American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

Maybe to some degree, but it's not all that different. The way I look at it, for that job and one other, was that I was underqualified, came with a built-in tax break, and preferential resume review. It's still a form of affirmative action, and its purpose is similar. I'm specifically referring to being a campaign badge class, and to a time period in my career that was when I first got out.

>That's a great story, how you came up, after immigrating to America from India. However, very important points that you have glossed over is the history of slavery, redlining, Jim Crow (and other laws), voting suppression, etc... of Black Americans who are the descendants of slaves. They (and other ethnic groups) were being shut out of opportunities, and the courts were attempting to alleviate this in some way. The original purpose of affirmative action, was to help those that were being actively and consistently discriminated against.

And not one of those things is in the least bit his fault or responsibility, least of all the fault or responsibility of his son or many other kids in the same situation. It's a pernicious, grotesque notion that people with no personal or ancestral fault in a specific historical context should be punished for its existence as a compensation to others. The idea is in fact little better than the implicit punishment-through-bias accorded to other minorities because they or their ancestors were at one time considered inferior. A society can alleviate past wrongs without creating new ones of a similar if softer flavor against yet other collectively defined groups.

>As a more recent immigrant, you are benefiting from laws and polices, which are the result of historical issues, court battles, and actual battles in America. Many Americans fought, died, and were jailed to get laws changed.

And so what? Does he somehow owe a personal debt to a country because it, for reasons of its own, decided to fix and fight against internal historical wrongs that its own people had created in the first place? Another idiotic and ugly idea: that a country makes itself better and then is right to foist part of the cost onto people who later come to it specifically because it's supposedly become a better and more just place, as if they'd had a part in its previous wrongs.

That you make such absurd arguments shows how much the ideological aspect of affirmative action (vs. its practical, carefully balanced merits) has contaminated much progressive thinking.

City University of New York had an incredible line up of world-class genius graduates, because they took the Jews who were excluded by the Ivies. For some reason that never translated to prestige status for the university.

I don't think you are seeing the historical context. Race is very much a part of it. America had to overcome slavery, redlining, Jim Crow, etc... These were based on race, not economic position. Affirmative action is an attempt to rectify the long standing American issues of discrimination based on race and other attributes (sex, color, etc...).

Economic position or being at an economic disadvantage is a different argument than what you had originally presented and the attack on affirmative action. America did not develop as, and still is not, a society blind to race, color, or sex. Better that you had made that argument, which would possibly be along the lines of better loans, scholarships, free education, etc...

Many good points.

> There is a huge difference between the Admission rates for Asians Vs African Americans. In fact the admission rate for Asians is lower than Whites!

You seem to assume that the applicant pool is equally strong across races, especially with reference to the parts of the application outside of test scores and grades. I humbly suggest that this is not true.

> It does not matter that the current percentage is 27% when Harvard itself admitted that it would be 40% if not for AA.

I would like to see that exact quote. Iirc, that was the stat if they went by grades and test scores, which they never have and most likely never will.

> And finally I do not understand where this degree of faith in Harvard is coming from?

I have worked in an advisory capacity at several elite schools on the admissions process.

I’ve seen how the sausage is made. Most people get it incredibly wrong.

> This is the institution that systematically gave Asian significantly lower "personality scores" without even meeting them. Even while their own alumni rated Asians similar to their peers. Is this not an explicitly exclusionary policy?

Maybe.

The real question is if they also rated non-Asian people with similar profiles low on the personality score.

Let me tell you, there are an absurd number of applicants to elite schools that are basically doppelgängers. Strong grades, strong SAT scores, similar essays to thousands of other applicants, no outstanding hook, “standard strong” recommendations, etc. There is nothing that makes these applicants stand out to the reviewer. They may be super pleasant to be around and highly articulate, but so what? So are truckloads of other applicants.

I haven’t seen the comparable numbers for Asians versus other races, but there are no shortage of boring white applicants and boring applicants from every race that would warrant a lower personality score (however that is described).

Additionally, there are a number of reasons that one group or race might have lower average personality scores than another group that don’t involve racism. As a simple made up example, the ratio of “hail Mary” applications to strong applications might impact this. Note that I have no idea what race/group sends a higher percentage of Hail Mary apps than another, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were a few.

I can tell you one group that definitely exists. Kids of upper middle class parents in the northeast corridor who are pushing their kids to an elite school when their kid absolutely doesn’t care. The vast majority of these applicants probably have low personality ratings because they aren’t really trying that hard to stand out. Is that exclusionary? I dunno… seems reasonable to me.