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Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

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Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#611

Post by derangedHorse »

scarmig wrote: post #349
Miner49er wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's always a lot of weird circumlocutions around "merit" and "opportunity." In NYC, the poverty rate is higher among Asians than among African Americans or Latinos. In what way do the latter groups have "less opportunity"? Is it simply that Asian kids only succeed because they cheat by studying more?

I think that’s a weird stat to try and provide an argument with. There’s been a huge influx of Asian immigrants to nyc in particular and high poverty rates makes sense if you’re grouping all these immigrants in one group because they’re from the same continent (which never made sense to me since even Americans see Indian people to be distinct from Chinese people for example). Thus I don’t think it’s fair to say other groups don’t have less opportunity based on that.

Also with regard to how other groups might have less opportunity, it could be a result of harsher institutional racism towards one group of minorities versus another even given the same socioeconomic circumstances.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#612

Post by YaBomm »

dang wrote: post #597
pinephoneguy wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s a minority of mostly white progressives pushing this stuff. I think if you look a little closer you'll find that many members of that "white" minority are in fact not White (or Hispanic, Black, or Asian.)

You can't do this here. I've banned the account.

No post body was provided.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#613

Post by selimthegrim »

shard wrote: post #576
ransom1538 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wondered if these parents raising test ninjas are doing their kids favors. We have google now. I don't need to know the capital of Ukraine - I can just google it. STEM is great to study, but most of the academics in it after 8th grade are not particularity useful. I still haven't been asked to solve a differential equation at work. I have never been asked what school I went to during an interview (i wished t…

Sounds like the first step towards the world described by Issac Asimov in "The Feeling of Power": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power

Interestingly enough, he apparently had issues understanding how integration by parts worked.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#614

Post by bitwize »

zer0-c00l wrote: post #454
bitwize wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons why MIT has the reputation it has, is because MIT admitted lots of smart Jewish students who couldn't get into Harvard... because they were Jewish. (Keeping the Jews out was once largely the point behind Harvard's selective admissions process.) If, today, Harvard is keeping Asians out, it means more smart, eager Asian students to be recruited by other universities, which just might rise in status f…

100%. So many people in this thread are out here acting like going to an Ivy League school is a guaranteed right afforded to those who score well on tests. That’s never been the case. These institutions have been discriminatory from the start and IMO more or less historically exist to provide a path to success for privileged, mediocre, old money scions.

Just saw your nick. Hack the planet!

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#615

Post by vt100 »

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…

> It's unfortunate that a quality education is a finite pie we have to divvy up into thin slices.

I think this belief is part of the problem. Information is infinitely replicable at zero cost, but we create barriers to its dissemination. If there are kids who are eager and able to learn material, they should have access to that it. And if they have mastered the material, they should be granted recognition of that objective fact. Any other policy means we are deliberately dumbing ourselves down.

On the other hand, perhaps we need to dissect what it is we mean by "education", because while access to information can be unlimited, the number of places at Harvard IS limited. Inasmuch as membership in an exclusive social club is limited, and inasmuch as the Harvard class is an exercise in social engineering, I can see wny one may want some representation for various groups.

In short, knowledge doesn't need to be a finite pie. It only appears to be so because some domains are gate-kept by limited admissions numbers in order to protect the supply of labour in those professions. The tech industry shows that when we don't have professional licensing, talent can find a way regardless of credentialism.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#616

Post by vt100 »

lelanthran wrote: post #255
TulliusCicero wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> So, an individual Asian student needs to score much higher to have a chance at Harvard, compared to students of other ethnicities. That's very blatantly racial discrimination. > This amounts to, "sorry, we have enough people of your color, so we're gonna make it harder for you to get in." That's wrong. Period. "The law of unintended consequences" ... what are they going to do if the target demographic (in this case…

Such universities already exist, for example Howard University and Albert Einstein. Just not for Asians yet.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#617

Post by 0des »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #516
SyzygistSix wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Harvard is undoubtedly where so many future leaders come from (perhaps another entirely different problem), a better description might be leadership qualities.

And according to Harvard, Asians conveniently score lower personality scores.

Learning how such a thing is calculated would be interesting.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#618

Post by [deleted] »

jpgvm wrote: post #595
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/racis... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100730074308.h... “ "The belief in the fairness of the tests and the accuracy of the gauges to check them has been so deeply engrained that to challenge them would be akin to questioning the sun as center of the solar system," said Aguinis, a nationally recognized expert who was also a co-author of an amicus…

The amount of bollocks in those two links is hard to quantify. People who's job it is to complain about how unfair the world is aren't fit to decide how we should measure the effectiveness of education and our students progress. Leave that to educators, just like we can leave the bitching to the "Antiracist Research & Policy Center". The tests -will- show that disadvantaged children are behind, that is literally the…

[deleted]

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#619

Post by csa »

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…

> So, an individual Asian student needs to score much higher to have a chance at Harvard, compared to students of other ethnicities. That's very blatantly racial discrimination.

A little late to this, but…

1. Your quotes refer to recruiting, not admissions.

2. Even if your conjecture that Asians admitted to elite schools have higher scores on average than other minorities holds water (it probably does), I think this focus on SAT scores and grades sort of misses the point of the admissions processes in many elite schools (including, and perhaps especially, Harvard). Specifically, they are typically looking for people who have been at the top of something or had an impact on something at a regional, national, or international level. Lots of folks (Asians and otherwise) have great grades and SAT scores, but they don’t really stand out in other ways.

> This amounts to, "sorry, we have enough people of your color, so we're gonna make it harder for you to get in."

It’s more like “sorry, you were only above average (not outstanding) in one of the five criteria we evaluate, so we will take a hard pass”.

Note that academics is only one of five factors used in Harvard admissions (iirc). Getting the top rating in academics might be something like winning a prestigious math or science competition, so having “great grades and high SAT scores” doesn’t even merit the top rating in one category. I think many people don’t realize this.

You don’t need top ratings in any single category to get in, but if you don’t have a top rating for any of the evaluation criteria, you need to be above average in several of them.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#620

Post by csa »

busterarm wrote: post #435
TulliusCicero wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

They can still deny you even then. The Asian discrimination was already heavy in the early 00s when I was finishing high school. A close friend of mine had perfect scores in basically everything and Harvard turned him down on the basis of "we already accepted your older brother and it wouldn't be fair of us to take two of you".

> A close friend of mine had perfect scores in basically everything and Harvard turned him down on the basis of "we already accepted your older brother and it wouldn't be fair of us to take two of you".

I will go out on a limb and say that this is a narrative he shares to avoid embarrassment, and it’s probably not true from the Harvard perspective.

SAT scores and grades are only one part of the admissions evaluation criteria. How did he do in the others? What about his brother?

Something like this might happen if his high school had a certain range of slots for each elite school, and the school counselor decided to against advocating for him to get into Harvard specifically for some reason. That said, it still may have been a polite way of saying that he was not as good as his brother. Furthermore, if he was actually a compelling applicant, I imagine he got into some other elite school.

I really wish more people would learn about and appreciate the different evaluation criteria that elite schools use. These criteria aren’t perfect, but they strike me as being fairly dynamic.

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