
Feds say Yale discriminates against Asian, white applicants - pizza
https://apnews.com/e97f08eb935989840bda430bb7a32e15
======
nataz
Man, I remember appplying to colleges and being rather selective about how I
self identified. I'm half Asian, and half "white" (which is weird in itself
because it's technically a bunch of different races bundled into one light
skinned bucket).

On almost all my applications I identified as Asian (better chance of
acceptance and scholarships!).

The only exceptions were Ivy and California schools which even in the late
90's were obviously discriminating against Asians. You know it's bad when you
identify as white to get a diversity edge.

Even today at work,I regularly get ignored for diversity metrics. Being an
Asian American is so weird.

~~~
icelancer
This is true about one of my workplaces. Diversity this, diversity that. As a
Director, I remind them that I'm not white. They seem to handwave it away and
not count it despite Asian-Americans being underrepresented in this line of
work. Such is life.

EDIT: If you're an Asian-American you get used to this kind of "model
minority" discrimination / racism. It just is what it is. My guess is it is
similar for Jewish people.

~~~
0x00000000
If you have been paying attention you may have seen the term “BIPOC” pop up
overnight. This is a less handwave-y way of excluding Asians when it is
convenient.

~~~
pc86
I was confused by the B in BIPOC. I thought African-Americans were people of
color?

I'm trying to be earnest here because if that's the term that should be used I
will use it, but I'd like to know its genesis. It feels wrong to refer to
entire, disparate groups of people (indigenous peoples and Latinos in the
Dakotas probably have very little in common) by an acronym that seemingly
double-counts a particular group seems odd.

~~~
0x00000000
it essentially just means “the black and indigenous subset of people of
color”. Some definitions say it is to emphasize them more but includes all
POC, but the former definition is effectively what it means in any context
where one would find it necessary to use it at all.

~~~
pc86
Oh wow I completely misunderstood it then. So BIPOC is a subset of POC, got
it. Thank you.

------
simmanian
It's easy to engage in a zero sum game of fighting for the "fair" share of the
pie, but I believe the fundamental problem is that our education system as it
exists today has immense scalability problems: it's built upon the idea of
creating scarcity around qualifications and putting people against each other.
I honestly think we are already headed in the direction of providing a more
open education through the internet. COVID has probably accelerated the
process.

I hope we can find ways to lift each other up rather than bring each other
down.

~~~
biophysboy
This scarcity problem was the issue I had with the free college proposals last
year. It basically proposed that we should make everyone professionals. But,
this isn't possible! For every manager, there are 10 workers. "Working class"
jobs are necessary. The solution should not be give everyone an escape from
hell, it should be make the jobs less hellish. Better wages, better
healthcare, more respect and dignity overall.

Saying that everybody should not go to college might at first seem elitist,
but I think its elitist to presume that college is the only path, where people
demonstrate their "merit".

~~~
TouchyJoe
10 people don't need 1 manager. The company'd be best served if all 11 people
worked and managed themselves, like adults.

~~~
rickdeveloper
Well, I think if large groups of people (companies) are collaborating, some
degree of hierarchy should be maintained. While, yes, even if all employees
are reasonable adults, it would still benefit their shared objective if there
is structure in what they are working on, and when.

------
supernova87a
I've had a couple of observations about this whole process, and I would love
to be convinced (either way!) with real data / evidence.

1) For all the contortions that universities in the US go to, to adjust and
hand-tune their population -- does it produce a meaningfully _better_ class
than if they used a simple score cutoff? Would such a class (chosen by simple,
unbiased score cutoff) be so much worse at innovation, leadership, (alumni
donations??) than a class chosen by our heavy judgement-laden process? Sports,
maybe?

What is all this extra effort and political decision-making worth, in actual
outcome? Many other countries use purely exam based entrance. Or allow anyone
in, and test them once there and kick out if they don't pass. What is the
value of the "high judgement" method of admissions? Is it that you're more
likely to produce a president or CEO?

2) To echo Justice O'Connor's final question on the matter in oral arguments,
when do we know that we're _done_ with this policy? Who says we're done and
fixed the situation? How will we know we've reached a point where we can agree
that we've achieved something that was the goal, or is it just arbitrary, up
to whomever is in power at the moment? If not, will this just go on forever?
Is that not ripe for some bad side effects, or worse, corruption of the
process?

3) Why have universities adopted themselves as the place where this
modification of outcomes should be applied? As I understand it, the problem of
diversity etc. etc. happens long before the college/university stage.
Attempting to fix it at the end does no one very much good, than if the effort
was applied earlier in students' lives. Or, the metrics by which you decide if
it's working become softer and softer.

I struggle to find satisfactory answers to these questions, and therefore
don't find myself convinced for why AA is reasonable (or legal).

~~~
jmoss20
1) The incentives are different for different universities. Less elite
universities don't (generally) do all this because, you're right, there's no
point. More elite universities do, because they're incentivized to.

Elite universities play a zero-sum game with one another for the far right
tail of prestige/power/access. Part of that game does depend on producing the
right sort of graduates -- but no exam will find them, and the sorts of things
that identify them aren't generally the sorts of things you can grade/fail
them on either. The other part of the game is played not with the graduate but
with _everyone else_. Harvard is Harvard (to most people) not because of the
mean Harvard grad's success, but because everyone else couldn't get in. Those
two incentive structures point more or less at what we've got: painstaking
care taken to identify a very small group of candidates, who are then _highly_
credentialed (ex: grade inflation). (All while retaining the aura of
meritocracy.)

~~~
chii
> Part of that game does depend on producing the right sort of graduates --
> but no exam will find them, and the sorts of things that identify them
> aren't generally the sorts of things you can grade/fail them on either

And this is just a way to show class/status with more steps. The fundamental
problem is that there exists positions in society where holding it isn't merit
based, but connection and class based. Harvard is a vector for which some
people of a lower class are allowed to ascend - but only under the auspices of
the current crop of upper-class.

~~~
jmoss20
Sure, but Harvard's position in society is no more fixed than anyone else's
(albeit with more inertia). They maintain their status by producing high
status graduates.

If we want to influence that dynamic (say, to push it toward justice, perhaps
meritocratic justice), we can identify high status-granting
institution/processes (ex: Harvard) and try to make them grant status
differently. But, of course, if you interfere with that process it's going to
be less effective... but maybe that's okay; maybe burning the
process/institution (slowly) and redistributing status along the way is worth
it. Or, maybe, if you're skillful, you can get away without burning the
process. But this is a big, complicated, social process and heavy-handed
manipulation simply won't work -- you'll never rid status of connection and
class, because status /is/ connection and class. You can only hope to
redistribute things in a more just way (however defined).

------
totalZero
Why do schools need to know the race and ethnicity of their applicants in
order to make merit-based admissions decisions? Even things like geographical
location and economic adversity can be anonymized and quantified. It seems
like a no-brainer to hire some accounting firm to filter applications for
racially identifying material before they are reviewed by the admissions
board.

~~~
elliekelly
I think this gets to the crux of the issue that's almost impossible to solve
for in a "blind" way: if you _don 't_ look at race you're going to have a very
wealthy, white, suburban, homogenous class of admitted students. And there is
definite value in a diverse class: differences of thought, background,
opinion, and lived experience make for a much more interesting discussion in
the classroom.

~~~
skissane
> I think this gets to the crux of the issue that's almost impossible to solve
> for in a "blind" way: if you _don 't_ look at race you're going to have a
> very wealthy, white, suburban, homogenous class of admitted students

Why not provide racially neutral class-based / disadvantage-based affirmative
action instead? You get points if your parent(s) are poor. You get points if
you have a single parent. You get points if you or your parent(s) have been on
welfare. You get points if your parent(s) are in or have been to prison. You
get points if you went to a high school with a low average academic
achievement. You get points if your parent(s) have a history of homelessness
or drug addiction or serious mental illness. You get points if you reside in a
low income area.

That would produce a diverse student body without any direct consideration of
race.

~~~
logicchop
I think your assumption here is that if you were to filter based on those
things you'd get an outcome that would be representative of the total
population. But I don't see why you think that. Look at relatively poor Asian
kids in the NYC public schools system. Even if you were to apply your filter
there, they would still likely end up massively over-represented. Similar (but
less dramatic) outcomes are likely even with Whites. Even factors like social
class and family income don't carve things up in such obvious ways.

~~~
skissane
Why must the outcome "be representative of the total population"? If group X
is Y% of the national population, must group X also be exactly Y% of the
student body at universities? It is inevitable that, in anything, some groups
will be overrepresented and other groups underrepresented, partly just by
random chance, partly due to all kinds of complex cultural and historical
reasons. To the extent under-representation is due to bad historical reasons
(past oppression/persecution/discrimination/etc), then yes I think something
should be done about it. But why not do that at the individual level, of the
individual who is socially disadvantaged due to that history of oppression?

I have no problem with the idea that people from disadvantaged backgrounds get
some special consideration. But compare two individuals: (a) a person from an
under-represented racial/ethnic minority who comes from a privileged
background (e.g. parents who are university professors, politicians, corporate
executives, doctors, lawyers, etc) (b) a person from the ethnic/racial
majority (or a minority which is not considered to be "under-represented") who
grew up in extreme poverty, suffering from child abuse and neglect, parental
drug addiction and criminality, homelessness, etc. How is a system fair if (a)
gets given a preference but there isn't one for (b)? That's why I think
affirmative action should be based on individualised assessment of social
disadvantage, not group membership.

------
supernova87a
By the way, you all know this is going to come up in California this fall?
Because there is a proposition on the ballot (Prop 16, ACA 5) to repeal the
current CA Constitutional section that government shall not discriminate based
on race.

[https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/ballot-
measures/pdf/aca-5.p...](https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/ballot-
measures/pdf/aca-5.pdf)
[http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection...](http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=CONS&sectionNum=SEC.%2031.&article=I)

 _" The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment
to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or
national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or
public contracting."_

~~~
darkengine
Washington has a similar law, and a referendum to repeal it was on the ballot
last year (I-1000/R-88). It was narrowly defeated (ie, the law was not
repealed). Interestingly, according to Ballotpedia, there were many newspaper
editorials in favor of repealing the anti-discrimination law, but only one
against (in the WSJ [1]), and it also makes mention of the issue of Ivy League
admissions.

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/legalizing-
discrimination-11571...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/legalizing-
discrimination-11571602815)

------
virtuous_signal
Remember when The College Board was developing an "adversity score" but then
dropped it in the face of criticism?

I honestly wish we would just do that. We would actually have something
quantitative instead of vague generalizations about "personality". The
methodology could be scrutinized, and centralized (instead of every college
coming up with its own special formula), and we could stop talking about this
every X months.

~~~
commandlinefan
> adversity score

Hm - so people who faced more "adversity" would be propelled to the top of the
list? I can see that going horribly wrong: if it worked perfectly, you'd end
up with yo-yo generations where one generation went to a good college and had
a successful career (and if you don't believe one thing follows from the
other, why bother with the adversity score at all?) while the next would be
relegated to struggling, giving their children the needed "adversity".
Realistically, though, you'd have smart parents finding the right mix of
adversity to give their kids a leg up just just the way they find the right
mix of extracurricular and volunteer activity today.

~~~
Decker87
Nah, you'd just have wealthy people deciding how they calculate the score and
making sure they can tweak the numbers to show their kids are disadvantaged.

~~~
nradov
Just like some wealthy parents find a friendly doctor to diagnose their child
with a "learning disability" to get extra accommodations on tests. Knowing how
to work the system confers huge advantages on the privileged.

------
khawkins
On a very related note, California Prop 16 will be on the ballot in November,
seeking to remove the following text from the CA constitution:

>The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to,
any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or
national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or
public contracting.

[https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Pr...](https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Proposition_209_Affirmative_Action_Amendment_\(2020\))

~~~
drusepth
I wonder what impact the ordering of those clauses has on people
reading/voting. I didn't even notice "or grant preferential treatment to"
until the ~third read through, still trying to figure out why anyone would
vote to repeal this.

Alternative ordering for comparison:

>The State shall not grant preferential treatment to, or discriminate against,
any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or
national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or
public contracting.

------
Wolfenstein98k
I don't mean to be edgy here, but this is necessarily true in service of
affirmative action. It's obviously impossible to enact affirmative action
without the corresponding penalty on outgroup members.

Although it's perplexing just how...nasty?...the discrimination against Asians
is. I can't imagine ever trying to justify that "all Asians" have personality
defects that make them disproportionately bad candidates for college, as is
proven to be what the colleges are doing here.

Utterly unacceptable, IMHO.

~~~
throwaway189262
I may get a lot of hate for this... But I think affirmative action has
opposite the desired effect. The majority groups are dicriminated against by
design. I don't think this does anything to fix the tensions causing racism in
the first place. I think it makes them worse.

The government should find a way to benefit minorities without outright
descrimination against those that doesn't fit their definition. My personal
favorite idea is improving schools. If we diverted enough money and resources
to primary schools in poor areas, we could achieve similar outcomes to
affirmative action without just switching the groups we discrimate against.

~~~
coredog64
AIUI, it’s even worse, as the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action are
well off members of the minority group (e.g. the kids of doctors and dentists)
rather than students whose SES would be significantly improved by a degree
from a prestigious institution. This is because admission is the first hurdle,
not the last, and being well off removes potential sources of stress.

~~~
Petrova
If you look on LinkedIn you'll see the vast majority of "African-American" Ivy
League alumni are actually African immigrants. It seems without fail when I
run into someone black that's a successful doctor or lawyer they often turn
out to be an African immigrant. They're often quite coy about it and will only
tell you when you ask them directly.

There's nothing wrong with immigrants but it seems as though immigrants are
benefiting from programs meant to help the descendants of African-American
slaves. The only question is if the Ivy League universities care about this or
not.

~~~
MaximumYComb
A lot of children of African immigrants are actually outperforming the US
population as a whole in regards to education.

~~~
ponker
The ethnicity with the highest fraction of PhDs is Nigerian.

------
d33lio
It's only a matter of time before "asian privilege" becomes a common phrase
and / or people start campaigning to no longer classify asian / pacific-
islanders as a "minority".

~~~
dx87
I've already seen people jokingly use the term "schrodinger's minority" to
refer to Asian's and Indians. They're excluded from minority statistics when
trying to push for more diversity hires, but included in minority statistics
when trying to show how many succesful businesses are run by minorities.

~~~
Decker87
I heard someone once joke that Asians and Indians are granted non-minority
status because of their high math scores.

------
mrosett
To be clear, Yale _absolutely_ does discriminate against Asian applicants. As
far as I can tell, they justify it using the same language about "personality"
that they used to justifying discriminating against Jews in the the first half
of the 20th century.

~~~
MichaelRazum
It reminds me a bit what my parents told me about the soviet union. So
basically it was kind of the same. Too much jews in the universities, so lets
discriminate them. The same is going on here, as far as race plays any role.
Kind of sad to see this kind of decision making around the globe.

~~~
jpxw
It reminds you of the Soviet Union because the underlying philosophy is the
same. Equality at all costs.

~~~
sul_tasto
The buzzword now is “equity.” The left now seeks equality of outcome rather
than equality of opportunity. All such initiatives are oppressive should be
rejected outright.

~~~
dbtc
The Left is a very ambiguous phrase.

Also, separating outcome and opportunity is tricky because it's a feedback
loop.

I don't disagree with you, I just want more precision [edit]: and nuance.

~~~
sul_tasto
The human potential lost to poverty is heartbreaking. Unfortunately, it seems
like the political toolbox we’ve been bequeathed is filled with wooden spoons
instead of scalpels. Open to ideas.

------
vowelless
The issue is not really that they discriminate (which is bad). But the fact
that they have arbitrarily made this into a Zero Sum Game.

Why an organization with 30 BILLION in endowment cannot admit more than 2000
eighteen year olds baffles me. If you want to admit more POKs then increase
the class size and hire more professors with that vast amount of money.

I realize places like Yale try to be like old, exclusive country clubs. But if
that’s the case then they should be taxed on that money.

~~~
gruez
>I realize places like Yale try to be like old, exclusive country clubs. But
if that’s the case then they should be taxed on that money.

How would this be enforced? That private universities can't get tax exempt
status if they don't spend a certain % of their net assets each year? Doesn't
this effectively penalize organizations operating on an endowment funding
model?

~~~
jessaustin
Lots of people have wanted to do just that for a long time. At least this
proposal gives the universities a (perhaps temporary) way out.

------
cluse
I think if Yale had a true meritocracy for admissions, they would have a
majority Asian student body.

And I think if they actually admitted all of the Asian students that fulfilled
their acceptance criteria, they would probably want to expand the school so
that a more diverse student body could fit into Yale.

Out of curiosity, I wonder how much larger Yale would have to be, in order to
retain all th Black, Hispanic, and Native American students that they
currently have, while also including the white and Asian students who were
discriminated against.

Would Yale be twenty-five percent larger? Twice as large? What's the scale
here?

~~~
protomyth
I would love for them to report enrolled Native Americans and what tribes they
are from did they attend high school on a reservation. I keep discovering
Native Americans who don't actually have any connection to any tribe.

------
fmajid
Yale discriminates _in favor_ of Whites. If admissions were based purely on
merit as they are at Caltech or Berkeley, you would have far more Asians and
far fewer Caucasians. This was also true when they discriminated against Jews
(using the same techniques) at a time when Jews were not considered White.

~~~
_--___-___
By your own post, you seem to consider Jews a separate population from gentile
whites. If that were the case, I'd suggest you double check the relative (to
national proportion) population of non-athelte/legacy gentile whites at Yale
and similar schools before making posts like this.

------
hardwaregeek
Before we get our pitchforks out here, let's remember that Yale's percentage
of Black students is 7.4%[1]. That's not exactly a gigantic portion. In fact
Yale is on the lower end compared to Harvard's 14.3%[2] and MIT's 12% [3]. If
Yale is truly discriminating in favor of Black and Hispanic students, well,
they're not doing an excellent job of it.

[1]:
[https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/factsheet_2018-19_0...](https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/factsheet_2018-19_031020.pdf)

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

[3]:
[https://web.mit.edu/facts/enrollment.html](https://web.mit.edu/facts/enrollment.html)

~~~
Petrova
Most of the black students are probably African immigrants. I see it all the
time. If you just browse through LinkedIn and look at black Harvard/Ivy League
alumni you'll immediately notice all the African immigrants

~~~
xiaolingxiao
This is very true, and speaking as a non-black/african person, I noticed
they're very different culturally. They carry a sense of national pride
related to their home country, and draw from it constantly. I'm thinking about
Nigerian immigrants specifically.

------
CincinnatiMan
The age-old question of whether we want equal opportunity or equal outcome...

~~~
x3n0ph3n3
Harrison Bergeron is the logical conclusion to fundamentally equal outcome. Is
that a society anyone really wants to live in?

~~~
d33lio
Show me any evidence that this isn't literally what the far left wants? CA is
moving to remove hiring anti-discrimination protections, as if nothing could
go wrong with that line of reasoning...

~~~
x3n0ph3n3
The far left wants power, not equality.

~~~
d33lio
Even as someone who identifies as a liberal, I 100% agree with your sentiment
here. Anyone who thinks otherwise is blind to the obvious narrative or too
simple to acknowledge basic tenants of human behavior.

------
flo58
[https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-
of...](https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-
meritocracy/)

This has been an open secret since at least 2012.

Quotas restricting Asians, and affirmative action benefiting Jews, who make up
an astounding full quarter of the student bodies of Harvard, Yale, and
Columbia, despite being only 2% of the population, which is 5x their rate of
admission at Caltech, an elite school with a famously merit-based, AA-free
admission process:

 _The campus is located in the Los Angeles area, home to one of America’s
largest and most successful Jewish communities, and Jews have traditionally
been strongly drawn to the natural sciences. Indeed, at least three of
Caltech’s last six presidents have been of Jewish origin, and the same is true
for two of its most renowned faculty members, theoretical physics Nobel
Laureates Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann. But Caltech’s current
undergraduates are just 5.5 percent Jewish, and the figure seems to have been
around this level for some years; meanwhile, Asian enrollment is 39 percent,
or seven times larger. It is intriguing that the school which admits students
based on the strictest, most objective academic standards has by a very wide
margin the lowest Jewish enrollment for any elite university._

The author is apparently Jewish himself, BTW.

------
downvoteme1
Just wondering if it is a crime to lie about your race n college applications.
What if a bunch of Asians just decided to write black on their college
admissions applications - \- Will the colleges rescind the applications.

Also do mixed race individuals get to pick either white or black on college
applications?

~~~
fmajid
[https://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/07/living/feat-mindy-
kaling-...](https://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/07/living/feat-mindy-kaling-
brother-affirmative-action/index.html)

------
ecmascript
As a european I don't get why americans are so obsessed about race. I would
never even think of writing about my skin color on a university application.
That seems very foreign to me. People today are making the same old mistakes,
just treat everyone the same and it'll sort itself out over time.

Such an obvious thing imo, but now it's simply popular to discriminate against
whites and asian people. Awesome, we've come full circle.

~~~
Moway
It's partly due to specific historic reasons, but it's also just a consequence
of different groups or races sharing a country.

I'm afraid you might start to see similar things in Europe with the
demographic changes: [https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-
room/20190321IP...](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-
room/20190321IPR32133/end-racist-discrimination-against-afro-european-people-
in-the-eu)

------
heraclius
In practice it seems that affirmative action primarily takes from Asians and
unconnected whites to give to blacks. I have no objection to the
latter—indeed, I can see some justification in taking from educated middle
class Asians like me—but the obvious people from whom to take places are those
who get in on connexions (most of whom are white). If this creates a
shortfall, the obvious solution is to dismantle a bureaucracy that was clearly
unneeded, say, 40 years ago. Unfortunately there is no political incentive to
do this—the Republicans will almost certainly attempt to restore a situation
by which blacks end up in the grand scheme of things disadvantaged, with no
correction at university admissions, whilst the progressive narrative is
controlled by mostly white liberal bourgeois class interests, and therefore
will continue to find some other group to make the sacrifices it deems (not
incorrectly in this case!) necessary, and happens to create not inconsiderable
employment for them, inter alia—indeed, one might go so far as to say is
necessary for their broader control of the capitalist system by holding onto
cultural power within education.

~~~
walamaking
Maybe universities should consider adding an optional box to specify if the
applicant is willing to give up their potential seat for an affirmative action
candidate. /s

~~~
heraclius
I don’t see why this is would actually be a bad idea—it just sounds like the
offer wouldn't be taken up much. Most systems that allow people to express
some preference to be kinder to someone else probably won’t end up causing
harm—the worst case is that they just don’t cause anything.

------
three_seagrass
Lots of soapboxing in the comments here.

The Justice Dept made the exact same allegations against Harvard, and last
year a Federal Judge found that Harvard was constitutionally in the clear.

SCOTUS has said that race can be narrowly used in admissions to promote
diversity, which Yale says they are doing. The fact that the Justice
Department wants Yale to cease _all_ uses of race in admissions (despite this
interpretation) is suspect.

~~~
jcampbell1
The rules around AA and the courts has been in a constant state of change
since 1964. AA was justified as a temporary solution, thus there is no stare
decisis which people can agree. I think it is unpredictable what the courts
will do. The issue is setup to be never settled.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Indeed, one of the major precedents in favor of affirmative action (Grutter v.
Bollinger) anticipated that it would no longer be needed after 2028.

------
xiaolingxiao
Any background why the fed is going after yale, but not Harvard Princeton MIT,
Penn or Stanford?

~~~
olliej
Harvard has already faced this and had it shut down. Because it’s the fed
maybe they’re subject to some kind of double jeopardy type thing? Or just
tying different courts?

~~~
skissane
SFFA vs Harvard isn’t over yet. Harvard won at District Court level but SFFA
is appealing. It is likely to ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court, but
it is probably going to take a few years for the case to get there.

------
ausjke
1\. it's all about diversity and equality these days, meaning every thing
should be distributed proportionally based on race population and by gender.
the ultimate goal will be wealth re-distribution(or, communism), until then,
it is not going to stop.

2\. especially in hi tech and elite universities.

3\. NBA is an exception, actually all sports can be an exceptions.

4\. Asian is not considered as minority when it come to college admissions,
what doe minority mean?

5\. MIT and many other STEM universities has 50:50 boys and girls, if not so,
it's called gender discrimination.

...

So, let's throw out SAT/ACT/GPA and admit people via 'holistic' review, i.e.
totally subjective, which means, the more miserable you're the better chance
you will have, we joked as parents the best we can do for our kids is going to
jail, do drugs, go bankrupt, so our kids can get some benefits. Nice family,
law-biding family are basically punished.

I have not seen anywhere more communism like in USA now, you cut the corner
because of your race or gender, merit-based is racism, we're going to hell.

I wish those AA pumpers will get a doctor who was admitted/graduated/career-ed
based on AA rules, when they need a cure the most at hospitals.

~~~
bighead777
the United States population is equivalent to 4.25% of the total world
population while accounted for 15.2% of global gross domestic product (GDP).
The world definitely need more diversity in the wealth distribution , let's
start by just cutting every single American's income every month by 11% and
donate it to other countries in the world.

------
kevingadd
Kind of a complicated assertion here:

The investigation also found that Yale uses race as a factor in multiple steps
of the admissions process and that Yale “racially balances its classes.”

The Supreme Court has ruled colleges and universities may consider race in
admissions decisions but has said that must be done in a narrowly tailored way
to promote diversity

If they're "racially balancing" their classes, that does sound like it is a
narrowly tailored way to promote diversity in their classes. Whether or not
that's actually a noble or appropriate goal is a different question, but it
sounds like it's allowed...

Of course the definition of "balance" here is tricky. Corresponding ratios to
the overall racial balance of the country? The state? Overall racial balance
of all applicants? Of all alumni?

~~~
olliej
Of all alumni is dangerous because these schools banned black students until
the 70s.

Then when allowing them actively worked to limit entrance.

Finally they all operate with legacy admissions so the racist bans on
applicants have a long tail

~~~
Wolfenstein98k
Which schools?

The school in question never formally disallowed blacks.

"Yale’s first black graduate was Courtland Van Rensselaer Creed, who received
his medical degree in 1857 and went on to have a prominent practice in New
York City"

------
ip26
I wonder if you could build a model to assign handicaps to each applicant?
Forget racial quotas, just assign a modifier to each applicant based on the
difficulty they have likely faced in their lives. Race, but also household
income, zip code, alma mater, siblings, how many parents, etc... Then just
hide all that info from the review board.

In that way, you could get right at what is most interesting- which students
are actually the most impressive.

Past student body provides the training dataset- just define what measures a
successful student whom you are happy to have. College GPA, graduation date,
post-graduation compensation, whatever.

------
charlesu
HN is weirdly silent about identity politics except for threads like these.
Threads about discrimination in tech get a few dozen post, a third of which
are to the tune of “does this belong on HN?” But an article about
discrimination at a college with a horrific engineering program and no cachet
in the tech industry gets 500 posts.

Can anyone explain why this belongs on HN or why it gets so much attention? I
don’t understand it.

~~~
tgv
Possibly because commenting on those threads is a minefield, so nobody votes
for them and they end up quickly forgotten.

~~~
charlesu
This thread is a minefield. Any claims about discrimination on race or gender
is going to ignite controversy. Why is it OK to talk about this subject
despite the fact that it’s in no way relevant to tech?

Why is this on HN?

~~~
tgv
On other sites, much of the posts are fueled by indignation. That's a bit less
here, and very few people are going to reply: "yeah, I know. It's a shame.",
especially because that's against the rules. But it's only _a_ possible
factor.

> Why is this on HN?

Relatively many students and recently graduated under the members, more than
on e.g. reddit?

~~~
charlesu
These threads appear to be driven by indignation as much as anything I’ve read
on reddit, hence my confusion.

------
ur-whale
The thing I never understood about the US is why asking for someone's "race"
(or whatever the current PC term for it is) on a form, government or
otherwise, is not flat out illegal on account of being a) entirely meaningless
b) downright insulting c) guaranteed to produce the kind of outcome we're
discussing here.

------
bitxbit
They need to make clear it’s discrimination against Asian AMERICANS.

~~~
atom-morgan
And? Why the exception for African Americans?

------
chrisco255
The higher education sorting hat has really got to be disbanded. It is
increasingly at odds with the 21st century.

~~~
ProfessorLayton
This is a symptom of issues that still very much exist in the 21st century. In
the US access to a good education is closely tied wealth, which is closely
tied to homeownership and property values, which are in turn still benefiting
from discriminatory housing policies [1].

As an example, the Bay Area has some of the best schools and most expensive
real estate in the country. This is due to a lack of supply, yet _to this day_
it is illegal to build high density and inexpensive housing in the vast
majority of lots so that the less wealthy can start building equity, which
again is a huge portion of wealth. Ordinances like high minimum lot sizes and
low coverage were deliberately designed to make it more expensive for POC to
buy into a neighborhood. This is covered extensively in The Color of Law, and
is a great read [2].

Perhaps the better approach is to fix these systemic issues so that schools
didn't have to compensate for them.

[1] [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-
front/2020/02/27/examining...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-
front/2020/02/27/examining-the-black-white-wealth-gap/)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-
Segreg...](https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-
Segregated/dp/1631492853)

~~~
chrisco255
Yeah but in the 21st century it's ridiculous to associate physical buildings
with good education. There's no reason, today, why students can't consume
lectures from several world class instructors at scale. Video lectures are not
even inferior to the actual experience. Do you know how many lectures are
skipped entirely by students in college? Do you know how many students are
distracted by phones and laptops in lectures? This whole system needs to be
retooled. The main thing students need from college is enforced accountability
and pacing to keep them from dawdling. This can be done with proctors and
tutors coupled with world class video lectures from top professors.

~~~
ProfessorLayton
I'll echo the other poster that this is a nice thing to say, but it really
glosses over many realities regarding the various ways wealth influences
education. It is not just about the physical building, or even the lectures
themselves. It's the entire picture of what it means to have more wealth than
others.

First, there's k-12, and not just higher education, which the quality and
access thereof is impacted greatly by wealth — Nicer, more expensive homes
tend to also have nicer school districts.

It is not a leap to say that a student from a disadvantaged background had to
struggle a lot more to learn than one that didn't. Either because of costs
(Supplies, tutors, extracurricular activities etc.), or environment (Parent's
help and education, support). This is why higher education attempts to
compensate for opportunity: They understand the cards are stacked against some
groups more than others.

Yes anybody from any race/ethnicity can face these struggles, but remember
that a lot of these disadvantages are still _structurally engrained_ to target
a particular group. These aren't slight advantages, and housing isn't the only
issue, but taken together it has resulted in white families having _6.7x more
wealth_ than a typical black family.

------
Wolfenstein98k
In my opinion, policies like this stem from having good intentions, but
intervening where there is just friction instead of where there is most value.

Intervening at Ivy League admissions is a surefire way to benefit those
minorities who are currently the least inhibited, while expending a lot of
social (and potentially "real") capital to do so.

Intervening much earlier in the process would be much harder, but would
provide relatively more assistance to those who are so disadvantaged as to
otherwise end up nowhere near college admissions anywhere, much less the Ivy
Leagues.

------
admiralspoo
The whole undergraduate system in the US needs dismantling and rebuilding. it
is costly, wasteful, discriminatory and largely about signaling than any
skills. If race-based admissions moves to STEM graduate school, then we're in
trouble.

[https://medium.com/swlh/y-combinator-not-lambda-school-is-
un...](https://medium.com/swlh/y-combinator-not-lambda-school-is-un..).

------
fatjokes
With no data backing this up, I feel like people would be happier with quotas.

If Asians were told that at most X% of school Y could be Asian to save room
for other ethnicities for social reasons, they could probably accept that
better than being told that it was because they were being categorically
determined as having shitty or empty personalities.

------
LatteLazy
I feel sorry for Yale (et al) in this case because they're being presented
with a very hard problem (defining and measuring merit in a reliable non-game-
able way), one that likely has no widely accepted solution, and one that we as
a society have actively decided to completely ignore in favor of everyone
looking out for themselves.

~~~
omginternets
I sympathize as well, but I think the problem is much more fundamental; I
think there _is_ no universally acceptable solution.

\- If you think merit is a function of _de facto_ performance, you will not
deem it justified when the bar for admission is lowered for under-performing
groups.

\- If you think merit is a function of effort[0], then you will not deem it
justified when everybody is held to the same standard of performance.

The reason this is such a touchy issue, I think, is that both approaches
result in a _de facto_ racial (and/or other immutable-trait-based) hierarchy.
In my estimation, the determining ideological factor in picking a side is
whether one prefers implicit vs explicit hierarchies.

[0] There's probably a better word than _effort_ , but it's not coming to
mind.

------
justanotheranon
my solution to this problem is the same as my solution to the tech megacorp
oligopily problem.

there are too many students chasing to few colleges. there should be 20 Yales,
30 Harvards and 50 MITs. just like there should be 10 Microsofts, 20 Googles
and 50 Apples. if competition for credentials wasnt so pirate cut throat due
to induced artifical scarcity, then society wouldnt be nitpicking over
admissions quota minutia.

imagine a world where we cut the Pentagon's budget by 15%, and poured that
$150 billion into turning every Community College into a University on par
with Yale and the Ivys. imagine a world where unemployable grad students were
not ground up and churned out through a system that only has teaching jobs for
a fraction of them.

the solution to all higher education problems is to radically increase the
supply to meet the demand.

dont you want humanity to have an orbital base around Alpha Centauri someday?
how else are we going to achieve that?

~~~
raxxorrax
Very true, especially with the modern logistics of education.

Today we could show the best lecture any prof has ever given to a village in
nirvana that got running water 10 years ago. That doesn't replace direct
mentoring, but would still elevate education to new standards.

Special schools for particularly gifted people should exist, but the product
today is more prestige than quality of education (which is good, but not the
primary selling point anymore).

------
nudpiedo
I see how everyone speaks about the discrimination against Asian males, but
what about white males? If Freedom is not for everyone then no one is trully
free.

In this rebel youth aim to destroy older "conservative" ideas apparently
someone broke some of the oldes hard earned lessons by mankind about freedom
and equalty.

~~~
colmvp
To be clear, I'm not saying I don't care about the discrimination against
white men, but generally speaking white men have more societal advantages in
North America than Asian men such as likelihood in getting positions in
leadership roles at companies, political positions, as well as desirability in
online dating. My hunch is that's why it's not as 'highlighted' (for lack of a
better term) than Asian men who are discriminated against.

------
rasengan0
Some numbers
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States)

------
Petrova
Honestly at this point the US should just adopt the East Asian college
entrance model.

One exam per year at the same time with no exceptions.

Completely race blind and no additional criteria other than school class rank
and average school exam score.

------
ggggtez
>The Supreme Court has ruled colleges and universities may consider race in
admissions decisions but has said that must be done in a narrowly tailored way
to promote diversity

Sounds like SCOTUS will agree with Yale on this one.

------
2OEH8eoCRo0
I don't even blame Yale, I blame the stupid government incentives to do this.
The question of your race should never even be raised.

------
vivjay30
The real discrimination is continued legacy and athletic admissions which
artificially inflate the number of white students (discriminating against
Asians and other minorities).

43% of white students at Harvard are legacy, athletes, or related to donors.
Source: [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-harvard-
finds-43-...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-harvard-
finds-43-percent-white-students-are-legacy-athletes-n1060361)

------
leafboi
>The findings detailed in a letter to the college’s attorneys Thursday mark
the latest action by the Trump administration aimed at rooting out
discrimination in the college application process, following complaints from
students about the application process at some Ivy League colleges.

I'm an Asian liberal and I think trump is an idiot but the reality is that all
people, as altruistic or immoral as they appear to be, are, in fact, complex
amalgamations of good, evil, intelligence and stupidity. My judgement of trump
is just a biased simplification of reality and the complexity of his
character.

Props to trump for supporting this initiative.

------
JuliusPullo
Has it occurred to any of you that somebody might just want to intentionally
make us hate each other with this "racism" BS? To keep us divided? In the end,
who really cares if someone is black, white, Korean, or half Vietnamese?
Denying an earned admission to someone because that someone is of the color,
sex, religion or original nationality not in fashion at the time for the
leftist taste only serves to make us dislike each other more and more.

~~~
cossatot
> In the end, who really cares if someone is black, white, Korean, or half
> Vietnamese?

Yale, in this case.

------
pyrophane
I'd rather colleges were just forced to give up legacy preference.

------
thunkshift1
Why race information is needed for college and job applications?

------
chmaynard
This is election-year flack, pure and simple. Can we trust anything the Dept.
of Justice does? The Attorney General is clearly a proxy for Trump's desire to
reward his friends and punish his enemies. Barr's first priority is not
enforcing the law, it's enabling Trump's twisted agenda.

------
freen
I wonder what the makeup of the 14% of the incoming freshman class that are
legacy’s is...

------
setpatchaddress
How is everyone's first reaction not that this is Trump electioneering? I have
no idea if there's merit here or not, but the replies below seem to largely
fail to acknowledge two facts:

(a) All top schools weigh race and gender. They consider student body
diversity important. You can disagree that they should, but it's true.

(b) Bill Barr's DOJ is one of the least trustworthy entities in the USA on
this subject this side of the KKK.

~~~
Wolfenstein98k
Sigh.

This is something that has been pursued by the DOJ for years.

The lawsuit that began this process was in 2014.

Also, allusions to the KKK are just obscene. You can have political views, but
shoehorning them in while exhibiting such ignorance about the underlying facts
of the case just destroys the quality of the conversation.

IMO.

------
olliej
Weird that they don’t mention that the vast majority of legacy entries are
white, followed by Asian.

Any school that had racist policies that banned black and other PoC that still
has legacy admissions is fundamentally biased in favor of white applicants,
and will always be.

The bar for legacy entry is incredibly low, far below GPA requirements for any
affirmative action has ever been.

~~~
Wolfenstein98k
Isn't that obviously going to wean itself out of existence in a generation or
two, if whites are (as alleged) being discriminated against so heavily?

~~~
olliej
It will take more than a couple of generations, because the children of people
who got legacy admittance also get legacy admittance, which removes available
slots for people who don't just have the benefit of being born to the right
parents.

That's the big cudgel right: look at the racial spread of legacy acceptances,
and if that does not match (within reason) the average racial spread then
legacy admittance is adding a discriminatory pressure against those races that
are less represented.

------
jenkins6g
This "finding" is absolutely tasteless. Studies found that SATs have little to
no correlation to graduating from a university, same thing with GREs in grad
school. African American students are proven year over year to have far less
educational resources in their communities, live in poverty, etc. And far less
African Americans apply to get into Yale compared to their white or Asian
counterparts and the ones that do apply have a better shot of getting in due
to their hard work than the African Americans that don't apply. And on top of
that still has to deal with inequality across the board. So yes, to the 5% of
Yale students that are African Americans, their acceptance was very well
deserved. Knock off the bs about IQ this and IQ that. Try that crap in the
real world at your job and see how far that gets you.

------
throwaway5752
Free advice: there is no reason this suit could not have been brought in the
prior 3 years. It is shameless election year politics via the courts. Whatever
you think of the merits of the case, realize what this is from the timing and
the unprofessional release accompanying the filing.

 _" Yale College could fill its entire entering class several times over with
applicants who reach the 99th percentile in standardized testing and who have
perfect high school grade point averages, but we do not base admission on such
numbers alone," President Peter Salovey wrote. "Rather, we look at the whole
person when selecting whom to admit among the many thousands of highly
qualified applicants."_
([https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/08/13/us/politics/ap-u...](https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/08/13/us/politics/ap-
us-yale-discrimination.html), the other post on this on the front page)

This argument will be shown to have merit. Simply put, the question of whether
to have a class that represents the population vs the applicant pool is at the
discretion of the college. A lower ratio of acceptance by race is not de facto
indicative of individual discrimination. They can pick and choose a class from
the top tenth of a percent of the graduating seniors in the US. Every student
there is elite.

