Did scores actually get changed, or were they judging by different metrics?
"We invited you in with your lower score because we recognize it is more difficult for you to achieve that score, and as such are more likely to succeed" versus "We didn't like how smart we were so we lied to you about passing the exam to hide the fact that we're biasing entry standards."
Biasing entry standards is a thing that may or may not make sense. For public and public-funded institutions, transparency and honesty are absolutely essential.
This seems like a generous description of affirmative action given it punishes asian students and examples of demographics that benefit underperforming once accepted.
One of the key criteria for performance today is "grit", which is an evolution over the previous performance indicators such as education/SAT scores (which had poor long term correlation).
The assumption that they will underperform is unsubstantiated.
Especially considering - all/most Asian American/SE Asian kids go through the ringer to prepare them from the word go, to get into a prestigious school. (Do note - that if they dont get into their first choice college, they will get into their equally good backup schools.)
As the dean of Harvard said - he could fill his class with Valedictorians (and probably have many more to spare).
Academic achievement is not the main criteria for admissions - and at least in an american system it shouldn't be.
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Living in a world where Academics decide everything, you can easily see the kind of damage it does to daily life.
Societal worth, marriage prospects depend on what is said on that Degree - even if you are terrible at solving real world problems or have 0 motivation to actually work in your field.
Instead it should be the color of your skin?
That they will underperform is not unsubstantiated in cases like black law students.
The same is true, by the way, of folks with extremely religious anti-science backgrounds (like me!).
Either way, graduation standards don't change.
>which is what studies show
Which studies? Graduation standards have changed for all races, in undergraduate institutions grade inflation is rampant and hard curves or class ranks are relics. The performance of the student body and specific demographics is increasingly muddled. In premier law schools affirmative action demographics continue to underperform, as well as have lower LSAT scores which strongly predicts probability of passing the bar.
No. And this, "If anything I am an asian supremcist" angle is so dated, so boring, and so tedious I'm not going to entertain you further. Everyone can see what you're doing. Go debate a 6 year old youtube video rather than waste an instant more of 2018's time.
Folks are acutely aware that Asian immigration in the US only allowed extremely rich and overqualified immigrants until relatively recently, and that economic disparity is clearly reflected in many social scales. We're also acutely aware of many eugenicists using "well asian people are just genetically and culturally better" as a blind in America for their racial oppression for years. That history is well-documented.
>Folks are acutely aware that Asian immigration in the US only allowed extremely rich and overqualified immigrants until relatively recently
18th century Chinese laborers are rich and overqualified? Why say "no", whites don't have it harder than asians, then 180 and state that asian americans are all drawn from some privileged group. I'm not a eugenicist I'm just surprised by how easily affirmative actions proponents cast aside asian american concerns and commonly stereotype them as soulless grade grinders with "Tiger Moms" etc.
For folks who don't know (hnaccy almost certainly does because this is the standard rebuttal to this lousy argument): Because the Chinese Exclusion Act was a real thing, the total combined Asian American population between the 8th census and the 1965 Immigration & Naturalization Act never exceeded 500,000 nationally, and that's adding a healthy margin of error. The recruited labor force was minuscule and not a significant contributor to today's booming population of over 20m.
It wasn't until after substantial immigration changes (oh, and federally guaranteeing non-whites could own property) that more folks were allowed in, and so we've had a relatively tiny fraction of US history where immigration was possible and desirable (who's gonna immigrate if you're legally forbidden to own a business or a home because of your skin color?). Folks moving in initially were folks who were rich and capable of going to a country with only minimal resources and support structures. The first year after the I&NA came about, the Asian population in America surged by over 200% and has grown at a healthy clip since then, dramatically skewing the characteristics of the population's wealth distribution.
So yeah, there's a substantial bias in Asian immigration, which has had a lot less time to give people with less means (a reliable predictor of maximum academic performance). We'd expect to see this in the data if economic resources enable academic performance, which we can point to multiple obvious mechanisms of. hnaccy's argument only makes sense if you believe there is some essential quality to Asian and White genetics that, in isolation of every other factor, reliably makes them "smarter" than black or brown people. Even a casual knowledge of genetics and epigenetics suggests that this is at best radically implausible at worst an outright lie dating back to 1930s propaganda trying to co-opt science for political gain.
I believe my confusion stems from you answering no to my question
>So you believe that white americans start from a harder place than asian americans?
When it sounds like you do believe asian Americans start in a better place due to historical immigration policies and trends.
I agree. However, you went a step further and started suggesting a biological essentialism and history erasure. If you simply didn't know you were doing that then admit your opinion is ahistorical and go research the subject.
I think you're are now walking this statement back because it was such a weak point. I'm going to take screenshots in case you attempt to abuse editing.
> When it sounds like you do believe asian Americans start in a better place due to historical immigration policies and trends.
Please see Dr. Eugenia Cheng's 2017 talk "Category Theory in the Real World" for a primer in how to interpret this. There are multiple axis of privilege. Interestingly enough, admissions standards often address these axis by also considering family income and other historical details like presence or loss of family members.
The existence of affirmative action for specific groups does not create a zero sum exercise for white Americans, who also have access to a larger number of economic and social criterion for admissions and financial aid.
Where?
The existence of affirmative action for specific groups necessarily disadvantages other groups based on their race.
Why?
Ultimately we're asking for what proportion of applicants WERE qualified but denied because they didn't have a "spot", the total admissions volumes, and what that intersection is. What's more, most students apply to multiple colleges and only a few have specific environments that are specifically necessary (you might argue, for example Stanford's connection with the startup world makes it especially desirable, but look at what a untalented failure Lucas Duplan is... maybe not...), it simply changes outcomes in a way that isn't particularly disadvantaging.
Personally and in an unsubstantiated musing: I believe that the actual case where a student "doesn't get in to college because of their race" is astonishingly rare. The US has a large enough population that the law of large numbers surely makes a few, and that's one of many reasons I've dedicated my career to providing education for as long as I stay in the field.
But your argument seems to carry this unspoken corollary that there aren't resources for white folks or men, but that's something that seems to follow from what evidence I've found. I've found a few sources that suggest white people get about 60% of the private scholarship funding in the US.
>For example, Dr. Card’s simulations show that if Harvard had not considered race, the proportion of African-American students in the Class of 2019 would have dropped from 14% to 6%, and the proportion of Hispanic or Other students would have dropped from 14% to 9%.
It follows that there was a group of applications numbering 13% of the Class of 2019 who were disadvantaged due to their race.
Yes it's probably quite rare that a student is rejected at say HYP and does not get into any other college but I don't see why that matters? We accept that there is a benefit to attending certain schools over others why should it depend on your race whether or not you "deserve" your first choice or should be happy with second or third choice college?
>But your argument seems to carry this unspoken corollary that there aren't resources for white folks or men
You're inferring that.
Because the opposite case, where the economic destiny of folks from previously disadvantaged-in-America ethnic minorities is real and more common. If you're looking for a justification, more good than harm.
That in itself is reasonable. The fact that the key criteria where Asian students had low performance was on the scores from interviews with admissions officers, but their scores on interviews with Harvard alumni were just fine is a pretty damning indicator that Harvard was specifically excluding them because of race and not because of their non-academic qualifications.
But if you think publicly funded colleges should have 100% transparent admission standards, I'm behind you all the way. They should!
What bullshit. Accepting someone underqualified means rejecting someone perfectly qualified, by definition.
> But if you think publicly funded colleges should have 100% transparent admission standards
I think all colleges should have transparent standards. Publicly funded ones should have fair and non-racist transparent standards.
Ah yes, because college admission caps are not at all arbitrary and never change.
> Publicly funded ones should have fair and non-racist transparent standards.
Careful there with your language. Racism is an institutional proposition, discrimination is an individual one. So long as "white" (whatever that means) Americans hold the majority of political and economic power in America, the conditions for "racism" don't exist except in the most degenerate dictionary sense of the word.
E.g. "I made something nicer for you" vs. "I made something worse for you". Of course the second is the negative, dishonest one.
Both are equally dishonest.
> "We invited you in with your lower score because we recognize it is more difficult for you to achieve that score, and as such are more likely to succeed" versus "We didn't like how smart we were so we lied to you about passing the exam to hide the fact that we're biasing entry standards."
That's just rationalizations to justify your bias. The japanese made similar rationalizations. Female candidates are likely to get pregnant and society is better off with females getting pregnant because japan has a low birth-rate problem.
Their justification is just as "good" as yours. Both are discriminatory and evil.
Not absolute mark. Just the same standards.
> If you are looking at ability to apply oneself as being the criteria you have to examine a lot more.
Which is fine with me as long as the same criteria is applied equally.
Equal being the key here.
An effort is being made to provide opportunity to those with less access to it, but painting affirmative action as a free ride is a malicious category error that needs no debunking, it's simply a garbage argument that involves talking as fast as possible and hoping no one notices.
What? Who is talking about graduation criteria?
> An effort is being made to provide opportunity to those with less access to it
That's fine, as long as the criteria is the same.
> but painting affirmative action as a free ride is a malicious category error that needs no debunking
That's called straw man. I said it is discrimination. This is called fact.
> simply a garbage argument that involves talking as fast as possible and hoping no one notices.
As far as I can tell, you are the one talking as fast as possible and hoping no one notices. This is something called projection.
I'm making fairly straightforward assertions. Discrimination is wrong. Simple as that. The japanese shouldn't discriminate against women. We shouldn't discriminate against asians and whites.
Then why is it okay to have admisisons standards at all? Don't they inherently discriminate amongst people in such a way as to favor rich people who can afford to give their child the necessary nutrition, time and stability to perform all the rituals that college campuses look for?
> We shouldn't discriminate against asians and whites.
We also have to undo the generation's of economic and social harm principle perpetrated by white people against other ethnic minorities in the US. You can't simply wave away the US's obligations.
I do agree that Asian Americans face a lot of issues in the US and it's unfair how they're treated as a managed ethnic minority that schools like Harvard can keep in a separate managed bucket.
Because we want the best and brightest attending these universities? People most capable of actually performing and graduating? Is this a serious question?
> Don't they inherently discriminate amongst people in such a way as to favor rich people who can afford to give their child the necessary nutrition, time and stability to perform all the rituals that college campuses look for?
No. No more than the NBA discriminates.
> We also have to undo the generation's of economic and social harm principle perpetrated by white people against other ethnic minorities in the US.
We have. It's called evening the playing field by ending discrimination. Punishing asians ( who haven't done anything ) or young white students ( who haven't done anything ) is the definition of evil.
> You can't simply wave away the US's obligations.
Once again, we have. It's called ending discrimination.
> I do agree that Asian Americans face a lot of issues in the US and it's unfair how they're treated as a managed ethnic minority that schools like Harvard can keep in a separate managed bucket.
Yes. Discrimination is evil. I'm glad we are agreed. Using your logic, in 20 years, are we going to have to discriminate against blacks to make up for the discrimination against asians/whites today? The neverending cycle of discrimination?
The condescending affirmative action ideology is a new form of "supremacy". The idea that minorities are incapable of overcoming and need "help" is another form of white supremacy. Only this time, it's leftist faction looking down on minorities for social cred.
Discrimination is wrong. Simple as that. You don't achieve equality by removing hurdles from one group of people and putting them in front of another group of people. That's illogical and it's wrong. No amount of rationalization is going to make it right.
This is a value judgement, and a tedious one at that. You cannot compel women in a free society to have children to meet your expectations. If you want to encourage women to have children, you need to create an environment where it is equitable for them to do so without being unduly penalized.
Again: if your approach worked then Japan would not have a birthrate decline. This is, and has been, already their stance. Women are effectively removed from the workforce upon pregnancy. They are declining that proposition because it's unfair, and society COULD structure to redress that.
Yes. Discrimination is a value judgment and tedious one at that. We are agreed. Not sure why you support discrimination though.
> If you want to encourage women to have children, you need to create an environment where it is equitable for them to do so without being unduly penalized.
Actually, we already know that "equitable" society leads to lower birth rates. The more equal the society, the lower the birth rates.
> Again: if your approach worked then Japan would not have a birthrate decline.
You missed my point. It's not my approach. It's japan's approach. And I'm against that.
If you had paid attention, you'd realize that I am against discrimination, no matter what the ends. I don't believe the ends justify the means.
I just offered japan's rationale for discriminating against women, just like you offered your rationale against discriminating against people in the US.
I think all people should be treated fairly.
Pray, tell us more about the difference between subtracting points from someone for their identity, versus giving extra points to someone for their identity?
But that's not what admissions processes do. They say, "Here is the criterion for folks with consideration to their ethnic minority." All the research I've done does not suggest there is a single score folks are adding and subtracting to.
In the case of the article, they didn't say, "Sorry your womb makes you ineligible" they actually graded the tests with a penalty attached. They "changed the results" of the entrance exams.
> Pray, tell
Prithee sir, read with care. I hope thy question was answered. Fie, sir, fie! For this craven fear of loss and refusal to harken to the scope of history holds back your potential.