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Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

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Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#351

Post by mbg721 »

Miner49er wrote: post #345
sokoloff wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can’t wrap my head around an argument that amounts to “that person only succeeded on the test because they put in the time and effort to learn the material and their hard work is the primary thing that separated their performance from this other person; if that other person would have tried, they could have done just as well; that’s not a meritocracy!”

It's pretty simple. A lot of kids don't have an opportunity to put in the time and effort. Some of them still do well despite this, and that shows they have great potential if given the opportunity. Taking life challenges and starting points into account is more of a meritocracy, because you are accounting for the difficulty they had to get to where they are. For example, say you have two kids with the same high SAT…

Your example lists two outliers, though. Nobody thinks the kid with the 1600 SAT score who gets passed over by the Ivy admissions committee is going to turn to a life of cannabis and government handouts; we're not that racist. That kid is exceptional and will always be considered as an individual. The squirmy mass of kids with average scores are more of a concern.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#352

Post by ericd »

cwal37 wrote: post #343
rayiner wrote: post #311

I attended TJ, back when it was about 30% Asian. I’ve always felt like the school should do more to get more underrepresented minorities. I’ve found the recent efforts very off-putting however. It’s based on a modern strain of social justice ideology that adopts some very ugly assumptions about Asians. I’m reminded of Alison Collins in San Francisco, who called Asians “house n—-ers” and said they use “white supremaci…

> But it’s a few thousand dollars if that (as low as under $1,000) which is reachable to all but destitute families. I live in Arlington, so not Fairfax, but in a neighborhood that borders Fairfax (and not really that far away from TJ either). The median household income for our census tract was about a 3rd of the county's average, ~$40k vs ~$120k when I looked into it a few years back. Which is also indicative of th…

I got the impression that he meant $1,000 total, not recurring. Surely most people can scrape together $1,000 over years, if it’s made a priority.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#353

Post by scarmig »

Miner49er wrote: post #336
rayiner wrote: post #311

I attended TJ, back when it was about 30% Asian. I’ve always felt like the school should do more to get more underrepresented minorities. I’ve found the recent efforts very off-putting however. It’s based on a modern strain of social justice ideology that adopts some very ugly assumptions about Asians. I’m reminded of Alison Collins in San Francisco, who called Asians “house n—-ers” and said they use “white supremaci…

> And they act like the cost makes it unattainable for anyone else. But it’s a few thousand dollars if that (as low as under $1,000) which is reachable to all but destitute families This strikes me as extremely out of touch. I would think this cost is unattainable for a large chunk of American families. If it were true, and the cost was so clearly worth it, then why isn't every kid in America doing test prep?

Test prep isn't all that effective in raising scores, at least on the SAT. To the extent that it is, a $30 test prep book provides the lion's share of the benefit.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#354

Post by SyzygistSix »

refurb wrote: post #55
woodruffw wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's anything particularly dreamy or fanciful about a more equal educational system. My understanding is that the US, with its uniquely devolved set of educational authorities and standards is alone in the developed world in terms of the inequality of education offered to its children.

I assume you either have little experience with the US school system or other countries school systems. There is most definitely similar inequality in other countries.

Do they also have a permanent underclass with a high crime rate and result in mass incarceration?

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#355

Post by randomifcpfan »

Miner49er wrote: post #336
rayiner wrote: post #311

I attended TJ, back when it was about 30% Asian. I’ve always felt like the school should do more to get more underrepresented minorities. I’ve found the recent efforts very off-putting however. It’s based on a modern strain of social justice ideology that adopts some very ugly assumptions about Asians. I’m reminded of Alison Collins in San Francisco, who called Asians “house n—-ers” and said they use “white supremaci…

> And they act like the cost makes it unattainable for anyone else. But it’s a few thousand dollars if that (as low as under $1,000) which is reachable to all but destitute families This strikes me as extremely out of touch. I would think this cost is unattainable for a large chunk of American families. If it were true, and the cost was so clearly worth it, then why isn't every kid in America doing test prep?

Different family cultures. Some families value education more, plan ahead more, and sacrifice current consumption for their children’s future more than others. Small differences compound over time.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#356

Post by bhupy »

autoexec wrote: post #314
rayiner wrote: post #311

I attended TJ, back when it was about 30% Asian. I’ve always felt like the school should do more to get more underrepresented minorities. I’ve found the recent efforts very off-putting however. It’s based on a modern strain of social justice ideology that adopts some very ugly assumptions about Asians. I’m reminded of Alison Collins in San Francisco, who called Asians “house n—-ers” and said they use “white supremaci…

> But it’s a few thousand dollars if that (as low as under $1,000) which is reachable to all but destitute families. It seems that more than half the families in the US are "destitute" then ( https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/most-americans-cant-afford... ) and it's been bad for years ( https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americans-struggle-cover-400-em... )

That's a myth perpetuated by a (possibly willful) misinterpretation of the survey results[1][2].

If you click on the report in your own link, the survey summary even says as much:

"If faced with an unexpected expense of $400, 61 percent of adults say they would cover it with cash, savings, or a credit card paid off at the next statement—a modest improvement from the prior year. Similar to the prior year, 27 percent would borrow or sell something to pay for the expense, and 12 percent would not be able to cover the expense at all."

In the study, the Fed asks respondents whether they are able to pay all of their bills in full. Only 17% say they can’t pay some bills. The Fed also asks respondents how a $400 emergency expense that they had to pay would affect their ability to pay their other bills. 85% percent report that they would still be able to pay all their bills. Only 14% say that the emergency expense would result in their not being able to pay some bills. The situation is bad for that 14%, but that figure is much closer to what you would expect in a normal distribution, unlike the sensationalist 40% figure that makes the rounds.

Also, these kinds of surveys capture a point in time, and don't reflect changing affluence of an individual over the course of their life. One study[3] of historic income tax returns found that 40% of working Americans spend at least 2 years in the top 10%. A full 62% spend at least 2 years in the top 20%, and over 54% spend at least 3 years there[4].

If this comes as a surprise, one can sanity check this by comparing the median household income (after taxes, transfers, and benefits) in the US with those of other countries; the US is #1[5].

And NB: even for those that are destitute, the US has a huge safety net, where the poorest fifth of American working age households are better off than those in Canada, Denmark, Britain, and Germany because their market income is higher and their taxes are lower, after accounting for all monetary benefits[6]. That's not to say that there isn't room for improvement (people still slip through the cracks), but it's by no means as dire as many make it out to be.

Given all this, it takes a lot of motivated reasoning to be able to argue that "more than half of the families in the US are destitute".

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-04/the-40...

[2] https://www.cato.org/blog/it-true-40-americans-cant-handle-4...

[3] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourn...

[4] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371%...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...

[6] https://twitter.com/CPopeHC/status/1489702016561602568

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#357

Post by quadrifoliate »

rayiner wrote: post #311

I attended TJ, back when it was about 30% Asian. I’ve always felt like the school should do more to get more underrepresented minorities. I’ve found the recent efforts very off-putting however. It’s based on a modern strain of social justice ideology that adopts some very ugly assumptions about Asians. I’m reminded of Alison Collins in San Francisco, who called Asians “house n—-ers” and said they use “white supremaci…

> It consisted of going to some Indian dude’s house for an hour every Saturday for a summer. If that’s a game changer what does that say about American K-8 math education?

Ironically, this is scouting round a theory I have long espoused – the failure of American K-8 math education has nothing to do with teaching, and everything to do with culture.

Sure, going to some Indian dude's house every Saturday for a summer and prepping is not objectively hard in itself. But think of how many cultural factors had to be overcome for that to work out:

- Your family bothered enough to think about sending you there, rather than spending time keeping up with the Joneses for the latest model of garden sprinkler

- Your family quietly put down one thousand(!) dollars towards additional education instead of complaining about the schooling endlessly over $15 bottomless mimosas on Saturday

- You were extremely uncool by the standards of American culture for doing any kind of test prep. On Saturdays at that. The cool kids were off skateboarding or something, right?

- You stuck it out for a whole summer. Who does that? It's cool to blow it off, man. Chill out!

I think the big problem is that most Americans completely ignore these cultural factors, end up having bad outcomes in math, and then often blame it on the "terrible" school system. Asian-Americans just happen to have enough counteracting factors in their own culture that nullify some of these influences that drive away people from math in the United States.

----------------------------------------

Edit: Just to make it clear, the takeaway from my comment is intended to be "We should value STEM fields more in American culture, start paying your classroom teachers $200k", not "Every kid should be forced into test prep". Test prep is terrible and should be replaced by teaching the fundamentals of math and science much better. Maybe that would have caused 'rayiner to work at NASA instead of being a lawyer!

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#358

Post by AniseAbyss »

shadowgovt wrote: post #341
sokoloff wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can’t wrap my head around an argument that amounts to “that person only succeeded on the test because they put in the time and effort to learn the material and their hard work is the primary thing that separated their performance from this other person; if that other person would have tried, they could have done just as well; that’s not a meritocracy!”

It's more that the other person doesn't get the chance to try because nobody is footing the bill for their test prep.

It is self evident that loving, responsible parents with income provide better outcomes for their children's future.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#359

Post by SyzygistSix »

leephillips wrote: post #91
Manuel_D wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not what is happening. What's happening is that Thomas Jefferson is now using race as a factor in admissions, resulting in reduced representation of Asians. To narrow down more surgically on the issue here: > Many progressives believe in affirmative action, which doesn't say anything about the particulars of the groups that aren't being explicitly included. Nobody at all is interested in exclusion; they ar…

What you say is as inarguable as 1+1=2. That's why it's fascinating to watch people twist themselves into rhetorical knots to avoid the obvious truth. The reason for disadvantaging Asians (and Jews) is that it has always been fashionable to do so. This was true long before the Chinese Exclusion Act and, in the US, it seems it may always be true.

There are a couple takes on this. One is that it was genuine discrimination targeted at Jewish people and Asian people then where as now that is not so much the case. The other take is the reason for affirmative action is to address a very real and stubborn problem where we have what seems to be a permanent underclass. Asian and Jewish people do not seem to be having that problem now, at least regarding college admissions.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#360

Post by DebtDeflation »

whatshisface wrote: post #165
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…

We think universities are trying to solve the trolley problem of whether egalitarianism means letting people rise as high as they can or if it means compensating for all the circumstances of their birth, but they're probably solving the problem of how to admit the student with the highest donation expected value first, then the student with the second highest, then the third...

>or if it means compensating for all the circumstances of their birth

If this is the objective, then we need to start a lot earlier than the point of university admissions. Also, "circumstances of their birth" would need to be broadened to encompass quite a bit more than just race.

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