Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans • Hacker News Board

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#111

Post by gizmo686 » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:55 AM UTC

brighteyes wrote: post #99

aabajian wrote: post #81

I think something that's overlooked is the importance of parents in admissions. Case in point: Jewish culture values education in the same way that Asian families value education. As a result, a large number of white students admitted to Ivy Leagues are Jewish. 25% of the white students in my med school (Yale) were Jewish, despite making up only 1.4% of the U.S. population. I don't agree with racial quotas, but there…

> there has to be some form of normalization for students whose parents/culture/childhood environment didn't value education. Why? Colleges are literally places of education. It doesn't seem odd that children who focused on their education would be highly-represented there. Intervening earlier may make sense - promote education in environments where it's less focused on.

Consider two children, Alice and Bob, who appear equal on objective measurements while applying to college. Alice comes from an environment that heavily values education; Bob comes from one that does not. Despite this, they both achieved equal academic results. Further, if admitted, they will both find themselves in the same education valuing environment (college).

Since Bob came from an environment that did not value education, we might expect to see an improvement from the mere fact that he is now in an environment that does value education. In contrast, since Alice already came from such an environment, we would see no such improvement (from that cause).

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#112

Post by allenz » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:57 AM UTC

dokein wrote: post #87

In my opinion, Harvard needs to just be straight about why they're doing what they're doing. If it's race-based quotas for the sake of class diversity or long-term societal benefit, then just say it outright and we can have a discussion as a society as to whether that's ok. I personally think this is bad (with medium confidence), but understand that there are arguments for why it may be necessary. What they shouldn't…

Racial quotas are illegal, so Harvard cannot say it outright. Harvard says that race is considered as a factor in their holistic evaluation.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#113

Post by Teeer » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:58 AM UTC

wuunderbar wrote: post #3

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

Is there an easy way to get updates about this case in my inbox? I'm really hoping Harvard gates raked over the coals for its behavior. Not only for the racism. But the self-righteousness with which it pursued its agenda.

> its agenda Which is what?

That it prefers certain races over others?

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#114

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:59 AM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #110

Ends don't justify means. Period. This isn't right. That alone is enough of a reason to be against it. Ethics is never a question of goals,if that was the case anything can be justified with an end goal which appears worthy enough. There is this subversive ideology about acheiving equality. People are created equal regardless of the "race" social construct. If you have to make someone equal then they were not born eq…

[deleted]

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#115

Post by Jamerson » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:59 AM UTC

We need to stop basing education on submission and obedience. Asians are successful students, but they struggle to build startup cultures in their countries.

Edit: Downvote me all you want. I'm an educator who has toured schools in Asia to build international educational relationships. Their students are perfect automatons who will never take the risks necessary to change the world.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#116

Post by julianss » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:59 AM UTC

I'm a Chinese American and I have experienced this type of behavior during the college admissions process, and during the hiring process with larger companies.

During the college applications process, I noticed I was receiving vastly different responses than my girlfriend (wife now) who was African American.

Perhaps you could chalk it up recommendations or personal projects. But my girlfriend and I were both A students that made the varsity swimming team. She was African American and had 5/7 full tuition responses including Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. While I only was accepted into Columbia, with partial financial assistance. We both wanted to attend Yale at the time and this put a dent in our future plans.

I have also experienced a similar scenario in the "pre-interviewing" resume selection phase, right out of college with no experience. My friend group noticed comparatively that those who were not White or Asian tended to get faster and more initial responses to schedule an interview. (I will note that this occurred exclusively when submitting for large Fortune 500 companies, and not for smaller business such as startups. Perhaps some selection bias) However after a while with some work experience on the resume, this doesn't manifest as much.

It is my belief that university admissions and diversity initiatives need to focus more on individuals than race. The goal should be equality of opportunity and evaluation rather than equality of outcome.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#117

Post by TheCoelacanth » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 3:00 AM UTC

snomad wrote: post #59

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like there are two conflicting goals: - don’t explicitly consider race, gender, etc., while you make a decision about a cohort of admitted applicants. That is, only use other “performance” criteria (grades, essay, recommendations, etc). - ensure that post facto, the observed distribution of demographic properties of your cohort of admitted students fairly reflects the natural distribution, within a societall…

> there is endemic and generational discrimination and privilege issues that can mean even if you truly did not want to make decisions based on race, religion, nationality, etc., you inadvertently did just by using proxies for societal scale discrimination or disadvantage in those categories. Agreed. However, it seems to rest on confusing race for class. How about we just focus on class and get all the benefits (pick…

Some of the difference may be caused by class, but it is definitely not all of the difference. Black men consistently end up with a lower income than white men even when comparing only people with the same parental income[1].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-c...

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#118

Post by Teeer » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 3:01 AM UTC

klenwell wrote: post #21

To get past the affirmative-action-is-reverse-racism argument that often frame these discussions, I'd recommend checking out this thoughtful breakdown of the case from Metafilter: Yeah, debates over affirmative action are just one of many situations where the Asian American "model-minority" mythos gets used in service of anti-Black and anti-Latinx racism, and I encourage other Asian Americans to resist being used as…

Affirmative action is racism, not "reverse-racism". "reverse-racism" is a racist term since it is used to dismiss prejudice against certain races. Racism is racism, no matter the race of the target or the race of the perpetrator.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#119

Post by allenz » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 3:04 AM UTC

Jamerson wrote: post #115

We need to stop basing education on submission and obedience. Asians are successful students, but they struggle to build startup cultures in their countries. Edit: Downvote me all you want. I'm an educator who has toured schools in Asia to build international educational relationships. Their students are perfect automatons who will never take the risks necessary to change the world.

http://sites.psu.edu/christiercl/2014/04/02/why-stereotypes-...

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#120

Post by eh78ssxv2f » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 3:04 AM UTC

gourial wrote: post #4

By enforcing racial quotas, Harvard and other institutions are actively cementing race as an important factor in our society, as if it's something we should care about. As such, they are not helping society to become post-racial - as must be our goal - but instead are forcing a racialized view of the world down our collective throats. While well intentioned, racial quotas are a regressive policy and history will look…

> As such, they are not helping society to become post-racial - as must be our goal

Can you explain what's your definition of "post-racial"? I have seen it defined at least 2 ways: (1) Past the period the anti-racism laws were enacted (2) The period when the effects of racism are over. There are many ways to measure it. One possible way is to check if races that were victims of racism have proportional representation in jobs.