Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination • Hacker News Board

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#371

Post by cyber_kinetist » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

avnfish wrote: post #294

I think this is just a logical conclusion of the US's wider mentality towards higher education. It seems to me that the US considers the main purpose of a high quality college education is to produce good economic and cultural elites. Thus, the focus for these colleges is on identifying and fostering 'good citizens' - those that have the highest potential to be shaped into a well-rounded and ethical stewards of this…

The thing is, ordering your student's scores from top to bottom and selecting the Nth best, is going to create a pointlessly competitive system where students strive only to get the best scores and not get actually meaningful education (ex. South Korea, China). Even things like giving more points to extra-curricular activities, volunteers, and good admission essays, are eventually going to be gamed and impose tons of unnecessary stress at the students. (And these additional 'social' metrics can hinder the selection of eccentric intellectuals, since it systematically filters out the ones regarded as "outcasts" and encourage normalcy and complacency among the students).

My proposal is then: the top X% of students based on test scores will probably have roughly similar intellectual skills, and the much more gifted 0.1% of students are not going to be revealed simply through test scores, examinations, or admission essays. So my solution: take the top X% and filter them through a lottery. In that way you can motivate students to achieve a certain baseline minimum while also minimizing the stresses of college admission (although for this to work well you also need to ensure that universities throughout the nation are funded, supported, and operated more equally, so a talented student who failed to get into one of the top-rated schools because of bad luck can still get a decent-enough education, and then transfer to a better school later)

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#372

Post by pessimizer » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

ayngg wrote: post #82

I feel like these affirmative action policies are attacking the wrong aspect of scholastic achievement that doesn't need to be addressed as urgently as other problems in the system. These policies benefit students that are already having some degree of success, but they don't help the students that really need help, the students that have serious trouble with their education like those described in [1]. Those student…

> In comparison, those getting into a top institution via AA would most likely experience some degree of success even if AA didn't exist.

An extremely disproportionate amount of the benefits of attempts to fix the damage done to black Americans goes to black elites. It's a colonial pattern, where the goal seems to be to generate a tiny clique of representatives who can be treated like diplomats/negotiators for the entire group. The problem is that black Americans are a group only to the extent that they face the same racial treatment by the US, but not through being actually coherent or deeply obligated towards one another. The bulk of black people are supposed to see "representation" and "role models" as some remediation through some trickle-down of inspiration and drive. Black people have plenty of inspiration and drive, what they lack is family wealth; paradoxically, efforts to fix that have concentrated on black people who do have family wealth.

It's annoying but obvious why Asian people would be upset; they're seeing top 0.5% privileged black people getting a benefit from a historical discrimination that has affected them the least (as compared to other black people.) But that's really what meritocracy is: the people who have the most get the most.

It certainly doesn't help that fictional depictions of black people in television and movies tend to depict them as wealthier and more educated than the white people on the same programs, and disproportionately likely to be in management positions. People are bathed in images of black elites (produced by other white people), and when hearing about Ivy League discrimination have to know who that benefits.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#373

Post by tootie » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC

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…

The argument isn't against Asians, it's in favor of other groups.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#374

Post by SyzygistSix » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #6

TeeMassive wrote: post #2

What is the mainstream Progressive justification for discriminating against Asians?

"It's not racism if you're being discriminated against but have power" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52993306 >On 28 May, Ms Mitchum emailed Merriam-Webster to point out that racism is "both prejudice combined with social and institutional power. It is a system of advantage based on skin colour".

It is indeed racial discrimination, but it isn't institutional racism. There is a very definite difference between the two. Lots of people on many sides of the issue like to conflate the two when it is convenient, and some are just ignorant of the difference.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#375

Post by rhino369 » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 2:45 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #332

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…

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!”

To play devil's advocate, these tests are supposed to test aptitude to predict ability to learn--not test what you already know. They are more akin to an IQ test than a bar exam or medical board exams that test your knowledge. If just you want to test their ability to perform in school, why aren't grades the better metric?

It is very likely that increased preparation of the test reduces the tests ability to predict aptitude. If you were testing aptitude for kicking a football, and some players practiced every day and some never kicked a ball before, the test would overrate the players with practice and underrate those who didn't. Send both groups to football kicking practice for 8 hours a day and the test stops being useful.

That said, it is really easy to measure this. And the fact that the proponents of the affirmative action don't prove this factor is significant suggests it probably isn't. All you have to do is see the correlation between asian/white scores and their grades and the correlation between black and hispanic scores and their grades.

I have no experience with Fairfax county school testing, but in law school testing (LSAT), the scores for black and Hispanic students still accurately* predict their law school and bar exam performance. The LSAT isn't biased.

*as accurately as it predicts anyone's performance.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#376

Post by actuator » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 2:45 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #373

actuator wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The argument isn't against Asians, it's in favor of other groups.

I understand. But my argument was, it seems unfair that these Asian kids whose ancestors didn't have anything to do with the race discrimination in US, have to be on the receiving end of the affirmative action.

I know it is not a good example but should we have affirmative action in sporting teams as Asians seem to be underrepresented there.

Should we rather improve the funnels before which are leading to this concentration of Asian kids. This is not even considering the fact if even the desire to follow some subject is equal in every race. If it is not and it should be all things being equal at the start, then we should fix the funnels before.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#377

Post by tootie » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 2:45 PM UTC

tyjen wrote: post #80

I'm a confused by the equity claim to justify discriminatory behavior with what seems like heavy emphasis on race. It seems difficult to achieve equity without transparent, and standardized methods emphasizing a holistic assessment covering visible and invisible, immutable and mutable characteristics--each of which impact individual outcomes. I understand that tackling overrepresentation and underrepresentation is im…

NYC is going through the same thing and it's really awful. They have danced around a wild mix of policies to encourage meritocracy through testing, school choice across boroughs, charter schools. I am all for equity and inclusion, but achieving it by changing the rules of admission to top schools is the lamest answer. What we need are for schools to be better. Let's stop having so many bad schools that people run away from. Unfortunately, that's the hard problem we don't have an answer for. And the author of this article isn't presenting any decent solutions either.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#378

Post by jpgvm » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 2:46 PM UTC

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #267

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…

So you believe standardized tests are unbiased, huh?

It's literally in the name.

All the bias happens well before the tests. Fix the bias at it's root, don't blame standardized testing regimes for exposing the inherent biases in the system.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#379

Post by SyzygistSix » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 2:46 PM UTC

lazide wrote: post #69

TeeMassive wrote: post #2

What is the mainstream Progressive justification for discriminating against Asians?

They’re too successful as a group and it makes everyone else look bad (near as I can tell)

I think it is "their community is not continuing to suffer the problems of lack of success and achievement that other minorities are."

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#380

Post by Lascaille » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 2:47 PM UTC

AniseAbyss wrote: post #358

shadowgovt wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Precisely, and that's the problem we have to solve. We need to remove that influence somehow so everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.