Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 624 posts

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#141

Post by thaumasiotes »

jjcc wrote: post #85
TeeMassive wrote: post #2

What is the mainstream Progressive justification for discriminating against Asians?

I think somehow it's based on the idea of "give more opportunities to the weak" which seems more humane. It's not the policy only in the State. Believe or not, there's a similar policy in China that if a student is ethnic minority then s/he can get extra scores on the university entry exam named GaoKao which is equivalent to SAT. To take advantage of the preferential treatment, there are quite some fake "minority" st…

> Believe or not, there's a similar policy in China that if a student is ethnic minority then s/he can get extra scores on the university entry exam named GaoKao which is equivalent to SAT.

I was amused, looking up the admission thresholds for 清华, to see that Uyghur applicants get their scores docked by an amount that I assume equals the boost they got for being Uyghur.

No such readjustment seems to be applied for Mongols, Tujia, or etc.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#142

Post by anamax »

dahfizz wrote: post #35
chernevik wrote: post #13

Set standards, let people meet them, and don't worry about what they look like.

Ideally, yes. But if the group of people who meet your standards does not exactly match the demographics of the general population, you will be held accountable.

> Ideally, yes. But if the group of people who meet your standards does not exactly match the demographics of the general population, you will be held accountable.

Like the NFL or NBA?

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#143

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ipnon wrote: post #100

It's discrimination any way you slice it. You can't lower the bar for one person without raising it for another so long as the class sizes remain the same. If elite universities are about providing education (a valid point of critical contention), then systematically barring Asians from entry is the same class of injustice litigated in Brown v. Board of Education. It's not enough to say you can learn calculus just as…

Did Brown vs. Board of Education ever apply to private schools (like Harvard and unlike U Mass)? I’m guessing private schools had some rules applied to them later, but that was way after Brown and probably under different laws not arising from the constitution.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#144

Post by Ekaros »

dahfizz wrote: post #35
chernevik wrote: post #13

Set standards, let people meet them, and don't worry about what they look like.

Ideally, yes. But if the group of people who meet your standards does not exactly match the demographics of the general population, you will be held accountable.

So in workplace the gender-death the split isn't 50:50. Why aren't we very hard working to make it reality? By either making some work more dangerous or forcing people the gender-split on dangerous work?

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#145

Post by saunier_duval »

markdown wrote: post #112
ipnon wrote: post #100

It's discrimination any way you slice it. You can't lower the bar for one person without raising it for another so long as the class sizes remain the same. If elite universities are about providing education (a valid point of critical contention), then systematically barring Asians from entry is the same class of injustice litigated in Brown v. Board of Education. It's not enough to say you can learn calculus just as…

Quoted post unavailable.

It’s lazy policy making. Affirmative action should be based on generational poverty.

India has had caste based reservations for a while. There is no going back. Now sometimes 60 to 80 percent of government jobs or higher education seats are reserved.

A sad joke.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#146

Post by tomerv »

dshpala wrote: post #127
markdown wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Wait, are you saying that it'll be better for US to copy India's caste system? Let me guess which caste you think you'll end up.

I think they're saying that India's affirmative action against the caste system is a good idea, not the caste system itself. For a while now, people from the lower castes have gotten preferential treatment when applying to universities, and it seems to have reduced some of the stronger stereotypes against the lower castes. However, I'm not sure it translates well to the case of racism in the US.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#147

Post by Ekaros »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #108
abledon wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A colleague i know also argues that people tend to hire/promote people who look like them (subconscious bias that they prefer their own 'kind' / stemming back to tribal era etc)

This is pure, 100% anecdote, but, I remember at my first tech job, there were basically 3 teams working on different aspects of the product. I, a white male, was on a team with 3 other white males. There was another team of around 5 or 6 who were all Chinese. The last team was probably 10-15, all Indian. All these people were damn good at their jobs, but it was rather interesting how the demographics fell.

Part of this might be nepotism and networking. Maybe we should ban those from recruitment. Can't recommend anyone anymore. Just purely blind system, maybe text or voice changer, so visuals involved...

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#148

Post by thaumasiotes »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #84
jimbob45 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You stop blaming their issues on the white boogeyman and instead knuckle down to fix the hard problems that don’t have sexy solutions (e.g. single parent households, poor nutrition, high-crime proximity, lack of access to studying material, etc).

None of those things you listed are a problem for the upper half of minority households by income. For example, the upper-half of blacks have a higher median income than whites (including if you control for age) and no poverty. And the bottom half, most of those aren't the kind of shitty parents you're suggesting they are, either.

> And the bottom half, most of those aren't the kind of shitty parents you're suggesting they are, either.

Well, the black bastardy rate at last count was 70%. They're not exactly model parents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_family_struct...

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#149

Post by carabiner »

j7ake wrote: post #109

Would it be more fair to weight applicants by household income rather than race? For example, given two equally strong applicants, but one is from upper class and the other lower class, it seems clear that the lower class applicant is stronger, because they were able to achieve similarly with fewer resources.

This is already done with first-gen college students having advantages in admissions. Income is highly correlated with race, but also confounded by the cost of living (say, cities vs. rural areas). A waiter in San Francisco might make $50k (well above the median US income) but basically be at poverty quality of life while raising a child in the city. Colleges also have access to databases on high school qualities, and so they have an idea of the rigor and depth of high school programs around the world, and thus know if a 3.8 GPA was hard earned or inflated. Basically there is a vast number of factors that adcoms try to control for, but it's not easy.

If you read College Confidential forums, you'll see how adcoms are well aware of all of these considerations and have been struggling to integrate them in an equitable and rational way for their entire careers.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#150

Post by kleene_op »

markdown wrote: post #112
ipnon wrote: post #100

It's discrimination any way you slice it. You can't lower the bar for one person without raising it for another so long as the class sizes remain the same. If elite universities are about providing education (a valid point of critical contention), then systematically barring Asians from entry is the same class of injustice litigated in Brown v. Board of Education. It's not enough to say you can learn calculus just as…

Quoted post unavailable.

We'll see if you still think line that lowering the bar is a chance for America when you have to take a plane designed by a 2.1 GPA.
Post reply on HN