16 ms·

Blacks and Hispanics Are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago

44 points by rafaelc 9y ago

rayiner 9y ago
The article goes astray in the very first paragraph. "Even after decades of affirmative action." The period starts after the Supreme Court's 1978 decision in Regents v. Bakke which put significant limits on how affirmative action programs can be structured. More generally, the entire 35-year period (starting 1982) takes place during a conservative retrenching from the civil rights era.
Danihan 9y ago
More like "because of Affirmative Action". Just treat people as fairly as possible. The other way doesn't work.
- rayiner 9y ago
  We're going to play poker. Everyone will start with a randomly determined number of chips. But people whose HN handles start with A-H will get, on average, 40% less to start with. Aside from that tiny nit, it'll be a totally fair game.
  - tomp 9y ago
    The "fair" solution is to make sure that A-H folks start with the same amount as the rest. The "reverse discrimination" solution is to take, after half of the game, the winnings of P-W folks and give them to C-J folks.
    - spraak 9y ago
      But when in reality does that actually happen? I'm not trying to incite you, I just really don't see evidence of "reverse discrimination"
      - todd8 9y ago
        As a big proponent of civil rights and the whole civil rights movement I hope that I'm not misunderstood. Reverse discrimination refers to discriminating against say non-hispanic white males because they are non-hispanic white or male. It seems obvious to me that making admission choices to increase minority representation at universities is tautologically decreasing the representation of other groups and is reverse discrimination. The question to me is, "Is this a good thing?". Here in Texas, it works in a way that is not quite obvious. The University of Texas as Austin is a desirable state University. It was once all white (1950), clearly race was being used to discriminate against minority applicants--an unfair and condemnable practice. By 1996, the University, in an attempt to increase minority representation, had been using race as one of the factors in admission, blacks with lower academic scores were admitted ahead of whites with the same scores (clearly reverse discrimination). In 1996, Federal Appeals court ruled against the University and for a white student that made that claim. The University stopped considering race, but minority representation started to drop and the University found a way in 1997 to discriminate between applicants to change the minority representation again, this time without explicitly mentioning race. It automatically admitted the top 10% of every high school graduating class, regardless of actual academic achievement. This discriminated against the high schools with high performing students. Since these schools were usually found in more expensive suburban neighborhoods that had well funded school districts and mostly white student bodies (so although there was no longer any explicit reverse discrimination, it still produced the same result, minority students were being admitted with lower test scores, etc). This practice of admitting students based on where they went to high school helped but didn't completely achieve the goals that UT had for the make up of it's student body. In 2003, UT began to use race in addition to the 10% rule and now discriminates in favor of minorities that do not automatically qualify under the modified top 7% rule, this has resulted in a number of law suits that race based discrimination is happening, which it clearly is. I have mixed feelings about all of this. I detest the idea that race is used to discriminate against anybody including groups like Jews, Asians, and whites. I live in a school district that has a very high performing public high school. A friend recently got perfect scores on the SAT and I believe that he got very close to a perfect score on the ACT. He had a very high GPA and was a varsity athlete on a top rank team. He now attends Stanford, but was only around the top 13% of his graduating class. He didn't even bother to apply to the University of Texas. No one needs to feel sorry for him, he's a genius going to Stanford; I feel sorry for so many of his classmates that would have been very successful at an affordable University that can't get in despite working so hard in high school.
    - mattnewton 9y ago
      Please, college acceptance here is more like giving the C-J folks a pass on their first 2 blinds. College acceptance isn't like we're taxing people based on race.
  - aianus 9y ago
    So give everyone the same number of chips; don't compensate by changing the rules so that a black straight beats a white flush.
    - jacalata 9y ago
      Now translate "chips" into "systemic and generational advantages" and include detail on how to give everyone the same number.
      - aianus 9y ago
        Childcare, subsidized/free tutoring, mentoring, etc. I'm on board with practically anything other than lowering the admission bar. Edit: admission to good public schools based on standardized tests instead of family real estate would be a good start
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        adjkant 9y ago
        And what of studies that give evidence for racial biases in standardized testing? Your suggestions are all well and good, but do you see any of those happening soon? It's not like anyone is even remotely discussing this anywhere and with the current administration, it sure isn't happening soon at a federal level. The question becomes if affirmative action is better than nothing at all.
  - fiter 9y ago
    Is the alternative that we play poker and after every N rounds the chips are redistributed so that everyone has the same amount? At what point(s) should redistribution happen? At what point(s) should it stop to allow better decision making?
    - evanlivingston 9y ago
      There's your problem: you assume that redistributing every n rounds means that decision making suffers.
      - fiter 9y ago
        I grant you that this example is contrived, but I'd play poker very differently if that was the case!
        evanlivingston 9y ago
        Word, but I think it underlines a real problem. For some people with low chances of losing in the game (trust fund, property, stable family, no prior convictions, etc) life can be a game about maximizing gains. For others it's toothe and nail. When the rules of the game are historically set by people who are already too stable to really lose, it's the "weaker" players who get exploited.
        adjkant 9y ago
        I would add to this that making the system fairer will inherently decrease the chances for the higher starting players. That is because they had a higher chance to start with. The lowering of their chances is not a bad thing, it is perfectly just. But it's hard to get those players to accept that when they are starting from that position of power.
        fiter 9y ago
        When you phrase it that way, it sounds like you think it's hopeless to have a system with objectively fair rules. Notwithstanding the probably uninspired resulting college environment, I think it would be hypothetically fair to admit people solely based on their standardized test scores without any other consideration. The admission standard while somewhat arbitrary would be clear, such that anyone who wants to get admitted could work towards it. If someone is provided with a substandard K-12 education, it would make it harder to work towards admission. In that case, maybe we should look into the K-12 environment. Maybe it turns out that it's not as much the K-12 environment, and it's actually home life. Maybe home life issues are related to incarceration or maybe they're hereditary. I think this is what an effort to root-cause the problem would look like. When you find the root causes, then you could provide help for anyone with that root cause problem.
  - alexandros 9y ago
    If only it was so easy in real life to cleanly figure out who "starts out with less". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
    - ftlio 9y ago
      Target: Don't subjugate people to work agriculture. You know about slavery of the past and the labor practices of big agriculture today yeah?
  - briholt 9y ago
    Every individual black/Hispanic person is born with exactly 40% less wealth than every white/Asian person? It's time to re-evaluate your life choices when you think it's a good thing to promote blanket race-baiting stereotypes.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      > people whose HN handles start with A-H will get, on average, 40% less to start with
      - briholt 9y ago
        So you're saying individuals' wealth may differ from the average of other people sharing their skin color? Too bad we can't measure a person's wealth directly and have to rely on racist hysteria as a proxy.
- sanjeetsuhag 9y ago
  > Just treat people as fairly as possible. Wow, man, you just like, solved racism and discrimination.
  - Danihan 9y ago
    Discrimination can't be "solved" because 1. People are genetically different and 2. Anyone can have biases about anything. I could shut down every interviewee with big ears, or beady eyes, if I wanted to. Again, all you can do is treat people as fairly as possible by basing admissions policies on merit and standardization, rather than sloppily basing them on perceived group identity.
    - malchow 9y ago
      +1; and, even if poster above had a proposed methodology for proving discrimination, he couldn't show how such discrimination, over a population of hundreds of millions over decades and over trillions of minute decisions, nets out, since discrimination runs in all directions at all times.
    - HarryHirsch 9y ago
      I encourage you to teach a science course for non-majors at a local university that serves minorities. Unless you are intentionally blind the experience will be enlightening. The variation in quality of high schools in the US is astounding and needs to be experienced first-hand. Where does the talk about genetic variation and unconscious bias even come from? It's not relevant in this context.
      - Danihan 9y ago
        That's like saying I need to go live in a bad neighborhood to understand they are bad. Or that I need to do opiates firsthand to understand they feel good. I 100% realize that there is massive variation in high school quality. It doesn't astound me. [1] What does that have to do with making college admissions fair and standardized? [1] http://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/6-baltimore-schools-no-students-proficient-in-state-tests http://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/6-baltimore-s...
- jacalata 9y ago
  What other way? The one where some people have enormous structural disadvantages due to decades or more of discrimination? We agree it doesn't work, but many people get angry and defensive when we try and create systems that are fair enough to take this into account, like affirmative action policies.
  - Danihan 9y ago
    Because you can't fight bias with more bias, it's hypocritical.
    - evanlivingston 9y ago
      You understand the problem with color-blindness, yes?
      - Danihan 9y ago
        Blind-hiring worked to remove the gender gap in orchestras. Why wouldn't it be good to use in college admissions? http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact... http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact....
        adjkant 9y ago
        Because the input of applicants is the original problem. Affirmative action is intended to select more from the limited applicants, which in the end is a small effect in comparison to getting more black/hispanic students who are able to go college at all. Solving that takes a lot more, and affirmative action is attempting to stopgap for that.
        evanlivingston 9y ago
        Of The cuff; a whole slew of reasons. Entry into an orchestra isn't something that is cost prohibitive for an economic class of individuals. Applicants to orchestras likely enjoy a certain level of affluence given how demanding the required practice is for performers. Musical performers enjoy slightly less systematic discrimination throughout their careers and technkal musical ability is something that is largely self-taught meaning that the applicants to orchestras are more likely to share similar levels of abilities at the stage of auditioning for an orchestra whereas college applicants are more likely to express difference at the time of application due to systematic discrimination throughout their educational trajectory. Playing in an orchestra doesn't share the same grave weight of attending college in careerist society where college is increasingly necessary. The demand is higher for college, and the supply can reflect that. Orchestras arnt a part of a massive industry tied to sports, science, defense, state subsidies etc...
kool1 9y ago
I bet it's all those pesky good for nothing lazy asians that spend their entire time doing useless things like studying and trying to make it in life. They're the reason smart and honest blacks and hispanics are being pushed out of top universities. We really need to do something about this.
- spraak 9y ago
  I wondered how long it would take to see trollish comments on this thread. Not long!
- sctb 9y ago
  We've banned this account and the others by the same user.
- wehadfun 9y ago
  Honestly I appreciate competing views. Sure Asians seem to push academic excellence. Some parents push sports, some push military, Asians push academics which results in them going to highly elite schools. No Asians are not elite they just focus on books. Calm down.
DarkKomunalec 9y ago
Amazing how quickly the proportion of whites dropped in a mere 35 years, in every single one of those charts. Pretty soon they'll have to get used to being a minority in the US as well.
p_monk 9y ago
The only benefactors of affirmative action have been white women.
- sctb 9y ago
  Please comment substantively or not at all, especially on divisive topics. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- wheaties 9y ago
  In general, women outperform men in educational results. So, no, affirmative action isn't benefiting women at all. See these for references: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/21/new-book-explains-why-women-outpace-men-education https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/21/new-book-expl... http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/education/09college.html?mcubz=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/education/09college.html?m...
yequalsx 9y ago
To fix inequality of opportunities one would be well advised to start with the way k-12 schools are funded. It's too late for most disadvantaged students by the time they are old enough to go to college.
- southphillyman 9y ago
  Tying such a large percentage of funding to the property wealth of the community ensures the poor remain under educated without access to upward mobility. I cringe thinking what effect this had in the Jim Crow era.
  - Balgair 9y ago
    Highly dependent on state. In CA, all money goes to Sacramento and then gets re-distributed to schools.
- wehadfun 9y ago
  Throwing more money at failing and corrupt school districts wont fix it either.
  - Balgair 9y ago
    SO just went through a school like one you mention. Yes, it was really bad, and yes, admin had a lot to do with it. Yes, funding was an issue, a big one, but not the main one. Want to fix it? Go to your next PTA meeting, become a coach on a team there, volunteer with the local school, get involved, today. Do you even know where your kids would go to school from the place you live (speaking to HN in general)? This is a democracy, you must participate for it to function at all. Sitting there screaming at the internet and the Moldavian troll-bots isn't fixing anything. Yes, it stinks. Yes, the admins and the superintendant are complete and total idiots. Guess who gets to fix it? You do. It's likely near the beginning of the school year near you. Now, today, is the best time of the entire year.
- rayiner 9y ago
  Some of the best-funded and worst-performing school systems are ones in inner cities with high minority populations. Baltimore, MD public schools spends more per student than the wealthy D.C. suburb of Montgomery County, MD, despite having a lower cost of living.
misja111 9y ago
Thread about this same article from 4 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15089419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15089419
sokoloff 9y ago
The denominator used is "college-age population". I wonder what the charts would look like if they used "4-year college attendees". I'm not saying that's the only way to look at things, but if the overall attendance rate for 4-year colleges is lower because a large swath of the population self-excluded from 4-year colleges, it would surprise me if that effect didn't show up in the data. Now, you could fairly ask why that large swath selected out of 4-year college, but the answer there probably isn't in the recruitment and admission processes of the specific colleges even though that's where the problem appears.
jimrandomh 9y ago
There is something very funky about the numbers used in this article. All their charts are measuring "enrollment gap", defined as (percentage of college-age population) minus (percentage enrollment). But this conflates changes in enrollment with changes in population. This is especially obvious when looking at the graph for Hispanics, where the number of college-age Hispanics has greatly increased from 1980 to 2015; the "gap" has grown from 3% to 9%, but without using a ruler, it's hard to tell whether the actual percentage of Hispanics attending college has gone up or down! This makes me feel like the author of the article is trying to deceive me, and I'd much rather get numbers from somewhere else.
sctb 9y ago
I suspect users are flagging these submissions because of the abysmal comments, and they're not wrong to. If were going to have a discussion it needs to be up to the civility and intellectual standards of the site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  I would suggest otherwise.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    What would you suggest?
    - dredmorbius 9y ago
      As noted: otherwise.
an27 9y ago
I'm only talking about the African-American portion (is that word still used?) for now, stats on Hispanics are harder to find. Perhaps a significant part of it is because those groups have lower IQ's on average? I think it's kinda strange that the article doesn't even entertain the notion that intelligence is genetic. According to Wikipedia[0] it's 15 to 18 points lower on average for African-Americans than for white Americans, which would imply that only 11-18% of African-Americans have an IQ above 100. I get that it's taboo to talk about groups having "worse genes" in some respect than white people, I guess I can thank the fucking Nazi's for that. I definitely don't think any individual should be judged based off their group identities, but I do think it's hypocritical to only accept the discussion of racial differences when it's to the benefit of minorities (e.g. "Jews/Asians are smart", "certain Africans run best", "white people/especially Asians have tiny penises"). Perhaps "Affirmative Action" even hurts a portion of black students, by lowering the bar and funneling them into colleges that are too competitive for their abilities; that would be a possible explanation if there would still be an achievement gap after corrections for IQ. Affirmative Action is partly about admission standards, so I interpret it as assuming someone was measured to perform worse, because of some kind of systemic disadvantage that will leave them once they're at university. However, I don't really understand how you'd tell the difference between someone being plain under-qualified and someone being under-qualified due to unjust circumstances that will "magically" correct once they're at university. I'm on shaky ground here though, I don't know that much about AA. Meta: is my post at all "trollish" to anyone? I tried to be as neutral as possible but perhaps I overreached somewhere, I'm fairly new to this topic and it's hard to always distinguish between information that can reasonably be assumed to be factual and baseless or exaggerated claims. This area of knowledge is mostly discussed by white supremacists, I suppose partly for lack of liberals even wanting to consider the notion that IQ is genetic. I must admit I'm slightly grateful to them for spamming comment sections because they inspired me to start studying media, history and politics. If you say "Hitler did nothing wrong" I think you're dead wrong and you should learn to troll better or go home, but history sure is more nuanced than I previously thought, and the people that complain about steel beams actually seem to have more solid evidence than those who support the official story. I also think it should be more acceptable to discuss these non-mainstream perspectives, because even though they're wrong they highlight different parts of history, and if they're taboo you also can't find sources that will refute them. It makes it harder to curate a well-balanced perspective. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#United_States_test_scores https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#United_S...
gwern 9y ago
Note how systematic and inexorable the graphs are; it's not any individual college or policy or region. I suspect that this is a mechanical effect of top colleges keeping enrollment essentially static even as the population continues expansion; this means that getting in becomes ever harder (see for example average SAT scores at MIT or Harvard), which in turn changes group admission ratios by the usual tail effects - when you have two normal distributions with different means, the further out you go, the more lopsided the fraction becomes. If you have a mean difference of, say, 100 SAT points between two groups, that leads to a relatively small difference in the number from each group passing a low cutoff like 900, but it means that there will be hardly any members of the lower group reaching 1600 compared to several from the higher group. The tails thin out too fast. (The tails effect is likely also related to the Asian overrepresentation.) Presumably the larger effects in elite colleges are why the NYT investigator focused on them rather than national aggregates, which will show smaller shifts as the lower-scoring students can still go to the unselective colleges. So as long as Harvard et al keep their incoming classes small and the number of prospective college students remains high or keeps increasing, the imbalance will continue. A few elite colleges may be able to poach from each other to improve their numbers (like Harvey Mudd) but obviously they can't all do that.
- whatnotests 9y ago
  Best comment in this thread. Thank you.
W3AVE 9y ago
Being "underrepresented" speaks absolutely none as to the cause of such a state. I would be interested in more comprehensive data on college applications, and the acceptance/rejection of said applications.
- W3AVE 9y ago
  gets negative karma for attempting to discuss thanks fam
jeremyflores 9y ago
Oh great, another race/gender-based discussion to elicit the best that the HN community has to offer.

44 points by rafaelc 9y ago

The article goes astray in the very first paragraph. "Even after decades of affirmative action." The period starts after the Supreme Court's 1978 decision in Regents v. Bakke which put significant limits on how affirmative action programs can be structured. More generally, the entire 35-year period (starting 1982) takes place during a conservative retrenching from the civil rights era.

Danihan 9y ago

More like "because of Affirmative Action". Just treat people as fairly as possible. The other way doesn't work.

rayiner 9y ago
We're going to play poker. Everyone will start with a randomly determined number of chips. But people whose HN handles start with A-H will get, on average, 40% less to start with. Aside from that tiny nit, it'll be a totally fair game.
- tomp 9y ago
  The "fair" solution is to make sure that A-H folks start with the same amount as the rest. The "reverse discrimination" solution is to take, after half of the game, the winnings of P-W folks and give them to C-J folks.
  - spraak 9y ago
    But when in reality does that actually happen? I'm not trying to incite you, I just really don't see evidence of "reverse discrimination"
    - todd8 9y ago
      As a big proponent of civil rights and the whole civil rights movement I hope that I'm not misunderstood. Reverse discrimination refers to discriminating against say non-hispanic white males because they are non-hispanic white or male. It seems obvious to me that making admission choices to increase minority representation at universities is tautologically decreasing the representation of other groups and is reverse discrimination. The question to me is, "Is this a good thing?". Here in Texas, it works in a way that is not quite obvious. The University of Texas as Austin is a desirable state University. It was once all white (1950), clearly race was being used to discriminate against minority applicants--an unfair and condemnable practice. By 1996, the University, in an attempt to increase minority representation, had been using race as one of the factors in admission, blacks with lower academic scores were admitted ahead of whites with the same scores (clearly reverse discrimination). In 1996, Federal Appeals court ruled against the University and for a white student that made that claim. The University stopped considering race, but minority representation started to drop and the University found a way in 1997 to discriminate between applicants to change the minority representation again, this time without explicitly mentioning race. It automatically admitted the top 10% of every high school graduating class, regardless of actual academic achievement. This discriminated against the high schools with high performing students. Since these schools were usually found in more expensive suburban neighborhoods that had well funded school districts and mostly white student bodies (so although there was no longer any explicit reverse discrimination, it still produced the same result, minority students were being admitted with lower test scores, etc). This practice of admitting students based on where they went to high school helped but didn't completely achieve the goals that UT had for the make up of it's student body. In 2003, UT began to use race in addition to the 10% rule and now discriminates in favor of minorities that do not automatically qualify under the modified top 7% rule, this has resulted in a number of law suits that race based discrimination is happening, which it clearly is. I have mixed feelings about all of this. I detest the idea that race is used to discriminate against anybody including groups like Jews, Asians, and whites. I live in a school district that has a very high performing public high school. A friend recently got perfect scores on the SAT and I believe that he got very close to a perfect score on the ACT. He had a very high GPA and was a varsity athlete on a top rank team. He now attends Stanford, but was only around the top 13% of his graduating class. He didn't even bother to apply to the University of Texas. No one needs to feel sorry for him, he's a genius going to Stanford; I feel sorry for so many of his classmates that would have been very successful at an affordable University that can't get in despite working so hard in high school.
  - mattnewton 9y ago
    Please, college acceptance here is more like giving the C-J folks a pass on their first 2 blinds. College acceptance isn't like we're taxing people based on race.
- aianus 9y ago
  So give everyone the same number of chips; don't compensate by changing the rules so that a black straight beats a white flush.
  - jacalata 9y ago
    Now translate "chips" into "systemic and generational advantages" and include detail on how to give everyone the same number.
    - aianus 9y ago
      Childcare, subsidized/free tutoring, mentoring, etc. I'm on board with practically anything other than lowering the admission bar. Edit: admission to good public schools based on standardized tests instead of family real estate would be a good start
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - adjkant 9y ago
        And what of studies that give evidence for racial biases in standardized testing? Your suggestions are all well and good, but do you see any of those happening soon? It's not like anyone is even remotely discussing this anywhere and with the current administration, it sure isn't happening soon at a federal level. The question becomes if affirmative action is better than nothing at all.
- fiter 9y ago
  Is the alternative that we play poker and after every N rounds the chips are redistributed so that everyone has the same amount? At what point(s) should redistribution happen? At what point(s) should it stop to allow better decision making?
  - evanlivingston 9y ago
    There's your problem: you assume that redistributing every n rounds means that decision making suffers.
    - fiter 9y ago
      I grant you that this example is contrived, but I'd play poker very differently if that was the case!
      - evanlivingston 9y ago
        Word, but I think it underlines a real problem. For some people with low chances of losing in the game (trust fund, property, stable family, no prior convictions, etc) life can be a game about maximizing gains. For others it's toothe and nail. When the rules of the game are historically set by people who are already too stable to really lose, it's the "weaker" players who get exploited.
        adjkant 9y ago
        I would add to this that making the system fairer will inherently decrease the chances for the higher starting players. That is because they had a higher chance to start with. The lowering of their chances is not a bad thing, it is perfectly just. But it's hard to get those players to accept that when they are starting from that position of power.
        fiter 9y ago
        When you phrase it that way, it sounds like you think it's hopeless to have a system with objectively fair rules. Notwithstanding the probably uninspired resulting college environment, I think it would be hypothetically fair to admit people solely based on their standardized test scores without any other consideration. The admission standard while somewhat arbitrary would be clear, such that anyone who wants to get admitted could work towards it. If someone is provided with a substandard K-12 education, it would make it harder to work towards admission. In that case, maybe we should look into the K-12 environment. Maybe it turns out that it's not as much the K-12 environment, and it's actually home life. Maybe home life issues are related to incarceration or maybe they're hereditary. I think this is what an effort to root-cause the problem would look like. When you find the root causes, then you could provide help for anyone with that root cause problem.
- alexandros 9y ago
  If only it was so easy in real life to cleanly figure out who "starts out with less". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
  - ftlio 9y ago
    Target: Don't subjugate people to work agriculture. You know about slavery of the past and the labor practices of big agriculture today yeah?
- briholt 9y ago
  Every individual black/Hispanic person is born with exactly 40% less wealth than every white/Asian person? It's time to re-evaluate your life choices when you think it's a good thing to promote blanket race-baiting stereotypes.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    > people whose HN handles start with A-H will get, on average, 40% less to start with
    - briholt 9y ago
      So you're saying individuals' wealth may differ from the average of other people sharing their skin color? Too bad we can't measure a person's wealth directly and have to rely on racist hysteria as a proxy.
sanjeetsuhag 9y ago
> Just treat people as fairly as possible. Wow, man, you just like, solved racism and discrimination.
- Danihan 9y ago
  Discrimination can't be "solved" because 1. People are genetically different and 2. Anyone can have biases about anything. I could shut down every interviewee with big ears, or beady eyes, if I wanted to. Again, all you can do is treat people as fairly as possible by basing admissions policies on merit and standardization, rather than sloppily basing them on perceived group identity.
  - malchow 9y ago
    +1; and, even if poster above had a proposed methodology for proving discrimination, he couldn't show how such discrimination, over a population of hundreds of millions over decades and over trillions of minute decisions, nets out, since discrimination runs in all directions at all times.
  - HarryHirsch 9y ago
    I encourage you to teach a science course for non-majors at a local university that serves minorities. Unless you are intentionally blind the experience will be enlightening. The variation in quality of high schools in the US is astounding and needs to be experienced first-hand. Where does the talk about genetic variation and unconscious bias even come from? It's not relevant in this context.
    - Danihan 9y ago
      That's like saying I need to go live in a bad neighborhood to understand they are bad. Or that I need to do opiates firsthand to understand they feel good. I 100% realize that there is massive variation in high school quality. It doesn't astound me. [1] What does that have to do with making college admissions fair and standardized? [1] http://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/6-baltimore-schools-no-students-proficient-in-state-tests http://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/6-baltimore-s...
jacalata 9y ago
What other way? The one where some people have enormous structural disadvantages due to decades or more of discrimination? We agree it doesn't work, but many people get angry and defensive when we try and create systems that are fair enough to take this into account, like affirmative action policies.
- Danihan 9y ago
  Because you can't fight bias with more bias, it's hypocritical.
  - evanlivingston 9y ago
    You understand the problem with color-blindness, yes?
    - Danihan 9y ago
      Blind-hiring worked to remove the gender gap in orchestras. Why wouldn't it be good to use in college admissions? http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact... http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact....
      - adjkant 9y ago
        Because the input of applicants is the original problem. Affirmative action is intended to select more from the limited applicants, which in the end is a small effect in comparison to getting more black/hispanic students who are able to go college at all. Solving that takes a lot more, and affirmative action is attempting to stopgap for that.
      - evanlivingston 9y ago
        Of The cuff; a whole slew of reasons. Entry into an orchestra isn't something that is cost prohibitive for an economic class of individuals. Applicants to orchestras likely enjoy a certain level of affluence given how demanding the required practice is for performers. Musical performers enjoy slightly less systematic discrimination throughout their careers and technkal musical ability is something that is largely self-taught meaning that the applicants to orchestras are more likely to share similar levels of abilities at the stage of auditioning for an orchestra whereas college applicants are more likely to express difference at the time of application due to systematic discrimination throughout their educational trajectory. Playing in an orchestra doesn't share the same grave weight of attending college in careerist society where college is increasingly necessary. The demand is higher for college, and the supply can reflect that. Orchestras arnt a part of a massive industry tied to sports, science, defense, state subsidies etc...

kool1 9y ago

I bet it's all those pesky good for nothing lazy asians that spend their entire time doing useless things like studying and trying to make it in life. They're the reason smart and honest blacks and hispanics are being pushed out of top universities. We really need to do something about this.

spraak 9y ago
I wondered how long it would take to see trollish comments on this thread. Not long!
sctb 9y ago
We've banned this account and the others by the same user.
wehadfun 9y ago
Honestly I appreciate competing views. Sure Asians seem to push academic excellence. Some parents push sports, some push military, Asians push academics which results in them going to highly elite schools. No Asians are not elite they just focus on books. Calm down.

DarkKomunalec 9y ago

Amazing how quickly the proportion of whites dropped in a mere 35 years, in every single one of those charts. Pretty soon they'll have to get used to being a minority in the US as well.

p_monk 9y ago

The only benefactors of affirmative action have been white women.

sctb 9y ago
Please comment substantively or not at all, especially on divisive topics. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
wheaties 9y ago
In general, women outperform men in educational results. So, no, affirmative action isn't benefiting women at all. See these for references: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/21/new-book-explains-why-women-outpace-men-education https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/21/new-book-expl... http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/education/09college.html?mcubz=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/education/09college.html?m...

yequalsx 9y ago

To fix inequality of opportunities one would be well advised to start with the way k-12 schools are funded. It's too late for most disadvantaged students by the time they are old enough to go to college.

southphillyman 9y ago
Tying such a large percentage of funding to the property wealth of the community ensures the poor remain under educated without access to upward mobility. I cringe thinking what effect this had in the Jim Crow era.
- Balgair 9y ago
  Highly dependent on state. In CA, all money goes to Sacramento and then gets re-distributed to schools.
wehadfun 9y ago
Throwing more money at failing and corrupt school districts wont fix it either.
- Balgair 9y ago
  SO just went through a school like one you mention. Yes, it was really bad, and yes, admin had a lot to do with it. Yes, funding was an issue, a big one, but not the main one. Want to fix it? Go to your next PTA meeting, become a coach on a team there, volunteer with the local school, get involved, today. Do you even know where your kids would go to school from the place you live (speaking to HN in general)? This is a democracy, you must participate for it to function at all. Sitting there screaming at the internet and the Moldavian troll-bots isn't fixing anything. Yes, it stinks. Yes, the admins and the superintendant are complete and total idiots. Guess who gets to fix it? You do. It's likely near the beginning of the school year near you. Now, today, is the best time of the entire year.
rayiner 9y ago
Some of the best-funded and worst-performing school systems are ones in inner cities with high minority populations. Baltimore, MD public schools spends more per student than the wealthy D.C. suburb of Montgomery County, MD, despite having a lower cost of living.

misja111 9y ago

Thread about this same article from 4 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15089419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15089419

sokoloff 9y ago

The denominator used is "college-age population". I wonder what the charts would look like if they used "4-year college attendees". I'm not saying that's the only way to look at things, but if the overall attendance rate for 4-year colleges is lower because a large swath of the population self-excluded from 4-year colleges, it would surprise me if that effect didn't show up in the data. Now, you could fairly ask why that large swath selected out of 4-year college, but the answer there probably isn't in the recruitment and admission processes of the specific colleges even though that's where the problem appears.

jimrandomh 9y ago

There is something very funky about the numbers used in this article. All their charts are measuring "enrollment gap", defined as (percentage of college-age population) minus (percentage enrollment). But this conflates changes in enrollment with changes in population. This is especially obvious when looking at the graph for Hispanics, where the number of college-age Hispanics has greatly increased from 1980 to 2015; the "gap" has grown from 3% to 9%, but without using a ruler, it's hard to tell whether the actual percentage of Hispanics attending college has gone up or down! This makes me feel like the author of the article is trying to deceive me, and I'd much rather get numbers from somewhere else.

sctb 9y ago

I suspect users are flagging these submissions because of the abysmal comments, and they're not wrong to. If were going to have a discussion it needs to be up to the civility and intellectual standards of the site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dredmorbius 9y ago
I would suggest otherwise.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  What would you suggest?
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    As noted: otherwise.

an27 9y ago

I'm only talking about the African-American portion (is that word still used?) for now, stats on Hispanics are harder to find. Perhaps a significant part of it is because those groups have lower IQ's on average? I think it's kinda strange that the article doesn't even entertain the notion that intelligence is genetic. According to Wikipedia[0] it's 15 to 18 points lower on average for African-Americans than for white Americans, which would imply that only 11-18% of African-Americans have an IQ above 100. I get that it's taboo to talk about groups having "worse genes" in some respect than white people, I guess I can thank the fucking Nazi's for that. I definitely don't think any individual should be judged based off their group identities, but I do think it's hypocritical to only accept the discussion of racial differences when it's to the benefit of minorities (e.g. "Jews/Asians are smart", "certain Africans run best", "white people/especially Asians have tiny penises"). Perhaps "Affirmative Action" even hurts a portion of black students, by lowering the bar and funneling them into colleges that are too competitive for their abilities; that would be a possible explanation if there would still be an achievement gap after corrections for IQ. Affirmative Action is partly about admission standards, so I interpret it as assuming someone was measured to perform worse, because of some kind of systemic disadvantage that will leave them once they're at university. However, I don't really understand how you'd tell the difference between someone being plain under-qualified and someone being under-qualified due to unjust circumstances that will "magically" correct once they're at university. I'm on shaky ground here though, I don't know that much about AA. Meta: is my post at all "trollish" to anyone? I tried to be as neutral as possible but perhaps I overreached somewhere, I'm fairly new to this topic and it's hard to always distinguish between information that can reasonably be assumed to be factual and baseless or exaggerated claims. This area of knowledge is mostly discussed by white supremacists, I suppose partly for lack of liberals even wanting to consider the notion that IQ is genetic. I must admit I'm slightly grateful to them for spamming comment sections because they inspired me to start studying media, history and politics. If you say "Hitler did nothing wrong" I think you're dead wrong and you should learn to troll better or go home, but history sure is more nuanced than I previously thought, and the people that complain about steel beams actually seem to have more solid evidence than those who support the official story. I also think it should be more acceptable to discuss these non-mainstream perspectives, because even though they're wrong they highlight different parts of history, and if they're taboo you also can't find sources that will refute them. It makes it harder to curate a well-balanced perspective. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#United_States_test_scores https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#United_S...

gwern 9y ago

Note how systematic and inexorable the graphs are; it's not any individual college or policy or region. I suspect that this is a mechanical effect of top colleges keeping enrollment essentially static even as the population continues expansion; this means that getting in becomes ever harder (see for example average SAT scores at MIT or Harvard), which in turn changes group admission ratios by the usual tail effects - when you have two normal distributions with different means, the further out you go, the more lopsided the fraction becomes. If you have a mean difference of, say, 100 SAT points between two groups, that leads to a relatively small difference in the number from each group passing a low cutoff like 900, but it means that there will be hardly any members of the lower group reaching 1600 compared to several from the higher group. The tails thin out too fast. (The tails effect is likely also related to the Asian overrepresentation.) Presumably the larger effects in elite colleges are why the NYT investigator focused on them rather than national aggregates, which will show smaller shifts as the lower-scoring students can still go to the unselective colleges. So as long as Harvard et al keep their incoming classes small and the number of prospective college students remains high or keeps increasing, the imbalance will continue. A few elite colleges may be able to poach from each other to improve their numbers (like Harvey Mudd) but obviously they can't all do that.

whatnotests 9y ago
Best comment in this thread. Thank you.

W3AVE 9y ago

Being "underrepresented" speaks absolutely none as to the cause of such a state. I would be interested in more comprehensive data on college applications, and the acceptance/rejection of said applications.

W3AVE 9y ago
gets negative karma for attempting to discuss thanks fam

jeremyflores 9y ago

Oh great, another race/gender-based discussion to elicit the best that the HN community has to offer.