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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

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

>The idea that we can create distinct categories based on skin colour is incredibly misguided.

Yet the "idea" that we can create distinct categories based on geographical heritage is not only not-misguided, it's obvious. You're making a straw man argument because you're the only one isolating skin color alone as the sole determinant in race — albinos exist so obviously you're right. But geographical heritage (ie whether your parents came from Asia or Africa) not only creates distinct categories between people, but it's dishonest to say they don't.

You really telling me that the racial makeup of the NBA has nothing to do with geographical heritage? FOH lmaooo

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

#202

I'm a Chinese American and I have experienced this type of behavior during the college admissions process, and during the hiring process with larger companies. During the college applications process, I noticed I was receiving vastly different responses than my girlfriend (wife now) who was African American. Perhaps you could chalk it up recommendations or personal projects. But my girlfriend and I were both A studen…

I was an ivy league admissions officer for a few years after college. I promise you your application was viewed as "well, here's another really smart asian kid who's otherwise unremarkable from the other 1000 we'll see". Meanwhile, hers was treated like precious gold.

So what's the solution to the problem of not enough seats for x ethnicity when filtering out academic performance metrics?

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

#204

We need to stop basing education on submission and obedience. Asians are successful students, but they struggle to build startup cultures in their countries. Edit: Downvote me all you want. I'm an educator who has toured schools in Asia to build international educational relationships. Their students are perfect automatons who will never take the risks necessary to change the world.

I think it's the Europeans who are failing to build successful startups (no need to talk about whether they are building a "startup culture"). People can quibble, but perhaps China has outpaced the US with regards to startups, and presumably China has a different cultural environment for business.

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

#205
post #89
post #80

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. 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…

In spite of a century the Black population is still concentrated in the South. I am not saying the disparity does not exist. Blacks are less than 10% of population in California and about 33% of population in Alabama. That it self will skew numbers in certain way.

The median white person's salary in Alabama is ~29k. The median black person's salary in Alabama is ~20k.

http://www.usacityfacts.com/al/economy/

Your assertion that difference in American black/white incomes is largely due to differences in geographic distribution is wrong.

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an ivy league admissions officer for a few years after college. Harvard and the other Ivies don't want to keep out asian people. They want to keep out boring, myopic applicants who spend all day studying to achieve the grades and scores they have and show little sign of interest in contributing to the outside world beyond getting a well-paying job as a lawyer or doctor and raising a family comfortably. The Ivie…

The fact that you feel so comfortable saying something that sounds so vicious and dismissive of many many years of students' hard work and aspirations is pretty disconcerting. But even if what you say is true, isn't it a university's mission to expand horizons and channel the talents of hard-working people toward productive and fulfilling ends? Any university worth its salt should be able to mold and guide a proven h…

I didn't stick around past two years because I regularly had to make decisions based on assumptions that I outlined above and I just wasn't comfortable with it. It felt bad reading a pretty good application from a kid in Puerto Rico, but passing because "We'll see much better Puerto Ricans in the NYC schools when we review those". Those kids didn't know they were competing, but they definitely were.

I'd say a university's doctoral programs are designed to "expand horizons and channel the talents of hard-working people toward productive and fulfilling ends". Their undergraduate programs are to perpetuate a base of influence and financial prosperity across as many spheres of society as possible and their masters programs are to print money from selling credentials to middling corporate people looking for a leg up.

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

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you feel so comfortable saying something that sounds so vicious and dismissive of many many years of students' hard work and aspirations is pretty disconcerting. But even if what you say is true, isn't it a university's mission to expand horizons and channel the talents of hard-working people toward productive and fulfilling ends? Any university worth its salt should be able to mold and guide a proven h…

I didn't stick around past two years because I regularly had to make decisions based on assumptions that I outlined above and I just wasn't comfortable with it. It felt bad reading a pretty good application from a kid in Puerto Rico, but passing because "We'll see much better Puerto Ricans in the NYC schools when we review those". Those kids didn't know they were competing, but they definitely were. I'd say a univers…

As to your second point, like I said, it wasn't about asian people. There were TONS of white kids with applications like the ones I outlined. Those kids got whacked too, but asians were the biggest group in the cohort.

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

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Like I said, it's not a race thing, its that a lot of the asian applicants all basically look the same on paper and have the same stated goals. Lots of white kids apply with the same "look" and also get rejected. Those students are not seen as bringing enough to the table.

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

#209
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an ivy league admissions officer for a few years after college. I promise you your application was viewed as "well, here's another really smart asian kid who's otherwise unremarkable from the other 1000 we'll see". Meanwhile, hers was treated like precious gold.

So what's the solution to the problem of not enough seats for x ethnicity when filtering out academic performance metrics?

Lawsuits like this, I'd imagine.

Also, waaaaaay more asians need to be running for Congress. It's getting better but they're still underrepresented slightly (4.8% of reps are asian while 5.6% of americans are).

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

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ah, good catch. I missed the height one. However, I think it's not even close in terms of magnitude. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember hearing something like that tall individuals earn, on average, something like $1000 more per year. That's pretty small compared to differences in the usual groups that people tend to focus on.
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