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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

I find penalizing scores of Asian Americans to be exactly as racist as improving scores of African Americans and other ethnicities. If we, as a society, believe that all people from all ethnicities are equal, why do we do this? I could understand if we boosted scores of people coming from poor families, but changing scores based only on ethnicity? How is that not racist?

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>all people from all ethnicities are equal

All people from all ethnicities are equal in the sense that they deserve an equal oppertunity to succeed. However, that has not happened. Certain ethnic groups (black people) have been systematically disadvantaged. They continue to be under-represented in higher education and over-represented in the prison system. Affirmative action does a good job at getting black people into college, which generally helps a person later in life when they want to get a good job.

AND helps their children and grandchildren do well for themselves, breaking a socioeconomic cycle

It's not black people who are disadvantaged - but people coming from poor, ghetto communities who are. The fact that they are black is secondary. Like I've said, I would be completely ok with them being given extra points due to coming from a very poor/criminal families. No problem here. But a simple system "black? extra points. Asian? negative points" is nothing but racist. Is a black person from a rich family getting extra points? If yes, why? Is an Asian person from a poor family still getting negative points? If yes, again - why? It literally doesn't make any sense.

You're now shifting the conversation from the broad admissions policy to specific admission merits of individuals. The policy of promoting the admission of black students as a whole has been successful. It's not racism when a minority/disadvantaged group is given a leg up on a group that already has an advantage. The effect is so minimal that it really isn't worth discussing.

How has it been successful? Some people got admitted to university on the basis of their skin color, while some other people got rejected based on their skin color. How is this a success?

Skin color is not the only factor of admissions, so your reduction of the situation to being one is not appropriate. It is a success in that people who might have previously been unable to attend college are admitted to college, and given scholarships for needy/minority students. We need not worry about the fate of middle class white people like me.

Asians from poor neighborhoods still are because they're Asian. And if they are male, then they are even more discriminated against than Asian women who are both "female" and "Asian".

Basically Asian in general regardless if you're from overseas or from NY, you're getting shafted. And if you're male... good luck, you better have a 5.0 GPA and be the captain of the football team to get in any where.

To play devils advocate:

If you think all ethnicities are equal, a quota system makes perfect sense. If all ethnicities are equal, the differences in admissions must be the result of error, bias, or discrimination.

Asians/whites are just forcing their kids to prep better for SAT. The SAT may be biased. Grades in high school are biased.

Admissions criteria are actually biased (don't even have to play devils adovate here). Vice President (one of 55!) of the junior Sailing Club looks better than guy who picks teams at the local basketball hoop. Playing Violin looks better than freestyle rapper.

" If all ethnicities are equal, the differences in admissions must be the result of error, bias, or discrimination."

No, if all ethnicities are equal, then having 100% of Asians or 100% of black or white people doesn't mean anything. If black people are just as good as white people(and they are!) then we shouldn't care about the split being 50/50 - any split is good enough, because the color of your skin literally doesn't matter.

>>Asians/whites are just forcing their kids to prep better for SAT.

and this sort of generalization is racist all by itself.

What the original poster is saying though is that if they are all equal, then differences must be either though some bias or just random chance. With consistent disparity it is more likely to be bias. So to counter this a quota system makes sense.

Of course we know both that a quota system won't fly and skin color matters a lot in virtually everything we do. We're at a great lose-lose scenario.

Boosting scores of kids from poor families will disproportionally help poor white kids. And the last thing universities want is more poor white kids.

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