Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans • Hacker News Board

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#51

Post by gyardley » Sat, May 16, 2015, 1:46 PM UTC

anon-obviously wrote: post #7

The complaint argues that elite schools “that use race-neutral admissions” have far higher Asian-American enrollment than Harvard. At California Institute of Technology, for instance, about 40% of undergraduates are Asian-American, about twice that at Harvard. Interestingly, Ron Unz did a lengthy expose on this issue in 2012, and arrived at similar conclusions: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth…

Ron Unz used different methodologies for figuring out the percentage of Jewish 'top academic achievers' and the percentage of Jewish students attending elite colleges, making his statistics suspect. If you're going to count Jews to make an argument, you need to count Jews in a consistent way.

Andrew Gelman has the details:

http://andrewgelman.com/2013/02/12/that-claim-that-harvard-a...

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#52

Post by cbd1984 » Sat, May 16, 2015, 1:48 PM UTC

Garbage wrote: post #37

freyr wrote: post #35

I knew it! I had near-perfect SAT scores and a very high GPA, but I was rejected by many schools that accepted my friends with lower scores. Now it makes perfect sense. Except I'm white and my high school classmates were Asian and Indian. I'll never understand the admissions process.

Aren't Indians Asians?

> Aren't Indians Asians?

Depends on what variety of English you speak whether the term Asian normally includes Indians or not.

For Brits, Asian primarily means "From the Indian Subcontinent" which includes Pakistan for them, IIRC.

For Americans, Asian primarily means "From East Asia" which is China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia.

Of course, in an academic context, Asian means "Anyone from the Asian Continent" which includes some but not all Russians, all South Asians, all East Asians, all Central Asians, all Middle Easterners (except Egyptians), and whoever else depending on how certain lines get drawn.

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#53

Post by zxcvcxz » Sat, May 16, 2015, 1:49 PM UTC

mattbee wrote: post #40

nodiscpls wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discrimination is a bad thing that should be rooted out and stopped. The most insidious is of course the very PC "positive or affirmative discrimiation" - where a group of people decide discrimination is now ok, just because. It ends up with parody situations, like here in the UK, there is the joke about a lady making an absolute fortune, companies being desperate to hire her, because she is disabled, ethnic, lesbian…

Spreading that fictional "parody situation" is fuel for real discrimination. At best, you've got it backwards. People of colour & women who are perfectly competent at their jobs fall under more suspicion, have to prove themselves more, and are assumed to be less competent than white men doing the same work. There are so many studies affirming this. It's pretty ugly behaviour to hold onto the idea that a single PoC mi…

>It's pretty ugly behaviour to hold onto the idea that a single PoC might be an incompetent "diversity token" rather than just ... someone doing their job.

I've got news for you: People don't hold white males in high regard because they're white males, they do so because they're privileged.

I've never met a "SJW" that actually knows what it's like to be poor, it's all well-off, college educated, mostly white people. Some social justice warriors even go so far as to split people up into groups (PoC?) while at the same time espousing ideas of "equality".

I think most poor people who make their way to the top don't actually get any help, so they end up forming conservative view points, whereas the rich white people just can't understand why poor people don't just stop being poor. It must be because they're black! Congratulations you're a racist.

>Spreading that fictional "parody situation" is fuel for real discrimination.

No it's not. You're basically saying that by not taking race into account at all you're fueling racism. Institutionalized discrimination fuels racism. Why do you refuse to accept that people who are against affirmative discrimination may in fact be for RACE BLINDNESS and not just letting people be racist?

Why can't being blind to race completely be an option? Why does everything that doesn't go your way have to be racism? It sounds more to me like you're just trying to control the narrative to push some political agenda.

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#54

Post by geographomics » Sat, May 16, 2015, 1:52 PM UTC

streptomycin wrote: post #41

Personally I'm not too concerned about this at the undergrad level. So you don't get into Harvard and you have to go to a state school or whatever, that's not really an impediment to your life and career unless you want to become a congressman or a supreme court justice or whatever. Where it does bother me is med school. I've seen several of my Asian friends who were just ridiculously obviously great applicants eithe…

Maybe it's just that the accepted applicants were of the same quality or better, in terms of their predicted suitability to practice medicine. The fact is that not everyone can get into such highly competitive programmes, and unfortunately some have to lose out.

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#55

Post by streptomycin » Sat, May 16, 2015, 2:05 PM UTC

geographomics wrote: post #54

streptomycin wrote: post #41

Personally I'm not too concerned about this at the undergrad level. So you don't get into Harvard and you have to go to a state school or whatever, that's not really an impediment to your life and career unless you want to become a congressman or a supreme court justice or whatever. Where it does bother me is med school. I've seen several of my Asian friends who were just ridiculously obviously great applicants eithe…

Maybe it's just that the accepted applicants were of the same quality or better, in terms of their predicted suitability to practice medicine. The fact is that not everyone can get into such highly competitive programmes, and unfortunately some have to lose out.

That wouldn't explain my observations, where excellent non-Asian applicants were shoe-ins on their first try and Asian applicants of the same quality had to try multiple times, some of them never making it in at all. If it was just a numbers issue and not everyone could make it in, you wouldn't expect such a clear racial difference.

Of course my anecdotes could just be flukes or I could be misinterpreting the quality of various candidates. But given what we know about undergrad admissions, it's not a stretch to imagine the same thing in med school. It's just that med school acceptance is much more impactful than undergrad.

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#56

Post by perfTerm » Sat, May 16, 2015, 2:08 PM UTC

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #23

Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-American === Harvard Accused of Favoritism towards African-Americans/Latinos/etc. The former just has a sexy title. The latter we've known all along because these schools openly state that they embrace affirmative action. The matter of fact is that the school is incredibly strategic in how it makes its admissions decision, taking into account not only race, but geography, and a w…

I hate typing on my phone so I'll make this short.

When it comes to companies, diversity is far better than having whatever the equivalent of "everyone looks the same and has the same SAT scores" so presumably it'd probably work to Harvard's benefit as well to encourage diversity whether mandated by law or not.

There's been plenty of studies pointing to the positives of diversity. In order to foster an environment which will be diverse you're probably going to have to skip over some of the kids from the populations that are large and generally well off even if they have better SAT scores.

I personally, have no problem with this. The kid who just missed getting into Harvard because of their race is probably going to an awesome school and statistically is more likely to come from a pretty good place in the world. They'll be fine.

The other kids who do get in though, get to go to a school that is better precisely because of the advantages diversity offers.

Here's some reading:

http://images.forbes.com/forbesinsights/StudyPDFs/Innovation...

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#57

Post by rayiner » Sat, May 16, 2015, 2:10 PM UTC

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #23

Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-American === Harvard Accused of Favoritism towards African-Americans/Latinos/etc. The former just has a sexy title. The latter we've known all along because these schools openly state that they embrace affirmative action. The matter of fact is that the school is incredibly strategic in how it makes its admissions decision, taking into account not only race, but geography, and a w…

That's not actually true. The majority of Harvard's class is white. Statistically, if they are biased against Asians, that seat is going to a white person, not a black or Hispanic person.

The magnet school where I went to high school has median SAT scores comparable to one of the mid-level Ivies. They got rid of affirmative action. It is now 70% Asian. And that's without accepting any foreign or out of state students. Asians didn't take seats from other minorities, because there weren't all that many to begin with. They took seats from white kids.

CalTech, which is race blind, has 40% Asians, more than the number of whites. That's the end result schools like Harvard are trying to avoid.

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#58

Post by spacehome » Sat, May 16, 2015, 2:11 PM UTC

mycroft-holmes wrote: post #43

mattbee wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spreading that fictional "parody situation" is fuel for real discrimination. At best, you've got it backwards. People of colour & women who are perfectly competent at their jobs fall under more suspicion, have to prove themselves more, and are assumed to be less competent than white men doing the same work. There are so many studies affirming this. It's pretty ugly behaviour to hold onto the idea that a single PoC mi…

> People of colour Are Asians not POC?

The term is nonsense anyways.

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#59

Post by bachmeier » Sat, May 16, 2015, 2:20 PM UTC

streptomycin wrote: post #55

geographomics wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's just that the accepted applicants were of the same quality or better, in terms of their predicted suitability to practice medicine. The fact is that not everyone can get into such highly competitive programmes, and unfortunately some have to lose out.

That wouldn't explain my observations, where excellent non-Asian applicants were shoe-ins on their first try and Asian applicants of the same quality had to try multiple times, some of them never making it in at all. If it was just a numbers issue and not everyone could make it in, you wouldn't expect such a clear racial difference. Of course my anecdotes could just be flukes or I could be misinterpreting the quality…

> Of course my anecdotes could just be flukes or I could be misinterpreting the quality of various candidates.

The beauty of commenting on HN is that you don't need to provide data or citations, you can just write down anecdotes (made up or not), and you'll be upvoted by those who like what you say. And you can feel good about it, because the community thinks it has an intellectual side, engaging in deep conversations about a variety of topics.

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#60

Post by ausjke » Sat, May 16, 2015, 2:22 PM UTC

Affirmative Action is to care for minorities, aren't Asian Americans minorities in this country? What's the definition of Minority in US? Why are so many blacks in NBA?

The best solution is to set up a few Asia-American self-funded private schools across the country, where academics becomes the major admission criteria and your race does not matter, of course this has to be stated carefully otherwise you still could be sued for "discrimination" becomes some group of people will be least represented as expected.

Affirmative Action will not make those who can take advantage strong, as strong comes from serious competition only, they will make that group stay weak for good. It's simply unfair to those kids who spent most of their time learning, what a shame to Harvard and the Supreme Court.