
Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans - yasp
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2018/06/harvard-discrimination-lawsuit-data.html
======
gourial
By enforcing racial quotas, Harvard and other institutions are actively
cementing race as an important factor in our society, as if it's something we
should care about. As such, they are not helping society to become post-racial
- as must be our goal - but instead are forcing a racialized view of the world
down our collective throats.

While well intentioned, racial quotas are a regressive policy and history will
look back on them with scorn.

~~~
rayiner
Race blindness isn’t the end goal, the goal is racial equality. Today, black
people on average make _1 /3_ less income than white people. Because we must
assume black people are intrinsically just as capable as white people, the
goal must be to drive that disparity to zero.

With that in mind, it makes no sense from a scientific/engineering perspective
to ignore race. No scientist or engineer looks at a situation, sees all of
these problems correlated with a single variable, and then decides the way to
solve the problems is to ignore that variable.

History will remember “race blindness” with derision. A thousand years from
now, people are going to be studying our society in textbooks. And they’re
going to say “so they enslaved and then denied human rights to this group of
people based on their skin color for hundreds of years. Then, they said they
could undo the effects of all that just by pretending to ignore skin color on
a going forward basis!” They’re going to see “race blindness” for what it
is—an attempt to sweep under the rug generations of oppression because it’s
uncomfortable and we’d rather pretend “we’re all good now, right?”

EDIT: shocked at the number of responses challenging my premise that blacks
are equally capable to whites.

~~~
userbinator
_Because we must assume black people are intrinsically just as capable as
white people, the goal must be to drive that disparity to zero._

Must we? There's another comment here about no one seeming too bothered that
the NBA doesn't contain very many Asians. Is it already too racist to believe
that there are certainly trends in race, and that everyone is different and
should be considered on their individual merits alone?

As a (Asian) friend once remarked, "raise the bar on us and we just jump
higher. Lower the bar on the Blacks and they try even less, because they know
they don't have to do as much."

Indeed, it seems all that making it harder for Asians and easier for Blacks
has done is pushed the Asians harder to achieve even more, which certainly
isn't helping equality much. A pretty good demonstration of the law of
unintended consequences.

~~~
siosonel
We must.

Asians have not been systematically denied entry to the NBA for hundreds of
years. I do not deny that there are ethnic differences or cultural priorities.
But if a group of people has been systematically told _for a very long time_
that they cannot achieve anything beyond being a slave, then that oppressed
group would probably not bother to engage in technical or scientific pursuits,
nor would they have time to pursue higher education because they were not
allowed to do so.

Think about that: a group of people have been systematically given a chance to
prove themselves, while another group was systematically prevented from doing
the same. It's a systemic issue that requires a comprehensive solution. It
must start with assuming the very assumption that you are questioning, since
how else could start from a clean slate?

(1. And no, race blindness is not starting from a clean slate, it's denying
the systematically-imposed disadvantages that already exists. 2. Your examples
posing asians against blacks and asians rub me the wrong way, a bit like race
baiting although I don't know you enough or the tone of your explanations to
say for sure.)

~~~
echaozh
The Asians are now systematically denied entry to the Academy and you are
supporting it now.

~~~
siosonel
I am an Asian. I am against systematic denial of anyone. I say let anyone
attend the school of their choice, using online access to overcome space
constraints.

As an Asian who've experienced discrimination first hand, I am saddened that
necessary differences in the gravity of error correction, as applied to group
discrimination, is not obvious to everyone. Correcting the effects of slavery
is much more important because its effects are much more pervasive. Getting
rejected by a top school is not as dire for a group as a while, especially for
someone in a group that is not even a minority at those schools. But I could
see how someone could say what you said (but hopefully with at least a bit of
explanation to back it up?).

Although the "denial of opportunity" seem systematic in both cases - Asians
applying to Ivy League schools and enslaved African Americans in my examples -
the latter is _not_ due to space constraints. In contrast, Asians have not
been or are under-represented. To me, that fact justifies a top school's
effort to make access fairer to historically under-represented groups, whose
cultural tendencies have been shaped long-term by outright denial.

~~~
bruthafez
>Correcting the effects of slavery is much more important because its effects
are much more pervasive.

Uh, source?

You're just making an arbitrary value judgement. Who are you to compare the
effects of racism-against-blacks against the effects of racism-against-asians?
You're making an arbitrary value judgement and then using that value judgement
to justify systematic discriminations against Asians.

You're also ignoring the fact that Asians were enslaved too in Japanese
internment camps -- and what's more that slavery was more recent than African-
American slavery.

Weird to see you throw your own ethnicity under the bus in your haste to agree
with the racist value judgements of elite bureaucrats tbh.

~~~
siosonel
And someone who insists on absolute racial blindness is not making a value
judgement? Isn't the issue mostly about which group to feel sorry for, why,
and how? And you want a literary or published source for that empathy? Or are
you saying that it is not self evident that a group, one that has been
enslaved for hundreds of years, is not disproportionately poorer, grow up in
single-parent households, or experience incarceration? Is that pattern even
possible without a history of systematic, long-term oppression?

The way I see it, one group is arguing from a place of historical hardship,
and the other is arguing from a place of privilege. I don't mean someone
growing up poor in Appalachia as being privileged simply because s/he is
white; to me, that historical background definitely counts towards raising
diversity. I'm just trying to put myself in other people's shoes. It's not
necessarily about race or ethnicity or recentness of oppression, it's the
compounded interest of those oppressions and inability to rise out of that
enforced debt. Our institutions have to factor that historical indebtedness.

Unless you really put yourself in another person's shoes, I honestly don't
think this discussion will go anywhere. I mean, imagine growing up poor in a
single household family, going to lowly ranked high schools, being
disproportionately more likely to be stopped over and imprisoned for minor
offenses, and getting questioned about academic abilities constantly.

------
julianss
I'm a Chinese American and I have experienced this type of behavior during the
college admissions process, and during the hiring process with larger
companies.

During the college applications process, I noticed I was receiving vastly
different responses than my girlfriend (wife now) who was African American.

Perhaps you could chalk it up recommendations or personal projects. But my
girlfriend and I were both A students that made the varsity swimming team. She
was African American and had 5/7 full tuition responses including Harvard,
Yale, and Columbia. While I only was accepted into Columbia, with partial
financial assistance. We both wanted to attend Yale at the time and this put a
dent in our future plans.

I have also experienced a similar scenario in the "pre-interviewing" resume
selection phase, right out of college with no experience. My friend group
noticed comparatively that those who were not White or Asian tended to get
faster and more initial responses to schedule an interview. (I will note that
this occurred exclusively when submitting for large Fortune 500 companies, and
not for smaller business such as startups. Perhaps some selection bias)
However after a while with some work experience on the resume, this doesn't
manifest as much.

It is my belief that university admissions and diversity initiatives need to
focus more on individuals than race. The goal should be equality of
opportunity and evaluation rather than equality of outcome.

~~~
IvyAdmisions
I was an ivy league admissions officer for a few years after college.

I promise you your application was viewed as "well, here's another really
smart asian kid who's otherwise unremarkable from the other 1000 we'll see".
Meanwhile, hers was treated like precious gold.

~~~
sizzle
So what's the solution to the problem of not enough seats for x ethnicity when
filtering out academic performance metrics?

~~~
MR4D
Replace the name, ethnicity, and gender of the person with a number.

If admissions can never see that information they are much less likely to be
able to discriminate against it.

Of course, if someone doesn't like the result, and not enough
black/asian/jewish/white/whatever kids get in, then someone sues.

But to me, this is the only way of making it on the merits. As soon as you
introduce that information into the process, bias takes over.

~~~
IvyAdmisions
The asians will still get rejected. They're not rejected for racial reasons.
They're rejected because they submit uninspiring, cookie cutter applications
en masse. This may be because of something in the asian culture. That's
outside my expertise.

~~~
bedhead
There is a natural follow-up question: why might other races get rejected at
high rates, albeit not for racial reasons (similar to your point)? I think
there are questions that many people simply don't want the answers to.

~~~
sizzle
socioeconomic reasons

------
dokein
In my opinion, Harvard needs to just be straight about why they're doing what
they're doing. If it's race-based quotas for the sake of class diversity or
long-term societal benefit, then just say it outright and we can have a
discussion as a society as to whether that's ok. I personally think this is
bad (with medium confidence), but understand that there are arguments for why
it may be necessary.

What they shouldn't do is try to say: Asian people have worse personal
characteristics, when evaluated by our admissions committee, even though no
such deficit is found by the face-to-face interviewers. That's not propping up
one race for well-intentioned reasons, but rather suggesting that a specific
race is timid, not leadership qualities, worker bees, and many of the other
negative stereotypes assigned to Asians.

Can you imagine what the newspapers would say if Harvard just said that Jewish
people, on average, had worse personalities? Say, less honest and forthcoming
than other ethnic groups?

~~~
allenz
Racial quotas are illegal, so Harvard cannot say it outright. Harvard says
that race is considered as a factor in their holistic evaluation.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Yep, and it is the US Supreme Court responsible for this semi-nonsense. At the
end of the day, looking at a statistically large enough population, "one
factor in a holistic evaluation" ends up looking exactly the same as quotas.

------
axaxs
Why is race even a factor? Our society is moving backwards in regard to
unification. If we stop using race or nationality as a factor for anything, we
can get more fair results - as long as the selection process is thought out
enough to not explicitly favor races over one another based on irrelevant
factors. It seems like more than ever people are identifying themselves by
race, and diversity is celebrated so granularly anymore than it creates 'us vs
them' situations. I just don't understand the thought process. I want to work
with the most qualified candidates and not celebrate or even think about their
race, sexual status, heritage, etc.

~~~
IvyAdmisions
I was an ivy league admissions officer for a few years after college.

Race is only a proxy for what really happens in these admissions processes.
Imagine your job is to create the best possible 2000-student freshman class
for Harvard from the 20,000 students who apply.

You review the applications and notice to your horror that 600-1000 of them
all have perfect or near perfect test scores, boring essays, so-so
extracurriculars (Overwatch tournaments and robotics club doesn't cut it),
play an instrument (well, but not remarkably), and want to study pre-med.

Their grades and scores are STELLAR! But if you admit these students your
campus is fucked. Half the freshman class can't do pre-med. Once the pre-med
spots fill up what will the rest do? That seems like a very horrible situation
to put students in. There's just not enough spots.

What's going to happen to campus social life if half the class has a history
of not being social at all? Who's going to produce art and go into politics?
Who's going into investment banking to pull down big bonuses 10 years from
now?

So you work your way through them and try to take the very best of them. The
rest of them you reject. They'll get into fine schools and be successful,
there's just only so many slots of students like that in the class.

This cohort of students happens to be massively asian. No one was out to
discriminate against asian people when I worked where I worked, their
applications were just very problematic at scale.

~~~
axaxs
Honest question... what's the problem with Asian? I'm not Asian, but, if their
applications were best, I wouldn't be offended if the entire student body was
Asian.

~~~
IvyAdmisions
Like I said, it's not a race thing, its that a lot of the asian applicants all
basically look the same on paper and have the same stated goals. Lots of white
kids apply with the same "look" and also get rejected. Those students are not
seen as bringing enough to the table.

------
albntomat0
Different, but related issue (at least philosophically, to me): US colleges
currently are 57:43 women to men [0]. Does this warrant a response, and if so,
how should it be implemented? Male quotas? Gender as a "plus" in admissions
(like how Harvard does race)?

[0]: [https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/college-gender-gap-
remains-s...](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/college-gender-gap-remains-
stable-57-women/story?id=9676229)

------
aabajian
I think something that's overlooked is the importance of parents in
admissions. Case in point: Jewish culture values education in the same way
that Asian families value education. As a result, a _large_ number of white
students admitted to Ivy Leagues are Jewish. 25% of the white students in my
med school (Yale) were Jewish, despite making up only 1.4% of the U.S.
population.

I don't agree with racial quotas, but there _has_ to be some form of
normalization for students whose parents/culture/childhood environment didn't
value education.

~~~
brighteyes
> there has to be some form of normalization for students whose
> parents/culture/childhood environment didn't value education.

Why? Colleges are literally places of education. It doesn't seem odd that
children who focused on their education would be highly-represented there.

Intervening earlier may make sense - promote education in environments where
it's less focused on.

~~~
gizmo686
Consider two children, Alice and Bob, who appear equal on objective
measurements while applying to college. Alice comes from an environment that
heavily values education; Bob comes from one that does not. Despite this, they
both achieved equal academic results. Further, if admitted, they will both
find themselves in the same education valuing environment (college).

Since Bob came from an environment that did not value education, we might
expect to see an improvement from the mere fact that he is now in an
environment that does value education. In contrast, since Alice already came
from such an environment, we would see no such improvement (from that cause).

~~~
glangdale
This assumes that the sum total of Alice and Bob's ability to perform in
higher education is measurable by their admissions portfolio.

I can picture many different things matching this overall impression. Perhaps
Alice is the child of two university professors and has vaguely drifted to
near-perfect scores without really having to work. Alternately, she has slaved
over her books desperate to please her parents and is at the end of her rope.

Similarly, Bob might be a self-educated polymath who has transcended his
background, or a crammer who has carefully done everything exactly right to
produce the highest score possible, but is almost entirely uneducated outside
of the areas that produced good-looking admissions.

~~~
gizmo686
Yes. In reality, we are talking about populations. It is still possible that
the type of confounded you describe applies at the population level as well,
which is why I qualified my statement with "might expect". This is an
empirical question that requires empirical evidence to answer. Further,
universities have this empirical evidence (although I am not aware of what it
actually says).

I do recall hearing that (at some point in history) the army looked into this
and found that black soldiers did better then their white counterparts with an
equal score entering. Further, this is presisly the result I would expect to
see in the face of generic anti-black bias. For instance, if there was some
force that depressed black SAT scores by 10 points and had no other effect,
then a black student would be expected to perform as well as a white student
who scored 10 points better on the SAT.

------
seibelj
An anecdote about the evolving value of higher education:

I received a resume recently for a junior software engineer role. Under the
'Education' section was a paragraph that listed a prestigious university and
entrance year, but under it stated something like, "I was accepted to this
university, but rather than attend and go over $100,000 in debt, I taught
myself computer science and coding for 3 years with online tutorials. Here are
the projects I did over that time," with links to a github repo showing the
projects from his self study.

I gave him a phone screen, and while he wasn't a fit, I did not exclude him
because of the nature of his education.

I think more hiring managers in companies that are struggling to find talent
will begin to accept this narrative about education. The signal to me (if it
checked out) was his acceptance to a prestigious school, and his lack of
attendance was not very important to me, provided he could do the work.

~~~
alienallys
This might be possible for probably computer science education, if you want to
be a lawyer, banker, architect college education is MUST

~~~
seibelj
I think someone could self study and become a lawyer or banker / stock broker,
but licensing requirements would prevent it (not necessarily for good reason).

~~~
dbcurtis
In some states, California being one, you can "read law" while working for a
member of the bar and then sit for the bar exam. The CA bar exam has 45% pass
rate though, with most takers having gone to a good law school. YMMV indeed.

------
JumpCrisscross
Is there an easy way to get updates about this case in my inbox? I'm really
hoping Harvard gates raked over the coals for its behavior. Not only for the
racism. But the self-righteousness with which it pursued its agenda.

~~~
wuunderbar
> its agenda

Which is what?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _[its agenda] is what?_

Harvard's admissions policy promotes a particular vision for its students'
racial composition.

------
temp-dude-87844
Thought experiment: if you made all admission decisions by lottery, by
randomly admitting a previously decided, fixed number of n applicants out of
all valid applications received, and the resulting cohort of admitted
individuals was later found to significantly differ in demographic composition
from both the local and nationwide composition of population, would that be
discriminatory? If not, would it at least be problematic? What if it differed
significantly from the demographic composition of the pool of all valid
applications received?

This case is very unfortunate, because it literally pits racial categories
against one another, and claims that Asian-Americans are being unfairly
disadvantaged by affirmative action applied to Hispanic and Black applicants,
whose likelihood of successful admittance is proportionally much higher, in
part due to their race. What's unusual is Asian-Americans apply to Harvard at
much higher rates that they occur in the population, which complicates the
math, and encourages some reflection about the roles of affirmative action,
e.g. whether it intends to counterbalance a pipeline shortfall, or improve
absolute outcomes among groups whose society-wide outcomes have lagged behind,
or to right past wrongs. These are questions worth asking among ourselves when
we see that in some cases, and when faced with the allocation of a limited
number of a resource (a chance for a Harvard education) to a large group of
people.

It's hard to avoid thinking that this may be an edge case of affirmative
action that was purpose-selected by this group to force the courts to consider
a larger issue.

~~~
toomanybeersies
On face value this system seems fair, the most capable students get accepted,
regardless of ethnicity or race.

The problem with this is that a lot of students from disadvantaged minorities
don't get the same opportunities growing up. They might be just as capable as
non-disadvantaged students, but get worse grades because they had to work
after school to help pay the bills, or didn't have internet access at home, or
a variety of other reasons.

This is why in some systems, there is a different entry stream for minorities.
It's been a while since I applied to university, but I believe that in New
Zealand for subjects that have a grade cutoff for entry, Maori (indigenous)
students have a lower cutoff for entry to account for this.

Of course, this is a blunt instrument in affirmative action. There are plenty
of Maori kids who grew up in a middle class environment who are no worse off
than white kids, but still get the same affirmative action as poor Maori kids,
and there's white people who get left out because they grew up in a
disadvantaged environment.

If you could come up with a model that works better than just bluntly
delineating by race, that would be great. But it's hard to factor for every
variable. Maybe you could base it on the median income for the zipcode of the
school that the student went to, but then you'll be fooled by creative
accounting and wealthy families sending their kids to poor schools.

~~~
pkaye
Factor parents income into the equation instead of race.

~~~
bruthafez
Even that would make little sense. Jeff Bezos' income is $0 (or maybe $1,
can't remember) — you really think his kids would be disadvantaged tho? That
just massively incentivizes financial trickery in order to reduce stated
incomes.

For example if I were a parent I would just give all my money to my siblings
with the understanding that they provide it to my kids under my management,
state my income as $0 or even negative, and watch my kids' college acceptance
letters roll in.

It's impossible to use finances as an admissions variable because finances are
already so heavily gamed by modern accounting practices.

Meanwhile Harvard keeps being racist AF. Don't they know about Goodwins
law!?!? Lol

~~~
pkaye
Okay maybe combination of income and assets reported to the IRS for the past 5
years. Not perfect but it is better than current scheme that uses race.

~~~
bruthafez
Yes it's better but still so gameable it's essentially unusable. Also if you
factor in assets reported to the IRS it would be damn near impossible not to
be biased towards kids whose families have more assets and thus higher chances
of contributing to your university's endowment via donations.

~~~
pkaye
I guess it depends what the priorities are. Are they trying to increase the
university endowment, increase diversity, teach bright students, run a winning
college sports team, etc.

~~~
bruthafez
I Dunno dude we were talking about fairness in admissions and now you're
talking about the goals of colleges. I agree different colleges have different
goals. I'm just saying that taking finances into consideration is so gameable
that it shouldn't be a factor in a fair admissions process.

------
badrabbit
Ends don't justify means. Period.

This isn't right. That alone is enough of a reason to be against it.

Ethics is never a question of goals,if that was the case anything can be
justified with an end goal which appears worthy enough.

There is this subversive ideology about acheiving equality. People _are_
created equal regardless of the "race" social construct. If you have to make
someone equal then they were not born equal.

If someone can't get into harvard due to historical disparities against their
group then what needs correction is not harvard but instead their current
sociological conditions.

How can a person not feel completely insulted when they get accepted into a
school or a job solely for the sake of their skin color? I would feel
humiliated.

This society needs to get back to the basics. If you accept something as wrong
then also accept it as wrong for everyone, else scratch out any reference of
equality under the law.

~~~
jack9
> Ethics is never a question of goals

Not to be nitpicky, but to ensure you don't actually try to use the phrase
again...that's exactly what ethics are about.

~~~
badrabbit
I actually meant what I said,maybe I was speaking my belief as opposed to the
popular view I disagree with?

For example, we can debate the ethics surrounding killing a person. Can I kill
a useless member of society? How about a dangerous criminal? Someone trying to
kill me? I can accept all of that as a question of ethics.

What I cannot accept is framing ethics with an end goal in mind such as
"killing people will reduce the population" vs "killing is not the best way to
reduce the population","Killing dangerous criminals will prevent future
violent crimes" or "you shouldn't kill useless members of society because that
won't guarantee a productice society". These questions are framed with the end
goal beinf the reason the act is considered ethical or not.

My belief is that asking if an act is ethical relative to a desired end goal
is in itself unethical. If the end goal is the deciding factor then we're
discussing strategy not ethics.

------
Rotdhizon
On the contrary, I wonder how people would view the school if it had no racial
based entrances and people were entered solely based on their academic merit.
Would people look negatively on the school if it were 90%+ asian-american
students?

~~~
brighteyes
It wouldn't be 90%. It would be 40%, most likely, because that's what happens
in California universities that don't have racial quotas.

Even if it would somehow go up to 90%, and people viewed that negatively, why
does that matter? Those people are wrong.

~~~
ng12
This is happening in NYC right now. The high-achieving highschools are
dominated by Asian-Americans. Admission is granted solely on the basis of a
standardized test -- and enough of a stink has been made that the mayor is
considering removing it in favor of a more holistic "diverse" approach.

[http://abc7ny.com/education/parents-students-protest-plan-
to...](http://abc7ny.com/education/parents-students-protest-plan-to-eliminate-
specialized-admissions-test-/3606937/)

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in VA, one of the best
high schools in the country has a class of 2019 that is 21.8% white, 74%
Asian, 1.7% black, and 2.6% Hispanic. My guess is most highly selective
universities would look similar if admissions were race blind there as well.

------
djyaz1200
Malcolm Gladwell wrote a much very thoughtful analysis of the admissions
process and it's bias here...
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-
in](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in)

------
mdimec4
This shows everything what is wrong witg race quotas. They are racist in it's
core.

It also mocks the idea that underpreformence of certian ethnic grups is
because of "racism" and "white privilege".

------
codedokode
> Yet Harvard’s admissions officials assign Asian Americans the lowest score
> of any racial group on the personal rating—a “subjective” assessment of such
> traits as ... “attractive person to be with,” is “widely respected,”...

Why is such an evaluation is even necessary? What is its purpose? To give
higher scores to one's relatives and friends? And how do you measure the
wideness of respect?

Well, if it is completely private institution then it might be fine but if
they use government money such subjective ratings are a good opportunity for
corruption.

~~~
fraudsyndrome
I reckon it's to purposely give them a "reason" not to accept Asian Americans.

People like to believe we live in a meritocracy and Asian Americans as a group
did better than other races - so they put in "well-roundedness" which ends up
being super subjective but a reason for them to deny others based on other
factors not relating to scores.

The respect part is a cop-out as it plays on peoples bias. This is where
social stereotypes of groups as a whole tend to work it's magic. Asian
Americans are seen as "not able to lead", "worker bees" etc. Even though there
is no objective measure for that, just peoples bias and this leads them to
apply certain characteristics to groups (based on names/photos) no matter what
their application looks like.

------
CharlesMerriam2
Just to remember the 1990s, Harvard was also shown to colluded with other good
schools to maximize the number of scholarships awarded. For example, one might
receive a full scholarship from MIT or Harvard but not both.

As in that case, the activity leads to great discussions about what is fair,
what are the goals of a university, and what may a private university choose?

~~~
somecontext
For some context in case anyone was curious, this New York Times article from
1991 discusses the collusion this post is presumably referring to:
[https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/23/us/ivy-universities-
deny-...](https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/23/us/ivy-universities-deny-price-
fixing-but-agree-to-avoid-it-in-the-future.html)

(Note that the purpose of the collusion was to _price-fix_ to avoid
competition, which is the exact opposite of the example given.)

------
allthenews
They may as well be instituting explicit quotas at this point, if these
allegations are true. At least then it would be clear, and possibly even less
controversial. We have x slots for race A, y slots for B, etc.

Racism is alive and well. Only our notions of which types are acceptable have
changed. Do the ends justify the means?

------
coldseattle
What makes this especially bad isn't that they're trying to correct an
underrepresentation of certain groups by giving them a boost when evaluating
candidates; it's that they're making up false "personality traits" based on
stereotypes to demote Asian applicants. They'd be on much firmer ground if
they just said "we feel we should have more African American candidates and
we'll alter our selection criteria to get them by increasing our ratings for
them."

------
klenwell
To get past the affirmative-action-is-reverse-racism argument that often frame
these discussions, I'd recommend checking out this thoughtful breakdown of the
case from Metafilter:

 _Yeah, debates over affirmative action are just one of many situations where
the Asian American "model-minority" mythos gets used in service of anti-Black
and anti-Latinx racism, and I encourage other Asian Americans to resist being
used as tools for this agenda. Our proximity to whiteness will not protect us.
Our ancestors never enjoyed it, and it will not save our children. In
solidarity with other minorities, we can use the privilege we have to
dismantle the systems that oppress the most vulnerable among us.

On multiple occasions in my life, white people irl have complained to me about
how affirmative action disadvantages Asian Americans, clearly expecting me to
agree. I think this demonstrates a profound and/or willful ignorance of
history? Racism against Asian Americans definitely exists -- but anti-Asian
racism looks very different from anti-Black and anti-Latinx racism, it has
different historical roots, and it has had different historical impacts. In
some contexts, Asian Americans get the privileges associated with proximity to
whiteness, and in other contexts, they don't.

I think the educational system leading up to elite universities and white-
collar professional fields is one context where Asian American and white
people generally get profound advantages._

[https://www.metafilter.com/174730/Asian-American-Students-
Su...](https://www.metafilter.com/174730/Asian-American-Students-Sue-Harvard-
Over-Alleged-Admissions-Bias#7430438)

As this comment notes, the guy behind this case clearly has a clear
ideological axe to grind:

 _I love to see Harvard squirm, and they surely deserve whatever fallout comes
their way from this case. But there 's some context here worth keeping in
mind: this lawsuit is part of a sustained campaign by neocon perpetual
litigant Edward Blum to kill affirmative action. He is the same guy behind
Fisher v. University of Texas (previously), which claimed that a white
applicant was the victim of "reverse racism." Whatever the merits and facts of
Harvard's specific treatment of Asian-American applicants, Blum will be
seeking the broadest possible ruling against race-based admissions policies
across the board._

[https://www.metafilter.com/174730/Asian-American-Students-
Su...](https://www.metafilter.com/174730/Asian-American-Students-Sue-Harvard-
Over-Alleged-Admissions-Bias#7430201)

~~~
Teeer
Affirmative action is racism, not "reverse-racism". "reverse-racism" is a
racist term since it is used to dismiss prejudice against certain races.
Racism is racism, no matter the race of the target or the race of the
perpetrator.

------
Jamerson
We need to stop basing education on submission and obedience. Asians are
successful students, but they struggle to build startup cultures in their
countries.

Edit: Downvote me all you want. I'm an educator who has toured schools in Asia
to build international educational relationships. Their students are perfect
automatons who will never take the risks necessary to change the world.

~~~
allenz
[http://sites.psu.edu/christiercl/2014/04/02/why-
stereotypes-...](http://sites.psu.edu/christiercl/2014/04/02/why-stereotypes-
are-bad/)

~~~
Jamerson
This article defines stereotypes as "unfair" categorization. That is far
different than knowing the fact that groups have traits, and that
categorization comes from these observed traits. Of course individuals stand
out, that doesn't make the generalization a less useful tool for quick
analysis.

