
Does Harvard discriminate against Asian-Americans? - onuralp
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-content-of-their-character-ed-blum.html
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mankash666
Such policies never end well. A university's best chance of relevance long
term is to unabashedly pursue the best and the brightest, regardless of race.

This holds in the valley too - merit trumps everything else. There's ample
evidence of a (happy) best-in-class workforce affecting bottom lines.

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MagnumOpus
> pursue the best and brightest

Well, for Harvard (and most other top universities apart from Caltech) the
"best" and the "brightest" are not necessarily synonyms.

First, from the viewpoint of prestige, it is better to accept those into the
program who don't cut the mustard but have a good chance of becoming
presidents/prime ministers/kings/business tycoons. And who has a good chance?
Kids of senators, dictators, billionaire movers and shakers, way more so than
the politically active 4.0 student from next door.

Second, from the viewpoint of long term relevance, spitting out one student
who will endow the university subsequently with a few millions is worth way
more than spitting out twenty eminently smart professors who go on to teach in
obscurity - Harvard is the best example, even if their marketing goes badly,
their $30bn endowment will buy sufficiently many Nobel-prize-winning faculty
and scholarships for bright students to stay relevant for centuries.

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reacharavindh
I'm shocked reading this. How is this legal in the USA? And they have been
doing this "racial balancing" for this long?

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trav4225
The US is completely obsessed with race. It's utterly bizarre to me. I often
ask people what race has to do with anything, but they never seem to provide
me with a convincing answer...

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coldtea
Well, for a long time, the US meant white (and 90% protestants). All the
founding stories and elites are based on them (from the Founding Fathers and
the pilgrims to the image of America in culture, Hollywood etc). Heck, there
was a fuss that Kennedy was catholic -- and that was in the late 50s. So, it
was those English, German, nordic, etc people at the core.

Blacks, of course, had their start as slaves and servants of those whites, and
were until the mid-60s discriminated openly against, with full legal coverage
for that.

So a large part of the white population has inherited notions that this is
their proper place, where others are judging them by the second and third
order effects of their old status up to the segregation (e.g. seeing that
they're still many uneducated, poor, living in bad areas, over-represented in
prison etc. Those whites assume that just because slavery ended -- and they
conveniently forget 100+ more years of discrimination-- those blacks should
just raise and ascend to middle/rich class, like many immigrants did. After
all those immigrants started dirt poor too -- yeah, but those immigrants
didn't live in a hostile society forever, they were more easily assimilated,
intermarried etc into the white story, and given more chances, especially
after WWII).

Because even other whites, like Italians, Jews, Irish, Greeks, and so on, were
openly discriminated against for a large part of the 20th century. After they
got slowly accepted into white society (and again, not totally), they also
adopted their stance towards other races (not totally), as a requirement to be
admitted in "polite company".

Asians too, were at the bottom. Japanese Americans, in the early 20th century,
were considered barely better than blacks were, working in the worst menial
jobs.

So that's what race has to do with anything. You came into the US as a member
of a race, found solace and support with your own, and usually hatred or
obstacles put your way from the dominant races. And as you were accepted into
the mainstream society, you learned to hate those other races they hated too.

That's my understanding of the issue.

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trav4225
Thanks! I don't disagree with anything you said. I guess that, in my mind, it
just seems that we'll never move forward as a society until we stop sorting
people into boxes, especially boxes defined by arbitrary things like skin
color. That is not the only variable. Why don't we focus on all the causes of
disenfranchisement? There's clearly a macro-scale correlation between racial
background/history and one's opportunities in society, but at the micro-scale
the picture is so much more complex than that. A hyperfocus on race
oversimplifies the problem, contributes to division, and hinders progress
toward real solutions. I think we owe it to future generations to raise them
with a broader understanding of these matters.

Maybe I'm overreacting here. If so, my apologies -- perhaps it's because of
the sociopolitical milieu where I live. Anyway, I mean no offense to anyone.
Like many others, I'm just trying to work through these issues as honestly as
I can -- because dishonesty doesn't help anyone.

:-)

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supreme_sublime
I do think that there are people who actively try to divide the country on
racial lines because it personally benefits them. Most notably, Al Sharpton
and Jesse Jackson. David Duke gets media attention every time there is a
national election because for some reason his opinion means something. I think
there is currently a hysteria about a racism epidemic in the US that doesn't
really hold true.

A lot of what was said in parent comments is true and I agree with. Though I
don't think it really reflects today. At least not where I'm from. Perhaps
there is more of that on the East coast, but I think as you go to the midwest
and west coast you get less of that kind of division. There are definitely
racists, but there are a lot more who live with a "live and let live", or
attempt to adopt a "colorblind" (which is now racist apparently), worldview.

I think most whites in the US feel like they are the scapegoats for some other
groups misfortunes. When no one alive had much to do with past injustices. Can
you really blame past injustices for decisions of people today? In 1965 the
out of wedlock birth rate was 25% and now it is almost 75%. Single parent
homes come with a host of problems and much higher rates of crime, drug abuse,
and lack of education.

So the likes of Jesse Jackson and Sharpton look at things like police shooting
statistics (which is misleading in how they characterize them) and act like
that is the biggest problem facing black people in the US. People feel enraged
by what is perceived to be "unjust" police violence, sometimes rightly.
Jackson and Sharpton raise their own profiles, and essentially run a "don't
get called racist" money laundering operation through foundations they run.

The real problems don't get addressed and those who attempt to are called
"racists" or "uncle toms" and the cycle continues. It is disgusting and sad.

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zimablue
The mental doublethink that enables outrage over this but tacitly accepts
gender quotas is amazing.

~~~
Retric
Uhh, more women go to collage now so that seems like it would discriminate vs
women?

Really, if we want to punch more women into stem we would need to eliminate
less useful options.

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zimablue
Talking about the push for implicit quotas in tech companies/all companies.
Kind of obviously.

~~~
Retric
Ok, article is about collage admissions so I assumed that's what was being
referenced. Companies are not going to introduce quotas as it reduces their
efficiency and thus costs them money.

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GhostVII
> Companies are not going to introduce quotas as it reduces their efficiency
> and thus costs them money

Don't they already do this? Maybe not with direct quotas, but certainly they
fast-track women when hiring.

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Retric
Fast tracking does not have the same downside as quotas. With fast-tracking
you can have some minimum standard, with quotas you are more or less forced to
accept people that are arbitrarily bad simply because you did not get enough
applications.

Another way of thinking about this is if you take say 2+ weeks to vet everyone
then some perfectly qualified people are going to drop out because they found
a job on day 3. On the other hand if you simply adjust the schedule so group X
gets an answer within 3 days you are going to end up with more perfectly
qualified people from group X without lowering your standards.

Similarly if you promote someone sooner they are less likely to look for a new
job right after a promotion. That does not mean you need to promote people
that are not capable, just reduce mandatory waiting periods.

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quantumofmalice
Yes, of course it does (as do the rest of the ivys and most elite schools):

[http://www.unz.com/runz/the-myth-of-american-
meritocracy/](http://www.unz.com/runz/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/)

Somewhat humorously, if you buy unz's numbers, non-jewish whites are actually
the most underrepresented group in nearly all elite universities.

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mankash666
The next time you read a bullshit article/research on the Harvard Business
Review (hbr.org) remember that it isn't necessarily the product of unbiased
scientific research. An admissions committee (including professors) that
doesn't value merit and objectivity can't be trusted to publish realistic
research

