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Comment by fraudsyndrome | Hacker News Reader

Not sure what assumptions are to be made by comparing this with US population by ethnicity except that they should be match up - which I don't agree with.

Also are Jewish people considered White in this case? I simultaneously see that they are referred to as minorities but also don't see them represented in statistics such as these when comparing ethnicity in X with ethnic population in the US.

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As a non-white Jew (there are 20-30% of us!) I know I'd be annoyed to be considered white. I'd like to hope we've finally moved beyond this one.

Are you non-white according to the classification system commonly used by the US government and universities though? In the US, everyone who lives in Mexico and almost everyone who lives in Iraq is white.

No idea. Why should I care what the US government thinks white equates to. Having zero "white", "caucasian", or similar ancestry other than Jewish and from Arab lands for hundreds of years makes me very non-white.

But if you want to judge it by looks, I look like an Arab. Like hundreds of thousands of other Jews.

The US concept of "caucasian" Streisanded the caucasus region for me, so among other things I've learned about the Niggun Shamil.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23914667

שָׁלוֹם עֲלֵיכֶם ٱلسَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ :-)

PS. do you have any opinion on סרוגים‎ (the show)?

Wow it's been years since I saw that... I loved the first season, then it dropped off the map. If you like סרוגים‎ try שבאבניקים

That's fine. I'm sorry if I've offended you. I meant that for the purpose of these discussions about US university racial demographics, Arabs are white.

No worries, I wasn't offended! I just think it's insane that a group of people other than my own can even think to tell me what my ethnicity is. As an example, it would be utter hubris were I to say the same to Black Americans, so I'm not sure why it's randomly okay to do this to other groups.

As a sephard who looks completely "white" I'm just annoyed by this whole classification.

I feel you. I find all race based things rather offensive - on all sides, and in all the countries I've lived in.

> Not sure what assumptions are to be made by comparing this with US population by ethnicity except that they should be match up - which I don't agree with.

Why don't you think they should match up?

Because they should be based on merit.

Then the concept of “legacy students” should be illegal.

Alumni paying millions (billions) of dollars over years is of great merit to a private university.

Sure, but it proves that admission is not based on the student’s merit. It discriminates against those whose parents did not attend the school.

Alternately, it rewards those who made the school great in the first place -- by admitting their children.

Note that it's not strictly zero sum either. Huge grants by previous may have opened the university to more people than are admitted by legacy admissions -- yielding greater participation by non-legacy than previously possible.

People are choosing one small slice of what goes on with a university -- admissions right now. They are glossing over the fact that it is other people who made the university great over the years to the point that it is desirable at all. Those people made it great by donating money and going on to bring prestige to the university. Ignore them and lose the prestige and money.

==They are glossing over the fact that it is other people who made the university great over the years to the point that it is desirable at all. Those people made it great by donating money and going on to bring prestige to the university. Ignore them and lose the prestige and money.==

Nobody is glossing over that fact. I am simply saying that if anything outside of a student's merit is "discrimination", then taking into account the alumni status or past contributions of [not that student] is also "discrimination".

They are not the student's merits to weigh, they are the relative's merits.

Does this imply you think some races are more meritorious than others?

The demographics of the US population may differ from the demographics of the college-age US population, or the demographics of the population of high-achieving high schoolers who want to go to Yale, or the demographics or the population of those people plus international students.

Different race happen to be correlated with different cultural values.

One particular cultural value is caring a whole lot about education and prestigious degrees (see the test prep industry in most of asia).

I have no problem with people who value education getting an edge in admissions. So even in a race-blind world, I am okay with outcomes not matching population statistics. Because in a world where you're solely judged based on your values that's exactly what you'd see.

But what's happening is that two different people can both adopt this same "education" value and have different outcome because of their race. The opportunities are not equal, not for blacks, not for asians.