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

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

#191

Post by ramblerman » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 10:17 AM UTC

toomanybeersies wrote: post #125

temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #43

Thought experiment: if you made all admission decisions by lottery, by randomly admitting a previously decided, fixed number of n applicants out of all valid applications received, and the resulting cohort of admitted individuals was later found to significantly differ in demographic composition from both the local and nationwide composition of population, would that be discriminatory? If not, would it at least be pr…

On face value this system seems fair, the most capable students get accepted, regardless of ethnicity or race. The problem with this is that a lot of students from disadvantaged minorities don't get the same opportunities growing up. They might be just as capable as non-disadvantaged students, but get worse grades because they had to work after school to help pay the bills, or didn't have internet access at home, or…

> If you could come up with a model that works better than just bluntly delineating by race, that would be great.

Uhm, don't delineate by race. Trying to fix this by forcing equality of outcome is akin to trying to manage your resources in a 'planned' economy, you will always do more damage then good.

If you have the money to spend, then spend it by fighting poverty, pull more people into the middle class.

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

#192

Post by siosonel » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 11:16 AM UTC

echaozh wrote: post #163

siosonel wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am an Asian. I am against systematic denial of anyone. I say let anyone attend the school of their choice, using online access to overcome space constraints.

As an Asian who've experienced discrimination first hand, I am saddened that necessary differences in the gravity of error correction, as applied to group discrimination, is not obvious to everyone. Correcting the effects of slavery is much more important because its effects are much more pervasive. Getting rejected by a top school is not as dire for a group as a while, especially for someone in a group that is not even a minority at those schools. But I could see how someone could say what you said (but hopefully with at least a bit of explanation to back it up?).

Although the "denial of opportunity" seem systematic in both cases - Asians applying to Ivy League schools and enslaved African Americans in my examples - the latter is not due to space constraints. In contrast, Asians have not been or are under-represented. To me, that fact justifies a top school's effort to make access fairer to historically under-represented groups, whose cultural tendencies have been shaped long-term by outright denial.

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

#193

Post by rayiner » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 11:43 AM UTC

analyst74 wrote: post #175

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…

What about Asians? I mean the immigration system picks cream of the crop into America, who drive up the average/median income of Asian Americans. So now some penalty has to be applied to make sure this group is held in place?

Admissions to Harvard is a zero sum game. Helping one group necessarily involves hurting another. Those “cream of the crop” Asian immigrants (like my dad), do so voluntarily. They know they’re coming to a country that has to deal with some very fucked up things it did to people it brought over in slavery. I think immigrant Asians have no room to complain about those measures.

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

#194

Post by siosonel » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 11:49 AM UTC

fraudsyndrome wrote: post #146

siosonel wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Asians have not been systematically denied entry to the NBA for hundreds of years. I find this comment goes deeper when I followed Jeremy Lin's progression into the NBA. I suggest anyone who is interested in your comment should read too. Lin wasn't systematically denied entry, but the kind of stuff he faced and endured based on his race - which was admitted to by a coach, was pretty bad. And I feel this type of beh…

I agree Jeremy Lin's experience in the NBA was not smooth with regards to acceptance, maybe even now. I'm an Asian, and I've experienced social questioning/shocks that you mention.

Having said that, I still hope that the difference in priority and importance is obvious between: (a) correcting the impacts of hundreds of years of systematic outright denial of opportunity in all aspects of life, and (b) a top school's rejection of an applicant who do not belong to an under-represented group and who will likely get admitted in another top school or another very good school.

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

#195

Post by silisili » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 1:54 PM UTC

IvyAdmisions wrote: post #182

axaxs wrote: post #50

Why is race even a factor? Our society is moving backwards in regard to unification. If we stop using race or nationality as a factor for anything, we can get more fair results - as long as the selection process is thought out enough to not explicitly favor races over one another based on irrelevant factors. It seems like more than ever people are identifying themselves by race, and diversity is celebrated so granula…

I was an ivy league admissions officer for a few years after college. Race is only a proxy for what really happens in these admissions processes. Imagine your job is to create the best possible 2000-student freshman class for Harvard from the 20,000 students who apply. You review the applications and notice to your horror that 600-1000 of them all have perfect or near perfect test scores, boring essays, so-so extracu…

Honest question... what's the problem with Asian? I'm not Asian, but, if their applications were best, I wouldn't be offended if the entire student body was Asian.

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

#196

Post by brighteyes » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:59 PM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #170

6nf wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Colleges do have a significant amount of international students, but the high number is actually in part because they pay more for tuition - it's a good revenue source for colleges. The percentage rises and falls over time for related reasons.

The percentage also rises with higher degrees - people often finish their undergrad in their home country, then go to the US for their graduate degree. But undergrads are the bulk of college student bodies.

So overall, most college students in the US are from the US.

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

#197

Post by brighteyes » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 3:03 PM UTC

gizmo686 wrote: post #111

brighteyes wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 valu…

Sure, if they are equal on all objective measurements, your theory may be valid. But Asian-American students etc. have far better objective measurements than other groups, on average. So if you just break ties, as you suggest, you're not going to move the needle much.

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

#198

Post by magduf » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 3:10 PM UTC

brighteyes wrote: post #93

temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #43

Thought experiment: if you made all admission decisions by lottery, by randomly admitting a previously decided, fixed number of n applicants out of all valid applications received, and the resulting cohort of admitted individuals was later found to significantly differ in demographic composition from both the local and nationwide composition of population, would that be discriminatory? If not, would it at least be pr…

It's not really an edge case, though. Asian-American students should (based on merit alone) make up almost half of top colleges. I realize you probably didn't mean "edge case" as in "a small effect", but the effect here is so large it really is front and center - it would radically change the makeup of top college student bodies, with a large corresponding impact on affirmative action for underrepresented minorities.…

>It's not really an edge case, though. Asian-American students should (based on merit alone) make up almost half of top colleges.

I'm not sure I see the problem here. Top colleges are educational institutions. So what's the problem if people who come from a cultural background that highly emphasizes the importance of education greatly outnumber people who come from cultural backgrounds that eschew education? No one ever complains that Asian-Americans are underrepresented in country music and NASCAR.

If these institutions were to ignore race altogether as a factor, then of course people who come from pro-education backgrounds are going to outnumber those who don't. Why is this a problem? This is just an effect of a culture (or subculture) getting the outcome it's working for. This doesn't mean outlier individuals in anti-education cultures are barred from it, as they're free to compete too, and a truly race-blind system will choose some of them as well.

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

#199

Post by bruthafez » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

pkaye wrote: post #157

toomanybeersies wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On face value this system seems fair, the most capable students get accepted, regardless of ethnicity or race. The problem with this is that a lot of students from disadvantaged minorities don't get the same opportunities growing up. They might be just as capable as non-disadvantaged students, but get worse grades because they had to work after school to help pay the bills, or didn't have internet access at home, or…

Factor parents income into the equation instead of race.

Even that would make little sense. Jeff Bezos' income is $0 (or maybe $1, can't remember) — you really think his kids would be disadvantaged tho? That just massively incentivizes financial trickery in order to reduce stated incomes.

For example if I were a parent I would just give all my money to my siblings with the understanding that they provide it to my kids under my management, state my income as $0 or even negative, and watch my kids' college acceptance letters roll in.

It's impossible to use finances as an admissions variable because finances are already so heavily gamed by modern accounting practices.

Meanwhile Harvard keeps being racist AF. Don't they know about Goodwins law!?!? Lol

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

#200

Post by bruthafez » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 4:27 PM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #166

EventH- wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

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

Yes there are massive systemic factors working against people disadvantaged in those factors, and yes it is a good comparison. Look up the average height of CEOs sometime and then tell me height discrimination isn't a thing.