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It's like we have these two irreconcilable ideas: - Diversity is good - Discrimination is bad When 50% of the world's population is from China/India, how do
by umvi 7y ago
It's like we have these two irreconcilable ideas:
- Diversity is good
- Discrimination is bad
When 50% of the world's population is from China/India, how do you both promote diversity and not discriminate?
- rolltiide 7y agoThen you start focusing in the diversity within those extremely large countries and groups of people. So further partition once the US becomes saturated with a more accurate representation of who lives on this planet.
- theonlyklas 7y agoWhy does the US need to be first?
- rolltiide 7y agoBecause this is a thread about Harvard, a US college, being scrutinized under US laws in the US court system.
- AdrianB1 7y ago50% of the world and admission at Harvard in USA are different groups, so the comparison is flawed. If you would use USA population structure, that is a relevant argument.
- gameswithgo 7y agoTo me the obvious thing is to aim to eliminate racial/national/gender bias as much as possible by blinding admission/hiring processes to those things. Then on top of that offer spots for people who have had to deal with exceptional difficulty. Whether that be physical handicap, racial prejudice, economic, etc. There are companies/grants that take an approach like this. Its going to be subjective but perfect is the enemy of good. Then let the percentages land where they may. Having quotas or racial/gender preferences is crazy.
- filoleg 7y agoOut of curiosity, why not just lump most of it under "socioeconomic disadvantages" category (mostly based on the family's financial situation)? E.g., poor asian kids shouldn't be grouped with the less poor asian kids and shouldn't have been at a disadvantage compared to a rich african american kid for admission purposes. This proposed approach sounds so obvious, I feel like there has gotta be some caveat in it that I am missing. Is it easily gameable or something?
- Ancalagon 7y agoI think this is the ultimate solution. Of course people will still try to game this system by e.g. sending their kids to high school in poorer districts.
- ravar 7y agoArguably if people try to game the system in that way it would be socially good. Don't we want the privileged people going to the same schools as poorer people?
- sushid 7y agoBecause it’s zero sum? The rich kid pretending to be poor is taking away a seat from an actual poor kid.
- kelnos 7y ago
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- prolepunk 7y agoIts not about absolute numbers, it's about admitting people from historically underrepresented or oppressed groups. I think the name 'Race Conscious' is not a great description where it actually means race and oppression.
- prolepunk 7y agoEveryone who's downvoting me. Please explain why simply stating this is so controversial? Hasan Minhaj did a pretty informative episode on the lawsuit against Harvard affirmative action -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm5QVcTI2I8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm5QVcTI2I8
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- slg 7y agoI think the debate from progressives is the definition of the term discriminate. We all agree choosing an unqualified person over a person who is qualified based on their race is discrimination. However is it discrimination to choose the diverse candidate when presented with two candidates that are equally qualified in every other regard? Because that is often the situation. There is no shortage of people who are qualified to get into Harvard or capable of succeeding there.
- alexis_fr 7y agoYes it is discrimination, because it gives people of that race systematically fewer chances of having a life. The difference is when it is systematic. It is currently systematic in most universities and schools.
- dwoozle 7y agoWhy set a minimum bar at “qualified”? If you try out for an NBA team they won’t say “you are really fucking good at basketball, you’re not as good as these guys but you’re diverse so you’re hired.” You get scarce positions by outcompeting people, not by clearing a bar and then getting selected for your race.
- defen 7y agoBasketball is zero-sum, undergrad college admissions mostly aren't. As long as Harvard lets in enough students who are "good enough" to not fail out or besmirch their reputation, it can continue indefinitely as a prestige-generating institution. Put another way - the "Michael Jordan" of undergraduate academics doesn't really exist (in other words, there is no individual undergraduate you could admit who would instantly make your college superior to every other one)
- dwoozle 7y agoOf course there are — they are the “Michael Jordans” of the world... not only Michael Jordan himself, but all of the top accomplished people in the world... presidents, Nobel Prize winners, CEOs, famous authors... Harvard is prestigious because they admit people who later do those things. The content of the curriculum is largely the same as other colleges. Harvard is looking for people who have the highest probability of becoming prestige generators, the same way that NBA teams are looking for people with the highest probability of being points generators. Sure, the assessment methods for Harvard are much more coarse, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
- aviraldg 7y agoBy realising that India is not homogenous at all, and is inherently diverse?
- humanrebar 7y agoSure, but so are Americans: white, black, Hispanic, etc.
- TheCoelacanth 7y agoPick two random Indians and there's about a one in three chance that they won't even be able to talk to each other due to not sharing any common languages. The US has nothing remotely close to India's level of diversity.
- Konnstann 7y agoConsidering the US selects for English-speaking immigrants, and the fact that English is taught as a second language in a lot of the world, I don't think that's a valid way to measure "diversity".
- TheCoelacanth 7y agoHow would you prefer to measure it then? Any reasonable measure of diversity you come up with, India will score highly on. Skin color? India has the whole spectrum from dark brown to people who could pass for southern European. Religion? India has a huge variety. Economic? Everything from some of the poorest people in the world to multi-billionaires. What percentage of the population's ancestors has been enslaved by other parts of the population's ancestors? Still very high. Please explain how you are measuring diversity if you want to make the outrageous claim that India is not diverse.
- Konnstann 7y agoI wasn't making the claim that India isn't diverse, just what was in my comment. The claim was that people being "unable to communicate" makes the country more diverse than the US. Take any western European country and you'll find exactly the same huge diversity in skin color, religion, economy, and all of those factors.
- mar77i 7y agoWhat I'm seeing happen is that unis (and other affected institutions) are trying to get rid of diversity of opinion in favor of diversity of skin color/ethnicity, and... I find that reasoning nothing but racist.
- bduerst 7y agoIsn't that a false dichotomy though? You can have both, and I'm not entirely convinced that universities are disqualifying candidates based on opinions in their applications.
- mar77i 7y agoAs far as universities do these things publicly, this is inadvertently going to tip the scales in who is going to apply. And I'm nowhere seeing an university that is actively filtering for opinion-conciousness in this sense, that might actually not be that bad of an idea. Then again, if they test for both things, how are they supposed to not prioritize one over another?
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- Barrin92 7y agoI think there is at least one way forward that at least reduces the intensity of these conflicts. Increase the admission numbers of people at Harvard. Stop treating it like an exclusive club that hands out occupational licenses for an elite class of the well connected few and give as many people as you can a quality education. With the money that these universities receive that should be possible. If increase in the amount of students would have even remotely kept pace with funding we wouldn't have the need to treat this like a zero-sum race game.