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

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#441

Post by busterarm » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 3:47 PM UTC

donatj wrote: post #411

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 was with you right up to > But it’s a few thousand dollars if that (as low as under $1,000) which is reachable to all but destitute families. Selling my blue collar parents on $1,000 to slightly improve my chances of getting into a slightly better school so I could spend even more money? That’s absolutely not happening. I’d have gotten a pat on the back and told there’s no shame in community college. I think you mi…

You lost me at 'parents'. I grew up poor as shit in a single parent household. Food stamps. Hand me down clothes.

My mom made damn sure that I went to the best possible schools, did all of the afterschool programs (including the expensive ones like band) and went to summer camp. She had to beg, borrow, save and sacrifice to make sure that happened.

If you grew up in a two parent household you're already significantly ahead of the game by a huge margin.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#442

Post by lazide » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 3:53 PM UTC

DebtDeflation wrote: post #420

ejb999 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that, and then the highschools where they have 30 or 40 'valedictorians' in one graduating class. Now the term 'valedictorian' has also become meaningless as well. When everyone is a valedictorian, nobody is.

>the highschools where they have 30 or 40 'valedictorians' in one graduating class. What? The definition of a valedictorian is literally "the student (singular) with the highest academic standing in the graduating class" just as the salutatorian is defined as the student (again, singular) with the second highest standing.

Just like ‘literally’ now means ‘not literally’, folks keep changing things when it suits them.

Some schools literally don’t give less than a B anymore, and that some would make anyone with an ‘A’ valedictorian is a real thing. According to this [https://www.campusexplorer.com/student-resources/what-is-a-v...] article I ran across, Stratford High School near Houston gave 30 students valedictorian in 2010, and I doubt that has gotten much better.

Think of it as ‘scam innovation’ - the first ones to do it get major rewards (for schools it would be acceptance at better institutions for their students), then it spreads as more people figure it out, it hurts the legit folks, then folks start adjusting for it to try to tamp down the scamming.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#443

Post by mohanmcgeek » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 3:55 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…

> However, in case of South Asia/India, the argument is positive discrimination now to correct for negative discrimination in the past.

I don't think India makes this "penance for primordial sins" argument.

There's a current high correlation between somebody's caste and somebody's socio-economic status which is reservation is supposed to solve. It has loopholes surely and in some parts of the country, completely useless. But overall it is effective in increasing social mobility and social cohesion.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#444

Post by NeverFade » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 3:56 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.

The number of admissions is limited. If there are two groups, X and Y, and you discriminate in favor of giving more admissions to group X, group Y will have fewer.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#445

Post by mohanmcgeek » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 4:01 PM UTC

abhink wrote: post #312

cutemonster wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to get admission in the top college Could this indicate that there're many bright people in India, who are mostly self taught, because they belonged to the "wrong" group and so couldn't study at University (or at least not the one they wanted) ? Whilst, if someone has studied at a top university, it doesn't mean that much?

This is correct to some extant, and not just for getting education. As an example, in many competitive exams conducted by universities etc. to select students, the selection cutoff marks clearly show this pattern of intentional discriminatory admittance. For someone belonging to "general" category, anyone designated to an upper caste, the cutoffs percentage for selection could be as high as 97-99%. For "reserved" cat…

> This means someone scoring 95% would not get get an admission offer while someone else scoring 15% would.

Sounds entirely made up. All these exams generally have a minimum clearing criteria at 60-65%

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#446

Post by lazide » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 4:02 PM UTC

Wiseacre wrote: post #124

lazide wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't going to fix that by only letting folks with terrible upbringings in important positions. You'd need to start fixing those terrible upbringings, and likely wait a few generations.

Who is saying only one thing should be done? You can see free lunch programs and free daycare but you can also see that is not a panacea by itself.

Results and end capabilities matter. If there is a way to reliably produce better end results and capabilities, we should do them. If there is a way to better (as in more tied to reality) measure for better results and capabilities we should.

I don’t see that being part of the discussion anymore though, and haven’t for awhile unfortunately.

It used to be this discussion was about how to take better advantage society wide of folks who had good capabilities by not artificially restricting the set of folks being considered (and helping those who didn’t have an opportunity to learn/try).

The goal posts keep moving though, and now seem to be ‘damn that, just give them a spot regardless’, which is terribly corrosive society wide.

If someone is legitimately awesome and is in an underserved community, they’ll forever doubt their actual capabilities AND everyone else will too, because they know the system has been rigged at some level to favor them based on attributes other than their capabilities.

It’s why nobility generally rotted out from the core too.

Any method of choosing folks that isn’t based on effectiveness and actual quality will rot the system.

It happens all the time, and most of the shiftiness we deal with in everything from healthcare to roads to politics is because we forgot this.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#447

Post by alistairSH » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 4:04 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #440

alistairSH wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A holistic review will be done of students whose applications demonstrate enhanced merit; 550 seats will then be offered to the highest-evaluated students. Students will be evaluated on their grade point average (GPA); a student portrait sheet where they will be asked to demonstrate Portrait of a Graduate attributes and 21st century skills; a problem-solving essay; and experience factors, including students who are e…

"... and experience factors, including students who are economically disadvantaged, English language learners, special education students, or students who are currently attending underrepresented middle schools." I would think this would be the more problematic part. It's not based on achievement/performance but based on status. It sounds as if they give preference points for people with low income, from underreprese…

Yes, the old policy was also race-blind in language, no question about that. But, it had decades of results that were extremely race-biased.

Equality vs equity - I'd prefer we removed the sources of inequity. Do that and equality works itself out (in theory, anyways). The admissions fee removal seems like an easy win - paying for access to a public high school strikes me as extremely inequitable and I can't think of a good reason to require a fee here. The admissions test could be inequitable - the county decided it was, so removed it. The question, in my mind, is what replaces the test? GPA, essay, and portfolio seem reasonable. I'm not sure about language and income policies, but at the same time, fixing those sources of inequity are massively complex and outside the scope of the school board.

I wish I could find the actual policy WRT language/income/school, implementation is key here. And the language used by people on both sides isn't helpful - too much emotion, not enough facts.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#448

Post by SyzygistSix » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 4:04 PM UTC

darkerside wrote: post #292

niemandhier wrote: post #289

It is easy to rage against perceived injustice, but maybe this is just a case of "All predictors become bad if they become the target"? In the end the goal of admission processes is to select a certain type of individual. Since some degree of objectivity is needed they created a system that tried to select the desired people based on objectively measurable factors. Maybe a subset of the american asian culture is over…

Some people get _more_ angry about systemic racism than the old fashioned personal hatred kind.

Both are an issue but they have some different solutions. I would think institutions are ideally set up to reduce the amount of both.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#449

Post by nicwolff » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 4:04 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #201

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…

> 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. If you look at those particular stats, sure, it doesn't sound particularly objectionable. But if you look at others: https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/15/politics/harvard-affirmative-... > Under questioning from SFFA lawyer John Hughes, Fitzsimmons detailed some of…

No, that amounts to "we have way too many people of your color, we're going to invite more people of other colors to apply". Says nothing about making it harder to get in.

The "personal" ratings might:

> Lee said Students for Fair Admissions had misconstrued data, and that race was used only to a student’s advantage in certain circumstances, and never to his or her disadvantage.

which sounds like a weird argument since obviously "advantage" for one in a zero-sum competition is disadvantage for all others, but counters the accusation that Asians in particular are being penalized.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#450

Post by notch656a » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 4:05 PM UTC

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…

Can you refer me to the 23andme algorithm that determines race with 99.9999% parity with self-reported race? Where do they report this outcome? I'm unable to determine the algorithm or find this claim by 23andme just from the reference to '23andme algorithm.' I've been totally unable to find such claims made by 23andme, suggesting they predict 'race' with any certainty to self-reported 'race.'

I know what meiosis is, that isn't in dispute here.

>College admissions departments already check to see if applicants are lying about race, e.g. by looking up their social media.

Isn't that just checking for consistency? Say I change my mind about what race I am due to it being typically poorly defined. Many children have changing views about race over time, so it seems quite absurd to expect a literal child applying for college applications to fully understand and stay consistent about a topic that is constantly evolving and often nebulous. What you know at age 13 when opening your first facebook may not match your understanding of yourself at 17 when applying for college. And it's not clear to me what objective definition we are using of 'races' to make sure every applicant is following the same standard for determining when the applicant is lying and when they are not.