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Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

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Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#211

Post by [deleted] »

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #200
root_axis wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite the increased chances of admission, black students make up a modest 5% of the (e.g.) Harvard student body compared to Asian students and white students at 13% and 40% respectively. Ultimately, I can't justify the idea of rejecting students based on race, but when I look at those demographics I just don't see much to get worked up about. From a more cynical angle the problem almost seems like "the total percen…

> It's unfortunate that a quality education is a finite pie. Good that it's not then? With modern technology, one can get started on ultra cheap automated courses (not necessarily just static lectures, can be interactive/VR experience like good computer games), coupled with one on one help from paid and volunteer tutors around the world. Than those who show potential can in due time be given access to expensive resea…

[deleted]

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#212

Post by Mordisquitos »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #208
notch656a wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking at face they're 99.9999% the same, are you opting towards the self selection option, the DNA option, or some combination of the two? Can you walk me through which DNA algorithm you're referring to that matches self-reported 'race' 99.9999% of the time?

I'm not a bioinformaticist. Try the 23andme algorithm, or whatever they used in the research that compared self-reported race to genetically measured ancestry. (The objective definition of your race is defined by where your ancestors come from, which, due to how babies get made, can be measured from your DNA. You can read more about this "DNA pseudo-science" here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiosis ) College admis…

I am a biologist and a bioinformatician, though not currently active in those fields. There is no such thing as an "objective definition of race", and claiming that so-called race can be determined from one's DNA is indeed pseudo-science.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#213

Post by anon7725 »

gxs wrote: post #137
uejfiweun wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to understand, this is the last dying throes of a liberal fire that has been raging for hundreds of years. Liberalism has achieved great things in the west, including expanding the rights of women, minorities, and LGBT individuals. We are all better off for its achievements. However, the low hanging fruit is taken, and now the same activists that once fought for noble goals are reduced to taking ever more di…

Thank you for contributing something other than pop-sociology to the comments (omg race is a social construct guys). I hadn’t thought about this this way before - eventually anyone with an inclination to “rage against the machine” will have to really pinpoint that energy and drill down and down until it seems like a parody. Not saying we’re there now, but an interesting thought exercise.

When the idea is backed by corporate HR departments and academic orthodoxies, it’s no longer raging against the machine. It is the machine.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#214

Post by [deleted] »

tqi wrote: post #154
markdown wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I think there is clearly a problem of inequality of opportunity in America, and Affirmative Action is probably a necessary bandaid to heal the legacy of slavery and racism. However based on the evidence presented, the admission policies at Harvard (and other schools like it) were absolutely appalling. The systematically lower "personality" scores for Asian applicants and the dean of admission's testimony about "geogr…

[deleted]

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#215

Post by SamReidHughes »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #212
SamReidHughes wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a bioinformaticist. Try the 23andme algorithm, or whatever they used in the research that compared self-reported race to genetically measured ancestry. (The objective definition of your race is defined by where your ancestors come from, which, due to how babies get made, can be measured from your DNA. You can read more about this "DNA pseudo-science" here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiosis ) College admis…

I am a biologist and a bioinformatician, though not currently active in those fields. There is no such thing as an "objective definition of race", and claiming that so-called race can be determined from one's DNA is indeed pseudo-science.

Then why can you tell what race people are by looking at them?

I claimed you can predict 99.9999% of people's self-identified race from their DNA. Is that wrong? How high does that number have to be before you'd call it non-pseudo-science?

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#216

Post by carrionpigeon »

actuator wrote: post #202
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…

This is what affirmative action will look like. If you want to see the context of such an action happening somewhere for long time, take the example of India. There it is much more explicit and written in the law. For some subjects, the criteria it takes for one cohort to get admission in the top college is the same one in which the other cohort will not even get admission in any college in the top 20. You can see th…

I was curious about how the Indians handle this, too, so I read Republic of Caste by Anand Teltumbde. It's a long, rambling, but detailed description of how the reservation system was playing out in India. Broadly, he argues that any initial positive effect has been displaced by caste becoming even more of a wedge issue (each caste feeling disadvantaged unfairly and hyper-vigilant for others' corruption) and castes scrambling for favorable designations (e.g. inventing a new history of victimization or fabricating a genealogy in order to be assigned to a more favorable schedule).

Ironically, Teltumbde advocates for replacing reservations with American-style affirmative action.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#217

Post by bzbarsky »

fmajid wrote: post #207
root_axis wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite the increased chances of admission, black students make up a modest 5% of the (e.g.) Harvard student body compared to Asian students and white students at 13% and 40% respectively. Ultimately, I can't justify the idea of rejecting students based on race, but when I look at those demographics I just don't see much to get worked up about. From a more cynical angle the problem almost seems like "the total percen…

This discrimination is not to protect Black or Hispanic students from being outcompeted by Asians, it is there to protect Whites , just like anti-Jewish discrimination before WW2 when Jews were not considered white. Bringing Blacks and Hispanics into the conversation is a red herring used by elite universities to defend the indefensible. If you want to see what a truly meritocratic admissions policy would look like,…

> it is there to protect Whites

Is it? The estimate at https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_p... disagrees, but if you have other data I would be interested.

> at least in STEM

This is an important caveat, by the way. The racial breakdown differs quite a bit by major at many of these schools. I doubt Harvard would be 44% Asian even without the discrimination they engage in (and so do the authors of the study linked above, who put it at 37% Asian admittees if all the racial/atheletic/legacy preferences went away).

> not the paltry 15% quota the Ivies have consented to grant them.

15% when? The data I've seen has Harvard at 15% Asian about 10 years ago. Per the chart above the fraction of Asians in the set of people who get _admitted_ is 24%. Per the numbers at https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/harvard-university/s... Harvard's _enrolled_ undergrads are 21% Asian. Not sure whether the discrepancy has tso do with systematic differences in how often people accept the offer of admission or whether something else is going on.

> The other thing to consider is that “diversity” somehow fails to consider class.

Yes, fully agreed.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#218

Post by anonymoushn »

goodoldneon wrote: post #48
yhoneycomb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not beat around the bush here. It's "messy" because it's racist against Asians.

How do you suggest we increase admissions for under-represented groups?

You could try ending legacy admissions or admitting fewer white people.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#219

Post by anonymoushn »

esyir wrote: post #173
travisporter wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t you want to look at my dice if I don’t get a 6 after 50 rolls? 12? I think it’s reasonable at a certain point

Sure, though your dice might not be weighted the way you thought. Rather, you might want to look at the pipeline. Asian culture is particularly education focused, so is it surprising that Asians are overrepresented in areas heavily associated with education?

"Asian culture" is hardly a monolith. It may not make sense to admit ~0 Filipinos because the quota for Chinese students has been hit.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#220

Post by SamReidHughes »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #148
SamReidHughes wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Outside actual poverty, the kids are still getting fed, going to school, maybe they're one console generation behind two-parent households but even that's not such a big deal now...
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