Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 660 posts

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

#361

Post by tomschlick »

smashthepants wrote: post #356
asdf21 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't answer his question, created a strawman, put words in his mouth, implied he doesn't care about equality (isn't treating people equally, regardless of race equality?)... goodness.

He explicitly said income equality is unachievable. I didn't put those words in his mouth. You can't answer the question of "when" if a person has already decided the goal is unachievable. Again, those were his words not mine The temporary measures will end WHEN people are genuinely interested enough to help regardless of whether they created the problem. That is my answer. You just don't like it. And that's ok....

When, in the history of humanity, has income ever been at an acceptable level of equality?

If you/the people who support such a policy can't define an explicit goal then I'd say that's pretty unachievable.

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

#362

Post by slg »

tooltalk wrote: post #183
slg wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> ... when presented with two candidates that are equally qualified in every other regard? ... Because that is often the situation Is that the case? I always thought that the case is brought on because the diversity candidate is NOT often "equally qualified,"

That depends on what "equally qualified" means?

If it means "someone who is equally likely to be successful at Harvard" the answer is likely yes. Like I said there is no shortage of people who fit that definition.

If it means "someone who has quantifiably the exact same quality of resume" the answer is potentially no.

Although if you subscribe to the second definition, you should probably have a bigger complaint against athletes and children of alumni, staff, or donors. Almost half of all white students at Harvard are in one of those groups[1] and yet there are always more complaints about "diversity" than there is about these students.

[1] - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-harvard-finds-43-...

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

#363

Post by tomschlick »

balls187 wrote: post #360
tomschlick wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

> So under that thought process... when does the temporary measure end? Difficult to answer, and honestly not at all a priority to have an answer.

It is when the courts say as a temporary measure its ok. You have to define temporary or else it just becomes de-facto permanent.

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

#364

Post by neetdeth »

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?

I've always figured that if you do this, it will be assumed that you are trying to dodge negative discrimination and will be treated the same as a White/Asian person.

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

#365

Post by defen »

rohit2412 wrote: post #309
defen wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard. Neither Brin nor Page went to Harvard and are both more famous for their connection to Stanford as graduate students IMO

They did bring fame though right?

Sure, but this is about undergraduate admissions, not graduate.

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

#366

Post by gimmeThaBeet »

habosa wrote: post #96
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…

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…

I apologize if this sounds blunt, it's not imprudent to see more sinister reasons given history, but my thought would be you're seeing them break out Jewish because from the religion as cultural group perspective, the cultural import of education is anomalous.

I genuinely am not trying to break out the praeteritio, and say I'm not calling it a 'positive' stereotype, but at a certain level you can't have such a cultural focus on education, and then be gobsmacked when it has statistical significance in things like school admissions.

Like, if I told you that Utah had the lowest per capita alcohol consumption in the US, it's not liable to blow anyone's mind.

Heck, one of the reasons Harvard came up with its holistic admissions process in the first place was targeted at Jewish kids applying. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/9/19/admissions-laws...

Also just a lazy google, I'd hazard to guess you're right about catholic representation being higher than expected. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/09...

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

#367

Post by geodel »

darawk wrote: post #263
dmix wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't that the whole idea of affirmative action?

My understanding was that affirmative action was supposed to correct the under-representation of minorities by eliminating the over -representation of non-jewish whites. Not that it was designed to under-represent them.

Seems your understanding is totally out of touch with SJW/Woke wave sweeping across the world. Pointing out statistics may brand you as apologist of racism, perpetuating while privilege etc.

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

#368

Post by bsanr2 »

pessimizer wrote: post #277
streb-lo wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're offering personal anecdotes as facts on here now? Really?

The comment is illustrative of the fact that a portion of the people counted as remediation for American slavery and discrimination are not only not the descendants of American slaves, but actively parrot bigoted attitudes against them.

Unfortunately, they are also subject to the bigotry native blacks are subject to - one of the wealthiest majority-black counties in the country, whose population has swelled recently with highly-educated African and West Indian immigrants, still deals with lower housing values and the attendant ills (lower quality public schools, etc.), for example.

It's not just about slavery.

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

#369

Post by ravitation »

gnicholas wrote: post #358
ravitation wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I mean all of that's true. I'm just saying A) this is just the latest decision in a long legacy of maintaining race as part of college admissions, and that B) Harvard's specific admissions process survived immediate scrutiny. Also, I'm saying this mainly because a lot of the comments in this thread are missing that context (especially when speculating on what happens next in this case, or on what implications t…

What do you mean by "survived immediate scrutiny"? Do you mean that in a generic sense, or in some legal sense (that I'm unaware of — I only know strict, intermediate, and rational basis).

I mean it only in the generic sense, in that the admissions process overcame some level of review (and would likely not have if direct evidence of racial quotas had been presented, as the other comment mentioned).

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

#370

Post by mffnbs »

geodel wrote: post #367
darawk wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding was that affirmative action was supposed to correct the under-representation of minorities by eliminating the over -representation of non-jewish whites. Not that it was designed to under-represent them.

Seems your understanding is totally out of touch with SJW/Woke wave sweeping across the world. Pointing out statistics may brand you as apologist of racism, perpetuating while privilege etc.

Seems your understanding is drunk and lost all of its tact earlier in the night.
Post reply on HN