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Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

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

#161

Post by [deleted] »

kryogen1c wrote: post #150
gourial wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Harvard administrators think the upper echelons of society - which a Harvard education can lead someone to - should reflect the racial makeup of the broader society as a whole by default. While they must discriminate negatively against Asian Americans to achieve this goal, this discrimination is justified in their minds. I'm not defending it, just recognizing discrimination is not an end for them but a means…

What a bold and interesting claim! Do you have any evidence for it? I have a hard time believing the admissions board would take such a stance for such a petty reason

[deleted]

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

#162

Post by jack9 »

_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…

> Ethics is never a question of goals

Not to be nitpicky, but to ensure you don't actually try to use the phrase again...that's exactly what ethics are about.

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

#163

Post by echaozh »

siosonel wrote: post #124
userbinator wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We must. Asians have not been systematically denied entry to the NBA for hundreds of years. I do not deny that there are ethnic differences or cultural priorities. But if a group of people has been systematically told for a very long time that they cannot achieve anything beyond being a slave, then that oppressed group would probably not bother to engage in technical or scientific pursuits, nor would they have time t…

The Asians are now systematically denied entry to the Academy and you are supporting it now.

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

#164

Post by AnthonyMouse »

rayiner wrote: post #80
shados wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black people on average make 1/3 less income than the average white person because certain significant subgroups of white people are highly privileged. The problem you then hit is that when you start compensating for certain groups by race, instead of the actual root of the problem (people who don't come from a priviledged background have a hard time getting out of it), you then leave everyone else absolutely screwed…

> Black people on average make 1/3 less income than the average white person because certain significant subgroups of white people are highly privileged. No that is wrong. It’s not some elite white subgroup. According to the BLS: “Among the major race and ethnicity groups, median weekly earnings for Black men working at full-time jobs were $723, or 72.5 percent of the median for White men ($997).” That’s not even cou…

> Put another way, if whites took a pay cut so they made the same as blacks, $1.6 trillion of national income would disappear, a number comparable to the total income of the entire top 1% ($2 trillion).

Isn't this how that is expected to look if the difference is due to elites? The total difference is equal to the amount made by the elites, almost all of whom are white. And that's assuming the "elites" are only the top 1% and not e.g. the top 20%.

Or look at it from the bottom side. The population of white people who make less than the median black person in the US is larger than the black population of the US.

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

#165

Post by olalonde »

anon23423532 wrote: post #156
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Race blindness isn’t the end goal, the goal is racial equality. Says you. The whole concept of race is an aritifical construction, a barbaric vestige of the past that should be rightfully recognized for what it is, and cast off. >Today, black people on average make 1/3 less income than white people. Even if society were totally race blind, some of that disparity would remain—it would be the legacy of when society wa…

Do you believe in evolution and genetics? Different races have various different afflictions, sickle-cell, tay-sachs, cancer rates, etc. Different facial structure, average height, body fat distribution, muscle mass, limb length, etc. You would have to deny evolution and genetic inheritance to think that different groups of people living apart for tens of thousands of years in vastly different environments didn't res…

That's true but the idea that we can create distinct categories based on skin colour is incredibly misguided. Also, we haven't been living apart for quite a while now. See this article: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/race-gen...

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

#166

Post by dwaltrip »

EventH- wrote: post #132
rayiner wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There aren't massive systematic factors working to negatively affect specific slices of those population groupings. It's not a good comparison.

That's not to say that Harvard's approach is necessarily the best way to tackle this issue. But it's very difficult to argue that there isn't an issue at all.

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

#167

Post by jpster »

jappleseed9 wrote: post #107
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…

Ofcourse all types of people are likely intrinsically pretty close to everyone else, but you can't underestimate the effect of culture. Roughly speaking, alcohol is legal worldwide if you're above the age of 18 or so. So why do alcoholism rates vary massively between countries? It's largely 'culture'. Black american culture has been pretty self-destructive these last hundred years. Look at rap music videos, thug cult…

>Black american culture has been pretty self-destructive these last hundred years. Look at rap music videos, thug culture, single motherhood statistics, etc.

I suspect you would hesitate to judge the entirety of white american cultural progress on e.g. Kim Kardashian, sporting event riots, and Nascar.

For anyone interested in a less monolithic assessment of black american culture, this is possible. https://nmaahc.si.edu

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

#168

Post by JauntyHatAngle »

PakG1 wrote: post #128
JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologise, but that is my genuine question, and my genuine thoughts. The way I wrote that is because on issues like this, people get quite charged one way or another, so I wanted to avoid anything personal and just hear the specifics. I'm definitely putting myself into the deep end on this stuff, so I want to hear more on the arguments from both sides - and also the specifics on this case because a lot of it slides…

OK, having parsed your comment again on a larger screen, I don't think you've missed the parent's point. But I do think you took an unnecessarily long, roundabout way to ask your question, which I also think didn't need to be asked because I think the parent's view is quite clear. So your question didn't add to the conversation on two points: first, it was really verbose and obtuse; second, it didn't contribute to th…

Thanks for the comment.

I suppose I should have front loaded the comment, I was basically saying there was too wide a net cast by that comment so it was difficult to get into the grits of it.

Fair call.

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

#169

Post by _8j50 »

jack9 wrote: post #162
_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…

> Ethics is never a question of goals Not to be nitpicky, but to ensure you don't actually try to use the phrase again...that's exactly what ethics are about.

I actually meant what I said,maybe I was speaking my belief as opposed to the popular view I disagree with?

For example, we can debate the ethics surrounding killing a person. Can I kill a useless member of society? How about a dangerous criminal? Someone trying to kill me? I can accept all of that as a question of ethics.

What I cannot accept is framing ethics with an end goal in mind such as "killing people will reduce the population" vs "killing is not the best way to reduce the population","Killing dangerous criminals will prevent future violent crimes" or "you shouldn't kill useless members of society because that won't guarantee a productice society". These questions are framed with the end goal beinf the reason the act is considered ethical or not.

My belief is that asking if an act is ethical relative to a desired end goal is in itself unethical. If the end goal is the deciding factor then we're discussing strategy not ethics.

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

#170

Post by perl4ever »

6nf wrote: post #154
perl4ever wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because the vast majority of Harvard students are from the USA?

You seem to be suggesting that Harvard should represent the US because it currently does represent the US. I don't find that particularly compelling logic, but I believe the underlying assumption is also false.

Harvard has roughly 20% international students, whereas the US as a whole has about 0.6% lawful non immigrants[1].

[1]https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Nonimmi...

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