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Comment by Dig1t | Hacker News Reader

If this actually happens, what will the demographics at top universities end up looking like?

The universities have been doing a underhand work around for affirmative action for a long time now. In particular the ivy's have been allowing certain races more leniency on standardized tests and other performance metrics in order to promote so-called diversity.

I do not expect this to change. They needed the above workarounds because it is often the case in the recent decade that white people in particular were reaching minority status in their population. This would mean white people would be entitled to affirmative action treatment at their university. According to dogma this is certainly not "diverse" and therefore, not good. I'm not going to spend 20 minutes hunting for source as this has been discussed here on frontpage topics for the last few years. It's common knowledge at this point.

I think the supreme court is making the smart choice here because affirmative action is often being ignored by the universities. There's no sense in even having it if they are defining their own rules to select for non-asian, non-white students. The existence or lack thereof of this ruling will not change the current bigoted admission policies of the ivy's.

In which Ivy League universities were white students reaching minority status?

Ivy's were one example of the problem. Not of the white minority. As far as I know, ivy leagues do not have a white majority (owing to the legacy membership programs at many of them). However, one article [0] points to this happening in the midwest. It is also becoming the case at my local university who follows harvard's doctrine of race-based SAT/GRE admission standards.

[0] https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2022/08/29...

The linked article uses a strange system for calling white students a 'minority'. If you count everyone who is not 'white' as one group then sure, but that makes no sense. In this discussion here people are speaking of 'Jewish' 'Asian' and 'Black' students as distinct, yet when 'white' is counted then everyone 'not-white' get grouped together. 38% white with 20% asian and 10% black, etc, does not make 'white students a minority'.

Also, it is incredibly difficult to take the 'white' demographic label seriously when it comes to people concerned about it becoming a minority because it is not a demographic that can be joined. A black person and white person have a child, and that child is black. There is no way for a person of color to have a 'white' child, while the opposite is true for a white person having a 'child of color', so therefore the 'white' demographic cannot do anything but become smaller and smaller until it ceases to exist.

If 38% of the students are white, then white students are a minority. That's not playing with words, that's a basic understanding of words.

You believe that 'minority' as a demographic term literally means 'anything less than 51%'? What happens when there is no '51%+' cohesive group? At this point is not the term 'minority' meaningless since every group is now a minority?

That is, in fact, what "minority" means. When there is no 51%+ group, the largest group is a plurality. We do have words for these things.

I am referring to definition 1b: the smaller quantity or share. Which one are you referring to?

Definition of minority

1a: the smaller in number of two groups constituting a whole

b: the smaller quantity or share

2: the group or political party having the smaller number of votes

3a: a part of a population thought of as differing from the rest of the population in some characteristics and often subjected to differential treatment

b: a member of a minority group

4a: the period before a person reaches the age of majority

b: the state of being a legal minor

(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/minority)

If a group has 49% share, and there are 10 other groups that each have 5% share, will you still call the first group with 49% as a minority group? does n't make sense to me. As per your definition, then every group will be defined as a minority group.

Yes, indeed, every group under 50% is a minority group. In the scenario you outline, the group with 49% is the plurality, but no group has the majority, therefore all groups are minority groups.

what does "minority" mean then if not that and why are you saying that?

I saw a comment on HN that broke-down Ivy league representation vs population representation. Non-jewish whites were very underrerpresented but jewish whites were overrepresented.

Is that a meaningful distinction? And was this data legit?

A lot more Asians at top universities.

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