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

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

#91

Post by adamsea » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:41 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #78

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…

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 alon…

If you take the time to read real history written by highly educated and thoughtful scholars (as opposed to bs pseudo intellectual history) then yes.

Just think about the racist stereotypes held by Americans towards Chinese and Japanese people during and prior to WWII.

Those stereotypes were not of the successful violin playing overachiever, I can promise you that.

Thus, for anyone willing to look in the mirror, all sorts of implicit biases and stereotypes or prejudices - racial or otherwise - must be called into question if you want to live a life of intellectual honesty with oneself.

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

#92

Post by shipman05 » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:41 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).

You would think that sort of discrimination is a thing fo the past, yet.... http://www.chicagotribune.com/g00/business/ct-bias-hiring-05...

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

#93

Post by brighteyes » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:41 AM UTC

temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #43

Thought experiment: if you made all admission decisions by lottery, by randomly admitting a previously decided, fixed number of n applicants out of all valid applications received, and the resulting cohort of admitted individuals was later found to significantly differ in demographic composition from both the local and nationwide composition of population, would that be discriminatory? If not, would it at least be pr…

It's not really an edge case, though. Asian-American students should (based on merit alone) make up almost half of top colleges. I realize you probably didn't mean "edge case" as in "a small effect", but the effect here is so large it really is front and center - it would radically change the makeup of top college student bodies, with a large corresponding impact on affirmative action for underrepresented minorities.

It's also historically not a small issue either. The same was true for Jewish students a few generations ago, and Harvard acted then as it did now - to limit the representation of those groups and prevent them from being a big chunk of the student body. This also isn't new about Asian-American students, for that matter - for many years now the evidence has been piling up that colleges are discriminating against them. So bringing this up isn't like someone found an interesting theoretical problem with college admissions policies - it's a huge long-standing issue.

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

#94

Post by dbcurtis » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:42 AM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #68

alienallys wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be possible for probably computer science education, if you want to be a lawyer, banker, architect college education is MUST

I think someone could self study and become a lawyer or banker / stock broker, but licensing requirements would prevent it (not necessarily for good reason).

In some states, California being one, you can "read law" while working for a member of the bar and then sit for the bar exam. The CA bar exam has 45% pass rate though, with most takers having gone to a good law school. YMMV indeed.

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

#95

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:43 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…

[deleted]

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

#96

Post by perl4ever » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:43 AM UTC

brighteyes wrote: post #76

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Asians are around 60% of the world population, no? So I'm not sure how a rise to 40% of Harvard inhibits "proportionate" representation.

Edit: I'm not pretending to be obtuse here - I'm actually questioning why an elite university should be representative of US demographics rather than the world.

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

#97

Post by albntomat0 » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:45 AM UTC

Different, but related issue (at least philosophically, to me): US colleges currently are 57:43 women to men [0]. Does this warrant a response, and if so, how should it be implemented? Male quotas? Gender as a "plus" in admissions (like how Harvard does race)?

[0]: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/college-gender-gap-remains-s...

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

#98

Post by Jamerson » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:47 AM UTC

EventH- wrote: post #90

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…

This is pure ideology, built with rhetoric on emotional sand instead of argument from principle. A difference in outcome by itself in no way lays a requirement on society to 'drive that disparity to zero.' This is a baseless, indefensible assertion and leads to utter chaos when applied across society in the myriad ways one may analyze 'inequalities of outcome.'

Lol. Say more with less syllables. What an empty fog. Almost want to ask if this comment was computer generated.

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

#99

Post by brighteyes » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:47 AM UTC

aabajian wrote: post #81

I think something that's overlooked is the importance of parents in admissions. Case in point: Jewish culture values education in the same way that Asian families value education. As a result, a large number of white students admitted to Ivy Leagues are Jewish. 25% of the white students in my med school (Yale) were Jewish, despite making up only 1.4% of the U.S. population. I don't agree with racial quotas, but there…

> there has to be some form of normalization for students whose parents/culture/childhood environment didn't value education.

Why? Colleges are literally places of education. It doesn't seem odd that children who focused on their education would be highly-represented there.

Intervening earlier may make sense - promote education in environments where it's less focused on.

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

#100

Post by gizmo686 » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 2:47 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…

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Think carefully about if racial equality is truly your end goal. I agree that in a perfect world, there would be racial equality. I also agree that there were, and are, forces pushing us away from racial equality and that those forces are harmful.

Consider two children, one black and one white, who are in an approximately equal position. Why is it beneficial to give advantages to the black child just because his condition was caused by generations of discrimination, instead of, say, crappy parents. Perhaps it would be easier to consider the population of "low class" people [0]. Under what theory is it beneficial to discriminate in within this population?

This is not to say that, from a practical perspective, affirmative action is always wrong. For instance, if you have a white applicant and a black applicant that, by all available metrics, are equal; it is entirely possible that the black applicant is actually a better choice for reason that statistically exist, but which you fail to capture in your metrics. But, unless you are arguing that there are actually meaningful differences between the races, you are simply using race as a proxy for some measurable property(s). It would be better if we could measure that property directly (although, we often cannot).

If we simply force racial equality without address the root causes of the inequality, then we have two problems: The first problem is the harm caused by the initial racism. The second problem is the harm caused by the racism inherent in our method of forcing equality. There is also the benefit caused by incidentally addressing the root cause of the inequality; but since that is not what we are measuring, it is not clear how well we are doing with that.

[0] Yes, in general low class whites are better off than low class blacks. But the curves have enough overlap that it is possible to construct a population where the expected value of a white person is equal to that of a black person. That is the type of population I am talking about.