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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

#611

Post by zhugeIiang »

simmanian wrote: post #506
rohit2412 wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Isn't it interesting to see so many people being okay with Asians getting discriminated against? It's almost as if it's not institutional racism to funnel Asians to colleges that mass produce worker class people instead of leaders of tomorrow. People will almost directly say that Asians make poor leaders because all they care about is school grades, when in reality Asians are taught to work harder than their peers to…

Agreed, it is time to stand up for our rights.

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

#612

Post by zhugeIiang »

underpand wrote: post #245
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 grossly misleading. US population numbers are meaningless. Harvard doesn't consider all US born students. They have an academic floor. Most of the US population does not meet the academic floor. Low achieving students are effectively not in the applicant pool even if they apply. A more accurate representation of the applicant pool would be the USA demographics that meet the 10th percentile SAT score…

http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/legacyathlete.pdf

See page 45. Asians have a much higher bar and lower probability of getting in after balancing for same academic level. Seems like discrimination to me.

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

#613

Post by TheCoelacanth »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #203
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, Harvard's own internal study determined that if academics were all that mattered, 43% of admitted students would be Asian. The major factors pushing down that percentage are legacy admissions and the vague "personal rating," which seems to be the knob Harvard admissions turns to get the demographic ratios it desires. Asians are systematically given a far lower "personal rating" than other demographics. Source…

"Well it's simple you see, Asians are simply less personable, as a group, than white folk. No no no, it's not blatant discrimination at all, I assure you! It's just science, I swear!" I really don't see how anyone justifies this kind of thing in 2019. This is like the barest possible fig leaf over obvious prejudice. They could rename it to "Cromulence Factor" and it'd make as much sense.

The smoking gun is that Asians were doing just fine on personal ratings given by Harvard alumni, but were doing poorly specifically on the personal ratings given by Harvard admissions officers.

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

#614

Post by TheCoelacanth »

humanrebar wrote: post #372
aviraldg wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By realising that India is not homogenous at all, and is inherently diverse?

Sure, but so are Americans: white, black, Hispanic, etc.

Pick two random Indians and there's about a one in three chance that they won't even be able to talk to each other due to not sharing any common languages.

The US has nothing remotely close to India's level of diversity.

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

#615

Post by hdfbdtbcdg »

40acres wrote: post #42

Unfortunately this is bigger than Harvard and the Asian American students are 'collateral damage'. Fundamentally, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow permeates every facet of American life, education especially. You can't fix hundreds of years worth of discrimination without tipping the scales in a way that seems discriminatory to others, seems like the Judge in this case understands that.

Jim Crow was institutional racism designed to suppress one group and lift up another.

This is institutional racism designed to suppress one group and lift up another.

What is the difference?

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

#616

Post by tomschlick »

shadowgovt wrote: post #532
JPKab wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are all of your coworkers equally productive? Neighbors? Relatives? The answer for all 3 for me personally is no. I have family members who make decisions based on different priorities which change their income. My coworkers differ radically in their abilities and work ethic. How can they have equal incomes in this scenario? There is a way to do this, and it hasn't worked any time it's been tried.

I mean, "universal basic income" would be a good start.

Until everyone's cost of living goes up because they have an extra $1k/mo and landlords / retailers know it. The same thing happened with guaranteed student loans. When people have money to burn the market will react by increasing prices.

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

#617

Post by tomschlick »

jqgatsby wrote: post #537
JPKab wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are all of your coworkers equally productive? Neighbors? Relatives? The answer for all 3 for me personally is no. I have family members who make decisions based on different priorities which change their income. My coworkers differ radically in their abilities and work ethic. How can they have equal incomes in this scenario? There is a way to do this, and it hasn't worked any time it's been tried.

I don't think "fixing income inequality" needs to mean that everyone is paid the same amount. It's reasonable to believe that isn't a million times more productive than their median employee, and that factors other than pure merit allowed them to amass that much wealth. Even if you did think that they were that meritorious, you could still make an argument that "fairness" should involve balancing both merit and utili…

> It's reasonable to believe that isn't a million times more productive than their median employee

If a normal employee at say walmart brings in $100 worth of value a day to the company, and the CEO executes a few big multi-million dollar deals that month, then the CEO in fact would be significantly more productive (in terms of capital to the company) than the average employee.

> and that factors other than pure merit allowed them to amass that much wealth.

Yes like taking the risk of starting such a business to employ others and putting down the capital which might be lost.

I also don't know who you think would enforce some kind of "fairness" limit on how much money someone makes. The government doing so would likely be ruled unconstitutional and wouldn't likely ever be passed in the first place through congress.

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

#618

Post by sjg007 »

mlevental wrote: post #602
sjg007 wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is gamed.. a lot of rich kids "emancipate" from their parents to qualify for financial aid for example and probably preferred admissions.

I love this thing that happens where someone jumps in to make an incisive point based on something they learned just recently and even on this same forum. the article about emancipation was posted here just like 2 weeks ago. so that's how certain you should be about that fact. and yet here you are proclaiming it as if you yourself have done the research and know exactly how prevalent emancipation is.

Maybe you missed it but there’s a well researched and detailed Vice news article on it.

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

#619

Post by blhack »

gdy wrote: post #583
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…

"We’ll build our own system." ...with blackjack and hookers!

We’ll build our own system! With bitcoin and tensorflow!

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

#620

Post by adolph »

kache_ wrote: post #143
rr-geil-j wrote: post #89

This feels reminiscent of 'diversity hires' where females and/or members of the LGBT+ community are preferred not because of competency/merit but to improve a company's diversity metrics. Disclaimer: I haven't experienced this myself. I only read/heard of these complaints from other people.

This ends up hurting females and L/G/B/T people in our industry because people will have a preconception that they may have been hired for reasons other than merit. To bring it back to the article, imagine being a black harvard graduate. People may judge you as lesser compared to asian harvard graduates, because they know that you've been held to different standards, even if you had the merit and deserved your placem…

In the South, even at Holy Cross, Thomas thought that he could force his way into the meritocracy by the power of his intelligence and will. At Yale, his accomplishments felt divested of their authorship. “As much as it had stung to be told I’d done well in [high school] despite my race,” he later wrote, “it was far worse to feel that I was now at Yale because of it.”

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/essay/clarence-thomass-rad...

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