Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans • Hacker News Board

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#71

Post by gourial » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:31 AM UTC

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #61

gourial wrote: post #4

By enforcing racial quotas, Harvard and other institutions are actively cementing race as an important factor in our society, as if it's something we should care about. As such, they are not helping society to become post-racial - as must be our goal - but instead are forcing a racialized view of the world down our collective throats. While well intentioned, racial quotas are a regressive policy and history will look…

How is discrimination against Asian-Americans well intentioned? It seems like your comment is referring to affirmative action, while the subject at hand is active discrimination against a minority.

Because Harvard administrators think the upper echelons of society - which a Harvard education can lead someone to - should reflect the racial makeup of the broader society as a whole by default. While they must discriminate negatively against Asian Americans to achieve this goal, this discrimination is justified in their minds.

I'm not defending it, just recognizing discrimination is not an end for them but a means to what they consider a just society.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#72

Post by shados » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:31 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #53

gourial wrote: post #4

By enforcing racial quotas, Harvard and other institutions are actively cementing race as an important factor in our society, as if it's something we should care about. As such, they are not helping society to become post-racial - as must be our goal - but instead are forcing a racialized view of the world down our collective throats. While well intentioned, racial quotas are a regressive policy and history will look…

Race blindness isn’t the end goal, the goal is racial equality. Today, black people on average make 1/3 less income than white people. Because we must assume black people are intrinsically just as capable as white people, the goal must be to drive that disparity to zero. With that in mind, it makes no sense from a scientific/engineering perspective to ignore race. No scientist or engineer looks at a situation, sees a…

Black people on average make 1/3 less income than the average white person because certain significant subgroups of white people are highly privileged. The problem you then hit is that when you start compensating for certain groups by race, instead of the actual root of the problem (people who don't come from a priviledged background have a hard time getting out of it), you then leave everyone else absolutely screwed. There's a LOOOOOOT of white people out there, and some are in exactly the same boat.

That's what is happening here, but with Asians. Imagine you're Asian but not from a privileged background. Now not only you have to claw yourself out of that, not only you have to deal with not being white, but you also have to fight against the school's racial quota.

Odds aren't great for you. Worse, its' not just some society bias, it's not just people's racism...it's literally a rule. We're in 2018. Let's not have rules that screw over underprivileged people by race just because some subgroups of those race might make the statistics look in their favor.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#73

Post by anilshanbhag » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:32 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #53

gourial wrote: post #4

By enforcing racial quotas, Harvard and other institutions are actively cementing race as an important factor in our society, as if it's something we should care about. As such, they are not helping society to become post-racial - as must be our goal - but instead are forcing a racialized view of the world down our collective throats. While well intentioned, racial quotas are a regressive policy and history will look…

Race blindness isn’t the end goal, the goal is racial equality. Today, black people on average make 1/3 less income than white people. Because we must assume black people are intrinsically just as capable as white people, the goal must be to drive that disparity to zero. With that in mind, it makes no sense from a scientific/engineering perspective to ignore race. No scientist or engineer looks at a situation, sees a…

The right way is to improve education in neighborhoods with black/hispanic communities.

Instead if we just introduce quotas, the system is not going to improve. Having 50 more blacks admitted to Harvard does not change anything for millions of African Americans who get lower quality education. This is just the easy way out for politicians.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#74

Post by smt88 » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:32 AM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #26

seibelj wrote: post #14

An anecdote about the evolving value of higher education: I received a resume recently for a junior software engineer role. Under the 'Education' section was a paragraph that listed a prestigious university and entrance year, but under it stated something like, "I was accepted to this university, but rather than attend and go over $100,000 in debt, I taught myself computer science and coding for 3 years with online t…

I’m not optimistic. Nobody is actually struggling to find talent, rather they are just not willing to pay competitive wages. If your goal is to underpay someone at all costs, then I agree getting creative with the types of candidate backgrounds you’ll consider might work. Otherwise, college experience is just another way of getting some signal or info about a candidate’s talent. It’s not a guarantee of anything, just…

I don't under-pay anyone, but like most people hiring for desirable jobs, I have too many resumes to sort through and could never interview everyone. You find yourself reaching for quick filters, even if they're not perfect.

Could I miss out on great candidates by interviewing only people with college degrees? Yes, and I'm sure I have.

But the ones I have interviewed have also ended up being the worst interviews of my career, and it had nothing to do with technical skill. YMMV

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#75

Post by smt88 » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:33 AM UTC

silisili wrote: post #69

dominotw wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is race even a factor? This has been endlessly discussed to death. It is a factor because it is a factor in society(common eg: black names not getting callback for an interview). It is a factor because social inertia exists. Ignoring it and putting your head in the sand is not moving forward, places like harvard to want to take corrective measures to offset the inertia. Yes we would like to live in a race blind…

Why is the name even a factor? Why can't it be an input of criteria, and handled by formulas? We're not in the 1920's with a guy with a fat cigar looking at each one individually, while burning and throwing away the ones that sound (irish/black/jewish/whatever).

Names absolutely matter. Many studies have been done where the same resume was submitted with different names. Why not Google it?

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#76

Post by brighteyes » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:34 AM UTC

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #61

gourial wrote: post #4

By enforcing racial quotas, Harvard and other institutions are actively cementing race as an important factor in our society, as if it's something we should care about. As such, they are not helping society to become post-racial - as must be our goal - but instead are forcing a racialized view of the world down our collective throats. While well intentioned, racial quotas are a regressive policy and history will look…

How is discrimination against Asian-Americans well intentioned? It seems like your comment is referring to affirmative action, while the subject at hand is active discrimination against a minority.

Not sure what GP was referring to, but those issues are related. If Asian-Americans were 40% of Harvard (as they should be based on merit), instead of 17% (as they are now) then that would mean fewer spaces for everyone else. In particular, it would make achieving the goal of affirmative action - proportionate representation for black and Hispanic students - much harder.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#77

Post by StanislavPetrov » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:34 AM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #18

gourial wrote: post #4

By enforcing racial quotas, Harvard and other institutions are actively cementing race as an important factor in our society, as if it's something we should care about. As such, they are not helping society to become post-racial - as must be our goal - but instead are forcing a racialized view of the world down our collective throats. While well intentioned, racial quotas are a regressive policy and history will look…

It seems like there are two conflicting goals: - don’t explicitly consider race, gender, etc., while you make a decision about a cohort of admitted applicants. That is, only use other “performance” criteria (grades, essay, recommendations, etc). - ensure that post facto, the observed distribution of demographic properties of your cohort of admitted students fairly reflects the natural distribution, within a societall…

The answer is one that was unfortunately rejected years ago - class-based affirmative action instead of race-based affirmative action. For example, there are far few legitimate greivances that would (or could) be raised by giving admissions preferences to those whose parents don't have a college degree. The end result would still end up assisting minorities most in need without codifying racial preferences or getting bogged down in the arbitrary idea of race at all.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#78

Post by userbinator » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:35 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #53

gourial wrote: post #4

By enforcing racial quotas, Harvard and other institutions are actively cementing race as an important factor in our society, as if it's something we should care about. As such, they are not helping society to become post-racial - as must be our goal - but instead are forcing a racialized view of the world down our collective throats. While well intentioned, racial quotas are a regressive policy and history will look…

Race blindness isn’t the end goal, the goal is racial equality. Today, black people on average make 1/3 less income than white people. Because we must assume black people are intrinsically just as capable as white people, the goal must be to drive that disparity to zero. With that in mind, it makes no sense from a scientific/engineering perspective to ignore race. No scientist or engineer looks at a situation, sees a…

Because we must assume black people are intrinsically just as capable as white people, the goal must be to drive that disparity to zero.

Must we? There's another comment here about no one seeming too bothered that the NBA doesn't contain very many Asians. Is it already too racist to believe that there are certainly trends in race, and that everyone is different and should be considered on their individual merits alone?

As a (Asian) friend once remarked, "raise the bar on us and we just jump higher. Lower the bar on the Blacks and they try even less, because they know they don't have to do as much."

Indeed, it seems all that making it harder for Asians and easier for Blacks has done is pushed the Asians harder to achieve even more, which certainly isn't helping equality much. A pretty good demonstration of the law of unintended consequences.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#79

Post by dogruck » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:35 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #33

gourial wrote: post #4

By enforcing racial quotas, Harvard and other institutions are actively cementing race as an important factor in our society, as if it's something we should care about. As such, they are not helping society to become post-racial - as must be our goal - but instead are forcing a racialized view of the world down our collective throats. While well intentioned, racial quotas are a regressive policy and history will look…

> As such, they are not helping society to become post-racial It did always use to be like that. In the 70s and 80s there was a focus back on individuals regardless of their race, gender or origin. This trend to put quotas goes with the wave of political correctness that started pretty much in the early 90s.

Yes, but when they used purely merit-based standards, some groups consistently scored lower than other groups. That was deemed unacceptable, so discrimination was reintroduced to the process.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#80

Post by rayiner » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:35 AM UTC

shados wrote: post #72

rayiner wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Race blindness isn’t the end goal, the goal is racial equality. Today, black people on average make 1/3 less income than white people. Because we must assume black people are intrinsically just as capable as white people, the goal must be to drive that disparity to zero. With that in mind, it makes no sense from a scientific/engineering perspective to ignore race. No scientist or engineer looks at a situation, sees a…

Black people on average make 1/3 less income than the average white person because certain significant subgroups of white people are highly privileged. The problem you then hit is that when you start compensating for certain groups by race, instead of the actual root of the problem (people who don't come from a priviledged background have a hard time getting out of it), you then leave everyone else absolutely screwed…

> Black people on average make 1/3 less income than the average white person because certain significant subgroups of white people are highly privileged.

No that is wrong. It’s not some elite white subgroup. According to the BLS: “Among the major race and ethnicity groups, median weekly earnings for Black men working at full-time jobs were $723, or 72.5 percent of the median for White men ($997).” That’s not even counting large differences in employment rates.

Put another way, if whites took a pay cut so they made the same as blacks, $1.6 trillion of national income would disappear, a number comparable to the total income of the entire top 1% ($2 trillion).

We’re not talking about elites. The median white person is much better off than the median black person.