is that these classes are/have been historically discriminated against and constitutional admissions which take race into consideration are a temporary measure to right these historical wrongs by leveling the playing field. So the e…

> but the justification is that these classes are/have been historically discriminated against and constitutional admissions which take race into consideration are a temporary measure to right these historical wrongs by leveling the playing field. So under that thought process... when does the temporary measure end? Is there a specific goal? Or is it something unachievable like "when income inequality is fixed".

I suppose its not far from the SCOTUS 1st Amendment cases of porn/obscenity, they can't quite define it, but they'll know it when they see it.

Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) (link: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/539/306/)

>The requirement that all race-conscious admissions programs have a termination point "assure[s] all citizens that the deviation from the norm of equal treatment of all racial and ethnic groups is a temporary matter, a measure taken in the service of the goal of equality itself." Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S., at 510

>But such measures, the Convention instructs, "shall in no case entail as a consequence the maintenance of unequal or separate rights for different racial groups after the objectives for which they were taken have been achieved." Ibid.; see also Art. 1(4) (similarly providing for temporally limited affirmative action); Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Annex to G. A. Res. 34/180, 34 U. N. GAOR, 34th Sess., Res. Supp. (No. 46), p. 194, U. N. Doc. A/34/46, Art. 4(1) (1979) (authorizing "temporary special measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality" that "shall be discontinued when the objectives of equality of opportunity and treatment have been achieved").

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

#233

Post by notyourday » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 9:19 PM UTC

StevePerkins wrote: post #117

habosa wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Jewish person I feel weird seeing "whites" being broken into Jewish and non-Jewish. What about other religions? Why include religion at all? In particular with respect to Harvard and Boston I'd think Catholicism might deserve a mention if we're going to bring religion into this. In the end I think religious diversity is important but it doesn't belong in the same conversation. You can choose your religion and al…

Oh come now. Judaism as an identity class has a lot more to it than mere religious affiliation. I have to suspect that if the representation were 0.5x, rather than 5x, then its consideration would strike you as more natural.

I mean grouping Jews together based on a religious affiliation is just weird -- Reform would look at you really funny if you start talking to them about how Hasids and Orthodox view the world. It is as if Christianity was compressed into Amish, Anabaptists and Catholics and someone said "they are the same people"

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

#234

Post by darawk » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 9:19 PM UTC

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…

Fascinating that non-jewish whites are actually the least proportionally represented. I've never heard that mentioned anywhere before.

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

#235

Post by lawnchair_larry » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 9:19 PM UTC

ilikehurdles wrote: post #135

ridaj wrote: post #21

What I don't get is, what happens if you don't declare a race, or declare "Other", during admission? Why wouldn't Asian candidates do that?

A colleague of mine declared African-American when applying to a US medical school, being from Egypt, a country in Africa, despite also being visibly white and a US citizen. The medical school paired him with a black African-American interviewer for the interview, who was visibly surprised and possibly annoyed at seeing the person he was interviewing.

Did he get in?

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

#236

Post by zhugeIiang » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 9:19 PM UTC

Miner49er wrote: post #81

yucca_plant wrote: post #3

The entire problem is that we categorize people into different buckets. "White", "Black", "Asian", etc. Admissions must be race blind. In general our society must be race blind. "White" people were once Polish, Italian, German, etc. Yet these identities have melted away over generations in large part because society did not and does not actively reinforce these identities. By forcing people into these buckets we rein…

But people in the Black bucket are way behind economically because people in the White bucket have been stealing from them for 100s of years, and the people in the White bucket created the buckets in the first place to do the stealing. So how do you make that right without continuing to use the buckets? The only way is to either completely dismantle Capitalism, and start over with it or something else again from scra…

So... whites steal from black bucket, so that makes it ok for the black bucket to steal from the Asian bucket?

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

#237

Post by TulliusCicero » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

whamlastxmas wrote: post #16

umeshunni wrote: post #10

Wow - this sets a bad precedent. This might now encourage companies to now discriminate against Asias in hiring as well. There are already murmurs in the Valley about how there are too many Asians in tech.

There's people saying there's too many whites and males in tech too.

Males, sure, there way more men than women in dev roles.

At least for Silicon Valley though, white people are, oddly enough, underrepresented relative to the US as a whole. Though that's less because white people are discriminated against, and more because there are a LOT of Asian immigrant tech workers.

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

#238

Post by throwaway_law » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

Jun8 wrote: post #209

throwaway_law wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is very clear that race-conscious admissions are systematically racist and discriminatory. Every time the SCOTUS hears one of these cases they acknowledge that, but the justification is that these classes are/have been historically discriminated against and constitutional admissions which take race into consideration are a temporary measure to right these historical wrongs by leveling the playing field. So the e…

Jews were also historically discriminated against, e.g. "Dean Milton Winternitz's instructions were remarkably precise: 'Never admit more than five Jews, take only two Italian Catholics, and take no blacks at all.'" (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota#United_States ) Also related: California Alien Land Law of 1913 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Alien_Land_Law_of_1... ), targeting mostly Asian…

>Jews were also historically discriminated against

And Jewish people are a protected class, even defined by SCOTUS as a race for purposes of Civil Rights/Anti-discrimination laws

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

#239

Post by shawnz » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 9:21 PM UTC

charliesharding wrote: post #224

shawnz wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 are…

No, it's not actionable unless you've developed some kind of machine that can change other people's opinions.

You're right that we've made significant progress on racial issues. That doesn't mean more can't or shouldn't be done. Furthermore it's not clear from your slippery slope argument that the disadvantages of reverse discrimination (of which there are of course some) are actually more significant than the advantages.

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

#240

Post by telchar » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 9:21 PM UTC

blhack wrote: post #161

How about: who cares? Isn’t this hacker news? Aren’t we all supposed to be hackers who are upending the existing system? How about we build our own Harvards where anybody who wants to study can come and learn whatever they want? And the network comes from being surrounded by other people who cared enough to learn. We don’t need these places anymore. We’ll find our own funding and do our own research and screw the sys…

I would recommend reading [0] before being so quick to tear everything down. You're replacing the devil you know with the devil you don't know, so I think it's worth making a point of learning more about that one.

[0] https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm