
The model minority is losing patience - stared
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21669595-asian-americans-are-united-states-most-successful-minority-they-are-complaining-ever
======
rsy96
One reason that Asians outperform other racial groups in the United States is
overlooked in the article: the difficulty of immigration. Most whites and
blacks are born within the US, and Hispanics are either born or move into the
US by simply crossing a land border. For Asians to come to the US, they have
to cross the Pacific Ocean. In order to do that, they have to be either rich
(at least middle class), highly educated, or extremely adventurous and self
motivating. The Pacific Ocean filters out many would-be Asian Americans that
would have lowered the average of the "modelness" of the group.

~~~
nailer
It's also entirely possible that, on average, Asian people are more
intelligent than other groups. We won't really know for a long time, as
discussing such things is taboo.

~~~
holychiz
I'm Asian and I don't think it's possible. Jews on the other hand are
confirmed with the most Nobel prizes per capita. :)

~~~
tomsun
I'm Asian too. I don't think it's because of raw intelligence. Asians work
hard, but in a very confined way, and visible way. For example in high school,
you work hard in school to get into a great college, your hard work is
visible.

Scientific discovery and technological innovation takes more than hard work,
it takes the willingness to be obsessed with specific and sometimes obscure
fields and forfeit social prestige and stability. Neither of those things are
praised by the Asian culture.

------
stared
See also a longer text on the same problem: "The Myth of American Meritocracy"
(2012) [http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-
of-...](http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-
meritocracy/) (or, as I would summarize it, "why Asians are the new Jews").

------
bsdpython
I'll be very happy when everyone can just stop worrying about what race
everyone else is. I understand the issue, but at what point does it sound
ridiculous to even use the term minority when there are 1B+ Chinese and not
much less Indian descendants around the world? In the tech world it is
certainly ridiculous. Trying to micro-categorize who is a minority in what
context has to qualify as some sort of vanity.

~~~
crimsonalucard
The title may refer asians as a minority. However, while asians definitely
aren't a minority in the context of the world, they still are a minority in
the context of the united states and Europe. All of that, however, is
completely irrelevant of the issue. What is the issue? Vanity? No. The issue
is racism.

When a race delivers quantitative metrics that beats other races out of the
water, what does it mean? When black people dominate in basketball and
athletics does it mean their race is genetically and physically superior to
others? When asians dominate academically does it mean asians are genetically
more intelligent?

I don't know the answer to these questions. It may be that asians just work
harder... but I do know one thing: All races are NOT equal. Political
correctness states that although races look different, all races are otherwise
equal. Although this idea permeates the cultural reality of the United States,
there is no logical universe where this makes sense. If races look different,
then the possibility of other metrics being different is a logical induction.

What does this mean? The implications are scary. Historical mistreatment of
black people have made this concept a very touchy issue in the united states.

While it is of my personal opinion that asians are academically successful
mainly due to hard work, I do believe that the heart of the issue that
articles like this discuss is this: We live in a culture where we are taught
that all races are equal, this is not the logical reality and subconsciously
we all know it. It's what causes the discrimination in the first place and
it's what causes defensive comments like this to be posted.

~~~
1stop
I think that's a bit literal.

No one thinks all races are equal in a genetic sense, it is obvious they are
different.

They should be 'treated' equally is the thing we are taught. We all have our
unique genetic advantages and disadvantages, but there shouldn't be social
disadvantage based on genetics. It is good we are taught this, because it
requires social change.

Also to answer your points directly, they do not at all suggest races are not
equal. "Asian" isn't a race, and "Working harder" is a cultural/social quality
not a genetic quality. Same with black people dominating basketball, could
just as easily be explained with social qualities rather than genetic. Really
you have presented weak hypothesises in the form of rhetorical questions.

Otherwise, by your same reasoning: White men people are genetically superior
at leading, running companies, space travel, research, etc... Where as the
truth, I suspect, lies in the context of their social situation, not their
race.

~~~
jrochkind1
> No one thinks all races are equal in a genetic sense, it is obvious they are
> different.

I don't find that at all obvious.

~~~
andrepd
No? Why? It isn't racist to say Africans have darker skin or different shaped
faces to Caucasians, you know. It's a fact.

~~~
jrochkind1
Ah, I guess it depends on what you mean by 'equal'.

But I also think that's probably less of a fact than you think, depending on
what you mean by it. There are certainly some people identified as being
'Caucasian' who have darker skin than some people identified as 'African', for
instance.

------
golemotron
I was talking to someone just out of college the other day and she was adamant
that reverse racism doesn't exist. To her it isn't racism unless it happens to
a group lower in a power ordering. The exact position of groups in that
ordering wasn't clear but it was clear that Asians were higher than other
groups.

Identity politics is a very dehumanizing philosophy. It tells us that we must
be seen through a label we can't change: our race, gender, or orientation.

~~~
cousin_it
Yeah. The ultimate goal of such redefinitions is to imply that some groups'
problems are inherently more important, more worth addressing. But that's not
true. All suffering is suffering.

~~~
memonkey
I don't know. Is going to jail based on your race suffering more or less than
not getting into Harvard because of your race? I tend to agree with OP's
comment, but one important aspect is left out when talking about things like
this: Class.

~~~
omonra
I'd like to call out your casual mentioning of someone's race being
responsible for them going to jail. That's not really what happens - rather
that someone breaks the law and goes to jail.

I'm not aware of law-abiding members of any race going to jail (while the
article demonstrates that Asians who do everything same as whites or blacks
have no chance of getting into Harvard).

~~~
jackpirate
_Everyone_ breaks the law. Some people get disproportionate punishment. So
while your statement is true, it entirely misses the point.

~~~
omonra
This is a factually unsupported assertion.

[http://www.manhattan-
institute.org/html/miarticle.htm?id=458...](http://www.manhattan-
institute.org/html/miarticle.htm?id=4582#.VhC1fWSrS2w)

~~~
jackpirate
From your article:

> In 2006, the black arrest rate for most crimes was two to nearly three times
> blacks’ representation in the population. Blacks constituted 39.3% of all
> violent-crime arrests, including 56.3% of all robbery and 34.5% of all
> aggravated-assault arrests, and 29.4% of all property-crime arrests.

This paragraph is presupposing that the arrest process is fair to assert that
blacks deserve their higher prison sentences.

~~~
omonra
I'm not sure if you missed these two points:

"From 1976 to 2005, blacks committed more than 52% of all murders in America."

and

"The advocates acknowledge such crime data only indirectly: by charging bias
on the part of the system’s decision makers. As Obama suggested in the Martin
Luther King debate, police, prosecutors and judges treat blacks and whites
differently “for the same crime.”

But in fact, cops don’t over-arrest blacks and ignore white criminals. The
race of criminals reported by crime victims matches arrest data. No one has
ever come up with a plausible argument as to why crime victims would be biased
in their reports."

The simple truth of the matter (which our entire discussion boils down to) is
that blacks commit crime at a rate vastly exceeding other groups. For more
stats please see: [http://www.infowars.com/black-crime-facts-that-the-white-
lib...](http://www.infowars.com/black-crime-facts-that-the-white-liberal-
media-darent-talk-about/)

~~~
mazerackham
Lol, I believe that cops DEFINITELY over-arrest blacks. After Ferguson and a
huge WAVE of black people dying unfairly at the hands of police officers, you
can read a lot of articles online where highly educated black men (ivy league)
write about how they get pulled over by a cop once every 1-2 weeks for NOTHING
(except for being black).

Think about that, once every 1-2 weeks. I've been pulled over 3 times in my
life. Twice for speeding, once for a broken tail light.

~~~
omonra
1\. I'm not sure why you bring up Ferguson when the guy was clearly in the
wrong. Ie he got killed because he fought the cop for his gun (which went off
inside the car) and then charged at him.

Ie someone who jumps out a 10th story window can't blame the oppressive
"gravity" for causing their death.

2\. That said, I take your point that educated black men may be unfairly
targeted for being _pulled over_. Yet I don't see how someone being pulled
over results in their arrest, let alone conviction of a crime which they did
not commit.

That's the issue - not that someone gets pulled over every couple of weeks
(unpleasant but hardly life-altering) but that huge number of men are in
prison for actually committing crime.

~~~
mazerackham
1\. As all the controversy shows, he wasn't "clearly in the wrong". Neither
was Eric Gardner, that guy who got choked out, nor all the other cases, the
names of whom I started to forget because the reporting became so common
place, i.e. it was happening all the time.

2\. So let's say a white person and a black person in a car have the same rate
of performing a crime (let's say smoking marijuana, a harmless pastime enjoyed
by all races). Let's say that if a cop pulls you over while you are smoking
marijuana, then you will be arrested. Well if a cop is twice as likely to pull
you over if you are black, then there will be twice as many black arrests.
This is a simplistic model and doesn't even factor situations where a black
person gets pulled over, and definitely gets forced out of his car,
handcuffed, and searched, whereas a white person might be able to cordially
get away with a smile and a "Yessir".

~~~
omonra
1\. The only thing that controversy showed is that Mainstream Media is bending
over backward to accommodate black race baiters.

If you read the report that explains in great detail what happened (as opposed
to just saying 'well, there's no smoke without fire') - you will see what I
mean: [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/ferguson-
mi...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/ferguson-missouri-
town-under-siege-after-police-shooting.html?pagewanted=all)

Eric Gardner was indeed a completely different case. His death was an
unfortunate accident. The cop did not intend to kill him - he was looking for
a way to subdue a very large man. I do agree that under normal circumstances
it should be treated as manslaughter (ie unintended killing).

2\. Your scenario is missing a very important point. I'm not saying that black
arrest rates are much higher, hence this proves criminality.

Rather the rates for being convicted for serious crimes (like murder) is off
the charts. Likewise victim reports of the race of crime perpetrators matches
the conviction stats.

So basically the innocent black guys who just smoked weed in a car and
happened to be pulled over because they're black are not going to jail for it
(maybe a fine at most).

------
skywhopper
I'm not sure what to think about this topic, but articles like this don't help
me decide, when they do things like:

* Dumping data from an advocacy group into a sidebar chart without doing any critical analysis of the data. The ratios of professionals to managers and executives are meaningless without factoring age cohort ratios into the data.

* Comparing Asian student admission rates between Ivy League universities to two California public universities, making an implicit assumption that they have comparable candidate pools and an explicit assumption that the only real difference in their admissions policies is that California forbids using race in making admissions decisions. Neither of those assumptions is close to being true.

* Implicitly accepting the idea that SAT or ACT scores are the only metric on which students ought to be judged for making admissions decisions. (Okay they mentioned "extracurriculars" and I was amused by the Northwestern person who said recruiters were looking for people who played lacrosse and rowed crew. But all the data mentioned were based on test scores alone.)

About the only sentence in the article I feel I can put any trust in is:
"Asian-Americans are a large, diverse group exposed to a range of influences."
But that very true statement feels almost out of place in an article that sure
frames things as if all Asian-American high schoolers are academic powerhouses
who want into the Ivy League at all costs.

~~~
crimsonalucard
>* Implicitly accepting the idea that SAT or ACT scores are the only metric on
which students ought to be judged for making admissions decisions. (Okay they
mentioned "extracurriculars" and I was amused by the Northwestern person who
said recruiters were looking for people who played lacrosse and rowed crew.
But all the data mentioned were based on test scores alone.)

What other metrics are you referring to besides academic performance? The
color of the skin? Obviously not. But this sentence implies something else. It
admits that asians deliver superior performance in terms of test scores but
that there must be some other metric that causes Ivy leagues to dismiss them.

I would like to know what that metric is. What is the supposed metric that
asians are inferior to other races at that causes their superior test scores
to be completely dismissed? Do you know the answer? Can anyone else answer it?

~~~
wozniacki
From the horse's mouth:

    
    
      “We could fill our class twice over with valedictorians,” Harvard President
      Drew Gilpin Faust told an audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival, sponsored 
      by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, on Monday. That means admissions 
      officers rely on intangibles like interesting essays or particularly unusual
      recommendations to decide who comprises the 5.9 percent of applicants who 
      get in. 
    
      Faust's top tip for raising a Harvard man or woman: “Make your children
      interesting!”
    
      For parents and students alike, that’s both good news and bad news. The bad 
      news is that of course it’s much easier to say that than to actually make it
      happen, though Faust recommended encouraging children to follow their 
      passions as a way to develop an interesting personality. It’s much easier to 
      complete a checklist, however daunting, than to actually be interesting.[1]
    

[1] How to Get Into Harvard

[http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/how-
to-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/how-to-get-into-
harvard/373726/)

~~~
pointeroffact
in other words, use unclear and vague criteria to judge admissions that just
happen to massively disadvantage asian americans. it's strange that Faust is
not condemned for her absurd and racist suggestion that asian american
applicants are on average much less "interesting" people.

~~~
puredemo
"All these Asian applicants look the same..."

Seems to be her meta-message.

~~~
wozniacki
Not to put too fine a point on it, but 20% of those admitted were Asian
American, for the class of 2019, in a country where less than 5%, self-
identify as Asian-American.[1][2]

[https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-
statistics](https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics)

[1]

[http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/how-
to-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/how-to-get-into-
harvard/373726/#comment-1462718053)

[2]

[http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/how-
to-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/how-to-get-into-
harvard/373726/#comment-1462720720)

~~~
9872
Harvard accepts students from all over the world. Over 50% of the world is
Asian.

~~~
klipt
Only 12% of admitted students are from outside the US. Harvard clearly favors
US applicants.

[https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-
statistics](https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics)

------
nraynaud
What's interesting to me too, is that they are also neglected in the
discussion about diversity in tech. They are the most over represented
minority in tech, and instead of looking into why, and how it happens, can we
find a leverage for other minorities, what open them doors but not blacks and
hispanics, they are just overlooked.

Complaining people just overlook them as: "it's a bunch of white males", but
Asians (and Indians I think) might be a key for change this situation.

~~~
lazyant
A bit off-topic but on US tv shows is ridiculous how actors (esp. main
characters) are usually white or black, little or no Asians and Hispanics.
"Friday Night Lights" is about teenagers in Texas (1/3 pop. Hispanic) and they
are all white or black (they even had an episode or more about the divide),
not a single Hispanic or Asian ever (only one secondary character for a bit).

EDIT: Also we laugh now at stereotypes like the token cool/funny black guy in
shows form the 90's or so, but now it's about the super aggressive female
black lead ("Suits", "Scandal", "How to get away with murder" etc).

~~~
protomyth
A Native American actor classmate of mine did a lot of tv during the era where
Vietnam-based programs (e.g. China Beach) were running as casting directors
would hire him for those parts (his hair was short then). I guess that's why
you see self-financed stuff. Defiance has a Native American in a lead part,
but I am hard pressed to think of anything else. Figure 2% of the population
would give you something statistically.

~~~
humanrebar
Longmire has many Native American characters and addresses Native American and
reservation issues throughout the series.

------
ZeroGravitas
_" Since the Ivies will not stop giving places to the privileged, because
their finances depend on the generosity of the rich, the argument homes in on
affirmative action"_

I was surprised by the paragraph before this, when it claimed affirmative
action was holding back Asians, when immediately after it listed a whole bunch
of less deserving groups that were taking up spaces. At least this line
acknowledges it, though I'm not sure fatalistic acceptance of the status quo
is much better than ignorance, both seem driven by cognitive dissonance more
than logic.

~~~
GBond
There were Asian-American based advocacy groups that disagreed with California
Prop 209. Their stance was Affirmative Action would intact a societal change
beyond academia in the long term.

------
mcnamaratw
This is hurting the country. I want my (white) kid to get in and everything,
but it's not right. Education is an investment, and we're not putting it where
it will do the most good.

We know there are de facto quotas at a lot of otherwise great schools.
(Probably not MIT -- yay!) Hopefully the word 'quota' reminds people of the
time when Feynman couldn't get into Columbia because he was Jewish.

------
huac
A really good point noted in this article, and ignored in the comments, is
that of the 'bamboo ceiling.' Yes, there are lots of Asians in tech. But they
are generally programmers and rarely in managerial positions.

~~~
ap22213
As a white in tech, I sometimes sense that I'm being discriminated against by
Asian / Asian-American hiring managers. For instance, I've never been offered
a position by an Asian, whereas I'm rarely not offered a position by a non-
Asian.

What kind of concerns me is that so many of the big tech companies have
disproportionately more Asians, and many Asians cultures are known to be as
racist or more racist. Unlike Americans, who are trained from youth to be
tolerant and accepting, many immigrants are not.

Unfortunately, even with training, most people will still be biased toward
hiring people like themselves.

~~~
beachstartup
_> I've never been offered a position by an Asian_

so... this feels like discrimination, which is understandable.

 _> whereas I'm rarely not offered a position by a non-Asian._

... but does this feel like preferential treatment? because that's the logic
you are presenting here.

"when i don't get hired, it's because of discrimination. when i do get hired,
it's because i'm a good hire, not because someone _else_ was discriminated
against to hire me."

this is why these discussions are meaningless. there's no way of knowing why
you did or didn't get hired. yet another reason to run your own company.

~~~
ap22213
Certainly a valid point, but I decided against pointing it out, since because
of market demands, pretty much anyone with a brain can get a job in tech,
currently.

That a particularly skilled and experienced candidate was being rejected so
frequently either pointed to an innate bias, more selective criteria, or
inflexibility in pay. Maybe all three.

------
mwhuang2
“There’s something in the upbringing that makes Asians shy,"

At my first internship, people were commenting on how timid I seemed. I was
used to obeying my parents and teachers without question; all I did was try to
keep my head down and work harder. This sort of upbringing makes for great
workers but bad leaders. I hope to come out of my shell more during the rest
of college and my formative years.

~~~
crimsonalucard
As an asian, I think shyness is also genetic. My parents were pretty lax in
terms of discipline. So lax, that I ended up going to a community college
after high school and transferring to ucla after i got my act together. This
didn't stop me from being shy. Shyness is just a heightened fear response
that's triggered during social situations. I think for asians the threshold
for this trigger just lower when compared to other races.

~~~
beachstartup
i'm asian and i think this theory is 100% full of shit.

you're making excuses for your under-developed social skills.

how embarrassing.

~~~
ryaniwamoto
How would you like it if someone said that to you? Do you act this way in real
life? Sometimes I think the internet acts as a sort of alternate reality where
people can just act like assholes without consequences. On the internet people
cowardly hide behind nicknames, but in the real world you're exposing your
physical identity to everyone. Things can get really dangerous.

-Ryan Iwamoto

------
bandwitch
"Children who rebel may be threatened with being sent to stay with family in
China, and they know from relations there that teenagers in America, even
Asian ones, get off relatively lightly compared with those in China."

This seems quite naive. We all have been children and something like this
seems unlikely to work (at least my personal opinion).

~~~
jacalata
Actually, plausible threats that are carried through are usually quite
effective. What kind of similar experience are you suggesting everyone else
has to compare to this?

------
logicchains
I think the Australian system is fairer, where university entrance is
determined almost solely by the results of our SAT equivalent and our final
year of high school in a largely automated matter. Universities don't even
know the race of applicants (although they do know if the applicant is a
member of the underrepresented Aboriginal minority).

~~~
michaelfdeberry
That would only be fairer if everyone has the same level of access to
education up to that point.

I don't know anything about the Australian school systems, but I know for sure
that is not the case in the U.S.

~~~
chongli
Isn't it wrong-headed to attempt to derive fairness out of non-fairness? If
the level of access to primary and secondary education is highly unequal then
why not fix that first?

~~~
theothermkn
> Isn't it wrong-headed to attempt to derive fairness out of non-fairness?

While the wording of that sounds very logical, (Isn't is stupid to try to get
gold out of not-gold?), it's a pseudologic that has historically been used by
the likes of Ayn Rand and other right-wing types to justify inaction. Fairness
is always "derived from" unfairness. The pie wasn't divided equally? Then the
fair thing to do is to unfairly take pie from the people who were rightly
given their larger share. It's theirs, right? They were given it. They played
by the rules, and now we want to take pie from some and give it to others?
Fairness is only possible when one transcends exactly that line of reasoning.

> If the level of access to primary and secondary education is highly unequal
> then why not fix that first?

The _most_ naive thing about that remark is that it's precluded by your first
remark. The _second most_ naive thing about it is that the way in which this
inequality of access works, and the ways in which it can be remedied, should
embarrass any speaker who asks "...why not fix that...?" Civil liberties? Just
fix it. Traumatic and total devastation of an extant cultural support system
by colonization? Just fix it. Centuries of ensuing racism, ethnocentrism, and
bigotry reinforcing an association--in both the dominant cultural and economic
systems _and_ in the minds of the members of an outgroup--between a race or
ethnicity and social unfitness and undesirability? Just fix it first.

No problem. I'll have it on your desk Tuesday.

------
ryanlol
So uh, why aren't admissions implemented as an algorithm that reviews academic
performance? Minor human intervention could be used to prevent mistakes by the
algorithm... Or not, humans make mistakes too. But machines don't
intentionally discriminate.

~~~
joshAg
Well, two major issues:

The first is technical: how does one guarantee that the algorithm is actually
fair? And that of course hinges on how one defines 'fair'. Many of the
measures that appear objective aren't. There is a growing amount of evidence
that the method in which a test is administered can have a statistically
significant impact on how different races and sexes perform [1][2]. On top of
that, there is evidence that similar biases creep into how teachers grade
essays and even math problems [3].

The second is more social science-y: switching to an algorithm doesn't fix the
problem that affirmative action attempts to solve, which is that even after
correcting for any test bias certain minorities or subgroups will still
perform statistically worse than others, not due to inherent differences in
intelligence, but due to the cumulative effects of the inequalities of
opportunities in society, eg lesser performing schools, less time/energy for
parents to help with homework, less money for extracurricular activities, &c.
&c. [4]. Yes, socioeconomic status accounts for a large amount of this, but it
does not 100% account for it. There are still statistically significant
amounts that are due to things like race, sex, or religion.

[1]: [http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-
a-s...](http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-
stereotypical-male) [2]:
[https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/06/21/sat](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/06/21/sat)
[3]:
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/02/10/teacher_bias...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/02/10/teacher_bias_in_math_new_study_finds_teachers_grade_boys_more_generously.html)
[4]: [http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-
plate](http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate)

------
jstalin
Fix the title please. It should probably read "discriminated against,"
otherwise it appears as though the Asians did the discriminating.

------
nv-vn
I find it very ironic that the people who created affirmative action are now
realizing how dumb it actually is in practice.

------
anonforreasons
>Thanks to such pressures and hard work, many Asian-Americans do end up in top
universities—but not as many as their high-school performance would seem to
merit. Some Asians allege that the Ivy Leagues have put an implicit limit on
the number of Asians they will admit. They point to Asians’ soaring academic
achievements and to the work of Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Walton
Radford of Princeton, who looked at the data on admissions and concluded that
Asian-Americans need 140 SAT points out of 1,600 more than whites to get a
place at a private university, and that blacks need 310 fewer points. Yet in
California, where public universities are allowed to use economic but not
racial criteria in admissions, 41% of Berkeley’s enrolments in 2014 were
Asian-Americans and at the California Institute of Technology 44% were (see
chart).

The picture painted by this article of the difficulties (or lack thereof)
faced by whites in securing admission to elite private universities like
Harvard, Yale, or Columbia is in stark contrast to the one painted by Ron Unz
three years ago in his thorough analysis of university admissions policies.

While Unz did indeed find ample evidence of quotas restricting the admission
of Asians, he also found evidence of what appears to be affirmative action
favoring Jews:

>Most of the other Ivy League schools appear to follow a fairly similar
trajectory. Between 1980 and 2011, the official figures indicate that non-
Jewish white enrollment dropped by 63 percent at Yale, 44 percent at
Princeton, 52 percent at Dartmouth, 69 percent at Columbia, 62 percent at
Cornell, 66 percent at Penn, and 64 percent at Brown. If we confine our
attention to the last decade or so, the relative proportion of college-age
non-Jewish whites enrolled at Yale has dropped 23 percent since 2000, with
drops of 28 percent at Princeton, 18 percent at Dartmouth, 19 percent at
Columbia and Penn, 24 percent at Cornell, and 23 percent at Brown. For most of
these universities, non-white groups have followed a mixed pattern, mostly
increasing but with some substantial drops. I have only located yearly Jewish
enrollment percentages back to 2006, but during the six years since then,
there is a uniform pattern of often substantial rises: increases of roughly 25
percent at Yale, 45 percent at Columbia, 10 percent at Cornell, 15 percent at
Brown, and no declines anywhere.

Read the rest here: [http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-
of-...](http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-
meritocracy/)

Despite Unz's piece being nearly three years old, the issue of Jewish over-
representation at these elite private universities has gone completely
undiscussed in the wider media, even in the context of Asian quotas, and
outlets like the Economist continue to point the finger at whites and whites
alone.

Similar dishonesty is manifest in the discussions of technology's supposed
lack of diversity, where it turns out that whites are actually generally
underrepresented at major tech companies relative to their proportion of the
general population and minorities (non-whites) are therefore by definition
collectively overrepresented, despite the continuous rhetoric to the contrary.

For example, at LinkedIn, whites make up only 53% of employees, meaning that
minorities are in fact overrepresented, largely due to Asians making up a full
38% of its employees despite being only 4% of the general population:
[http://blog.linkedin.com/2014/06/12/linkedins-workforce-
dive...](http://blog.linkedin.com/2014/06/12/linkedins-workforce-diversity/)

Yahoo! is borderline majority-minority, yet it too supposedly lacks diversity:
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/06/17/yahoo-lack-
of-...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/06/17/yahoo-lack-of-
diversity/10718789/)

Asians apparently only count as diverse and minorities sometimes, when
acknowledging them as such won't refute a particular anti-white narrative the
media is intent on spreading.

------
linkydinkandyou
A similar thing happened--and still happens--to Jews (which is why there are
so many Jewish Nobel Prize Winners from schools like "City University of New
York"). The Economist blames other factors, though.

"Racial prejudice of the sort that Jews faced may or may not be part of the
problem, but affirmative action certainly is. Top universities tend to admit
blacks and Hispanics with lower scores because of their history of
disadvantage; and once the legacies, the sports stars, the politically well-
connected and the rich people likely to donate new buildings (few of whom tend
to be Asian) have been allotted their places, the number for people who are
just high achievers is limited. Since the Ivies will not stop giving places to
the privileged, because their finances depend on the generosity of the rich,
the argument homes in on affirmative action."

The Truth, which is hard to swallow for some people, is well summarized in the
book "The Bell Curve." Fact is, in a pure meritocracy, some groups of people
("races") would be represented more than others. And its impossible to face
this fact in America without getting shouted down.

~~~
anonforreasons
>and still happens

No it doesn't. If anything, Jews now seem to benefit from a bizarre form of
affirmative action, particularly at the institutions that once most
discriminated against them:
[http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-
of-...](http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-
meritocracy/)

------
notNow
Americans view everything in life through the race and skin color lens. It's
becoming really exhausting and frustrating to deal with.

The other day I was watching a video on YT for the Daily Show after Trevor
Noah took the helm. While all what I was just concerned about was the
possibility that Trevor not to be up to the job and not to be able to fill
Jon's shoes, in other words, he might not be funny, esp. since Jon was
exceptional in this regard and superbly funny, unfortunately a great deal of
comments on the video were about his skin color and ethnicity and whether he
was black, bi-racial, mixed-race, coloured ...etc.

It's really nauseating and disheartening.

Americans need to be de-sensetized about this immediately because their
heightened sense of awareness regarding this issue is getting to an extremely
ridiculous level.

Back to the subject, America could be considered a relatively meritocratic
economy compared to others but in general can't be viewed as such in absolute
terms. There's a pecking order in businesses and while they love to blabber
about diversity and inclusiveness esp in tech companies, this only applies to
the lower ranks and if anyone wants to make his way up, they get to deal with
the ugly reality and real strata that make up their organizations or the
society as a whole.

~~~
protomyth
> Americans view everything in life through the race and skin color lens. It's
> becoming really exhausting and frustrating to deal with.

As a popular TV program put it, it's America's original sin. Also, it factors
into targeted politics that is in vogue. Separate everyone into groups and
target them with specific (and sometimes conflicting) messages. It works, so I
wouldn't expect a change.

~~~
_yosefk
Isn't it everyone's original sin? Which nation did not conquer the land it
occupies today from some other nation? Which nation did not have the
institution of slavery?

~~~
jessaustin
Forcibly occupying land that is occupied by others is not necessarily driven
by racism. Often it is hunger, or something else. Slavery in many locations
was not something done to other races, but to other closely-related tribes,
long enough ago that no one remembers the difference between those tribes.

USA is somewhat unique in that we enslaved people who were easily
distinguishable from the rest of us, and also in that after slavery was ended
we maintained a system of laws and cultural norms that kept the former slaves
and their descendants separate from and disadvantaged to other citizens. That
is our sin. It functions so that racist institutions and the habit of racism
reinforce each other, and even pull other races such as Native Americans into
the Other category. That didn't happen in Mexico or Brazil or many other
places in which multiple races had had a problematic history but then learned
to coexist, if not on an equal footing then also not on a so aggressively
unequal one.

~~~
jrochkind1
I don't think the US (or it's colonial forebears) forcibly occupying the land
occupied by others, or importing others as enslaved laborers -- was _driven_
by racism either, especially at it's origin. It was driven by economic profit,
same as usual. Europeans didn't conquer the Americas because they hated Native
Americans, they did it because they wanted the land and it's resources. They
didn't import slaves, originally, because they hated Africans, they did it
because they wanted free labor.

But the pertinent thing about America is how the society was structured based
on racism to _manage_ the economic exploitation. It was convenient to those on
top to color-code the socio-economic structure. And this was done at an early
stage in European settler colonial society in North America (By the 1600s it
was fairly solidified).

This is what makes racism the 'original sin' of the U.S.

And it is definitely not at all a constant in historical examples of nations
or kingdoms conquering land. There are plenty of examples, especially pre-
modern, of the conquered people being fully or mostly integrated into the
conquering society on the same basis as the already existing population of the
conquererors. Now, especially in pre-modern times, 'the same basis' could mean
as impoverished and disenfranchised peasants -- but the same as the
impoverished and disenfranchised peasants of the conquering kingdom, state, or
nation. Or in other cases, incorporated into an existing society that is
somewhat more complex and with opportunities for advancement

(How the Ottoman Empire treated it's conquered populations is super
interesting, and certainly not always great, but _very different_ from how we
assume this thing works in modern times. The Ottoman Empire was sort of a pre-
modern socio-political structure that hung on into the beginnings of
modernism).

There has always been conquering in human history, and it's often been brutal.
Even in the pre-Columbian Americas. (Although at the same time it's not been
_universal_, there are more and less brutal, and more and less expansionist,
societies in human history. )

But the very idea of 'race' is a modern phenomenon, as is structuring a
stratified society based on race. (And the idea of race developed in the main
during a process of structuring societies based on racial stratification, in a
way that hadn't genererally existed before).

~~~
jessaustin
Yes I agree with all of this.

Your reference to the integration of the conquered reminds me of James C.
Scott's studies of the states of Southeast Asia. As he explains it, the
limiting factor on the wealth of kings was the number of subjects they had
working the land. So when they went to war, it was primarily to capture more
people they could enserf. There was actually a regular intergenerational
cycle. Grandparents could have been (the equivalent of) serfs, some of their
grandchildren might have had some sort of sub-chief of a sub-village position,
others might have been conscripted to fight a war to round up more farm labor,
while others yet might have run off to the hills to stay out of reach of the
state.

~~~
jrochkind1
I love James C. Scott's writings too. :)

I am currently going through _Seeing Like a State_, going through it pretty
slowly because nearly every page is so thought-provoking.

------
dudul
Wait? Are you saying that affirmative actions are discriminating high
performers in favor of lower achievers? Holy shit, I didn't see that one
coming.

"The higher socioeconomic status of Asian parents provided part of the
explanation, but only a small part. Their data suggested that Asian
outperformance is thanks in large part to hard work."

So Asians' higher socioeconomic status only play a small part in their
success, but Whites' socioeconomic status is the only explanation for Whites
outperforming other races in academia (thus justifying Whites being the target
of discrimination via affirmative actions). Boy, don't I love it when liberals
try to make up some double-think to reconcile their crooked ideology.

------
gaoshan
The points I see missing from that very accomplished young man's application
to these top schools are the essay(s), any interviews he may have done and any
sort of philanthropic or leadership roles he may have been involved in. These
are all important, now more so than ever.

It is entirely possible that he did not demonstrate, through these other
avenues, the desired qualities of a student from the schools he was rejected
by. Getting into such schools isn't simply a matter of racking up points by
following some formula and quite a few kids do not seem to realize this.

When a school has a flood of equally polished test scores and fantastic
accomplishments it can result in other criteria playing the deciding role.
Perhaps he didn't meet these other criteria? They are not discussed in the
article so no way to know. I personally suspect this, much more than mere
ethnicity, as I know they matter greatly in the application process at such
schools.

~~~
pointeroffact
perhaps michael wang fell short in terms of extracurricular achievements
(though this is unlikely given information provided in the article). but this
is unlikely to be true of all asian candidates as a group. serious questions
need to be asked about the use of subjective and hard to quantify non academic
criteria that discriminate against a particular group.

the usa is after all quite unique in using non academic achievements for
admissions to elite universities...

