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> 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 ha

> 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 ago
  Sincere 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 ago
      Nitpick 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 ago
      Thanks? 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 ago
    My sense would be they are just implying that HN is overwhelmingly white, which wouldn’t be surprising.
  - moomin 9y ago
    Not 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 ago
      I'm not sure how that's answering my question...?
    - dang 9y ago
      That "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 ago
        HN 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 ago
        I 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 ago
Thoughts 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 ago
  Yea "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 ago
    Yes, 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 ago
    I'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 ago
it can be both
Cryptid 9y ago
Radiolab'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 ago
Not 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.

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 ago
Sincere 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 ago
    Nitpick 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 ago
    Thanks? 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 ago
  My sense would be they are just implying that HN is overwhelmingly white, which wouldn’t be surprising.
- moomin 9y ago
  Not 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 ago
    I'm not sure how that's answering my question...?
  - dang 9y ago
    That "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 ago
      HN 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 ago
        I 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 ago

Thoughts 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 ago
Yea "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 ago
  Yes, 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 ago
  I'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 ago

it can be both

Cryptid 9y ago

Radiolab'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 ago

Not 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.