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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

#461

Post by maehwasu »

mikelyons wrote: post #346
smashthepants wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income inequality is only "unachievable" exactly because of thinking like this. If people were genuinely invested in equality they would be asking "what can i do to get us there faster?" instead of being defeatist and calling it unachievable because you didn't personally create the problem.

Income equality is outcome equality, which is unenforceable.

It’s very enforceable. It’s just that it really, really sucks to live in a society that implements that enforcement.

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

#462

Post by pnako »

zhugeIiang wrote: post #193

I propose creating a school that only looks at quantitative measures, gives a single test once a year that is grueling in mathematics, science, logic, reading, and writing. They just pick the top x-percentile of students. If there is a tie, students are picked randomly. We can call it the HackerNews Academy.

That would be Ecole Polytechnique (or indeed all engineering schools in France).

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

#463

Post by chii »

mikelyons wrote: post #346
smashthepants wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income inequality is only "unachievable" exactly because of thinking like this. If people were genuinely invested in equality they would be asking "what can i do to get us there faster?" instead of being defeatist and calling it unachievable because you didn't personally create the problem.

Income equality is outcome equality, which is unenforceable.

it should be opportunity equality, rather than outcome equality.

Everyone should have the chance at getting educated, but not everyone needs to pass or excel - it is up to the individual to succeed, but it is up to society to provide the opportunity to succeed. That is why schooling (primary, secondary and tertiary) should be free for everyone.

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

#464

Post by akhilcacharya »

thereare5lights wrote: post #357
akhilcacharya wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They got a fair shot. A judge just determined it. I got a fair shot. I didn't get in. Can the plaintiffs move on?

> They got a fair shot. A judge just determined it. And what happens if the Supreme Court overrules that? Are you just going to blindly agree then too? > I got a fair shot. I didn't get in. Can the plaintiffs move on? How do you even know you got a fair shot. That's the whole point of this case. You're just blindly asserting that.

I didn't get into _any_ elite schools. That's a reflection on me.

Elite schools judge 17 year olds by their future worth. That's perfectly fine by me. I was diligent enough in school to know that if I didn't do as well on a test I should blame myself for being lesser, not the institution.

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

#465

Post by barry-cotter »

danans wrote: post #305
nordsieck wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Yes. Africa is a huge continent of 54 countries with a population of 1.2 billion people, so it makes perfect sense that such a huge geographic area like that would have many excellent schools compared to the areas of concentrated and persistent poverty in the US. The two areas aren't remotely comparable, unless you were thinking of something else?

The comparison isn’t all of Africa with areas of concentrated and persistent poverty in the US. It’s sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean with the black population of the US.

Given that the US black population does better on the PISA tests than the only black majority country that participated, Trinidad and Tobago, it seems unlikely there are better educational systems. A quick check does not find a single country in SSA with college graduation rates above ten percent[1]. Given that over 90% of the US black population are descended from slaves who’ve been in the US since the 1800s the disproportion is suspicious.

[1]http://www.uis.unesco.org/Library/Documents/global_education...

https://huebler.blogspot.com/2012/02/ssa.html?m=1

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

#466

Post by Ancalagon »

filoleg wrote: post #400
gameswithgo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the obvious thing is to aim to eliminate racial/national/gender bias as much as possible by blinding admission/hiring processes to those things. Then on top of that offer spots for people who have had to deal with exceptional difficulty. Whether that be physical handicap, racial prejudice, economic, etc. There are companies/grants that take an approach like this. Its going to be subjective but perfect is the en…

Out of curiosity, why not just lump most of it under "socioeconomic disadvantages" category (mostly based on the family's financial situation)? E.g., poor asian kids shouldn't be grouped with the less poor asian kids and shouldn't have been at a disadvantage compared to a rich african american kid for admission purposes. This proposed approach sounds so obvious, I feel like there has gotta be some caveat in it that I…

I think this is the ultimate solution. Of course people will still try to game this system by e.g. sending their kids to high school in poorer districts.

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

#467

Post by fzeroracer »

dmix wrote: post #282
Jun8 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why should historical discrimination matter to the policy? If at all, it should be about discrimination today.

Let's say that your parents were discriminated against, and were unable to go to college, or find a good job, or were actively lynched due to their race.

Do you think their kids might be affected by say, the economic troubles their parents might've gone through, or the fact that they lost family due to the racial animus at the time? Or how about if those families were relegated to places designed specifically for them, to keep them away from the rest of the populace, with less opportunity for education or work. Do you not think that might have a multi-generational effect?

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

#468

Post by tathougies »

underpand wrote: post #439
cloverich wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly all racial and ethnic sub-groups were discriminated against to various degrees in the US (and elsewhere). I distinctly remember being taught this (including about several of your bullet points) in the Texas suburb I grew up in. But its not comparable in scope or legacy to that of Black Americans, and by your own admission if Asian American's "basically own the United States" -- do they actually need help? Its…

I disagree with both you and OP on the race-based oppression Olympics. Class matters more than race. Class heals all past discriminations for educational and professional outcomes. Most affirmative action beneficiaries are middle and upper class. Their class standing shields them from the effects of past discrimination. In the case of African Americans, they are less oppressed than Asian (and all other races) applica…

I broadly agree that class matters more than race, but I fail to see how your other statements do not contribute to he so-called 'race-based oppression Olympics'.

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

#469

Post by rohit2412 »

Anechoic wrote: post #442
rohit2412 wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if it's starting position you're worried about, you'd be worried about class. You would give affirmative action based on economic status, not race. That I would agree with.

You would give affirmative action based on economic status, not race But race also matters in terms of starting position.

Yes, a lot in terms of cultural differences. So Asian-americans are being discriminated against because their parents make them study hard?

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

#470

Post by shawdotion »

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…

Interesting.

I find that the black community (including myself) will quickly point to the reason of Affirmative Action, and what it is trying to accomplish. I find it fair if a historically marginalized group require over-representation to "break" it's cycle. Yet I find something troubling.

I'm concerned that many of the flagship arguments that are still often brought forth by this community have propositions that continue to look less and less stable.

There is a perpetual cycle that the average African-American faces, often said starting from slavery. It has frequently been said that starting with proper education, will this cycle begin to unravel. Though there's been significant attempts to equalize opportunity of education for decades, yet there's been virtually no improvement in the racial performance gap (Black-White).

The main reason I commonly see for this gap is socioeconomic status and parental education. College Board prompts every testing student for their family income status, race, gender, etc. I'd love CB to dump every categorical statistic they've collected, but they do provide a summary every year. Every year they're able to give basic statistics on performance of the different groups based upon the groups stated above.

What I find really interesting was for 2 separate years (2003, 2008) College Board made public test performance by race x income. College Board had also released 'Reaching the Top: A Report of the National Task Force on Minority High Achievement The book' (1999). The book generally stated that black students whose parents were college-educated scored lower than white students whose parents did not graduate high-school. Both datasets show that black students from high socioeconomic families were scoring comparatively to white students from low socioeconomic families.

I see this as deeply troubling. Though there is an large list of variables that are not publicly accounted for, it would make more sense for discussion to be shifted towards the discovery of the cause of the gap.

I fear that Affirmative Action is inherently unjustified and examples like similar to OP's post will continue to hurt the opportunities of the talented.

(2008) [JBHE] https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/why...

(2005) [JBHE] http://www.jbhe.com/features/49_college_admissions-test.html

[Teachers College Record] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280232788_Race_Pove...

Extra bit, attempt to model 1995, caution on the rhetoric but quality article: http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/testing.htm

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