Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support • Hacker News Board

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#171

Post by ejstronge » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 7:19 PM UTC

thatswrong0 wrote: post #69

ejstronge wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your assumption is wrong Perhaps... > It is because the extremely high percentage of Black kids living under single parenthood family [1] This is wildly unsourced - what data do you have (ideally across nations/racial categories) for this?

Wildly unsourced? The person you're responding has a link right there in their comment with a government source.

Where in that link does the case for single-parenting causing poor outcomes get made? Why is pointing to a spreadsheet sufficient evidence for a complex outcome?

This and the other sibling comments seem focused on single-parenting and not the rest of the GP argument (which I still maintain is unsupported).

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#172

Post by dang » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 7:43 PM UTC

bobmarley1 wrote: post #120

_m96l wrote: post #110

The key facts of this story is that Harvard has been discriminating against Asian-Americans based on race, which is illegal in the US. Harvard knows they've been acting unlawfully, which is why they desperately try to resort to evasive tactics, such as claiming their admission process is a "trade secret" and should never be discussed in court: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/harvard-university-is-figh... The DoJ is…

It's actually not at all clear if it's legal hence the court battle. In fact AA is literally legalized discrimination that benefits Minorities so you really don't know what you are talking about.

This and other recent comments you've made have broken the site guidelines. We ban accounts that do that, so would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here?

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#173

Post by zacharytelschow » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 7:43 PM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #166

zacharytelschow wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What systematized injustices are you referring to?

Please familiarize yourself with basic facts about crime and punishment in USA. After that, pay attention to how those basic facts affect the communities on which they are imposed.

The basic facts are black people commit more violent crime and have a correspondingly high rate of incarceration. They have a higher prevalence of single parent homes, a contributing factor to academic under achievement (and future crime). Blacks commit abortion at such an alarming rate, in some major US cities there are more black abortions than live births.

Screaming racism and demanding reparations (through redistribution of wealth, affirmative action, or other means) isn't going to change the real, underlying problems.

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#174

Post by sjg007 » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 8:50 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #149

2bitencryption wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote time: The high school I went to served two neighboring communities, one uber wealthy, the other lower class. As such, the uber-wealthy income taxpayers allowed our district to pay teachers in excess of $150k. I think our gym teacher made $200k. Several of my high school teachers were former university professors. And besides being qualified, these teachers were in general top-notch educators of high school s…

I was looking more for studies than anecdotes, like the one mirajshah posted. My anecdote is that I went to a charter school that served 23 different communities across basically half the state of Massachusetts. Median family income from these communities ranged from $54K (Leominster) to $202K (Lincoln). And there were very noticeable differences in both behavior and academic achievement between students from the Fit…

Did your charter school have entrance requirements?

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#175

Post by mantas » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 8:53 PM UTC

badlucklottery wrote: post #33

mantas wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that would certainly improve education, affirmative action camp would still have plenty of talking points. More educated parents do have effect on their kids' educational ability. There's always space to one-up by those who got money. Classes can always be smaller, some schools can always have better teachers and equipment, more study-oriented students will keep concentrating in specific locations. Perfect equa…

>Perfect equality is not possible. Of course but this is one of those "perfect is the enemy of good" situations. Right now we're doing very little and it shows in Title I schools.

My point is that affirmative action will stay relevant as long as there's no perfect equality. Which is not possible.

Even in today's situation affirmative action is wrong. We should accept people by merit, period.

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#176

Post by SenseiMaster » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 9:01 PM UTC

40acres wrote: post #7

This argument, while important, is the low hanging fruit of the affirmative action debate in my opinion. We would not need affirmative action if legacy based admissions wasn't so prevalent in top schools. We would not need affirmative action if every school district in America recieved proper funding to support teachers and enable smaller class sizes, test prep for students to take specialized exams, and after school…

It's not low hanging fruit by any means. I'm guessing it would raise the Asian American population by 10s of % at all the top tier schools.

The set of students who are both poor and almost meets Ivy League standards is most likely very Asian. IIRC, universities have made the argument that financial affirmative action would not work for racial diversity (implicitly because few poor students who do well are black or Hispanic). Generally, this set is competing with the privileged black and Hispanic students who under perform compared to their socioeconomic background. Removing affirmative action would displace almost exclusively rich Hispanic and black elites with a mix of poor Asians and some rich Asian/white elites.

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#177

Post by SenseiMaster » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 9:11 PM UTC

hackinthebochs wrote: post #152

The subtext of the hand-wringing over this case is that somehow Asians have earned or deserve their spot in Harvard for having X GPA or Y SAT scores, and thus it is "unfair" for people with lower GPA/SATs to be admitted over them. But this is just flat out wrong. The issue is that admissions to top universities isn't strictly meritocratic. Or to put it another way, "merit" in this context isn't simply GPA and SAT sco…

It most definitely is a moral issue when students are racially discriminated against. There is a trade-off between racial diversity and racial discrimination.

What you're saying here is that non-Asian leaders who are individually worse leaders take the spot of Asian leaders who are individually better leaders because the race of non-Asian leaders makes them better leaders.

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#178

Post by threatofrain » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 9:14 PM UTC

hackinthebochs wrote: post #152

The subtext of the hand-wringing over this case is that somehow Asians have earned or deserve their spot in Harvard for having X GPA or Y SAT scores, and thus it is "unfair" for people with lower GPA/SATs to be admitted over them. But this is just flat out wrong. The issue is that admissions to top universities isn't strictly meritocratic. Or to put it another way, "merit" in this context isn't simply GPA and SAT sco…

My interpretation of your statement is that you're arguing for Harvard's business prerogative to turn business knobs to achieve business outcomes. But do you not agree that there is moral wisdom in striking race as a consideration from the market?

There are all sorts of scenarios where there are natural incentives to discriminate on race; perhaps a bank can improve their model on creditworthiness if they considered race. Perhaps a company that provides security personnel can better model risk if they considered race. Perhaps Harvard can better improve their ability to accumulate powerful people if they considered race.

But isn't it agreeable that not all kinds of strife is useful to a nation? Perhaps strife between companies is useful for diversity in a market, but racial strife? Which brews into generations of mistrust?

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#179

Post by SenseiMaster » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 9:15 PM UTC

_ptgt wrote: post #25

lainga wrote: post #2

Equivalent Bloomberg article [0] mentions that the ACLU has taken Harvard's side, and they state [1]: While the DOJ’s brief does not challenge Supreme Court precedent granting universities the right to freely select their own student body—presumably because it cannot do so at this stage of the litigation—the Trump administration has advocated for “race-blind” policies, which Harvard and virtually all other universiti…

I find the ACLU's statement wholly unsatisfying. There is a tradeoff here: is unquestionable racism against Asian-Americans justifiable to increase advance African-American participation in higher education? There is also surely a legal question at play. The ACLU, instead of addressing either matter, launches a political statement announcing its stance without justification. Lost some respect for them here.

It annoys me how every official statement from institutions supporting affirmative action doesn't seem to acknowledge that racial discrimination is happening and is actively harming individuals.

Any reasonable person would at least acknowledge the trade-off between racial discrimination and racial diversity.

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#180

Post by rhcom2 » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 9:18 PM UTC

dustinmoris wrote: post #163

rhcom2 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Smart people will always pick up what they need in order to succeed university, with or without a previous academic background." is just a reframing of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and ignores the entire history of inequality in the US.

No it's not. It means if you are smart then you are still smart even if you haven't visited a private school and entry exams should be changed in such a way that it actually measures the potential of a candidate instead of their current education history. Also years of inequality don't have an effect on a blind process, because no student today had to live through a century of inequality. People of today have been bo…

Inequality is systematic and generational, "because no student today had to live through a century of inequality" is a ridiculous statement when we still have major problems with inequality in schooling, health care, criminal justice, the list goes on and on. Just because things are better than they were 50 years ago doesn't erase 300 years of history.

There is no such thing as a completely "blind" process that can somehow "measures the potential of a candidate" outside that candidate's socioeconomic history and outside the history of inequality in the US. It's the dream of a pure meritocracy which is completely impossible in reality.