
Where Does Affirmative Action Leave Asian-Americans? - jbegley
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/magazine/affirmative-action-asian-american-harvard.html
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Simulacra
This article is poorly written. Early on the reporter really steps her foot
into it by practically insulting the kid. Then he bristles at her and responds
as if he's being attacked. It's cringing and I'm learning more about these two
people than I needed to.

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TheAsprngHacker
I am an Asian rising senior who is in the process of applying to college, and
affirmative action makes me cynical.

I like math. I first came onto this path when my parents got me a Scratch book
for my birthday. Scratch was my introduction to programming, and from
Scratch's small hacker community, I discovered Snap! (UC Berkeley's Scratch-
and Scheme-inspired language) and the lambda calculus. From there, I fell in
love with type theory, the beautiful Curry-Howard correspondence between types
and propositions, and constructive math. Programming led me to type theory,
which then led me to adjacent fields of math, such as category theory. When I
read about programming language theory on my own, I would encounter the works
of professors at prestigious universities (of course, that's where the
research happens), and now, I want to go to a good college where I can learn
more about type theory and the related math and possibly get involved in
research.

When thinking of "Asians" loving "math," I feel that what comes to mind for
most people is competition math. Most people don't seem to realize that
there's more to math than tricky word problems, or that there are abstract,
beautiful ideas beyond calculus (e.g. topology generalizes calculus). This
article lists that there is a stereotype of Asians being academic, or being
(the child of) mathematicians. It seems to imply that this is a bad thing.
What's wrong with liking math? So what if I want to go into academia? Are Mac-
Lane or Grothendieck boring people for being mathematicians? Are the college
admissions officers who will decide my fate even aware of the true beauty of
math?

The article also points out that there are alternate pathways to success than
going to those well known T20 colleges. This touches upon the idea that
society is pressuring teenagers into thinking that college determines one's
worthiness, and that this idea should be changed. I am sympathetic to
criticism of how society is pressuring teenagers into participating in a
system filled with taking loads of APs, having loads of ECs, etc. at the cost
of authenticity, just to go to a good college. However, I personally don't
want to go to a good college because society told me to. I want to go to a
good college because my own passions lie in studying the beauty of type theory
and math. It's not just about being "successful," making money, etc, it's
about my dreams.

The people who reduce this issue into a debate over who is the most oppressed
minority, or a Democrat vs Republican thing, are giving me a huge slap in the
face. For me, this isn't about "politics." This is about my dreams. Stop using
my dreams as a political football.

Being Asian is not a big part of who I am as a person. I am Westernized and
don't know so much about my culture. I'm just bringing my race up here because
apparently college admissions officers care about it, and will make negative
assumptions about who I am based on it. Treat me the same way that you would
treat a black person, a white person, a Latino person, etc, who likes math and
computer science. Me being Asian had nothing to do with this.

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stirbot
These are clearly driven individuals who will excel anywhere. In fact when you
consider grade inflation, they'd be better of going taking a scholarship from
a flagship state university. Especially for STEM majors.

Affirmative action is an attempt to break the cycle of educational under-
performance for certain groups in America. It's a blunt tool that needs to be
improved, not discarded.

~~~
Kaiyou
The problem I see is that higher education never really improved performance
of anyone. The way it historically worked was that higher education
institutions would admit only the smartest people around and so only the
smartest people would come out of them, too. Smartest roughly equates to
highest performing.

Employers would then be able to use the certificate from those institutions to
filter for only the smartest people since those were already filtered for to
begin with to be eligible to get such a certificate.

If you put people into higher education that ain't already the smartest, you
will get people coming out of higher education that ain't the smartest and
employers will learn the hard way that the certificate in question is
worthless and will begin to filter through other means. Now those students sit
on debt they have no way to pay off, since high paying employers will find the
smartest people around some other way.

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HNcantBtrustd
I'm no fan of judging people by the color of their skin, why not use family
income?

This way it's apparent who is getting high scores due to tutoring and who is
naturally gifted.

~~~
streptomycin
They already do that too, but it can't solve the racial distribution problem
which colleges care a lot about:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/1995-SAT...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/1995-SAT-
vs-Income-Education.png)

~~~
ajscanlan
Originally I was against the idea of affirmative action but I've came around
to it, but I still don't understand the need to solve for racial distribution
rather than socioeconomic distribution.

In my mind affirmative action's goal should be to break the cycle of poverty,
where smart kids have poor/uneducated parents which holds them back and they
grow up to be poor/uneducated themselves and so on.

It's my understanding that this problem disproportionately affects minorities
(in particular black people), so solving for socioeconomic would "self select"
(I don't know the proper term) for black people and avoid the issue of "Asian
kid with poor/uneducated parents passed over for black kid with
richer/educated parents" right?

Or is that just not a real issue? The article seems to mention pluses and
minuses (e.g. "two college-educated parents (minus) from a major American city
(minus) with aspirations to study either computer science (minus)") so it
could be that the above hypothetical would never happen.

I don't know, I'm just struggling to understand why colleges would care more
about solving racial distribution rather than socioeconomic distribution.

~~~
frustrated_90
I read a paper on this - if you cut the data by social-economic status, the
number of 'qualified' black students would be just over 2%, and I think the
colleges are targeting 8% of each incoming class (they don't call it a quota
but it is, since it stays consistent each year regardless of overall
applicants' demographic changes).

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whenanother
they got rid of affirmative action in california. the asians were the only
minorities to see growth in the number of acceptances to uc. however, it was
no where near the rate of growth of their population demographic. most of the
new spots went to foreign students. once again the faculty went back to being
exclusively white male. also all state government jobs hiring practices were
no longer scrutinized for discrimination. minority elected officials in
california clearly have difficulties dealing with their own state government.

nobody bothered to check whether eliminating affirmative action actually
helped.

~~~
throwaway2048
This is why so many white-centric right wing groups very much want affirmative
action abolished, because it is a massive advantage to the politically
powerful and connected, who are mostly white in America.

Lets just say its hardly like they are out for justice for all races...

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
"Politically powerful" are obviously mostly white because the population of
the US is mostly white.

There is about 10% of black reps in the House which is well in line with the
overall population.

And we also just have had a black president.

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JaceLightning
Leave Asian Americans?? Asian Americans have the highest income of all groups
of Americans.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> _Asian Americans have the highest income of all groups of Americans._

Amazing how people in the United States nowadays are sensitive to stereotyping
and racism ... except when it comes to Asians.

~~~
gonational
And caucasians.

