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Comment by bytematic | Hacker News Reader

When will people understand that “We do have some very affirmative goals though that I think are important to understand. That when we talk about diversity of backgrounds and experiences, it includes different academic interests. It includes different occupations of parents. It includes socioeconomic differences. It includes different viewpoints on issues.” is a good thing. This always gets me a negative reaction, people want college admissions to be straight top scorers, job prospects to be picked as the people with the top qualifications. I don't get it and it doesn't benefit anyone.

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It's because the language and approach with respect to Asians (and specifically Chinese, Korean, Japanese backgrounds) echoes the explicitly racist efforts of top universities, especially Harvard, in the early 20th Century against Jews. Holistic applications in the Ivy League were created solely to keep the Jewish population to a manageable level.

This for people who relatively recently experienced severe racist treatment by the government, currently experience racist treatment in pop culture (Lauryn Hill's racist treatment of Koreans in Doo Wop for example, or Spike Lee's movies), and see local governments creating intentionally racist policies (Philadelphia's attempt to ban security glass in liquor stores).

I think the plaintiffs don’t misunderstand this claim, they just think it’s cover for “we don’t want that many Asians” in this case.

That's the same argument these colleges used to keep Jews out in the 30's. Now they're saying Asians have bad personalities so they shouldn't be admitted. This sounds ethical to you?

In practice your statement reduces to holding up a color wheel and making sure the special colors are given a benefit in the selections process and unfavored colors receive a disadvantage in the process.

Most people understand this. The lawyer bringing the suit has chosen to do so in order to help abolish affirmative action.

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