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Comment by selfmodruntime | Hacker News Reader

The American focus on race is a bit insane to outsiders. Putting such a big focus on race in university applications is just weird. Even worse, having top universities openly discriminate against people based on their race or heritage with affirmative action or similar policies, all in the name of equality, is unbelievable to Europeans like me. What the hell is wrong with the US if a person has a worse chance to be accepted into uni just because they happen to be born Asian? How is no one in DEI committees seeing the utter hypocrisy here?

I firmly believe that the US is your best chance when you look for a country with equality and acceptance regarding race, religion, and culture. A lot of my US friends experienced a dire wake-up call when visiting and finding their belief that Europe is more accepting and less conservative than the US to be dead wrong.

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I'm European too and I can assure you that non-white people are discriminated at the admission stage to top European universities. Not via race, but via name. It's well known that universities and landlords reject people because they have a Muslim sounding name.

We have DEI in Europe too, but here it's increasingly codified into law.

I can guarantee you this is not the case, at least at the uni where I‘m doing my PhD. There is no name in the admission system, it‘s done automatically by grades or tests most of the time.

Same, and even in the ones that have interview. I would guess outside very bad language skills it might even give boost...

I don't see how you could possibly hire graduate students into a lab without knowing their research and publishing history (impossible to anonymize).

Academia certainly has its faults, but you won't find a field more accepting of diversity and hiring foreigners anywhere else.

+1 - University of Warsaw and other universities I know - admission is automatic based on grades only

Could you please name one or two of such universities? I am a EU citizen and I literally never heard of this. I am aware that in some regions in some of our countries you might end up with a racist professor etc., but never heard you can be excluded based on name.

That's simply illegal.

In Poland, admission to public universities is only based on your standardized test score. People grading standardized tests don't know your name or anything beyond a number, so discrimination is simply impossible.

Any reference or link to those policies? I have never seen such a thing.

In Portugal you get into university strictly based on your test scores and school grades, the university doesn't get to "pick" who it accepts.

Which countries are you referring to?

Race is a distraction from the ultimate divide: class. IMO, every policy that wants to promote equality should revolve solely around class.

In every place on earth, richer upper-class people are more advantaged than those from the lower classes. Every social policy should focus on lessening that gap (I recognize that the gap can't be closed entirely).

> every policy that wants to promote equality should revolve solely around class.

That was the case in USSR. There were university admission quotas for workers, peasants, etc. In practice, they resulted in discrimination agains Jewish applicants.

To fulfill the class quotas, the examiners had to fail a disproportionate number of some of the strongest applicants. A whole set of "Jewish problems", colloquially known as " coffins", was developed. At MIT, Tanya Khovanova has written on this subject.

Not sure exactly how this relates, but you're still saying with people being failed that the class representation was more equitable? Not sure what them being jewish has anything to do with it?

A brutal truth is that wealthy, upper class people have resources for training their kids that legitimately better prepare them for academic success than poorer kids.

The rich, smart kids in this example were Jews.

In USSR, nobody was rich.

> In USSR, nobody was rich.

Despite Soviet propaganda to the contrary, social class continued to exist in the USSR.

At the top of the class hierarchy, were senior party officials and their families.

Next rung down were university-educated professionals (doctors, engineers, scientists, etc)

Then came skilled factory workers, etc

Unskilled labourers were near the bottom of the Soviet class hierarchy

Those distinctions are irrelevant. Education was free in USSR. Access to math circles and specialized math schools was also free. It was not necessary to hire a tutor or pay for advanced classes to get admitted, unless we’re talking about the Conservatory or MGIMO.

Source: I was born and received education in USSR, so can tell Soviet propaganda from reality.

Class based admission meant discrimination against Jews.

Friend of mine's boyfriend was born in the USSR and was Jewish. To get into college he had to pass a mathematics test that anyone who learned math in high school wouldn't be able to pass. He got in. Then his dad applied for a visa to move to Israel and they kicked him out.

Guy hates communists, leftists, f*scists, Putin, and anything like DEI. Basically anyone that seems to have a habit of doing to people what the communists did to him.

I think it's a good point to be really suspicious of systems that categorize people into convenient boxes based on things that have no control over. That then determines what happens to them.

Even lebron james gets the n word spray painted on his house. Class may be the main divide, but race is still an absolutely huge one that transcends class.

Nit: it was spray-painted on his gate, not his house (mansion).

How?

> How can you even remotely believe that wasn't a false flag?

Please don't edit your comments to deprive replies of context. That's unfair to both repliers and readers.

Edit: It's always fine to add an edit, as I did here.

What evidence is there that it’s not what it seems? Its not like there’s a shortage of people who’d try something like that in this country.

It’s by design

100% ^.

But then it ends up being tied to race since black folks are on average coming from a less wealthier class than white people.

And class is hard to judge objectively. If you go by income tax, many wealthy people show very little income since they live on their family wealth. E.g a house fully paid off and only earning meager income from a side business, while their stocks they inherited are climbing millions in valuation.

The rich are really good at hiding they are rich.

> But then it ends up being tied to race since black folks are on average coming from a less wealthier class than white people.

Yes, addressing class inequality will also help to address racial inequality.

Seems like a strength, not a weakness.

> And class is hard to judge objectively.

Very simple, actually. $1 million+ in annual income or $10 million+ in assets is an objective starting point, all the way to mega billionaires like Musk and Bloomberg.

Congratulations, the small-time local farmer with 10 acres, two quality high tunnels, a mid-sized tractor, and a couple of trucks and trailers is now wealthy. Assets are not necessarily liquid.

Edge cases do not negate the whole point. For example, I'm pretty sure you can find a billionaire who's very cash-poor, i.e., wealth is locked up in the value of a private company. Does not change the fact that anyone with $1 billion+ of net worth is ultra-rich.

Whatever the edge case may be, anyone with $1 million+ annual income and $10 million+ in assets is undeniably upper-class, including your hypothetical farmer. Note that I never claimed their assets should be taken...just stating an objective definition for upper class.

> For example, I'm pretty sure you can find a billionaire who's very cash-poor, i.e., wealth is locked up in the value of a private company

Donald Trump comes to mind, struggling to pay $464M bond set by New York judge.

10 acres of farmland is worth around $30,000 its also 200 meters by 200 meters they probably don't need much of a tractor and can probably do with one truck for what amounts to a hobby nobody could live on.

The USDA says a small family farm averages around 231 acres or about $693,000 in land. Even adding the equipment its a long way from 10M in assets and that isn't even accounting for the elephant in the room DEBT.

Any sole proprietorship which is net positive to the tune of 10M is in fact by any reasonable measure wealthy.

Most of those situations the student wouldn't own those assets. If you go by how much money relatives have, then you end up being unfair to kids who have been disowned or if the kid has a rich uncle that has never given anyone a penny, etc.

Yes, the US is obsessed over race. That's because Americans are traumatized. I agree it's not a good thing. However, diversity in university admission is a good thing. There are many different ways to have diversity. Diversity is not easy to achieve and since it's sensitive topic it's often not done right.

Diversity in university admissions is a good thing. But US universities guarantee equality of outcome. This is wrong, it should be merit based. If you argue that there is a clear ethnicity correlated class divide, you can achieve more fair diversity by giving more chances to student's from poor backgrounds, instead of focusing on their ethnicity.

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