But I can see how it came off that way. Sorry to op and you the moderator.
I'm a Korean American male who migrated to the US as a second grader. I did not know any English and my parents were nail salon workers. I was on state assisted lunch program during middle and high school. While my parents had more than $30, we were certainly in lower socioeconomic class.
However, I was fortunate to have loving parents who wanted good things for me and my brother and I was studious/lucky/smart enough to go to a southern Ivy.
You're not being very kind by simply denying the struggles of over-represented minorities.
I forgive you since you wrote out of ignorance.
Your comment portrays you on par with a poor mexican immigrant who just crossed over. You both had $30 in your pockets when your came over but you credit your success to "have worked hard" implying the mexican immigrant didn't "work hard" as yourself.
Add in the fact that affirmative action isn’t about poor people. There are vanishingly few kids at Harvard who grew up in the projects in NYC. You’re comparing two groups of people who are comfortably middle class based on their grandfather’s status.
Now the op has a kid who is about to enter college which means when he arrived to USA he was already had access to college level education although had little money. The
If he was lower caste, he is being hypocritical as he would have benefited from affirmative action in India.
You are privileged, and I know it because I wanted to study in the United states for a master's degree but my parents couldn't afford it. The students who were able to afford an education in the United states were the rich kids in my class, and 100% of them were upper caste.
Most American students graduate with a 100K+ debt burden. How much debt did you have on graduation?
I forgive you for being blind to your upper caste privileges.
Having said that, I believe SAT scores should be the key factor in admissions.
> The backward castes of South Asia, known as Dalits, form 1.5% of all Indian immigrants to the United States
Calling me ignorant and a passive aggressive "forgive you" without actually addressing my comment isn't "kind".
GP came here with a stem degree worth millions of dollars in lifetime earnings , NOT $30 in pocket ( which was used as a proof of "not privileged" )
Grossly misrepresenting oneself and denying privilege is not kind.
Are you aware that the majority of STEM seats in Indian colleges are set aside for either affirmative action for ‘lower’ castes (itself an arbitrary criteria) and women?
The average man in India is competing for approx 10% of college seats!
And saying an Indian STEM degree is worth millions in lifetime earnings reveals even more ignorance - outside of a handful of colleges, the India higher education system is considered woefully inadequate, underfunded, pumping out graduates who only succeed out of personal initiative.
Every major corporation in India essentially has a retraining program to actually teach what’s necessary for work. The worker training issue is one of the top challenges faced by businesses there.
Perhaps it’s time you described your own ethnicity and background etc. Let’s learn a little more about where your biases flow from.
If you actually grew up in India in the time period of the OP, or knew anything about it other than nonsense in woke publications, you would feel ashamed for your tone and envy and render a sincere apology to the OP.
And these seats are never filled and go to upper castes anyway?
My class was supposed to be 50% low caste with 25% Dalits in a class of 60. There were literally 2 Dalits in my class. And of late, the OBC categories are being crowded in by upper castes through political action.
A whole 50% of my class was actually "payment seats" where they paid double the fees to get seats with low entrance scores. Basically, a 50% quota for the privileged.
Having said that, People ask folks how much they scored in their entrance exam. Then it becomes obvious who were Dalits are - they had the lowest scores. The 2 of them were also fairly underprivileged, so you could guess from their less trendy and not as new clothes too.
50% were payment seats with about the same entrance rank as OBC students. So it was hard to tell the OBCs apart from the payment seat students. India actually has "affirmative action" for the rich in all private universities, which most of Indian H1Bs have graduated from. My parents couldn't afford these seats. The H1B upper castes wont tell you that, and will pretend that rich Dalits are taking over all the seats. No such thing is happening. I have never met a rich Dalit in my life. I am sure they exist, but I have never met them.
Their academic performance improves with time, and some of them are engineering managers at Microsoft now.
Also, is "caste radar" a word you made up, or is that a generally-used concept?
I am connected to those folks on LinkedIn.
> Also, is "caste radar" a word you made up, or is that a generally-used concept?
I made it up. But I have read content online, where Dalits feel a huge pressure when they are asked which temple they attend, or how they celebrate certain festivals. I don't know what these ritual differences are. Many folks pick up caste from last names, I can only pick up a small subset of them. What I meant to say was that - I can't tell the caste of a person as easily as Hindus. The Dalits I know, I surmised their caste from their entrance rank and many of them didn't hide it.
Degree helps you at the beginning of the career
After you have exp and knowledge
It becomes less and less relevant
It is impossible to predict value of degree
Just like the value of connections
Surely a stem degree and an opportunity to get a post graduate stem degree in a blazing hot tech market is worth more than $30.
Do you really think GP and a venezuelan asylee have same amount of privilege because they both came over with $30 in their pockets. Yet that was the logic GP used to justify his lack of privilege.
You guys over there seem to be treating degree like the only way to better life
Degree is not worth this much.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2021/10/11/new-...
People with degrees, especially in stem are small (in compare to all ppl) group of people who are willing to put multi year, intense effort studying non trivial things
So yea, just those traits make them more likely to earn more
Go ahead and give degree to somebody without skills in good paying jobs and see whether that person will be milions ahead too
So the biggest salary gap is at the beginning and later everything is up to the skill
If you want fancy jobs like Jane Street then "just" degree from random school may not be enough
Dont forget to be grateful to the black people affirmative action was originally intended to help. They are the only reason you were allowed into the US and could become naturalized. They spent their limited political capital fighting for you when they didnt need to.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this is meant as hyperbole. Still I feel like this comment falls into the same rut that has lead to the current college admissions debate.
Advocating for poor people does not have to be seen as an attempt to disenfranchise or minimize the opportunities of racial minorities.
Black Americans arent just poor or racial minorities, they were systematically robbed of the vast majority of their "early US investor" wealth by the state for centuries. They dont and shouldnt fall into the same category of other "racial minorities" and white women when it comes to these programs.
>I hate this
Strong words.
You do not know their struggles, or their stories (beyond one fact and one assumption). Better to use weak words, because you are in a weak position
> You do not know their struggles, or their stories
By your logic no one can respond to anything because no one will know the commenters life story.
I don't think Indian education is noticeably better than other developing countries anyway. Much less poor regions of the US. Especially India a generation ago.
Does it not matter? Can we step back and think this through? The op is most likely comparing himself to all the better placed individuals compared to him. Do people in America always think about third world countries and feel humble, modest and welcoming? Everyone's got their own struggles.
> You had the momentum generations of high caste privilege and high caste education focused culture in India that let you achieve that
Surely, you don't feel humble because centuries of evolution put humans at a disproportionate level compared to others.
The op may have got an advantage because of cultural and historical reasons, but is that a conscious decision on his part? I don't think people voluntarily supress lower castes on a day to day basis.
90% of high caste folks might have started the migration to US, but it's just been a couple of decades.
I also don't understand this dichotomy. If higher caste people are affluent and influential in Indian society, what could be the reason for them to move out and make bread in a different country?
Judging from op's hundreds of dollars, they were definitely not affluent. If you are not affluent, you can't be influential. If you are not influential, you have hustle your way through everything, literally everything.
I think this comment is harsh on the OP.
still not a reasonable justification to misdirect talented individuals to mediocre colleges and waste their potential.
On a long term, this negatively affects scientific progress, and indirectly the national security.
yes agreed.
You can't buy food, housing, or pay utilities with your diploma. You need money to pay for things.
>getting that opportunity is a privilege that was denied to many.
Is it though? There are people who lived dirt-poor lives but managed to do a complete 180.
The whole concept of "privilege" is really just making excuses for why you can't do something about a problem.