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Affirmative action is not equality of opportunity, its equality of outcomes. That's why places like Harvard have to give Asian students SAT scores negative mod

Affirmative action is not equality of opportunity, its equality of outcomes. That's why places like Harvard have to give Asian students SAT scores negative modifiers in order to level the playing field of outcomes. We need to get a the root of the problem, not try to patch it at the top when its too late and override meritocracy. It all boils down to culture, which OP's article reinforces. Highly recommend Amy Chaus book The Triple Package. Its discusses why certain cultures succeed better than other in the US.

mcguire 8y ago
But see Jennifer Lee's response, https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2014/02/24/are-mexicans-the-most-successful-immigrant-group-in-the-u-s/ideas/nexus/ https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2014/02/24/are-mexicans-t.... "A colleague of mine illustrated this point with a baseball analogy: Most Americans would be more impressed by someone who made it to second base starting from home plate than someone who ended up on third base, when their parents started on third base. But because we tend to focus strictly on outcomes when we talk about success and mobility, we fail to acknowledge that the third base runner didn’t have to run far at all."
- noetic_techy 8y ago
  It's not a rebuttal of Chau, its just a different metric tailored to propel an outlier forward. Great on Mexican-Americans for jumping a much larger gap. I would have been more convinced if the author had other examples though. If you read Chau's book, she was focused on median household income compared to Whites and average Americans, as well as many other factors such as entrepreneurship, degrees, etc. Lee's article left out some of the other subgroups Chaus metric applies to, they missed Iranians, Lebanese and Mormons (the only majority white group). I'll take a whole book dedicated to the cultural theory that explains the rise of 7 subgroups within the US over some article that points out 1 any day.

mcguire 8y ago

But see Jennifer Lee's response, https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2014/02/24/are-mexicans-the-most-successful-immigrant-group-in-the-u-s/ideas/nexus/ https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2014/02/24/are-mexicans-t.... "A colleague of mine illustrated this point with a baseball analogy: Most Americans would be more impressed by someone who made it to second base starting from home plate than someone who ended up on third base, when their parents started on third base. But because we tend to focus strictly on outcomes when we talk about success and mobility, we fail to acknowledge that the third base runner didn’t have to run far at all."

noetic_techy 8y ago
It's not a rebuttal of Chau, its just a different metric tailored to propel an outlier forward. Great on Mexican-Americans for jumping a much larger gap. I would have been more convinced if the author had other examples though. If you read Chau's book, she was focused on median household income compared to Whites and average Americans, as well as many other factors such as entrepreneurship, degrees, etc. Lee's article left out some of the other subgroups Chaus metric applies to, they missed Iranians, Lebanese and Mormons (the only majority white group). I'll take a whole book dedicated to the cultural theory that explains the rise of 7 subgroups within the US over some article that points out 1 any day.