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Comment by ipnon | Hacker News Reader

It's discrimination any way you slice it. You can't lower the bar for one person without raising it for another so long as the class sizes remain the same. If elite universities are about providing education (a valid point of critical contention), then systematically barring Asians from entry is the same class of injustice litigated in Brown v. Board of Education. It's not enough to say you can learn calculus just as well at the University of Massachusetts.

"Here we find our first indication of the strength of preferences for underrepresented minority students. African-American students have nearly an 80 percent better chance of being admitted than their white counterparts, while the Hispanic advantage is reflected in almost 50 percent higher odds compared to whites. By contrast, Asian applicants and those from other races face lower odds of admission on the order of 17 or 18 percent—in relation to comparable whites."

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/tje/files/...

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Note that most Americans of all races, including Black people, oppose the practice of race conscious admissions: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/25/most-americ....

People of all races also overwhelmingly oppose consideration of race in hiring: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/05/08/america....

In California, Prop 16 failed in every single majority Hispanic county. It’s a minority of mostly white progressives pushing this stuff.

> It’s a minority of mostly white progressives pushing this stuff.

I think if you look a little closer you'll find that many members of that "white" minority are in fact not White (or Hispanic, Black, or Asian.)

Really? Because I don't think so since I mostly see people with a falsely treated savior complex. Harsh judgement, but they also justify racism and if it comes down to it we need to be honest.

You can't do this here. I've banned the account.

This is what affirmative action will look like. If you want to see the context of such an action happening somewhere for long time, take the example of India.

There it is much more explicit and written in the law. For some subjects, the criteria it takes for one cohort to get admission in the top college is the same one in which the other cohort will not even get admission in any college in the top 20. You can see this in undergraduate level admissions the most. I read interesting stats on this long time back, will need to see if I can find them.

However, in case of South Asia/India, the argument is positive discrimination now to correct for negative discrimination in the past. The same argument can't be made in US though against Asians.

I was curious about how the Indians handle this, too, so I read Republic of Caste by Anand Teltumbde. It's a long, rambling, but detailed description of how the reservation system was playing out in India. Broadly, he argues that any initial positive effect has been displaced by caste becoming even more of a wedge issue (each caste feeling disadvantaged unfairly and hyper-vigilant for others' corruption) and castes scrambling for favorable designations (e.g. inventing a new history of victimization or fabricating a genealogy in order to be assigned to a more favorable schedule).

Ironically, Teltumbde advocates for replacing reservations with American-style affirmative action.

Now it is a competition among castes to show that they are the most backward, since they would be considered for reservations then.

and this makes sense as well, I think while in practice the affirmative action in India seems ideal it is far too idealistic and one dimensional. Like just doing it on the basis of race would be in US.

Should an Asian kid coming from a family with financial difficulties be subjected to the same bias as others.

Also, I read a weird thing that in India even religions that don't have a caste system, have castes. It is interesting that Christians, Muslims can have one. It seems like that's one way to reap the benefits of the system.

> to get admission in the top college

Could this indicate that there're many bright people in India, who are mostly self taught, because they belonged to the "wrong" group and so couldn't study at University (or at least not the one they wanted) ?

Whilst, if someone has studied at a top university, it doesn't mean that much?

This is correct to some extant, and not just for getting education. As an example, in many competitive exams conducted by universities etc. to select students, the selection cutoff marks clearly show this pattern of intentional discriminatory admittance.

For someone belonging to "general" category, anyone designated to an upper caste, the cutoffs percentage for selection could be as high as 97-99%. For "reserved" category candidates, those from the lower castes, the cutoff can be as low as 10-20% for the same test. This means someone scoring 95% would not get get an admission offer while someone else scoring 15% would.

This reservation system is also a part of government jobs. I have seen "reserved" teaching positions being filled by candidates who score negative marks in the selection exams. But since no other type of candidate can fill the reserved position, the highest negative score gets the job.

Does this really alleviate the issues borne out of historical oppression of the lower cast, I don't know. Perhaps. Is this overall a good thing for a nation and its people? Again, I have no idea.

Thanks! I hope they won't start using these ways of hiring people, to find airplane pilots. Negative marks in the exams

> This means someone scoring 95% would not get get an admission offer while someone else scoring 15% would.

Sounds entirely made up. All these exams generally have a minimum clearing criteria at 60-65%

I mean the data is one google search away (granted, if you know some of the official caste related terms)

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/educa...

Also, the example I have provided are from 15 years ago, when I appeared for these exams. I'm not going to bother finding verifiable information from back then but the figures I mentioned are pretty much what I saw.

Then this is probably news to you. Search for Minimum eligibility on these

https://pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=147623

https://indiankanoon.org/doc/93076753/

You and I are referring to completely different scores. It is true that a candidate needs to have scored a minimum percentage of around 50-60% in their high-school/intermediate board exams (so 10th/12th standard) to be allowed to sit in the selection examination.

The cutoffs I'm talking about are dependent on overall performance of all candidates. In the link I have shared this cutoff is 18% (89/480) for reserved category students. There are more details in the article about the cutoff for reserved category students being 60% of that of general category ones. There is further elaboration on how many students have to drop off because of their poor performance. These vacant seats are rarely filled.

You can read the document again. It's the minimum eligibility in the test they're taking not their high school scores.

> the cutoff for reserved category students being 60% of that of general category ones

It is not that off and even if it were, it's not as bad as you initially claimed: 18%. AND media houses are known to sensationalize everything.

In the article the figures of 18% vs 36% are mentioned rather than 15% vs 97%.

Right, it is. Like I said, the figures I've pulled are from what I remember from 15 years back. Unfortunately I'm not able to find any sources with light searhcing.

I'd like to point out that there is a high possibility that there is an upward trend in reservation category cutoffs. And if it is indeed the case then I'd be the happiest.

As for my other claim, please see [1] and [2].

1. https://www.theyouth.in/2018/06/16/candidate-who-scored-minu...

2. https://www.india.com/education/zero-cut-off-maths-phd-inter...

The argument isn't against Asians, it's in favor of other groups.

I understand. But my argument was, it seems unfair that these Asian kids whose ancestors didn't have anything to do with the race discrimination in US, have to be on the receiving end of the affirmative action.

I know it is not a good example but should we have affirmative action in sporting teams as Asians seem to be underrepresented there.

Should we rather improve the funnels before which are leading to this concentration of Asian kids. This is not even considering the fact if even the desire to follow some subject is equal in every race. If it is not and it should be all things being equal at the start, then we should fix the funnels before.

The number of admissions is limited. If there are two groups, X and Y, and you discriminate in favor of giving more admissions to group X, group Y will have fewer.

We're talking about policies that favor some groups against others in a competition for scarce resources (college places, scholarships), so it clearly is going to have a negative effect on the people that are not in the favored groups. And even if the policies weren't so openly discriminatory (eg. SAT scores, quotas), the disparate impact on Asian-Americans would still be obvious.

"scarce resources"

I wish the effort was put into making them less scarce. It's one of the very specific illnesses of American economic culture that we are willing to bite and claw each other over access to things that need not be rare.

There's no shortage of great community colleges, though; the problem is that elite institutions in particular are being made artificially scarce for certain groups of people (Asian-Americans in this case) by government fiat, as well as the fact that prestigious institutions are valued because of their scarcity and exclusivity. If they managed to increase their admissions by a factor of ten, then the value of their degrees in the eyes of society would decrease because amongst other things this would mean that they would have to be less selective about who they accepted.

So it is ok to favor whites over Asians?

It is simply a bad mechanism and argument to put injustices of the past on the shoulders of new generations, especially with goals defined in such a blurry manner. On the contrary, the best remedy is to treat people as equals.

That isn't unpractical realism, nothing else is required. Of course some will have a huge head start and culture towards education is a very important factor. But you can shelve the false justice which is just racism with another motivation.

The injustices of the present need to be solved still. In America the way schools are funded in many states is such an obvious shorthand for racist school funding there isn't a level playing field.

This isn't true. Underfunding is not the issue with underperforming schools in the US. If you want to improve outcomes in inner city schools you need to fix the broken local culture first, but it's sort of chicken and egg.

http://thinkaboutnow.com/2016/03/debunking-the-underfunded-p...

https://www.vox.com/22266219/biden-eduation-school-funding-s....

Compare the homepages of the two. I know which one I trust more.

http://thinkaboutnow.com/

https://www.vox.com/

Wow, thinkaboutnow is quite the website.

That was the first link that came up on ddg, but it's laughable to presume that vox isn't just as biased, just in the other direction. Here's a couple more on the subject. I suspect you won't find a left leaning source with this opinion because it would undermine one of the primary ideals behind modern progressive thinking, that all groups of people would magically achieve equity and equal representation across all domains if only presented with the same opportunities.

https://www.commonwealthfoundation.org/

https://www.heritage.org/education/report/the-myth-racial-di...

Sorry. It is true. I went to schools that could only afford a four day week. Couldn’t even afford the fifth day. This is still happening.

School funding is still an issue.

I am fully on point with having more funding in education, it will always be a good investment and doesn't need racial discrimination.

I would suggest it's more along poverty lines than race lines. If you fix (well improve) the poverty rates it helps all races across the board. I think our emphasis is completely off base, education outcomes track with poverty a lot better than race.

> It is simply a bad mechanism and argument to put injustices of the past on the shoulders of new generations

There's no argument to be had; injustices of the past do land on the shoulders of the present generation. Everyone is born into circumstances they did not create.

There is a reason "The sins of the father shall be visited upon the sons" is a saying.

Now, given that reality, the question becomes "What does a society do about it?" When people believe in equality of opportunity but can see that opportunity is heavily influenced by birth circumstance, how does one address that fact?

> However, in case of South Asia/India, the argument is positive discrimination now to correct for negative discrimination in the past.

I don't think India makes this "penance for primordial sins" argument.

There's a current high correlation between somebody's caste and somebody's socio-economic status which is reservation is supposed to solve. It has loopholes surely and in some parts of the country, completely useless. But overall it is effective in increasing social mobility and social cohesion.

AA and other background-accounting factors have some place as an input into the system. You simply can't possibly claim that poor white rural kids in the south or black urban kids in poor neighborhoods (and all similar such situations) have the same chances at success of getting into harvard/yale/MIT as a rich white/asian kid from NYC who went to the best public/private schools (and SAT tutors) money could afford. There has to be some balance in there to account for such things. Until people put something forth as viable AA and quotas are what we have.

"Rich white/asian kid from NYC"

I've seen this sort of characterization a lot here. I can understand it, but it doesn't really reflect reality. I don't know a lot about other areas, but in NYC, most asians are not "wealthy". Far from it, Asians in NYC have a substantially lower median income ($53k household, $25k per capita) than whites ($69k household, $50k per capita ).

More importantly, the asian kids being discriminated against are not from wealthy families. Those that come from well off families tend to have all the extra-curriculars that white kids from wealthier families do. It's the ones from poor families. The ones who have to work after school and weekends to help out... and still study hard. Their parents cannot afford music/dance/arts lessons. The kid can't spend hours a day volunteering. Etc. It's these kids who get shafted when universities seek "well rounded".

Many of the lower income asian kids are from recent immigrant families. Their parents who barely speak english, working low paying jobs. They sacrifice everything to try to give their kids a chance to get ahead. And push their kids crazy hard to do well in school as they see it as their only way up. Imagine the feeling when -- after years of sacrifice and hard work -- after your kid did great in school, got great SAT scores, did everything he's supposed to do... he still gets denied by every good school..

See "rich" as in not poor. You can't shutdown the primary reasoning of my argument and downshift it to your point. My main point was poverty and location, I really don't even give a fuck about your race. The biggest problem in this country is delineated by who has money and who doesn't. That is the 90% problem, not race.

If your main point was poverty and location, adding race to the description certainly doesn’t help especially with the poor minority vs rich white/Asian angle.

> Those that come from well off families tend to have all the extra-curriculars that white kids from wealthier families do. It's the ones from poor families.

Or even just middle class families. I send my kids to private school with family money WASPs where we have a second winter break in February for ski trips. My kids will know how to navigate a system that puts more emphasis on writing an essay about how her grandfather grew up in a Bangladeshi village than on her SAT scores. But when my parents and I were recent immigrants to the country I certainly didn’t have that kind of cultural capital.

And it’s not just an immigrant thing. My (American) wife was noting that her dad, who grew up objectively poor would never have suggested he suffered adversity growing up, because after all they lived in a “stick built house” (a framed house as opposed to a mobile home).

Despite the increased chances of admission, black students make up a modest 5% of the (e.g.) Harvard student body compared to Asian students and white students at 13% and 40% respectively. Ultimately, I can't justify the idea of rejecting students based on race, but when I look at those demographics I just don't see much to get worked up about. From a more cynical angle the problem almost seems like "the total percentage of black people is a few points too high". I understand that there are real people behind these statistics, but this is true no matter which racial bucket you land in.

I'll also add, the paper you linked sort of muddies the waters on your point.

> Based on complete data for three applicant cohorts to three of the most academically selective research universities, we show that admission bonuses for athletes and legacies rival, and sometimes even exceed, the size of preferences for underrepresented minority applicants.

That is to say, there is a lot going on in the admissions process, but it isn't clear to me that much is gained by insisting on a racial perspective. With all that stated, it seems obvious that Asian Americans should fight against discrimination that statistically disadvantages them based on their identity. It's unfortunate that a quality education is a finite pie we have to divvy up into thin slices.

> It's unfortunate that a quality education is a finite pie.

Good that it's not then? With modern technology, one can get started on ultra cheap automated courses (not necessarily just static lectures, can be interactive/VR experience like good computer games), coupled with one on one help from paid and volunteer tutors around the world. Than those who show potential can in due time be given access to expensive research equipment and world renoun professors. All without a need to make a life making or breaking decision based on a single admission process. Let students decide for themselves if and when to conclude that a subject is not for them. Current system amounts to artificial gatekeeping of success.

The current system was developed based on almost three thousand years' experience dealing with the finite resource that was education.

And if you think that the resource is no longer finite, then are you going to supply and maintain the hardware and infrastructure to provide everybody with an online computer? Are you going to translate the coursework and exams to their languages? Provide the electricity? Provide the meal in the childrens' bellies so that their mind could be on the classwork?

>>> With modern technology, one can get started on ultra cheap automated courses

You cannot compare a degree from a well known university with cheap/free online courses. The benefits of a degree from a well known university are immeasurable.

Did you mean that one learns more there, or that the well-known name of the university makes it simpler to get a nice job?

This is why I don't understand. The logistics of education are cheaper than ever, almost free. Having a personal mentor is of course far more efficient, but that isn't the reality of modern education anyway.

What elite institutions offer is mainly connections and access directly into the pipeline of companies in a respective field.

There is some benefit to have elite institutions because proximity of highly educated people can spawn a lot of innovation, but a successful education system needs to be broad.

> Ultimately, I can't justify the idea of rejecting students based on race, but when I look at those demographics I just don't see much to get worked up about.

If you look at those particular stats, sure, it doesn't sound particularly objectionable. But if you look at others: https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/15/politics/harvard-affirmative-...

> Under questioning from SFFA lawyer John Hughes, Fitzsimmons detailed some of the recruitment efforts that begin the selection process. Harvard mails recruitment letters to black and Hispanic high schoolers with middle-range SAT scores, Fitzsimmons acknowledged, yet only sends such letters to Asian Americans if they have scored more than 200 points higher.

> According to charts Hughes displayed, Harvard sends such recruiting letters to black, Hispanic, and Native American students with top grades who hit at least 1100 on the combined math and verbal SAT score (the top score is 1600). To receive such letters under similar circumstances, Asian American men must have a combined score of 1380, and Asian American women, a combined score of 1350.

So, an individual Asian student needs to score much higher to have a chance at Harvard, compared to students of other ethnicities. That's very blatantly racial discrimination.

This amounts to, "sorry, we have enough people of your color, so we're gonna make it harder for you to get in." That's wrong. Period.

> So, an individual Asian student needs to score much higher to have a chance at Harvard, compared to students of other ethnicities. That's very blatantly racial discrimination.

> This amounts to, "sorry, we have enough people of your color, so we're gonna make it harder for you to get in." That's wrong. Period.

"The law of unintended consequences" ... what are they going to do if the target demographic (in this case Asians) start their own merit-based and academic-based colleges and universities?

Sure, it's not cheap, but large communities have done much more expensive things in the educational space before, and of course being pure merit-based means that the graduates will (eventually) be more sought after than the standard colleges[1].

Will someone then cry racism then?

[1] Maybe not to the level that Harvard grads are.

If you're saying that we should allow individuals and companies to create their own identity policies free from government oversight, then we should allow individuals and companies to discriminate any way they want. Don't want to hire blacks, gays or Jews? Allowed. To be honest, there is a legitimate argument that this type of discrimination would be better handled through the free market. But I doubt the people who support Asian discrimination in academia would support this.

Is creating a purely merit-based institution really an identity policy though? I see it as an identity-blind policy, unless you define identity to include merit.

The fallacy of meritocracy. You stand on the shoulders of your parents. If you come from a family of crackheads on the bad side of the rail tracks you already lost the race long before 8th grade.

While this is very true, you cannot force all parents to become crackheads, so you will always have different outcomes. We have the same problem with wealth in that regard.

You can only improve education in a way that is offers support for people in difficult homes. Perhaps their difficult childhood will ultimately hinder them from becoming the best. But then perhaps their children will fare better.

This is why we can do things to make up for the fact that society has failed these children.

If you make it so that only “merit” is considered - you’re only gonna get rich kids. (And I see this already through SV - it’s nothing but rich or well educated parents for the children here)

What is the argument against letting children who have had a rough lot in their life get a slight lessening of their handicap when applying for colleges or other life changing scenarios that could pull them out of their rut for future generations?

If you don’t and are unwilling to address the root cause (and we aren’t willing to address that in the US - we don’t even have universal healthcare yet guys) then you’re gonna keep having this shit continue.

The merit-based school such as Styuvesant in NYC and Lowell in SF are both filled with rather poor Asian kids.

The demographic profile of these two schools are substantially lower income than the very expensive cities they reside in.

Edit: Got the names of the schools wrong.

You know that isn't an argument against what I said, right? Like, at all. It completely supports what I said.

You said:

> If you make it so that only “merit” is considered - you’re only gonna get rich kids.

He said:

> The merit-based school such as Styuvesant in NYC and Lowell in SF are both filled with rather poor Asian kids.

> The demographic profile of these two schools are substantially lower income than the very expensive cities they reside in.

It couldn't possibly be further from supporting what you said.

Since people here are often ESL. I'll put it this way: "English is a rich language."

Please try to think about how the context of what I said could be interpreted. If you take literally everything at face value - you're truly not thinking critically about anything.

Not sure why you keep arguing against yourself. Many immigrant Asian families have households which are not English-fluent.

> You know that isn't an argument against what I said, right? Like, at all. It completely supports what I said.

It's literally the opposite of what you said, unless you suddenly changed your mind and agree that the merit-based schools are the best option for poor kids.

Agreed that there is a need of support system. Disagreed on making the denominator racial, religious or cultural. That is particularly evading the root causes in my opinion.

You can't force parents to do anything, but you can structure public policy to include recognition that some people get benefits of circumstance others don't.

As analogy: we won't (and we shouldn't) stop billionaires from making money as fast as they (legally) can, but we can sure as hell tax them proportional to their success at it.

what is the fallacy exactly?

The fallacy that you went to that nice university because you're smart and not just lucky.

Do you mean that some people are lucky because they were born smart?

This is the real issue that no one wants to address.

Yeah I’m with you here.

Would it be reasonable to say that hard work should be rewarded? Well…ones propensity for hard work, it turns out, is highly heritable. Either from your genes or from your upbringing. You didn’t choose your parents, nor did you choose your upbringing. So your propensity for hard work is really just unearned privilege.

Same line of reasoning can be applied with future orientation, or smarts. People don’t deserve the fruits of their intellect, because they didn’t do anything to earn it.

I’m not sure if there is a name for this kind of absurdity, but “Achievement Fatalism” is a nice fit.

I can sympathize with people who are sad about the inequalities of biology. The trouble is that the best hope for “a rising tide that lifts all boats” is for the top crust of the IQ of humanity to be applied toward fixing real problems. Distracting smart people with stupid fake victim status games literally makes the rest of humanity poorer.

The smartest people I know simply don't find them distracting. They also don't consider them stupid or fake; they have better things to do than argue whether people deserve equal treatment with dignity and mostly do their best to just treat people with equal dignity.

Spending extra time reading to your kids, sending your kids to tutors, paying for summer programs, sweating over neighborhood to move into for their good schools...many of these things are now considered “inter-generational privilege transfer”. But not long ago, they were simply called “good parenting”.

Why even bother doing good parenting when the ideologues in charge want to “fallacy of meritocracy” away any advantages you have given to your kids?

I used to be pretty annoyed by conservatives boasting about "family values". I thought it was just performative virtue signaling. But looking at how the far left views the hard work of parenting as something that ought to be "equalized away" has me thinking maybe the I was wrong.

Indeed we would have to make everyone completely equal. Mao tried to achieve this with the abolishment of the family.

Merit, by definition, is what you deserve. I could see the case for merit-based applications that take into account how far you've come relative to where you started.

In fact the Constitution insists on allowing exactly this kind of discrimination in the assembly clause of the first amendment.

The freedom of assembly is specifically the freedom that was curtailed by the Civil Rights Act.

Legally, it should be added... The freedom protected in the first amendment is the freedom of political assembly. The Civil Rights Act has been argued repeatedly in the Supreme Court, and the court has ruled repeatedly that the constitutionally protected freedom of assembly is not curtailed by requiring corporations, incorporated under the rules of the state, to be required to serve everyone in the protected classes.

Amazing that the first part of the first amendment does not only apply to political speech.

The court was wrong and will be wrong again.

I would ask how progressives square two contradictory interpretations of the first amendment but then I realized they don’t really support the freedom of non-progressive speech anymore.

Sorry, that was an error on my part: freedom of association (in the context of providing public accomodation) was curtailed by the Civil Rights Act, not assembly. And your beef isn't with progressives if that's something you're taking issue with; it's with a couple generations of the Supreme Court, which is considered a relatively conservative branch of the government.

(IANAL disclaimer) The freedom of association has been implied by analogy to be protected by the explicitly-enumerated freedom to peaceably assemble in the First Amendment, in some specific cases. But it's a loose protection by analogy; the letter of the First Amendment doesn't even mention a freedom of association. The SCOTUS has not ruled that the freedom of association extends to a freedom to exclude in public accommodation; in layman's terms, the reasoning is "You have the freedom to serve as many people as you want, but that does not imply a freedom to not serve other people if you want to operate under the corporate charter that the government grants."

This overview describes things much better than I can. https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment1/first-amendment-...

> The court was wrong and will be wrong again.

No doubt, but I don't think you'll find a receptive ear (in the public or in legal circles) to the notion that the Court has been wrong regarding upholding the Civil Rights Act.

> I don't think you'll find a receptive ear

Yes, anyone neutral or right of center knows all about that unreceptive ear.

I'd have to know what arguments you're thinking of in particular to have any opinion on why they don't find a receptive ear.

Without knowing that, broadly speaking: freedom of speech has never implied freedom to have people agree with you. And freedom of the press implies a lack of obligation to publicize information the owner of the press doesn't want to promulgate. It also implies an editorial right to modify published information, ideally with explanation but that explanation is not required (the back-stop on that right being if the public thinks the press's output is trash, they don't have to care what it has to say).

Some positions, you can argue until you're out of breath. If the position is bad, the argument won't win support no matter how much breath is put into it.

I appreciate your willingness to engage in good faith.

The argument is simple: people should be free to include or exclude others in their private business/university/home/club as they see fit, and suffer free market consequences for doing so. This freedom was taken away by the civil rights act and the supreme court.

It turned out, there weren't many market consequences for excluding black people in the American South because they lacked purchasing power (on account of the years of oppression leading to wildly-unequal amounts of resource ownership). There was just suffering and exclusion.

History suggests the market can't solve everything. History also suggests the majority is not always right, which is why the US government is structured as a system of checks and balances and not a simpler-to-implement mobocracy.

Are you arguing that ending Constitutional protections for minorities to freely associate was necessary to preserve the freedom of minorities?

Nobody ended those freedoms categorically. Those freedoms still exist in the context of personal association and most group associations.

But (like any business owner) if a minority business owner wants to incorporate and exchange money with the public for goods and/or services, their rights are curtailed like everybody else's are regarding who they may not refuse service to. For example, a black business owner isn't allowed to kick white people out. They are allowed to kick Klansmen out (as per federal law; states may place additional restrictions).

It is the nature of societies that we give up some rights to protect others. The law is one long, ongoing conversation on what that trade-off looks like. And in the specific case, I'm of the opinion that we tried it the other way (refraining from curtailing the right for a business to refuse service universally) for at least a hundred years and found that it didn't make a good society.

> "The law of unintended consequences" ... what are they going to do if the target demographic (in this case Asians) start their own merit-based and academic-based colleges and universities?

You're asking what people would do if those who couldn't get into university address the issue by building a new university, thereby increasing supply?

"Celebrate," I'd assume.

Would they though? I suspect they would want to apply non-merit/academic based policies to the new institutions too.

> You're asking what people would do if those who couldn't get into university address the issue by building a new university, thereby increasing supply?

No, I am asking what you would do if the people discriminated against built their own power structures (out of necessity) that, due to merit, was disproportionately made up of members of their community AND produced superior results for their graduates.

Right now many people are basically ranting that Asians are performing too well, leading them to succeed well above other $GROUP.

What do you think those people will say if the discriminated group sets up structures that further reinforce their success in succeeding generations?

Segregation resulting from discriminating against a particular minority to the level that they go ahead and establish their own structures can backfire immensely.

I've seen this (and currently living it firsthand) happen, to the point that the minority group is around 1.5% of the population but holds around 10% of executive and corporate positions[1].

And of course, the 90% majority is baying for blood...

> "Celebrate," I'd assume.

Segregation is never a reason to celebrate.

[1] Last I checked, anyway, which was about a decade ago.

> What do you think those people will say if the discriminated group sets up structures that further reinforce their success in succeeding generations?

"Congratulations on achieving the American Dream."

The NAACP already exists. What you're describing as a nightmare scenario is basically the way this has been done historically in America. It's part of the "rugged individualism" mythology that a group that feels marginalized organizes to take care of itself.

One of the reasons why MIT has the reputation it has, is because MIT admitted lots of smart Jewish students who couldn't get into Harvard... because they were Jewish. (Keeping the Jews out was once largely the point behind Harvard's selective admissions process.)

If, today, Harvard is keeping Asians out, it means more smart, eager Asian students to be recruited by other universities, which just might rise in status for admitting those students.

100%. So many people in this thread are out here acting like going to an Ivy League school is a guaranteed right afforded to those who score well on tests. That’s never been the case. These institutions have been discriminatory from the start and IMO more or less historically exist to provide a path to success for privileged, mediocre, old money scions.

Just saw your nick. Hack the planet!

hack the planet!!!!!

> what are they going to do if the target demographic (in this case Asians) start their own merit-based and academic-based colleges and universities?

I would expect setting up Asian-American universities in which non-Asians need not apply to be highly illegal due to the Civil Rights Act.

> I would expect setting up Asian-American universities in which non-Asians need not apply to be highly illegal due to the Civil Rights Act.

Who said anything about non-Asians? I said "merit-based" and "academic-based".

Is it inconceivable that a university that accepts only on academic performance and focuses only on academic performance will end up disproportionally Asian?

[EDIT: Actually, they can make it so that the "merit" test is not in English, but a selection of Asian languages. That'd very quickly make it into an Asian-only university without specifying Capital-R Race]

Well, if you first racially discriminate against a subset of the public, then propose they can set up their own structures at great expense (which only will become similarly prestigious after decades if not centuries, even if they somehow manage to churn out nobel prize winners and presidents almost immediately), it may be a tall order to also demand they be "racially fair".

At the same time you will push out Asian kids from regular Ivy-League school admission processes, after all "they can go to that Asian school".

If you promote the parallel polis, you will get more segregation, not less. That's the very reason you create a parallel polis.

Such universities already exist, for example Howard University and Albert Einstein. Just not for Asians yet.

> "sorry, we have enough people of your color

This is how US green card applications work too though.

Isn't that why you also have the diversity lottery?

That's what I'm talking about. Unless you have familial ties, or you are a refugee, exceptional worker or some other special status, it's a diversity-weighted lottery.

That’s also bad imo.

People shouldn’t be treated better or worse just because their country has more or fewer immigrants.

Harvard mails recruitment letters

Please correct me if I'm wrong..but these are recruitment letters, not acceptance letters, right? A letter asking them to apply to Harvard? My son has been getting a ton of these since he took a PSAT.

They can still deny you even then. The Asian discrimination was already heavy in the early 00s when I was finishing high school.

A close friend of mine had perfect scores in basically everything and Harvard turned him down on the basis of "we already accepted your older brother and it wouldn't be fair of us to take two of you".

> A close friend of mine had perfect scores in basically everything and Harvard turned him down on the basis of "we already accepted your older brother and it wouldn't be fair of us to take two of you".

I will go out on a limb and say that this is a narrative he shares to avoid embarrassment, and it’s probably not true from the Harvard perspective.

SAT scores and grades are only one part of the admissions evaluation criteria. How did he do in the others? What about his brother?

Something like this might happen if his high school had a certain range of slots for each elite school, and the school counselor decided to against advocating for him to get into Harvard specifically for some reason. That said, it still may have been a polite way of saying that he was not as good as his brother. Furthermore, if he was actually a compelling applicant, I imagine he got into some other elite school.

I really wish more people would learn about and appreciate the different evaluation criteria that elite schools use. These criteria aren’t perfect, but they strike me as being fairly dynamic.

He got into every other elite school. I can't say for certain given the passage of time but he wasn't the type of person to bullshit people no matter how big the issue. He didn't have pride like that.

I see.

If he got into another major school (e.g., Yale or Princeton), the admissions folks or the school counselor may have decided that he was a better fit at one of those.

Good for him for getting into other elite schools.

No, that amounts to "we have way too many people of your color, we're going to invite more people of other colors to apply". Says nothing about making it harder to get in.

The "personal" ratings might:

> Lee said Students for Fair Admissions had misconstrued data, and that race was used only to a student’s advantage in certain circumstances, and never to his or her disadvantage.

which sounds like a weird argument since obviously "advantage" for one in a zero-sum competition is disadvantage for all others, but counters the accusation that Asians in particular are being penalized.

Fair, there's some other articles showing the SAT score spread. It's similar, albeit the delta between highest and lowest ethnicities isn't drastic.

> So, an individual Asian student needs to score much higher to have a chance at Harvard, compared to students of other ethnicities. That's very blatantly racial discrimination.

A little late to this, but…

1. Your quotes refer to recruiting, not admissions.

2. Even if your conjecture that Asians admitted to elite schools have higher scores on average than other minorities holds water (it probably does), I think this focus on SAT scores and grades sort of misses the point of the admissions processes in many elite schools (including, and perhaps especially, Harvard). Specifically, they are typically looking for people who have been at the top of something or had an impact on something at a regional, national, or international level. Lots of folks (Asians and otherwise) have great grades and SAT scores, but they don’t really stand out in other ways.

> This amounts to, "sorry, we have enough people of your color, so we're gonna make it harder for you to get in."

It’s more like “sorry, you were only above average (not outstanding) in one of the five criteria we evaluate, so we will take a hard pass”.

Note that academics is only one of five factors used in Harvard admissions (iirc). Getting the top rating in academics might be something like winning a prestigious math or science competition, so having “great grades and high SAT scores” doesn’t even merit the top rating in one category. I think many people don’t realize this.

You don’t need top ratings in any single category to get in, but if you don’t have a top rating for any of the evaluation criteria, you need to be above average in several of them.

This discrimination is not to protect Black or Hispanic students from being outcompeted by Asians, it is there to protect Whites, just like anti-Jewish discrimination before WW2 when Jews were not considered white.

Bringing Blacks and Hispanics into the conversation is a red herring used by elite universities to defend the indefensible. If you want to see what a truly meritocratic admissions policy would look like, at least in STEM, just see Caltech, where Asians make up 44% of the student body, not the paltry 15% quota the Ivies have consented to grant them.

https://www.registrar.caltech.edu/records/enrollment-statist...

The other thing to consider is that “diversity” somehow fails to consider class. Have you noticed how universities prattle on about racial statistics but getting stats on socio-economic background is like pulling teeth, if you can get data at all?

> it is there to protect Whites

Is it? The estimate at https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_p... disagrees, but if you have other data I would be interested.

> at least in STEM

This is an important caveat, by the way. The racial breakdown differs quite a bit by major at many of these schools. I doubt Harvard would be 44% Asian even without the discrimination they engage in (and so do the authors of the study linked above, who put it at 37% Asian admittees if all the racial/atheletic/legacy preferences went away).

> not the paltry 15% quota the Ivies have consented to grant them.

15% when? The data I've seen has Harvard at 15% Asian about 10 years ago. Per the chart above the fraction of Asians in the set of people who get _admitted_ is 24%. Per the numbers at https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/harvard-university/s... Harvard's _enrolled_ undergrads are 21% Asian. Not sure whether the discrepancy has tso do with systematic differences in how often people accept the offer of admission or whether something else is going on.

> The other thing to consider is that “diversity” somehow fails to consider class.

Yes, fully agreed.

I think universities are judged to some extent on class. There are statistics about how many Pell grant recipients they admit, i believe. But one consequence of that is that if you are just slightly too well-off to get a Pell grant, you have no chance, because admitting you won't boost the university's score.

Exactly, if it becomes truly meritocratic, I feel that there are enough qualified Asian (chinese/indian/other countries) applicants that 100% of the batch would be asian.

And there is nothing wrong with that, if that ever happened

>Ultimately, I can't justify the idea of rejecting students based on race, but when I look at those demographics I just don't see much to get worked up about.

Really? I find it very easy. Racial discrimination is wrong. Period. You're pointing to a social discrepancy and saying "eh, maybe racial discrimination is okay because it might make the demographics more equal." I urge you to fully consider what this entails. If we want to live in a multicultural society, we must accept that different groups have different values, preferences, and practises. We choose to allow groups to be different, so we must accept that this means groups end up in different places.

Asian parents in the U.S. exhibit high propensity to encourage that their children study more than all other ethnic groups(https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110505103345.h...) (data here: https://www.bls.gov/tus/). Unsurprisingly, Asian children grow up to earn more than all other ethnic groups, and display lower levels of crime. In other words, this cultural difference results in an income and wealth disparity.

I am not of Asian descent, and I believe that a child should not be studying their childhood away. Who is right? Should I be making my children study 13 hours every week? Or should the Asian parents have their children study less? After all, if the existence of a disparity alone is morally wrong, one group must bend.

Or can we accept that different groups are different. This is indeed the premise behind multiculturalism. This will result in disparities between groups as a necessary and healthy outcome. Not something to be feared, but something to be celebrated as an expression of free will and cultural autonomy.

> I am not of Asian descent, and I believe that a child should not be studying their childhood away.

Most likely, by raising the bar for college entry in desirable schools, you only make them study more.

I would if I valued my children going to Harvard as highly as Asian parents. But I don't think that I do.

Claims of discrimination in top schools are often based around the incorrect belief that admissions are based mostly on academic qualifications. That hasn't been true for a while now.

I'm not sure where I heard it, but the admissions departments aren't looking for well rounded students, they are looking for a well rounded class.

A lot of that is just code words for racial, ethnic, and minority quotas.

I get that it doesn't make sense to require every admitted at Harvard plays the Violin/Cello. But it's easy to discriminate against a minority--like Asians--with facially neutral quotas that are designed to exclude them. "We've already got too many classical music instrument players" when the admissions dean knows Asians are more likely to play those instruments.

Schools in state's that banned affirmative action still practice it by applying these standards.

Why is racial discrimination acceptable in creating "a well rounded class"?

If racial discrimination is acceptable in this case, why not other cases?

Is a quality education really what is at stake here? Are the faculty teaching undergraduate courses that much superior to those who teach elsewhere? I suspect that if the quality of education is better, it is because of the college-readiness of the students admitted. (So kids, you are the customer, but you are also the product.)

A much cheaper state school in a cornfield can get you a quality education. Harvard and Yale are more about getting invited to the right dinner-parties.

If you wanted to rephrase that: The cornfield-state-school teaches you how to be a better serf. Ivy League teaches you how to become a master.

It's no coincidence that most founders come from ivy-league schools.

I’m assuming you mean startup founders (be sure to genuflect when you say that) but I can all but guarantee that the overwhelming majority of business founders in the US did not attend Ivy League schools.

Though these startup founders are both directly and indirectly funded by the power structures (investment firms, think tanks, the government) maintained by these Ivy League school graduates.

Think how all these startups are getting loads of "trickled-down" money from the Fed's money printer. Look at the list of chairs of the Federal Reserve and most of them are from prestigious Ivy League schools, you get what I mean.

The take that the economic elite are mostly from Ivy League schools feels markedly different than the take that most people who found startups are from Ivy League schools.

Startup founders are more likely to be here than old-money elites are.

But not everybody can go and be slavemasters, so if you're going to pick arbitrarily who can do it, why not use race in the criteria?

Everybody can know how atoms work, and read Cicero, and figure out where on the shore a boat traveling diagonally will land if the wind is picking up at a given rate. Increasing the human knowledge pie in that way is what universities claim to do.

> why not use race in the criteria?

We used to do that, wasn't it called Jim Crow?

Only by those who didn't benefit from the arrangement.

Getting invited to the right dinner parties can be worth orders of magnitudes more than a quality education. I should know, I’ve only ever been invited to the wrong dinner parties!

Was the dinner tasty, at least?

Black representation is one thing, but it’s almost a red herring. You can make Harvard 10-12% Black without changing the demographics too much.[1] The bigger question for Asians I think is competition with elite whites. A “proportional representation” type system handicaps Asians against whites, for no comprehensible reason. Harvard is 13% Asian, but Caltech is 40%. Why should white students be insulated from that competition?

[1] In my opinion there is no similar justification for preferences in favor of Hispanics. Studies show that Hispanics are similarly situated to previous generations of white immigrants: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/2/711/5687353. Their income disparity is explained by recency and character of immigration, and disappears over time. You see the same phenomenon about Asian groups that comprise primarily refugees. Vietnamese people were as poor as Black people in the 1970s. Today their household income is slightly higher than white people. By contrast, Black and indigenous people face persistent disparities that are not disappearing over time.

> Despite the increased chances of admission, black students make up a modest 5% of the (e.g.) Harvard student body compared to Asian students and white students at 13% and 40% respectively.

The numbers are a little misleading because 25% of the students have their race listed as "non-resident alien", aka no race assigned.

Removing that group and adjusting the other percentages accordingly gives:

* 55% White (61.5% of US population)

* 20.4% Asian (5.4% of US population)

* 12.2% Hispanic (17.6% of US population)

* 7% Black (12.3 % of US population)

* 4.7% Biracial (3.1% of US population)

I was just curious about the numbers and how they stacked up to the national average, and thought others might be as well.

> It's unfortunate that a quality education is a finite pie we have to divvy up into thin slices.

I think this belief is part of the problem. Information is infinitely replicable at zero cost, but we create barriers to its dissemination. If there are kids who are eager and able to learn material, they should have access to that it. And if they have mastered the material, they should be granted recognition of that objective fact. Any other policy means we are deliberately dumbing ourselves down.

On the other hand, perhaps we need to dissect what it is we mean by "education", because while access to information can be unlimited, the number of places at Harvard IS limited. Inasmuch as membership in an exclusive social club is limited, and inasmuch as the Harvard class is an exercise in social engineering, I can see wny one may want some representation for various groups.

In short, knowledge doesn't need to be a finite pie. It only appears to be so because some domains are gate-kept by limited admissions numbers in order to protect the supply of labour in those professions. The tech industry shows that when we don't have professional licensing, talent can find a way regardless of credentialism.

We think universities are trying to solve the trolley problem of whether egalitarianism means letting people rise as high as they can or if it means compensating for all the circumstances of their birth, but they're probably solving the problem of how to admit the student with the highest donation expected value first, then the student with the second highest, then the third...

>or if it means compensating for all the circumstances of their birth

If this is the objective, then we need to start a lot earlier than the point of university admissions. Also, "circumstances of their birth" would need to be broadened to encompass quite a bit more than just race.

>we need to start a lot earlier than the point of university admissions.

Everyone agrees with this, on all sides. That's why we have highschool and grade school for example.

You can, absolutely. A lottery system for admissions.

Not sure if you're joking but it would be a heck of a lot more fair. Just have some sort of objective bar like SAT score, and then do a lottery.

Then you don't have the "did we do enough for XYZ group", the RNG will simplify both decision making and justification. If there's x% of XYZ passing the minimum score, that's how many will be in your class.

But if there were racial disparities in your primary and secondary education systems which lowered the scores of some racial groups, then your supposedly objective "minimum score cutoff" would still be discriminatory.

Yes but then it's society's fault and you can't do anything about it and you have a reasonable explanation.

You can pour money into giving test prep help to disadvantaged groups and keep the headline, which is that fate decides among many who are worthy.

And when you find that x% of XYZ passing the minimum score isn’t exactly the same x% of XYZ in the population, what then?

"We didn't make the test. The bar is lower so more of every group passes. Fate decides who gets in, we don't add or remove anything based on legacy or donations etc."

To how many decimal points are you measuring “exactly”?

In the cases cited in the article, I strongly suspect “zero decimal places of percentage” is sufficient to show discrepancies (that discrepancies of full percentage point or more will be present, given the admissions rate for one group changed from 73% to under 50%).

The article calls out the TJ admissions process as discriminatory.

The activists that are regularly called racist against asians proposed exactly this policy. It was called a "merit lottery" and worked by setting a GPA lower bound and then admitting students randomly if they had a GPA of at least that level. This policy was ultimately seen as "too extreme" and non implemented but it saw its fair share of "lefties hate asian success" and proponents were even called "enemies of excellence" by Scott Aaronson.

yes, lowering your admissions bar because you don't like how many asians there are is clearly racist.

Did Brown vs. Board of Education ever apply to private schools (like Harvard and unlike U Mass)? I’m guessing private schools had some rules applied to them later, but that was way after Brown and probably under different laws not arising from the constitution.

Kind of. When Congress passed the Civil Rights act in the 1960s, the courts became much less aggressive in finding racial equity in the US Constitution, because it simply wasn’t necessary.

Private high schools that had segregation policies ran the risk of having their tax status revoked messed with by the IRS.

Colleges get tons of money from the federal government, which is conditional on not discriminating - and keeping federal government happy.

So private secondary schools still have a fair amount of leeway. Not infinite, but in reality they don’t have to worry about lawsuits like this.

Colleges do.

> It's discrimination any way you slice it. You can't lower the bar for one person without raising it for another so long as the class sizes remain the same.

I'm against affirmative action altogether but the best kind mostly avoids this problem: only consider ethnicity when it helps the application. Consider whites, Asians, Jews, and others as part of the same category.

But then you have to also not discriminate against white students. I'm aware that at super elite schools this discrimination usually helps white people, but in a lot of other situations it doesn't.

IIRC, Ivy League schools actually have a lower proportion of white students compared to the percentage of the total populace that's white.

Of course, if you look at grade schools, it looks like racial minorities are 'overrepresented' compared to the general population, so it's possible there's just fewer young white people.

> I'm aware that at super elite schools this discrimination usually helps white people,

The article calls out the TJ admissions policy, which was explicitly race-blind and did not lower the bar for anybody else.

the bar was lowered for the express purpose of lowering the population of asians at TJ. that is plainly discriminatory and racist - "there are too many of you asian folk here so we're just gonna trash our admissions to get rid of you"

The above post said "lowered the bar for one person..."

The bar in the new system was the same for everybody. It was simply a different method of judging candidates. There was no "these groups get a lower bar because they are black or hispanic."

Notably a group whose admission went up with the policy change was poor asian people.

The purpose of the policy was explicitly to lower the Asian population. It's there in the emails. Now the policy may have failed or ended up back firing but that doesn't make it any less of a racist policy.

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