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Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

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Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#241

Post by Lascaille »

jpgvm wrote: post #209

So they should. Anything other than an objective standardized test is just asking for bias. Australia gets by just fine with standardized testing only, don't see why America can't as well. If you make the cut then you can qualify for scholarships if you are disadvantaged because of means, etc. To be fair though Australia is overall more equal in terms of schooling outcomes but to pretend that it's a university/colleg…

>Australia gets by just fine with standardized testing only, don't see why America can't as well.

Because when the results align along racial boundaries and votes (and therefore power) can be won by 'combating' that 'discrimination' policies follow accordingly.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#242

Post by markdown »

saunier_duval wrote: post #145
markdown wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

It’s lazy policy making. Affirmative action should be based on generational poverty. India has had caste based reservations for a while. There is no going back. Now sometimes 60 to 80 percent of government jobs or higher education seats are reserved. A sad joke.

> Now sometimes 60 to 80 percent of government jobs or higher education seats are reserved.

There's your problem. Not the fact that there's affirmative action, but that it doesn't reflect society. Affirmative action should always result in outcomes that reflect society. So 60% is fine if 60% of the population are dalits (or whatever the protected class is). Basically you review it every few years so that it always reflects society.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#243

Post by trophycase »

jpgvm wrote: post #209

So they should. Anything other than an objective standardized test is just asking for bias. Australia gets by just fine with standardized testing only, don't see why America can't as well. If you make the cut then you can qualify for scholarships if you are disadvantaged because of means, etc. To be fair though Australia is overall more equal in terms of schooling outcomes but to pretend that it's a university/colleg…

Huh? I'm all for calling this what it is: discrimination. But many these are private institutions. They can discriminate however they want. Also as people have been saying for a long time: standardized tests don't necessarily measure what certain educational institutions deem important.

Also for what it's worth, I encountered more cheating Chinese students in my time in college than any other race by far. They even had email lists where they'd circulate around all the test prompts and homework answers. So let's not pretend like grades and test scores are some end-all be-all of academic achievement.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#244

Post by markdown »

throaway425119 wrote: post #175
markdown wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I grew up in a society where 3 major races make up 60%, 26% and 10% respectively. The 26% and 10% have a culture of striving, and they typically aspire towards business and/or the professions. The 60% (the majority) are indigenous and had civilization that stretches back centuries. However, they did not (and do not) have a achievement-oriented culture and therefore are not given to striving (at least in comparison to…

Thanks for that. I appreciate your view. I agree that affirmative action is a very blunt instrument and best used short-term only.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#245

Post by Gareth321 »

root_axis wrote: post #160
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…

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…

>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.

Really? I find it very easy. Racial discrimination is wrong. Period. You're pointing to a social discrepancy and saying "eh, maybe racial discrimination is okay because it might make the demographics more equal." I urge you to fully consider what this entails. If we want to live in a multicultural society, we must accept that different groups have different values, preferences, and practises. We choose to allow groups to be different, so we must accept that this means groups end up in different places.

Asian parents in the U.S. exhibit high propensity to encourage that their children study more than all other ethnic groups(https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110505103345.h...) (data here: https://www.bls.gov/tus/). Unsurprisingly, Asian children grow up to earn more than all other ethnic groups, and display lower levels of crime. In other words, this cultural difference results in an income and wealth disparity.

I am not of Asian descent, and I believe that a child should not be studying their childhood away. Who is right? Should I be making my children study 13 hours every week? Or should the Asian parents have their children study less? After all, if the existence of a disparity alone is morally wrong, one group must bend.

Or can we accept that different groups are different. This is indeed the premise behind multiculturalism. This will result in disparities between groups as a necessary and healthy outcome. Not something to be feared, but something to be celebrated as an expression of free will and cultural autonomy.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#246

Post by rosndo »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #192
j7ake wrote: post #109

Would it be more fair to weight applicants by household income rather than race? For example, given two equally strong applicants, but one is from upper class and the other lower class, it seems clear that the lower class applicant is stronger, because they were able to achieve similarly with fewer resources.

The advantage of race is that it's not easily gamed. Using household income would incentivize families to try and minimize income in the years prior to college admission. Additionally, you'd have to deal with how income relates to cost of living (e.g. 100k in Alabama and coastal California aren't the same).

Race is really easy to game, nobody will actually verify your ethnicity.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#247

Post by Gareth321 »

trophycase wrote: post #243
jpgvm wrote: post #209

So they should. Anything other than an objective standardized test is just asking for bias. Australia gets by just fine with standardized testing only, don't see why America can't as well. If you make the cut then you can qualify for scholarships if you are disadvantaged because of means, etc. To be fair though Australia is overall more equal in terms of schooling outcomes but to pretend that it's a university/colleg…

Huh? I'm all for calling this what it is: discrimination. But many these are private institutions. They can discriminate however they want. Also as people have been saying for a long time: standardized tests don't necessarily measure what certain educational institutions deem important. Also for what it's worth, I encountered more cheating Chinese students in my time in college than any other race by far. They even h…

>But many these are private institutions. They can discriminate however they want.

Even private institutions are legally prevented from discriminating on the basis of protected class, such as race. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case against Harvard later this year to rule on just this, and there is a good chance the plaintiffs succeed in ending the practise of racial discrimination in college admissions.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#248

Post by Gareth321 »

vertnerd wrote: post #238

If you have an admission process based on a standardized test and everyone named "Smith" decides to game the system by prepping heavily for the test then you will have a lot of students named "Smith" in your school. The answer is not to create a quota for people named "Smith". The answer is to create admission criteria that are not easily gamed.

Is studying hard really "gaming the system"? The rules are clear for everyone: learn the material and you will do well. The solution here seems simple: provide additional study support for people not named Smith. Unfortunately, most of the academic achievement gap is because of what happens in the home, and this is a place where lawmakers have been reluctant to intervene for obvious reasons. Lawmakers cannot force parents to prioritise studying or academic achievement, and while parents from certain demographics continue to show lower involvement and encouragement in their children's academic outcomes (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110505103345.h... - data here: https://www.bls.gov/tus/) the gap will persist.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#249

Post by cudgy »

> They don’t like the way unions leveraged a pandemic to put their members’ interests ahead of the children’s.

This seems like a cheap shot. I assume the article is mentioning teacher’s unions, which should logically prioritize the teacher’s interests over children’s. Don’t they exist to advocate for teachers and not students by definition?

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#250

Post by j7ake »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #235
ffwszgf wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Race can and is absolutely gamed all the time. Case in point: Senator Elizabeth Warren. Just because it can be gamed doesn’t mean it’s not a good metric

Yes, but it’s harder to game. Income is vastly more fluid than racial identity, especially since in this situation it’s more advantageous for your income to go down.

Income and wealth are better predictors of “privilege” than race though.

So one is using a worse indicator.

Using a mix of income and wealth over several years to me is an appropriate indicator and cannot be easily gamed.

The fact that Will Smiths kids get a better chance to get into college than a similar applicant from a first generation immigrant family from Vietnam shows how broken race as an indicator can be.

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