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Comment by colmvp | Hacker News Reader

Undoubtedly this'll get removed from the front page but before it does, as someone who is Asian thank God someone calls these institutions out for this racist BS.

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No one would support it if it were against Jews instead of Asians. And in fact, Yale used to have this policy against Jews! Absolutely disgusting.

In 1935 Yale accepted 76 applicants from a pool of 501. About 200 of those applicants were Jewish and only five got in." He notes that Dean Milton Winternitz's instructions were remarkably precise: "Never admit more than five Jews, take only two Italian Catholics, and take no blacks at all."[1]

It's quite bizarre how we realized that quota system was unethical so dismantled it. But later re-established the same system but think totally fine because we changed the numbers?

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota

[2]https://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/04/nyregion/yale-s-limit-on-...

As someone who isn't Asian, thank God someone calls these institutions out for this racist BS. I don't care whether they discriminate against group A in favor of group B or the other way around. ALL discrimination is abhorrent, and I genuinely can't believe we allowed preferential admissions based on ethnicity to go on that long.

> ALL discrimination is abhorrent

I think you meant, racial or ethnic discrimination. Apologies, but nitpicking to make your position stronger.

Is some discrimination acceptable then?

Discrimination based on academic record, aptitude testing, extracurricular activities, personal recommendations, athletic record, etc. is presumably acceptable.

trivially, i’m happy to discriminate in favor of, e. g. , people who are fluent in french and english if i want to hire a french and english translator.

Or in the context of say, admissions, i would expect to see discrimination on academic merit in the field of study for a program you’re applying to. If you were an outstanding undergraduate who majored in like, the archaeology of medieval germany, you should expect to have a very hard time getting into a graduate program in high energy physics.

(tangentially i happen to know a MD/PhD whose undergrad was performance ballet, but she double-majored as a physical chemistry major and did piles of lab work too, and thus didn’t have any troubles)

Also known as Merit.

If we're being pedantic, the whole point of the admissions process is to discriminate. The question is, discriminate on what basis?

Undoubtedly they discriminate on the basis of grades and test scores, but also on the basis of things like extracurriculars. Whether or not race should be a part of this equation is the heart of this debate.

Even if this lawsuit succeeds, Yale will still be able to discriminate against applicants of color. The DoJ is specifically targeting methods of discrimination that don’t benefit white people.

I don't see any evidence that they have negatively discriminated against applicants "of color", or will do so. It seems this discrimination chiefly affects Asian Americans, if you define them as "people of color".

Yale uses legacy status — which is discriminatory against applicants of color — as an admission criterion.

I think that's a rather weak point. I know many people (including myself) who are white or Asian and did not come from college educated families.

I think legacy status is a bit ridiculous, but legacy status admissions benefit those with higher socio-economic standings, not those of a certain race. The issue here is one of discrimination based solely on race. Legacy admissions are a weird from of classism (and therefor some degree of racism, I suppose), but not of race-based discrimination.

I think the difference is quite important.

It confers benefits based on race. Legacy college preferences are fundamentally identical to the “grandfather clauses” enacted during Reconstruction, which created onerous barriers to registering to vote while exempting people whose grandfathers were registered. The intent and result was to disenfranchise Black voters. So too with legacy admissions — they are rooted in attempts to continue segregating the student body after de jure discrimination became untenable.

It’s true that not every white applicant has a legacy status to benefit from. But if you look at the racial breakdown of students who benefit from legacy preferences, I think you’ll find far more white students than the in the overall student body.

They're not identical at all, because only a small minority of whites have legacy status at Yale, whereas the overall majority/plurality of whites had grandfathered voting status.

And nowadays, legacy preferences -- I'm all for getting rid of them -- hurts the average white student more than the average black student, because they fill up the white quota.

That's not a very nuanced read of why the policies are there in the first place.

I think the goal of having a more diverse student body is a good idea and studies show there are clear intergenerational benefits to having first generation minorities attending elite colleges versus a not so clear one for everyone else. I disagree with casting it all aside with 'racist BS'.

There can (and should) be critique, but it shouldn't be a broad swipe.

No, there shouldn't be discussion and nuance about judging people based on their race: it is not acceptable and positions to the contrary and in violation of the spirit and letter of the 14th amendment.

It's true - there shouldn't be. But there is judgement embedded in society. There has been judgement throughout history. This is not a question of whether we should judge any races, this is a question of how to eliminate the subtle cultural racism that still exists and hasn't gone away for a hundred years even with a lot of effort. If we can't discuss what's happening, then how can we fix it?

FWIW, affirmative action in various forms has been implemented and debated for a hundred and fifty years in the US. It has in the past been the law of the land, without contradicting the idea that we aren't allowed to discriminate against races. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_Unit...

You've always been allowed to discriminate, as long as it's against whatever the socially acceptable targets are at the time, in a socially accepted venue.

What do you mean we’ve always been allowed to discriminate? I disagree; being “allowed” is what’s legal, that’s different from what’s socially acceptable. Discrimination by race in employment hiring has been illegal by law explicitly for 50 years and implicitly for 150 years. Yes many people have discriminated by race anyway and gotten away with it. Some still are. A major goal of affirmative actions are to try to get what’s socially acceptably wrong to move toward what’s legal and ethically right.

Their goal is to harm Black applicants. If they truly cared about racism they’d take aim at legacy admissions.

I'm sorry but did you read the complaint?

"Yale expressly agrees to comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a cornerstone civil-rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance. "

They can "reverse discriminate" for Black applicants all they want, it's when they accept Federal Money it becomes an issue.

Yale is potentially on the hook for Billions in back Federal Aid.

I did. The point is that they’re only targeting the “reverse discrimination” that helps Black applicants, while omitting any mention of their “normal” discrimination — legacy admissions — that helps white ones.

Jake do you care to show me exactly where that is?

Exactly where what is?

As a South Asian American, it is so disappointing when these controversies pit two minority groups against one another.

Asian Americans make up 5.6% percent of the total American population and Yale has ~19% Asian students. How can you claim Yale is being racist? Should the number of Asian students at Yale be higher? And why should it be higher? Which numbers should be lower at Yale so there should be more Asians, and why?

White 43% Asian 19% Hispanic/Latino 13% Black or African American 8%

If your claim is that Yale should be accepting students blindly on merit only, and that as a result the number of Asian students would go up, then it would be hard not to conclude that you think one race is superior to the others and should therefor be accepted at a higher rate than their representation in the general population. Or is there some other conclusion you could come to?

Yale may choose whatever admission criteria it wants except for a handful of prohibited criteria. Race is one of them, according to the DOJ.

Yale could presumably choose to admit only students scoring high but not too high if they wanted to. Or only take soccer players. Or only admit tuba players.

But they are being challenged for including race as one of those criteria.

You repeated what I already read in the article and didn't answer any of my questions. Harvard won a similar lawsuit and the government has ruled before that race can be considered to eliminate discrimination. So both the issue and the law are more nuanced than you are making them out to be. How about answering my questions or getting into enough detail and nuance that it would move the conversation forward?

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