10 ms·
Asian-Americans Suing Harvard Say Admissions Files Show Discrimination
- jonnybgood 9y ago> The leader of Students for Fair Admissions and the architect of the case against Harvard is Edward Blum, a longtime crusader against affirmative action who has recruited plaintiffs, hired sympathetic lawyers and raised millions of dollars from conservative groups to challenge voting rights laws and affirmative action policies, often successfully. Is this really about discrimination against Asian-Americans?
- chimeracoder 9y ago> Is this really about discrimination against Asian-Americans? It's not at all. Unsurprisingly, East Asian and South Asian community groups have by and large gone incredibly far out of their way to distance themselves from this lawsuit. It took Blum a comically long period of time even to find people with standing who were willing to participate in it. You won't find that to be the predominant sentiment on HN, but HN has never been particularly representative of other populations when it comes to political topics, especially race and discrimination.
- ithilglin909 9y agoSincere question: what do you mean by "other populations"?
- chimeracoder 9y ago> Sincere question: what do you mean by "other populations"? HN does not provide a representative view of any group other than "HN readers". It doesn't even do a great job of representing programmers, or people who work in tech. So if you come to HN and expect the things you read to be representative of any group broader than that, you'll end up pretty far off the mark.
- mrep 9y agoNitpick but it actually represents "HN commenters" because there almost certainly a lot of people who do not comment and those people don't necessarily have the same view as the commenters.
- ithilglin909 9y agoThanks? I really don't know why I would have the expectation that the views expressed on HN would be representative of the views of a group other than "People who comment on Hacker News". Same goes for any other site that people comment on...
- caligarn 9y agoMy sense would be they are just implying that HN is overwhelmingly white, which wouldn’t be surprising.
- moomin 9y agoNot OP, but I’ll just observe that HN does have a recognisable political slant. Not everyone on it shares the views of that slant, but if you haven’t noticed it’s presence, it’s probably because you do share those views.
- ithilglin909 9y agoI'm not sure how that's answering my question...?
- dang 9y agoThat "recognizable slant" is in the eye of the beholder. On divisive issues, the community is simply divided, as is the society at large—or rather, the societies, since HN is a majority-international site. But that's not how it feels, because of this effect, which a reader pointed out yesterday: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16751922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16751922 I guarantee you that readers with opposite views to yours have opposite views of HN's "recognizable slant". Compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16397133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16397133 to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407769. Or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16134205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16134205 to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16750306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16750306. And so on.
- thraway180306 9y agoHN is a majority-international site Sorry, but is this claim based on pageviews, or the origins of the comments being posted? It's not like guardian.co.uk/international is in fact international news and opinion.
- dang 9y agoI mean that no country has a majority of the users hitting HN. In terms of posting comments it's a bit more than 50% from the US. The point, though, is that people coming here are coming from many different countries, so opinion is more divided than it would be from just one. There aren't only political and ideological divides, but national, cultural, and linguistic ones. Understandably—because the information isn't available—people don't take this into account. That unfortunately leads to a lot of misunderstanding and even ill will.
- moomin 9y agoThoughts 1) a lot of this sounds like a fishing expedition 2) Asian-Americans certainly face discrimination in other walks of life 3) “But what about Asians?” is pretty much like “But what about black-on-black crime?” of conservative talking points trying to deny the reality of race in America. In short, this is a devious way of disrupting affirmative action and I’m simultaneously impressed and horrified.
- sp527 9y agoYea "devious" if you're not Asian. Affirmative action is a garbage policy. It should be predicated directly on financial means instead of race.
- pessimizer 9y agoYes, affirmative action is unfair. Everything should be based on the wealth of your parents, which is fair.
- dang 9y ago"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- imjustsaying 9y ago>sarcasm >strawman
- yongjik 9y agoI'm Asian, my kids are going to apply to universities in America in a few years, and I'm OK with Affirmative action. Yes, I know they might have slightly better chance of acceptance if Affirmative action is gone. So what?
- doktrin 9y agoit can be both
- Cryptid 9y agoRadiolab's More Perfect had a pair of very interesting episodes on Edward Blum: http://www.radiolab.org/story/more-perfect-plaintiffs/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/more-perfect-plaintiffs/ and https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/architect-edward-blum/ https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/architect-edward-blum/
- s2g 9y agoNot really, if Asians were actually being treated the same (and the schools admission rates shifted to a higher percentage of Asian students) then people would start bitching about privileged Asians. Meanwhile Asian people are actually pissed off for the right reasons.
- greatamerican 9y agoThis is devastating to the professional victim industry. Asians ARE discriminated AGAINST at almost all of the nation's top schools.
- caligarn 9y agoHaving said that, Asians are the least of the discriminated against of all the non-Caucasian races.
- swagasaurus-rex 9y agoLeave it to 'em to find a way
- ken47 9y agoBut that's precisely the question being posed by this lawsuit: are Asians actually discriminated against less than other minorities in Harvard admissions?
- anonday935 9y agoI disagree. I can name 10 Black American actors and actresses that have leading roles in movies and TV. I can barely think of 3 Asian American actors in leading roles. And the ones that do act are often forced to do an accent, despite being fluent in English. Asians are routinely discriminated against in sports: "“He lit up our model,” said [the Rockets GM, Daryl] Morey. “Our model said take him with, like, the 15th pick in the draft.” The objective measurement of Jeremy Lin didn’t square with what the experts saw when they watched him play; a not terribly athletic Asian kid. Morey hadn’t completely trusted his model - and so had chickened out and not drafted Lin." [1] Asians are also seen as perpetual foreigners. Look at all the falsely accused Asian scientists like Wen Ho Lee, Bo Jiang, Sherry Chen, and Xiaoxing Xi. Or the current FBI director saying we need to be careful of all Chinese people. [2] It should also be noted that the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Japanese Internment were the only times the US had policies against specific races. 1. https://www.netsdaily.com/2017/3/14/14925994/morey-bias-played-a-role-in-lin-not-being-drafted https://www.netsdaily.com/2017/3/14/14925994/morey-bias-play... 2. http://www.businessinsider.com/china-threat-to-america-fbi-director-warns-2018-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/china-threat-to-america-fbi-d...
- sp527 9y ago> We will continue to vigorously defend the right of Harvard, and other universities, to seek the educational benefits that come from a class that is diverse on multiple dimensions Speaking as an Asian, the insinuation that my race might be considered a meaningful dimension in the pursuit of class diversity makes my blood boil. This PR rep is barely even trying to hide the real implication here: "we want our class to be visibly colorful". That's some grade A bullsh*t.
- caligarn 9y agoSeems like a situation where Harvard is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t.
- daenz 9y agoSo maybe it should do the fair thing.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- unclebucknasty 9y ago>maybe it should do the fair thing. The "fair thing" is the matter of perspective that's being debated.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- daenz 9y agoIs it really debatable on whether or not discriminating against individuals/groups makes things fair for other individuals/groups? At best, you've made things fair for one group, unfair for another group. Meanwhile you've re-enforced the idea that it's institutionally acceptable to discriminate against groups of people for physical attributes they have no control over.... an idea I thought we were all supposed to be moving away from.
- moomin 9y agoThe most racially discriminatory policy at Harvard remains the alum/legacy system.
- adamnemecek 9y agoAlso athletic recruiting. No one cares about sports. Just these two are 40%.
- internetman55 9y agoI care about sports
- adamnemecek 9y agoOk go do it in your spare time.
- Mononokay 9y agoWhy so? I'm not sarcastically asking, I genuinely want to know.
- thatswrong0 9y agoBecause of the demographics of alums I’m assuming
- that_one_fool 9y agoWhile I am not against the idea of Affirmative Action as a whole, some more thought needs to be put into fairly creating its classifications. Discussions about breaking down ethnic data into more granular countries and incorporating more socioeconomic factors need to be more strongly considered before implementing something like this. Eg. The median Indian American isn't the same as the median Vietnamese American. And neither are the opportunities for kids growing up in two different cities in America.
- dnautics 9y agoVietnamese American is bimodal, with a strong classification dependence on time of emigration.
- whack 9y agoLet's be honest, this isn't the first time and it won't be the last. Harvard has previously discriminated against Jews, and is now discriminating against Asians for the exact same reasons. I'm all for lending a helping hand to those from disadvantaged backgrounds. But using race is a punitive factor to punish minorities that are "too successful", is pure racism. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/harvard-s-jewish-problem http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/harvard-s-jewish-problem By 1919 ... Jews at Harvard tripled to 21% of the freshman class in 1922 from about 7% in 1900. Ivy League Jews won a disproportionate share of academic prizes and election to Phi Beta Kappa but were widely regarded as competitive, eager to excel academically and less interested in extra-curricular activities such as organized sports. Non-Jews accused them of being clannish, socially unskilled and either unwilling or unable to“fit in.” In 1922, Harvard's president, A. Lawrence Lowell, proposed a quota on the number of Jews gaining admission to the university. Lowell was convinced that Harvard could only survive if the majority of its students came from old American stock. Lowell argued that cutting the number of Jews at Harvard to a maximum of 15% would be good for the Jews, because limits would prevent further anti-Semitism. Lowell reasoned, “The anti-Semitic feeling among the students is increasing, and it grows in proportion to the increase in the number of Jews. If their number should become 40% of the student body, the race feeling would become intense.”
- cuckcuckspruce 9y ago>But using race is a punitive factor to punish minorities that are "too successful", is pure racism. Is it racism to punish members of the majority that are "too successful"? I'm not trying to make a point with this question - I am just asking.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ikeyany 9y ago> But using race is a punitive factor to punish minorities that are "too successful", is pure racism. It would seem more "fair" to instead factor in your parents' income or education, or what kind of neighborhood or high school you're from.
- cdiddy2 9y agoGood, there shouldn't be any systemic race based acceptance criteria. It only increases racism and skepticism. Imagine you have a Hispanic doctor, but you know that the MCAT score for a Hispanic to get into med school is lower than the score an Asian would need. Now you question whether your doctor is as qualified as they should be because of their race, even if they did have an amazing MCAT score. Affirmative action is blatantly racist from all angles.
- nova22033 9y agonow imagine the same resume being sent out to a number of companies: one with a white sounding name and one with a black sounding name. And imagine finding out that the same resume with the white sounding name gets more call backs? I'm going to assume it's the same thing if you replace white with east asian or south asian.
- vowelless 9y agoNow imagine that you both may actually be talking about orthogonal issues....
- unclebucknasty 9y agoCan you explain why you think these are orthogonal?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jostmey 9y agoOnly imperfect solutions for an imperfect world
- cdiddy2 9y agoThat doesn't mean that having quotas for different races is the right way to solve that though
- jfaucett 9y agoIs this surprising to anyone? There are numerous documented cases (some mentioned in this article), many anecdotal, of blatant discrimination against Asians at universities. [4] Honestly when you look at the data, its hard to believe there has been no major backlash on a national level until this point, especially when you consider a majority believe there is discrimination against them [3]. One reason could perhaps be the fact that Asians outperform other groups on a variety of positive societal metrics (income, wealth, education). [1,2] Anyway, whether or not you think we should or should not do anything about it is up to your political tastes, but I for one am at least happy its getting some national attention - given my own personal experience and just knowing what the data says. Admittedly, if the data looked a lot different I would be more inclined to rule this out as bogus. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U... 2. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p20-578.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio... 3. https://www.npr.org/assets/news/2017/12/discriminationpoll-asian-americans.pdf https://www.npr.org/assets/news/2017/12/discriminationpoll-a... 4. http://asianamericanforeducation.org/en/issue/discrimination-on-admissions/ http://asianamericanforeducation.org/en/issue/discrimination...
- objclxt 9y ago> blatant discrimination against Asians at universities So you mention "knowing what the data says" - * Asian Americans represent 5.6% of the US population[1]. * The most recently admitted class at Harvard was 22.7% Asian American. Is that "blatant discrimination"? If it is, at what percentage would it not be? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Asian_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Asian_American... [2]: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/3/29/harvard-regular-admissions-2022/ http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/3/29/harvard-regular-...
- jdoliner 9y agoDiscrimination is an act by one human against another. You can't tell just from looking at ratio of the broader Asian population and Harvard's Asian population whether or not they're discriminating. Human behavior is subtle, and when OP said that blatant discrimination was happening he was pretty obviously not referring to that ratio as the thing that makes it blatant.
- scaleout1 9y agoThis maybe offtopic so I apologize in advance but when people say "Asian-Americans" does it include South Asians as well or just East Asians? As a south asian this has caused me a lot of confusion while talking to people in bay area
- nokcha 9y agoIn the US, "Asian" without further qualification generally means East Asian. (In the UK, "Asian" extends to both East Asian and South Asian.)
- sp527 9y agoWhen people in the US say "Asian" conversationally, they usually mean "East Asian". The admissions process uses the more formal definition, which means an American who can trace his/her ethnicity to any country in Asia (including India, etc).
- whack 9y agoIn social situations, "Asians" generally refers to East Asians. However, most official demographic-checklists don't have an option for "South-Asian", and expect them to self-identify as "Asian". Hence, much of the evidence you see from the above lawsuit, likely applies to South Asians as well.
- prepend 9y agoI love when forms mix racial terms and have the options “Asian” and “Caucasian.” Mixing races based on recent geographic origin with races based on morphology can lead to broad interpretation. South-Asians are actually Caucasian if you believe in the racial theory that has three races- caucasoid, mongoloid, negroid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race) because they were big on bone structure over skin tone. But for the most part these racial distinctions are all pretty hokey and you can check whatever you want. I’m not sure why it’s more valid to classify by skin tone vs hair color vs hand width or whatever. I can understand the unjust classification within certain cultures in isolation because it probably closely associated with certain classes or religions. But classifying a black-skinned Indian South Asian and a brown-skinned Ethiopian (both also Caucasian) makes no real sense. Even from a social justice persective as which background has it worse off? Is a light-skinned African-American have more or less systematic oppression than a dark-skinned South Asian? Or a dark-skinned AA vs a light-skinned SA? There’s all sorts of interesting and confusing scenarios. I’m not sure what to do nor what is right, so I largely just muffle up and/or wait for the loudest shouting groups to figure it out. Things did not go well for an immigrant friend of mine who was white South African who signed up for an African American law program. But when the all white engineering team won the state championship challenge for minority schools, that was fine. It was a weird quirk in my country where the program was for schools with majority minority students. But most schools had almost entirely Asian and white teams because the schools had small non-minority populations.
- jdoliner 9y agoSo if Harvard systematically discriminates against certain races in their admissions process can lying about your race on an application be considered an act of civil disobedience? What's the difference between an Asian who wants to go to college saying they're black to get in and black children that wanted to go to white only schools during the civil rights movement? Why should either be denied an education based on their race? And then, if you're not ok with people lying about their race to gain admission what punishment should befall those that do lie? What should be done to those who commit race fraud?
- chrischen 9y agoI'd imagine you wouldn't be lying. You'd be "identifying" as black. And while you're at it, identify as a black woman. It would throw the whole system into chaos (until people start profiling based on names).
- en4bz 9y agoThere was an Indian-American guy who did this to become a doctor. https://nypost.com/2015/04/12/mindy-kalings-brother-explains-why-he-pretended-to-be-black/ https://nypost.com/2015/04/12/mindy-kalings-brother-explains...
- fatjokes 9y agoPretty sure they don't care about the box you check. They're just looking at your name and maybe your extracurriculars. I like to check random boxes. Given the precarious definition of race one could probably argue they belong to any race.
- prepend 9y agoWhat’s interesting about this is the difficulty of testing of someone is lying. Race isn’t purely genetic, so how do you call someone who is 40% Asian, 20% African, 40% European ancestry who looks “black” from identifying as African American? What’s the threshold? I really wanted the Rachel Dolezal to get into a court case somehow just to see what the legal ruling is. If someone who is 99.99% ashkenazi and 0.01% African truly believes she is black, who is a Harvard admissions person to contract them? Logically, this follows to a pretty weird place. With trends in census showing increase in multiracial populations, I hope it becomes a moot point before society goes full retard with “racial impurity” tests. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal
- jds375 9y agoDoes anyone have any solid basis for the degree to which this discrimination is happening (specifically scope and severity)? I'm curious to know if this is something that is impacting a large number of potential students in a significant way or is only a minor factor amongst many others when determining acceptance.
- ken47 9y agoAnecdotal evidence as an Asian male: way back when I was in high school, I applied to a particular brand name university in the US. In my class, I had the best or second best admissions profile. The rest weren't really even close. I was not accepted by this university, but fellow students from much more desirable demographic groups (from an affirmative action perspective) were. They were all wealthy, quite possibly from wealthier families than my own. And they had different skin color and/or gender. These were students who couldn't even handle AP calculus (and if you knew the name of this university, you'd be shocked), let alone match my extracurricular activities, test scores, etc. One of them had enough self awareness and integrity to apologize to me, and openly blamed affirmative action for her being accepted instead of me. The others let it get to their heads.
- Mononokay 9y agoThere really needs to be more press on the experiences of Asians when dealing with college apps - reading that made me feel gross; it's sickening to me that that's considered okay by so many people.
- TheFullStack 9y agoThere would be if people cared. No one does. The only people not surprised by any of this is Asians. I not only had to be better than my peers to get into Cornell, I had to be MUCH better. So it goes. It could be worse...
- prepend 9y agoSimilarly, my school only had one Ivy League acceptance. The student was from an extremely wealthy family and had tutors and camps and essay consultants. They had mediocre extra curricular, 70% sat/act and 3.5gpa and were accepted. The valedictorian has amazing everything but was Vietnamese and was turned down from every Ivy League. Sad because his family was really poor and he was a real bootstrap puller, etc. From a cosmic justice standpoint, the valedictorian is now pretty wealthy 35 years later and the ivy leaguer never worked and lived off family and spouse money.
- fatjokes 9y agoI seriously don't understand people who defend race-based admissions. It is, at best, an ends-justify-the-means argument where you're saying some forms of racism and stereotyping are acceptable. I'm aware of the argument that it is to offset systemic racism but it still boils down to assuming someone's life story based on the color of their skin. I'm very pro-diversity but this is just too high a price to pay. Everyone in the rainbow classroom will look around and know that the bars were different. They just won't say it out loud for fear of social reprisals. Furthermore, based on my college experiences, the issue with diversity in college isn't even the lack of it. It's the lack of integration. You still end up seeing the various racial groups sticking to themselves. Whatever benefits diversity brings is probably diluted until that is resolved.
- kss238 9y agoDo you think mandating minority majority districts is unethical?
- yongjik 9y agoYou know what's funny? The entire college acceptance system is biased toward wealthy families. You need to have the right experiences (often bought with money, inordinate amount of time spent by parents, or both). You need to write your own letters, of course, with "help" by parents or professionals. You need to plan your courses years beforehand, again, with help by others. If your parents are working their asses off to make ends meet, you likely won't have much help. The entire American system is set up to make it as easy as possible for wealthy kids to go to college. Somehow I've yet to hear one wealthy family objecting "This hurts my kid, because he is completely able to enter college on his own, but thanks to the system it will look like he got in only because he's wealthy! Make the system more fair!" Anybody who says Affirmative action actually "hurts" disadvantaged kids had better be able to explain the above discrepancy. I'm OK with Affirmative action.
- prepend 9y agoThis is an interesting argument, but the article doesn’t say this at all. The complaint isn’t that affirmative action helps recipients, but that it hurts Asian Americans. I suppose there are some people arguing against you, but it may be more productive to argue the point at hand. Or at least we can all nod and agree that the net gain to recipients of affirmative action outweighs any negatives. And move on to the lawsuit’s question of “Why should Asian Americans suffer?” I completely agree with your point about wealth being very important. But it’s not a good analogy to affirmative action based on some races. I’ve spent a bit of time in Ivy League schools and it’s still wealthy minorities who are the main benificiary of affirmative action. So wealth is a given for admission regardless of if you’re pro-AA or anti-.
- threatofrain 9y agoBut it sounds like all your complaints are about classism. Why not then look classism straight in the eye, rather than punishing young Asians looking to get into college?
- erdojo 9y agoThere is a great deal of societal value in empowering minority communities. And creating a diverse campus is a major starting point to developing a diverse and prosperous community. We know from hard data that students from some communities are at an inherent disadvantage in the education system. From family environments to poverty to the mental strain of everyday racism to school funding to parental involvement, some students are at a severe disadvantage. Even when of equal intelligence, maturity and potential. What universities do is account for these disadvantages in the mix. Is the system perfect? No. But it's good for our collective society, even if a few overachievers have to settle for Yale.
- qbaqbaqba 9y agoBut Asians aren't one of the protected minorities.