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

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

#131

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 3:23 AM UTC

ng12 wrote: post #35

brighteyes wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't be 90%. It would be 40%, most likely, because that's what happens in California universities that don't have racial quotas. Even if it would somehow go up to 90%, and people viewed that negatively, why does that matter? Those people are wrong.

This is happening in NYC right now. The high-achieving highschools are dominated by Asian-Americans. Admission is granted solely on the basis of a standardized test -- and enough of a stink has been made that the mayor is considering removing it in favor of a more holistic "diverse" approach. http://abc7ny.com/education/parents-students-protest-plan-to...

Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in VA, one of the best high schools in the country has a class of 2019 that is 21.8% white, 74% Asian, 1.7% black, and 2.6% Hispanic. My guess is most highly selective universities would look similar if admissions were race blind there as well.

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

#132

Post by EventH- » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 3:23 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #101

EventH- wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pure ideology, built with rhetoric on emotional sand instead of argument from principle. A difference in outcome by itself in no way lays a requirement on society to 'drive that disparity to zero.' This is a baseless, indefensible assertion and leads to utter chaos when applied across society in the myriad ways one may analyze 'inequalities of outcome.'

Society is necessarily built on ideology (also known as principles). The idea that differences in outcome shouldn't be based on factors like race isn't exactly a radical one. Nor is it based on rhetoric or emotion--if we assume races are equal, differences in outcome tied to race must be the result of societal inefficiencies and failures.

First of all, principle and ideology are very different things.

Secondly and more to the point, there is no reason to privilege race over any other of the millions of filters with which to slice up society to find inequalities of outcome. And even if there was, showing a correlation between one of those filters (race) and an inequality does in no way show injustice 'based on race' no matter how emphatic the assertion.

People with different hair colors, or heights, last names, pet types, and sibling orders on average don't have identical outcomes. And these differences in outcome by themselves are not unjust, are mere correlations, and therefore do not require fixing. Just read Harrison Bergeron by Vonnegut; it's not long.

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

#133

Post by chmln » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 3:24 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #53

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…

Race blindness isn’t the end goal, the goal is racial equality. Today, black people on average make 1/3 less income than white people. Because we must assume black people are intrinsically just as capable as white people, the goal must be to drive that disparity to zero. With that in mind, it makes no sense from a scientific/engineering perspective to ignore race. No scientist or engineer looks at a situation, sees a…

> Today, black people on average make 1/3 less income than white people. Because we must assume black people are intrinsically just as capable as white people

The premise is flawed - beyond wishful thinking, do you have any reasons to believe in equal capabilities across e.g. all racial groups for any given activity? Because there is vastly more research showing the contrary.

> They’re going to see “race blindness” for what it is—an attempt to sweep under the rug generations of oppression because it’s uncomfortable and we’d rather pretend “we’re all good now, right?”

Because at some point, we're gonna have to move on from this perpetual oppression and victimhood mentality. What solutions do you propose to correct "generations of oppression" that do not oppress other racial groups?

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

#134

Post by kryogen1c » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 3:25 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #53

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…

Race blindness isn’t the end goal, the goal is racial equality. Today, black people on average make 1/3 less income than white people. Because we must assume black people are intrinsically just as capable as white people, the goal must be to drive that disparity to zero. With that in mind, it makes no sense from a scientific/engineering perspective to ignore race. No scientist or engineer looks at a situation, sees a…

> History will remember “race blindness” with derision.

This is an emotional claim with very little practical application or philosophical thought. What exactly is your moral solution? Quantify for me, in dollars, how much hundreds of years of slavery is worth. Do we poison every non black person, or have different tax brackets? Is your claim that a 10% favoring on college admissions for children that werent slaves against children that werent slavers justifies centuries of rape, murder, and torture?

>Because we must assume black people are intrinsically just as capable as white people

Not only must we not assume that, it's probably not true. That's why Asians are being discriminated against in this case - their race is a better performer on average.

> Today, black people on average make 1/3 less income than white people.

I'm surprised no one has challenged you on this "fact". If it were true in the sense you are implying, businesses would be seeking to hire exclusively black people and heavily discriminate against nonblacks.

> Race blindness isn’t the end goal, the goal is racial equality

Equality of outcome is infinitely different than equality of opportunity. One is fair, the other is self destructive and murderous. See Russia and China, et al.

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

#135

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 3:25 AM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #96

brighteyes wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what GP was referring to, but those issues are related. If Asian-Americans were 40% of Harvard (as they should be based on merit), instead of 17% (as they are now) then that would mean fewer spaces for everyone else. In particular, it would make achieving the goal of affirmative action - proportionate representation for black and Hispanic students - much harder.

Asians are around 60% of the world population, no? So I'm not sure how a rise to 40% of Harvard inhibits "proportionate" representation. Edit: I'm not pretending to be obtuse here - I'm actually questioning why an elite university should be representative of US demographics rather than the world.

[deleted]

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

#136

Post by famil » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 3:30 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…

Actually that's exactly what happened in the 1920s onward.

Harvard’s admissions committee began using the euphemistic criteria of “character and fitness” to limit Jewish enrollment.

From: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/opinion/is-harvard-unfair...

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

#137

Post by chmln » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 3:30 AM UTC

silisili wrote: post #69

dominotw wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is race even a factor? This has been endlessly discussed to death. It is a factor because it is a factor in society(common eg: black names not getting callback for an interview). It is a factor because social inertia exists. Ignoring it and putting your head in the sand is not moving forward, places like harvard to want to take corrective measures to offset the inertia. Yes we would like to live in a race blind…

Why is the name even a factor? Why can't it be an input of criteria, and handled by formulas? We're not in the 1920's with a guy with a fat cigar looking at each one individually, while burning and throwing away the ones that sound (irish/black/jewish/whatever).

> Why is the name even a factor?

Because many people still believe in stereotypes. But whether stereotypes have any truth to them is a different question entirely.

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

#138

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 3:30 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #78

rayiner wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Race blindness isn’t the end goal, the goal is racial equality. Today, black people on average make 1/3 less income than white people. Because we must assume black people are intrinsically just as capable as white people, the goal must be to drive that disparity to zero. With that in mind, it makes no sense from a scientific/engineering perspective to ignore race. No scientist or engineer looks at a situation, sees a…

Because we must assume black people are intrinsically just as capable as white people, the goal must be to drive that disparity to zero. Must we? There's another comment here about no one seeming too bothered that the NBA doesn't contain very many Asians. Is it already too racist to believe that there are certainly trends in race, and that everyone is different and should be considered on their individual merits alon…

[deleted]

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

#139

Post by gizmo686 » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 3:31 AM UTC

glangdale wrote: post #129

gizmo686 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 valu…

This assumes that the sum total of Alice and Bob's ability to perform in higher education is measurable by their admissions portfolio. I can picture many different things matching this overall impression. Perhaps Alice is the child of two university professors and has vaguely drifted to near-perfect scores without really having to work. Alternately, she has slaved over her books desperate to please her parents and is…

Yes. In reality, we are talking about populations. It is still possible that the type of confounded you describe applies at the population level as well, which is why I qualified my statement with "might expect". This is an empirical question that requires empirical evidence to answer. Further, universities have this empirical evidence (although I am not aware of what it actually says).

I do recall hearing that (at some point in history) the army looked into this and found that black soldiers did better then their white counterparts with an equal score entering. Further, this is presisly the result I would expect to see in the face of generic anti-black bias. For instance, if there was some force that depressed black SAT scores by 10 points and had no other effect, then a black student would be expected to perform as well as a white student who scored 10 points better on the SAT.

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

#140

Post by acomjean » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 3:31 AM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #52

acomjean wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard is the position of Ranking and admitting students. They have a fair number of very high scoring academic performers so they use some other metics. They use 4 criteria: Academic, extracurricular, personal, and athletic. Some of the stats are on rankings based on race are here [1]. I suspect its not as cut and dry as the lawsuit alleges: (pg 36) [1] https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/diverse-education/file..…

Suppose the application was fully race-blind, and Harvard could rank all applicants on the four criteria you listed (academic, extracurricular, personal, athletic), and derive an overall score for each applicant. I would claim that this score would strongly suffer from racial bias. A cohort admitted based on this score would look like a cohort where certain racial groups historically disadvantaged would appear to hav…

Well the same guy behind this lawsuit filed one in Texas earlier. It went to the supreme court in 2016. The result said that Universities can use Race as one measure of admissions. Having a diverse student body is considered a good thing, but its a balancing act:

>>“A university is in large part defined by those intangible ‘qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness,’” Justice Kennedy wrote, quoting from a landmark desegregation case. “Considerable deference is owed to a university in defining those intangible characteristics, like student body diversity, that are central to its identity and educational mission.

>>“But still,” Justice Kennedy added, “it remains an enduring challenge to our nation’s education system to reconcile the pursuit of diversity with the constitutional promise of equal treatment and dignity.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/24/us/politics/supreme-court...

I guess being transparent about how you are doing admissions is probably the best way forward, but it leads to lawsuits when the data doesn't look like expected. Expect statistical analysis of this data from both sides saying what they want.