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Asian American Discrimination in Harvard Admissions [pdf]

• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• umvi 6y ago
  This is obviously a controversial topic, and I have mixed feelings. The bottom line (for me) is that diversity at universities and other organizations is either good, neutral, or bad. We've (mostly?) collectively agreed diversity is good as diversity in sex/age/race bring diversity in thought, which presumably results in more innovation/competition/challenging of status quo/etc. The only way to increase diversity is to practice negative discrimination on dominant groups or positive discrimination on minorities... Either that or universities need to dedicate a large amount of funding marketing to minorities so that they get more competitive applicants from said group. However, discrimination is easier and cheaper to implement.
  • skybrian 6y ago
    I think Harvard should be 10x bigger than it is. Why can't we have that? This needn't be zero-sum.
    • MiroF 6y ago
      Because there is potentially merit in having institutions that are concentrated with the most talented. Not that it necessarily works out that way in practice, but 10x would entail lowering admission standards.
      • littleweep 6y ago
        Or allowing people who are equally as qualified get in? My understanding is the issue is capacity and not quality.
        • MiroF 6y ago
          Qualification is a continuum, there is no such thing as "equally as qualified." Regardless, if Harvard accepted 50% of applicants rather than 5%, the student body would not be equally as qualified.
      • gog-ma-gog 6y ago
        The number of people “qualified” to go to Harvard is probably more than 10x the current capacity of Harvard, though. Maintaining scarcity/exclusivity in the brand is more valuable than servicing the number of people technically qualified to go there, from Harvard’s perspective.
        • MiroF 6y ago
          Yes, but many of those people choose to go to other prestigious schools. If Harvard admitted 50% of applicants, I don't see how you can claim quality wouldn't suffer.
          • gog-ma-gog 6y ago
            I claimed no such thing :D
            • MiroF 6y ago
              You said that they should admit 10x. Presumably that would mean 50% rather than 5%. I think quality would go down, you said it wouldn't. Seems clear cut to me.
    • frissonlabs 6y ago
      Even if it was 10x bigger, it might not change the ratio of each ethnicity (which is the implicit metric for diversity, right?)
    • hackinthebochs 6y ago
      The value of Harvard is in its exclusivity. If they just let anyone in over some SAT/GPA cutoff then the value of a Harvard diploma drops.
    • pzh 6y ago
      The value of a brand is derived from its exclusivity. If you making 10x bigger, then a degree from there won’t be as valuable. I’m not saying that is right, but most exclusive colleges do brand management based on exclusivity.
    • BadassFractal 6y ago
      Same reason why clubs want to be exclusive and keep a long line of non-VIPs outside waiting to get in.
  • whatshisface 6y ago
    >The only way to increase diversity is to practice negative discrimination on dominant groups or positive discrimination on minorities... That's kind of like saying, "I can either take money out of my wallet or put it in the cashier's hand."
  • ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    > "The only way to increase diversity is to practice negative discrimination on dominant groups or positive discrimination on minorities..." Uh, are you saying that Asian-Americans are a dominant group and not a minority? If so, a lot of us would have something to say about that...
    • MiroF 6y ago
      i think by dominant group s/he likely meant over-represented group
      • ThrowawayR2 6y ago
        That's just as bad. As the paper notes, these Asian-Americans have justly earned their representation through demonstrated capability and hard work and they are being deprived of it.
    • therealdrag0 6y ago
      I think OP means they are dominant in performance, which would lead to "over representation" if that was the only admissions factor.
      • ThrowawayR2 6y ago
        > "I think OP means they are dominant in performance, which would lead to "over representation" if that was the only admissions factor." "Other admissions factors" sounds rather similar to Harvard's tactics used to keep out excessive Jewish applicants in the 1920s (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/harvard-s-jewish-problem https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/harvard-s-jewish-proble...) because they were earning too many seats because of their performance as well, doesn't it?
    • throw_454324 6y ago
      Makes you wonder if OP would say the same about the NBA? Darryl Morey (Houston Rockets) said one of the reasons he didn’t draft Jeremy Lin is because he’s Asian, despite Lin meeting all his criteria.
  • jjoonathan 6y ago
    > diversity at universities and other organizations is either good, neutral, or bad That phrasing suggests there isn't a tradeoff involved. Instead: diversity is either more important than, equally important to, or less important than avoiding discrimination. > We've (mostly?) collectively agreed Back when I took Justice (the class at Harvard), one week's homework involved a mandatory online poll and debate about affirmative action. Opinions were split 50/50 for and against. My own strategy was to pick the (slight) underdog and argue for it -- and evidently others were doing the same thing, because the poll kept bouncing between 49/51 and 51/49. So no, I don't think we have collectively agreed, even though the administration certainly likes to pretend that we have.
  • gizmo686 6y ago
    The problem is that we have also (mostly) agreed that discrimination is bad. In the case of discrimination being bad, we had a massive civil rights movement, and enshrine the notion into constitutional law. Much of the success of the civil rights movement occurred on the legal front, with a strategy based heavily on fighting against discrimination. In the case of diversity being good, we (or at least some circles of us) have a general sense that it is good, but no where near the cultural (or legal) momentum behind the notion. It used to be the case that discrimination was so bad, that fighting against discrimination and fighting for diversity were nearly indistinguishable. Because of how much progress we have made on those fronts, the two camps now realize that they did not actually have the same goal in mind and are now starting to become opposed to each other. I do not think that either camp has fully internalized this new reality yet, so still assumes that the old coalition all belongs to their camp. I should also mention that discrimination in collage admissions (in the form of affirmative action) is one of the textbook examples of when we decided that discrimination was justifiable in the name of diversity under some circumstances.
  • wsc981 6y ago
    Diversity isn’t necessarily always good, even if this is treated like gospel these days. For example in less diverse societies it’s often true that there is more trust between people [0] and that can provide several benefits like more safety or perhaps a stronger social contract. I do wonder if there has ever been any peer reviewed scientific proof that diversity does indeed bring the benefits you mention. Personally I think in an institution like a university it’s best to just bring the brightest minds together, that’s probably more effective than filtering people based on race, gender, etc... — [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/world/americas/05iht-diversity.1.6986248.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/world/americas/05iht-dive...
• petilon 6y ago
  It is weird how racial diversity is given so much higher weight than other forms of diversity. We are different in economic and social class, religion, politics, urban/rural, interest in sports, interest in music, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and race. And yet, when we talk about diversity race trumps all other forms of diversity. It is the most visible (other than gender) form of diversity. All other forms of diversity requires getting to know the person. When it comes to discrimination, again, the most visible form of difference is the most common basis for discrimination.
  • kylebenzle 6y ago
    Maybe the whole thing makes no sense and the apparatus is just in place to make the loudest minorities feel like they are being treated "fairly".
  • MiroF 6y ago
    Harvard engages in this sort of "affirmative action" for many different axes, not just race. I think race gets such attention because it's such a charges issue, not because it is the only diversity promotion effort at play.
  • pcurve 6y ago
    exactly. don't forget personality diversity at work too. I manage a team of border-line spectrum to extroverts. I love them all. Quieter ones bring a lot of values to the company, but guess who get all the recognition? Workplace bias against certain personality types are a huge drag. For the most part, people are more or less born into their personality and predisposition. If not, it was influenced by their upbringing. Yet we feel it's ok to discriminate.
  • fapjacks 6y ago
    Totally, and it's unfortunate. When people talk about diversity in the workplace or whatever, they aren't talking about diversity in foot size. Diversity is invisible. I wish it weren't the case that so many people use race as a proxy for the kind of diversity that provides the greatest breadth of experience and worldview that lets us benefit in things like problem-solving. Many of us unfortunately live in cultures where it's acceptable to interpret a person's silence as tacit support one way or the other, and so people are under pressure to signal their political affiliations to their peer groups. And since there's been a really poor proliferation of the tools, training, and education necessary to even really identify what people mean when they say "diversity", and using race as a proxy is so easy to do, it's what the vast majority of people reach for first when they need a quick and low-effort signaling mechanism. And in gaining traction as a signaling mechanism in this way, it became the status quo, adding even more pressure to signal using this proxy, in a kind of feedback loop. It's super lazy. And worse, as with any kind of status quo there are also a lot of groups and individuals who've staked significant investment in it (political will, money, their careers, various kinds of relationships, etc.), who may in fact support diversity concepts and initiatives but because of their existing investment and their varying levels of desire to defend this investment (or out of a sense of sunk cost), they will actually in the end be working against diversity. Not to mention using race as a proxy just ends up reinforcing existing prejudices (or creating new ones) on many levels, from individuals to entire systems. It's unfortunate.
• Sindrome 6y ago
  No one cares
• mantap 6y ago
  By "Asian American" do they mean Americans of Chinese descent or what? Does it include Filipinos? Thai? Afghans? It is an odd term.
  • wahern 6y ago
    There are two predominate meanings: the Census Bureau definition includes the Indian subcontinent along with East and Southeast Asia. The vernacular excludes the Indian subcontinent, though perhaps less so among the Indian community. Afghanistan would not be included in either definition. Someone of Afghanistan ancestry (I'm purposefully avoiding distinguishing the various ethnicities in Afghanistan) would be classified as either Middle Eastern or Caucasian under the census definition as well as in the vernacular.
    • renewiltord 6y ago
      Census 2020 actually has Asian Indian as a distinct race choice but you're right for the past.
    • mantap 6y ago
      Right but what I'm getting at is that when people talk about "Asian Americans" in the context of college admissions, it seems like a coded way of talking about people of Chinese descent and not e.g. Filipinos.
      • sumedh 6y ago
        Probably because majority of the applicants would be Chinese not Filipino.
  • aspenmayer 6y ago
    What about people from India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh? They are distinctly Asian, yet also curiously absent from the public conception of Asian races. I think this shows how race has more to do with the viewer’s reading of race into the subject and especially physical characteristics of the subject perceived as racial traits by the viewer, and less to do with nationality or geography or citizenship. People call it like they see it, quickly and dimly in some cases.
• vikramkr 6y ago
  Here's what annoys me. This analysis is showing that race-based factors are being factored into "personal ratings" and in how rec letters are being interpreted etc. Just make there be an overall admission penalty for being Asian and release the exact level of that barrier like they do for med school admissions. You can see for med schools exactly what the average GPA and MCATs needed are for white, black, Asian, Latino, etc. Stop trying to hide it in obviously discriminatory ways like lowering people's personal ratings. Just make an affirmative action penalty without perpetuating stereotypes about Asian American applicants being math-loving robots with no other well-rounded characteristics. What annoys me even more frankly is that the burden for fixing centuries of institutional racism and discrimination apparently needs to be born by hardworking immigrants and children of immigrants, not the people that most directly benefitted from generations of injust social structures. Legacies are OK, and the percentage of students at ivy league schools from the top 1% can be sky-high, so rich wealthy white students with connections and successful parents don't have to sacrifice anything. Legacy admissions, a structure explicitly created by many schools to keep out Jewish students[0], is OK because "school spirit" and increased donations. People that benefit from generations of inequity totally deserve their spots at these schools. However, the hardworking student who's a child of immigrant parents, without connections or networks, parents working in everything from laundromats to tech jobs building generational wealth from the ground up? Students who studied hard to get good grades and do everything the admissions officers could want? No, they have to sacrifice their admissions to fix the legacy of slavery. They have to pay the price and are discriminated against compared to white folk. What a brilliant way to breed lateral violence between minorities and create a system that continues to perpetuate classism and racism while pretending that keeping out a deserving Asian student in favor of a rich white student is helping a disadvantaged black student. [0]https://www.businessinsider.com/legacy-admissions-originally-created-keep-jewish-students-out-elite-colleges-2013-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/legacy-admissions-originally...
  • MiroF 6y ago
    Part of the reason that those numbers aren't explicitly or obviously available is due to the tenuous legal nature - while it may technically be legal, quotas certainly aren't - so better to obfuscate a bit. I'm not sure the "personal ratings" were an intentional way of enacting affirmative action here, I think that was actually more a product of racist alumni interviewers.
• mydongle 6y ago
  Like one greyed out poster said, no one cares - about Asian Americans in the U.S. There is likely no other minority group where if something like this were occuring against them, that it would just be accepted. Hell, it wouldn't even be up for debate. Yet with Asians, here we are. No one being fired or cancelled, no action being taken, no one going to bat for Asians in this country like they would've if it were an African American, Mexican, or other minority group.
  • JamesG124 6y ago
    A recent example confirming this point https://nextshark.com/ucsc-phd-student-racist-rant/ https://nextshark.com/ucsc-phd-student-racist-rant/ The department and UCSC are effectively standing behind a PhD student who advocates for genocide. The targets are not quite the same demographics, but the reason both are tolerated is the same
  • Reedx 6y ago
    It seems like crab mentality at work. Pulling down those that succeed the most. Asian Americans are top performers, both in academics and income: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/2018/demo/p60-263/figure1.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizat...
    • mydongle 6y ago
      It's really not just academia where this occurs. In Hollywood and in everyday life, it seems to be acceptable for people to make fun of/mock Asian cultures, whereas they wouldn't (or they would think twice about it) do the same with most other minorities. I think the problem is that there's no repercussions to shit talking and stereotyping people who generally avoid trouble. What will it take for people to respect Asian Americans the same way that other minorities are respected?
      • whatshisface 6y ago
        I would argue that "don't make fun of Asian culture" would make being around it awkward and make people feel like they were walking on eggshells. Everything is lambasted in media from politics to food culture, and it's normal for familiar things to be made fun of. The more familiar they are, in fact, the broader the appeal there is in making fun of them. I might suggest that introducing "endangered species status" to any culture that doesn't have it would be a step away from familiarity and towards alienation.
• corporateslave5 6y ago
  What percent of Harvard is Jewish? Why are they not discriminated against in admissions? Why only Asians?
• dnautics 6y ago
  Not Harvard, but (being Asian American) this sort of soft characterization as being deficient in personality metrics rings true in my head. For starters, my father in his full time government job repeatedly got "no leadership potential" reviews. Meanwhile in his part time job with the US Navy, he advanced to the level of captain and in his final act for the Navy led a team that completed its first fully digitized inventory system, saving the Navy billions of dollars, and delivered it under budget and ahead of time. (Fwiw he was non-technical, just "good at making things happen for nerds", his words not mine) In my personal life, I've encountered several situations where people have expressed to me explicitly or implicitly they didn't consider me to be leader-worthy despite my having successfully managed small teams several times in my career.
  • woofie11 6y ago
    Cultural differences are big here too. Asian American culture leads to personalities which are not considered leadership-worthy in WASP culture. You're not alone there. The same is true for people from most cultures -- African immigrants, Eastern European immigrants, and most other types of immigrants behave in ways which are too foreign. It's not universal -- there are individuals who manage to culturally adapt. But they're a minority, and it's an uphill battle. Actual performance tends to be excellent, but that's not how leaders get chosen in most organizations. Leadership decisions are almost entirely about perception: Do your employees like you and relate well to you? Your superiors? That has a huge cultural component, and a lot of room for racism.
    • dnautics 6y ago
      Why do you assume my dad was an immigrant. His side of the family has been in the Hawaii since the 1880s, before it even became a territory. My father was born in post WWII America to two born in America citizens. His master chief was black, his executive officer was a woman, and his head programmer was white. He was universally loved in the Navy community, especially by his subordinates, and though he did ruffle some feathers with his superiors, I can't believe he pissed them off too much, since they even honored him with a full page cartoon of him explaining his achievement with two other O6s and an O5, and twice with the legion of merit, which you don't get (much less twice) if the admirals are displeased.
• renewiltord 6y ago
  In 1925, Jewish students at Harvard made up 28% of all attendees. President Lawrence Lowell brought into existence policies to judge individuals on character after failing to limit the number of Jewish attendees to his school. Once these policies were put into action, Jewish attendance at his school declined, eventually dropping below the 15% limit he was originally seeking to put it into existence. It wasn't that the Jewish people were being discriminated against. They were just not as well-rounded, lacking in character and that savoir faire that came so easily to anyone who was not Jewish. It may have been genetic or cultural. I guess we'll never know. Hard to tell why they just couldn't pull it off.
  • bigdict 6y ago
    Letting admissions "judge individuals on character" is a way to selectively reject applicants that do well on other, well-defined, metrics...
    • taneq 6y ago
      It's the "cultural fit" of academic institutions.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • bdowling 6y ago
    > lacking in character and that savoir faire that came so easily to anyone who was not Jewish. Well done. I thought you were serious until that bit about savoir faire.
  • corysama 6y ago
    Or, it may have been like how orchestral directors are completely motivated to recruit the best musicians. And, they will strongly tell you and themselves that gender, ethnicity, etc... are irrelevant. All that matters is how well you play. And yet, somehow if the people selecting the recruits are cut off from information that let's them determine the gender of the recruits, suddenly female musicians are selected at a much higher rate by the same directors! I would be amazed if 1925 Harvard physically cut of their recruiters from knowing which students were Jewish.
• rubatuga 6y ago
  So apparently Asians are supposed to be a model minority? But at the same time clearly not "model" enough for Harvard admissions? I believe the limited and idealized perspective of which Asians-Americans are viewed serves as a method of placation, making it harder to detect discrimination and racism. I'm trying to become aware of the benefits as well as drawbacks of this status, and I'm not sure what Asian Americans think about this as well.
• roenxi 6y ago
  It is a pity nobody knows how to have a civil and thoughtful public debate on these topics. The Asian experience throws a large number of spanners into what I assume is the common narrative around race. In particular, that the people bringing in affirmative action policy are acting on some sort of evidence. It is difficult to sustain the idea that pre-university racism was the most important variable when the Asians are such intellectual dynamos despite facing pretty stiff racial headwinds.
  • magicsmoke 6y ago
    The play devil's advocate, affirmative action isn't supposed to just compensate for what an individual's upbringing was before college, but the multigenerational racial discrimination that led to his community and family not being able to prepare him for college. The Asian American historical experience was very different from the Black American historical experience. Most Asian Americans today are descendants of well trained technical immigrants post 1950s. The US immigration process acted like a filter that selected for immigrants that were already above average in their respective societies. Asian Americans don't just outperform other minorities in the US, they likely outperform their compatriots back in Asia due to this filter. Black Americans, on the other hand, weren't exactly chosen to immigrate to the US because of their technical skills. They were forced to migrate due to the legacy of slavery. An Asian and a Black student clearly do not have the same family or historical background. Even within the Asian American community, you see differences in achievement between descendants of economic migrants and descendants of refugees. Indian and Korean Americans do much better than Vietnamese or Hmong.
    • turtlecloud 6y ago
      Great. Now give Asian Americans affirmative action in the NBA. Any mental gymnastics used to support affirmative action in business or schooling should also apply to sports. If I hear someone complaining about lack of representation of X in certain field I will gladly point at NBA and Asian Americans ask them out that.
      • dbbljack 6y ago
• xiaolingxiao 6y ago
  This is typical, Harvard did it for Jews back when they were discriminated against. In order to discriminate "tastefully" (Ivies are all about "is it a good look"), Harvard did a population study and learned that most Jews came from upstate NY. Thus began Harvard's mission of broadening access to elite education to the Midwest and Pacific West, where there are almost no Jews. While in college, I heard a very fascinating story of how Harvard retaliated when confronted with evidence. There is a linguistic professor at Penn who went to Harvard and is Jewish. While at Harvard in the 70s, he suspected discrimination and broke into the admissions office, unearthing documents proving his case. Harvard responded by sending him to Vietnam, presumably to die. Long story short, he lived to tell the tale. After the war, he went to MIT and received a doctorate. He has all kinds of interesting stories about 'Nam too, but this Harvard story is really something else. All Ivies/Stanford discriminate, they can fill the school 10x over with Valedictorian/Chess champions if they want to. But they have to mindful of their corporate customers as well, companies want a diverse menu of people. Some studies have been done around how they discriminate now: presently the tasteful instrument of discrimination is extra-curricular activities. You'd be hard pressed to find too many Asian Americans doing Lax or Crew. Remember, these are private institutions so strictly speaking, they could do what ever they want (Disclosure: I am Asian). The bigger issue is that many people do have to go to one of these colleges for upward mobility. These schools are like oligopolies that have taken captive the American dream.
  • renewiltord 6y ago
    What is this linguistics professor's name?
    • xiaolingxiao 6y ago
      Uh I feel bad outing the man on HN consider it's really his story to tell. But I think if you guys are motivated enough, you'd be able to track his name down :)
      • renewiltord 6y ago
        Oh, I thought it was part of his public story. Never mind. I'm happy to let it lie. I'll look it up myself. It probably lost some details in the telling because I can't see how Harvard can send someone to Vietnam.
• choonway 6y ago
  So what's stopping Asian-Americans from setting up their own university?
  • renewiltord 6y ago
    They have the California Republic - fair, unbiased, prosperous. California isn't the massive powerhouse it is (a bigger economy than half of American states combined) by accident. The free society has a competitive advantage. And obviously it's hard to set up a university these days, and no one is going to set up a single race university. I doubt anyone actually wants an Asian-only university, just for there to be sufficient race-blind ones.
  • tree3 6y ago
    What kind of weird comment is this? Universities are supposed to not consider race in admissions. Racial groups should have no reason to start "their own" university.
• hackinthebochs 6y ago
  The assumption underlying these arguments against Harvard's admission is that GPA/SAT scores represent merit and that any deviation from the distribution of GPA/SAT scores in admittance is unjust discrimination. But this is missing what is at stake for Harvard. Harvard wants to increase its prestige, and it does so by having future CEOs, Senators, and Presidents go to Harvard. But the distribution of potential leaders of society is not equal to the distribution of GPA/test scores past a certain point. But this isn't even mostly about leadership potential. It's about the social environment that makes it so people with certain traits will more likely rise to leadership positions in society. Power concentrates not by merit, but through complex social and cultural factors, and race is very politically relevant. Existing institutions and cultural factors will favor a white Harvard graduate over an Asian graduate becoming a leader of some political institution. So in service to Harvard's goal of having the next generation of leaders in society go to Harvard, they are correct to bias their admissions towards whites (and blacks, hispanics, etc).
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • dnautics 6y ago
    Did you read the paper?
  • runawaybottle 6y ago
    What the hell kind of pathological justification is that? We are taking the absolution of institutions so far now days. Everything is absolved as ‘makes business sense’.
    • hackinthebochs 6y ago
      I made no moral claims in my post. My post was simply to establish the facts and motivations in the case that tend to get overlooked in these discussions. Whether or not institutions should be able to bias their admissions as to maximize certain outcomes, and what criteria for discrimination is justifiable, is what should be debated. These silly semantic arguments that try to paint the facts as racism against Asians or entirely innocent attempts at diversifying their student body are entirely unhelpful.
• nradov 6y ago
  Since race is a social construct with no solid scientific definition, college applicants should feel free to select whichever checkbox gains them the greatest advantage. It isn't cheating. Or if they're uncomfortable with that, just leave it blank.
  • augustt 6y ago
    Not that useful when they see your name (and face usually).
    • keanzu 6y ago
      Elizabeth Warren would disagree.
• _wt8k 6y ago
  I am an Asian-American high school senior who is nearing the end of the college admissions process. I am so frustrated and angry that there is this discrimination, and people defend it. I feel that people don't take racism against Asian-Americans as seriously as racism against other groups. Here's more about me. Like many people on HN, I'm a programmer. I'm interested in functional programming, programming language theory, and type theory. These interests caused me to discover pure math (such as category theory), and although I do not know as much about math than about programming, I want to learn more because I find these ideas elegant and beautiful. (For example, the Curry-Howard correspondence, which links programming to logic through the idea that programs are proofs, or HoTT, which gives types higher-dimensional structure based on the idea that equality types are the isomorphisms of an infinity-groupoid.) I applied as a CS major to several colleges where PL theory had an academic presence, and in my supplemental essays, I discussed my interests and my desire to work with professors and do undergraduate research. I have competitive stats. Although other kids in my school got into my "reaches" (e.g. Cornell), I got rejected, but luckily I got into some "match" schools that did PL theory. It's hard to say if affirmative action made a difference. Maybe if my application were exactly the same, but I weren't Asian, I would have gotten in, and if my application were the same except that I got an A instead of a B+ in a class, I would also have gotten in. I got waitlisted from some highly competitive schools, so I could have been on the edge. A big part of me not knowing how much my race would have made a difference is how non-transparent college admissions are. It's left up to some nebulous idea of "fit" decided by a group of people sitting at a table, who only have a few minutes to spend on each applicant. But, what bothers me is the stereotypes. They've turned liking math and CS into a bad thing, at least when it's an Asian kid who's doing it. People defend affirmative action by saying that there are simply too many highly competitive Asian kids who want to study computer science. So, if I want to go to a good school, I shouldn't study computer science, even though that's what I want to do, just because of the way I was born? Among non-CS people, CS is probably seen as the stereotype track to get a high-paying job (and cynically, perhaps it's a popular major for this reason), but hopefully on a site such as HN, people will be more empathetic to the appeal of CS. I'm also frustrated because most people probably don't know how math really is like. People just see it as nerdy word problems, and they've never heard of ideas like constructive math, programs-as-proofs, Cartesian closed categories, etc that I've become so intimate with. Why is it bad that I love math? Shouldn't you encourage me to learn this? I guess it's similar to the old stereotype of the "nerd" with no social skills, except with a racial element now. It's a Catch-22 because people hold Asians to a higher standard, so we need to get higher grades and test scores to be competitive, then that feeds back into the stereotype that we are overly studious and have no personality. There is no winning for us in this game. Isn't it an objectively good thing to do well in school? If it were someone who weren't Asian, people would see high scores and grades as a positive thing or even cheer it on as a sign of increasing equality. Like all competitive high schoolers (of all races), we must play the game of having loads of AP classes, etc, but people specifically see Asians doing this as a negative stereotype. But, on the front of us studying too much and not having personality, if you play an instrument, people will assume that you're doing it because your parents made you, or because of college admissions. Music is truly a beautiful thing and I experienced just how heartfelt it can be. (Sidenote: Watch Hibike! Euphonium or Your Lie in April!) But, just like the universal language of math, people have somehow turned Asians practicing the universal language of music into a bad thing. I can't imagine stronger proof of not being a robot, of being human, than experiencing how music can move you. I implore you, in the meritocratic tradition of the hacker culture, to speak out against affirmative action and support Asian kids who want to pursue these passions. EDIT: In fact, "affirmative action" is a euphemism. It's a vague-sounding term (an action that affirms something?) because people don't want to say "racial discrimination." Words have power to influence people, so I should start calling it what it is.
• sudosteph 6y ago
  It's always so frustrating to see how elite colleges get away with such brazen racial discrimination. Where are the alumni orgs speaking out about this? I wonder how much of this is rooted in the desire to protect their own kid's chances of admission vs loyalty and the desire to protect their academic "brand". Either way, I don't forsee them fixing this any time soon, Unfortunately, the Harvard brand seems ingrained in the national consciousness as synonymous with top-notch. So just not applying in protest wouldn't serve the students, especially when other schools do the same thing. I almost wish that Asian Americans had their own equivalent of a prestigious HBCU like Spelman or Howard. It would help siphon off some of the talent from Harvard and the like and probably be an excellent institution in general.
  • alephnerd 6y ago
    Luckily we do. They’re called the University of California system. At least California banned affirmative action in the 90s.
    • hhsuey 6y ago
      > UC may choose to advance goals like diversity and equal opportunity using a broad range of admissions that are not based on an individual’s race or gender. For example, holistic review in admissions considers income level, first-generation status, neighborhood circumstances, disadvantages overcome, low-performing secondary school attended, and the impact of an applicant’s background on academic achievement. these things are highly correlated with race, however.
      • lawrenceyan 6y ago
        There's nothing wrong with recognizing that people in disadvantaged situations face greater difficulties in overcoming systemic obstacles. Being able to overcome these factors are actually generally a very strong signal in determining potential of future success. This is why affirmative action in of itself is not a wholly bad thing. It's just that using ethnicity as the primary proxy is worse at generating a strong signal as compared to > income level, first-generation status, neighborhood circumstances, disadvantages overcome, low-performing secondary school attended, and the impact of an applicant’s background on academic achievement.
• aspenmayer 6y ago
  I would like to see in admissions systems some kind of quantification and attestation of the applicants’ capabilities and also their shortcomings. Balance this with the sum total of all educational investment individually by their parents/teachers/schools, and also the collective investment in their peers and across all schools. It’s one thing to know someone is a good applicant. But if we argue that this is a meritocratic system that also accounts for inequality of opportunity, we should do more to articulate what it means to be a good student. What does it mean to be a good student versus a potentially good student? How do you tell the difference between a good student with test anxiety, an average student who tests well, and a below average student who has been tutored to compensate for their lack of discernment? How do you compare a good student in a severely disadvantaged intellectual and/or economic environment with a student who rates the same on educational attainment as the prior student, but lacks meaningful barriers to learning? Differences and advantages in stimuli and investment in intellectual activity exist in continuum that isn’t just what happens at school or at home but also what happens in the hands and minds of students. It also touches on funding of public schools, and how that funding is levied mainly by local municipal and county property taxes with federal and state contributions. This reliance on local tax base creates intellectual deserts in many of the same places you find food deserts. For a fair system to be possible, we have to have a conversation about goals in admissions process and what is fair and what is unfair in the current system to inform us about what a fairer system might look like. If college admissions is a measure of success, the measure should not be the target and be gamed by those with power and influence to do so. There must be some accounting for this disparity in opportunity for the student and their representatives to game the system. It’s fine to have a legacy system but I see it as opening the door to this kind of anti-meritocratic behavior by students, their families, their schools and counselors, and especially by the colleges and universities they apply to. In order to know how good an individual is we need to know both how big a fish they are, and how big the pond is. But we can’t stop there. We need to know how much food they ate and how much energy they expended to get it. Would they have done better in a different pond? Possibly. Should they have done better considering how much opportunity they and their peers had? Also a question we should be able to answer. We should have better tools to know how to better teach and also to better learn.
  • 6y ago
• slowdog 6y ago
  Part of the problem is Asians don’t vote as a block, so who will protect them? If for a group of people, votes are split, who will look out for their needs?
  • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Demanding that people sort themselves into race-exclusive voting blocks doesn't seem like an effective way to fight racism.
    • slowdog 6y ago
      Not sure how I’m demanding, just pointing out some differences between how different groups tackle this
      • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        Encouraging, then. Putting aside the toxicity of it, it's just not a helpful strategy for this kind of discrimination. If we push for fair treatment on an individual level, we hopefully can get it. If we push for fair treatment of Asian Americans as some monolithic bloc, people are going to compare 6% of the general population to 20% of the Harvard class, and they're not going to see what the issue is.
    • traderjane 6y ago
      So should black people stop organizing along lines of race, because that doesn't seem like an effective way to fight racism? That just means less black representation.
      • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        Yes. We shouldn't strap on blinders and ignore race, of course. But the activists who go around encouraging people to identify as Black first and individuals second, I think are toxic and ineffective.
    • jrs95 6y ago
• sfj 6y ago
  The problem is that Asians don't have a story of discrimination. Blacks have slavery, Jews have the holocaust, Native Americans have their land being taken from them, and Latinos have being raised in a third world country and fled to America on foot. These are simple, visual stories as to why they were all discriminated against. But Asians, along with Indians are mostly relatively wealthy immigrants that came here legally. There is no story of their collective hardships, so no heart strings are pulled, so no one cares. If there was a movie about discrimination and hardship, the Asians would be cut out of it, being their story was too boring and not dramatic enough. That is the real reason.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • fulyscentedking 6y ago
    You have zero knowledge about Asian American history. I suggest you read about these to get started: Chinese Exclusion Act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act Internment of Japanese Americans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
  • rczhang 6y ago
    Asian discrimination in the US includes the Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1917 Immigration Act, bans on the ownership of property (leading to the development of Chinatown ghettos), and internment camps. Furthermore, many Asian immigrant groups came to the US quite poor, such as early Chinese, and in more modern times, Vietnamese. I think this comment speaks more to personal ignorance than the actual truth of the matter.
    • sfj 6y ago
      > Asian discrimination in the US includes the Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1917 Immigration Act, bans on the ownership of property (leading to the development of Chinatown ghettos), and internment camps. > Furthermore, many Asian immigrant groups came to the US quite poor, such as early Chinese, and in more modern times, Vietnamese. Compared to slavery, the holocaust, having your land stolen away from you, and a fleeing refuge from war and poverty, these are small potatoes. > I think this comment speaks more to personal ignorance than the actual truth of the matter. I never said that Asians didn't have their own hardships, and in general, I don't think it's fair to lump people in categories such as race or sex and say your group of people suffered in such a way, therefore you personally are more deserving than others. What I'm saying is there lacks a simple visual story for Asians of suffering and this has a societal psychological effect on how they are being treated. Don't confuse what I'm saying as what should be vs what is. I don't pay much attention to what should be, because as an individual I can have little effect. I do like to understand what is and why it is (and like to comment about my theories about it)
• newfeatureok 6y ago
  These types of studies always miss the point - the difference in entry input (SAT, GPA, class rank) do not necessary result in a proportional difference in output (reputation in a variety of fields). As an example, if you assume everyone who applies at Harvard would be equally successful, you would want those who would have the most broad range of outcomes to boost your schools reputation. In other words, with a class size of 100 you would not want 100 famous scientists - you'd want famous scientists, politicians, writers, etc. So as a result you'd have to control for perceived interests among the committee that reviews applications. Nevertheless, discrimination is definitely in poor taste.
• ralusek 6y ago
  Asians, particularly Asian men, have the most active obstacles that manifest on _basis of their race_ than any other minority group in the US. If you are an individual given a situation, all things else considered equal (attractiveness, intelligence, parenting, culture, neighborhood, familial wealth, etc), being Asian will give you a harder time than any other racial/ethnic characteristic in terms of pursuing a good life. That doesn't mean that Asians as a collective will net worse results than black people as a collective, because collectively, parenting, culture, neighborhoods, familial wealth, etc, are not at all comparable between those groups. But if you are the same exact individual with the same exact circumstances, and you could choose to be black or Asian, you would be better off choosing to be black. You want to get into a good school? Diversity programs and affirmative action, above board, use the basis of your race to actively advantage you in your admittance if you are black, and do the exact opposite if you are Asian. Quotas for racial makeups almost always necessarily and uniquely disadvantage Asians. Because of being so overrepresented in achievements relative to their makeup of the population, any quota that goes off of anything other than their meritorious accomplishments necessarily puts an arbitrary scarcity on available opportunities for them. You want to get a good job? Sure, you might find certain employers in particular regions that may be discriminatory on the basis of race to black individuals. But large, highly desirable companies nearly unilaterally have diversity hiring practices that likewise greatly advantage black individuals relative to those who would otherwise hold comparable characteristics to individuals from other populations. YouTube famously had reports from their hiring department that a hold was issued on the hiring of white and Asian individuals for the remainder of some time period in order to ensure that diversity quotas were satisfied. Being Asian in a "sea of hyper-qualified Asian applicants" _is_ a distinct disadvantage, and the degree of competence needed to stand out from a group that is already associated with high achievement is uniquely unfair. What about dating? I have worked in this space. Every dating app shows the same thing: Asian men and black women are the least desirable groups for getting responses or being sought after, by quite a bit. I have worked in this space, and what is admittedly anecdotal, I have heard "I'm just not attracted to Asian guys," on many occasions. There doesn't seem to be any taboo in this particular area, it doesn't seem to imply closed-mindedness. I have _never_, _ever_, heard somebody say "I'm just not attracted to black guys," in my personal or professional life. I believe that this would be met with a great deal of social pushback. There seems to be a willingness for people to say things about Asians that is just not felt in other ethnic groups, and it possibly stems from this idea that it's safe to be "punching up." Lastly I just think there is a general cultural obsession with racial injustices which completely casts Asians aside due to their collective competencies. Think of all of the hullabaloo regarding the fact that there isn't enough black representation in the Academy Awards, regardless of (last I checked) the makeup of Oscars in the last few decades has been about 10% awarded to black individuals, which is about what their 13% of the population in the US would lead you to expect. Asian actors? Something on the order of 4. Nobody cares. I'm not Asian. I hate racial politics, but I just find it particularly absurd that Asians are ostensibly cast aside in this game when they strike me as having the most to complain about. Most other cases of supposed injustice stem from people comparing the outcomes of two racial populations, and subsequently stipulating that the differences must be due to racism. For the examples I've stated, I'm talking about things that actually net different outcomes for individuals on the basis of their race.
• cercatrova 6y ago
  This hurts Asian Americans in the short term but increases the equity of admission and also access to resources for other minorities in the long term. The discrimination serves a purpose other than just racial discrimination, as if there were a school of just Asian Americans, who on average already do well, it is not useful for other minorities to ascend as well. Before anyone says that admissions should be completely fair, that could work if everyone has the same access to money and education, but it has been shown that this is not true, so I understand why such discrimination against Asian Americans towards other racial minorities happens. The goal should be equity first and foremost and anything else second.
  • taneq 6y ago
    > This hurts <race> in the short term but increases the equity of admission and also access to resources for other minorities in the long term. Hey, same for slavery, does that make it OK?
    • saagarjha 6y ago
      Slavery does nothing for equality not does it hurt on the short term.
  • miscPerson 6y ago
    You’re viewing people as defined by their membership in a race, which is a deeply racist worldview. Let’s judge people on the content of their character and not color of their skin: Why should a poor Asian student from a troubled neighborhood be denied while a wealthy black kid with lower scores is admitted? “Because Asians elsewhere do well while blacks elsewhere struggle” is an inherently racist answer. I don’t support racism, even if you claim you’re racist for the “right” reasons — like every other bigot in history.
  • fg6hr 6y ago
    ...and it hurts America in the long term. It's a completely backwards idea to take away opportunities from the society members with highest potential. The inevitable outcome of this will be stagnation.
• danielscrubs 6y ago
  Can someone explain to me why affirmative action is necessary? Why not just send in your GPA and let a computer check which school you can go to based on your preference? Why resort to low-key racism? Low-income junior high-schools of course needs more money from the government than the high-income schools to combat equality issues. Because let's face it, it's the low-income people that struggle and always will, money IS power.
  • throwaway286 6y ago
    If you don't implement affirmative action, you'll be accused of racism (due to the uneven final result of a blind GPA filter or equivalent).
  • balls187 6y ago
    > Why not just send in your GPA and let a computer check which school you can go to based on your preference? Why resort to low-key racism? College admissions were based that way. And it disproportionately benefited white students, and affirmative action policies were implemented to combat that. Think of Affirmative Action similar to weighted GPA's. College Admissions attempted to take a population and normalize them to a pair of datapoints (GPA/SAT/ACT). Affirmative action policies attempted to weigh lower scores higher, factoring in historical biases. A (white) friend explained it like this: Think of playing a game of monopoly and if you're white you start with 2x the money, and given 1/4 of the properties on the board. If you're black, you start with 1/2 the money, and the all prices are doubled. How likely is it for a black person to win?
    • starpilot 6y ago
      Even controlled for income, achievement disparities persist between races. Also imagine: everytime you make a bad play, you go to jail, while the white player does not. Even as children, black kids receive harsher punishments (full on suspensions) than white kids (time-outs) for similar infractions. Imagine your whole life being told that you're bad and disruptive. You might start to internalize and normalize that message, and not try very hard as a result.
• rurabe 6y ago
  I'm pretty shocked by the lack of empathy here. Do any of these people railing against affirmative action really think that Native/African/Hispanic Americans should be locked in a self-reinforcing cycle of declining educational and economic outcomes? Maybe going to your second choice school is an ok tradeoff for trying to raise and entire segment of society from relative poverty and discrimination. * Am Asian, got rejected by Stanford and Harvard
  • hhsuey 6y ago
    > Maybe going to your second choice school is an ok tradeoff for trying to raise and entire segment of society from relative poverty and discrimination. this is inaccurate in many ways
  • liaukovv 6y ago
    Should weak cultures be let fail and die off or should they be dragged by society forever?
  • AuryGlenz 6y ago
    Then it should be based on poverty, not race. The people that didn’t deserve to get in to those top tier schools can make just as much money after graduating from a “lesser” school.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • freepor 6y ago
      I live in a $3 million house and would be COMPLETELY OK with my kids being rejected from their dream schools for poverty-linked affirmative action. They have a vastly easier path to academic achievement, and if they got 90 points on a test and a poor kid got 80 points, that other kid just plain old outperformed them. You'll find a lot of us out there who are vehemently opposed to race-based affirmative action but would enthusiastically support wealth/class-based affirmative action.
      • 6y ago
• _hardwaregeek 6y ago
  Asian American itself is an interesting (and quite arbitrary) category. It perpetually fascinates me what is considered "Asian". East Asians are undeniably lumped in. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who considers Chinese/Korean/Japanese not Asian. SE Asia as well. South Asian (i.e. Indian, Pakistani, Bangla, etc.) ditto. But the moment you cross this devious little Bactrian border, you start getting more and more pushback upon being labeled Asian. Talk to someone from Georgia or Armenia, or even Israel (yes, Israel is in Asia), and they'll quickly tell you that no, they're not Asian. Except...yeah you are. One could make an argument that well, they're culturally European. I don't buy that. If you're in Asia and then your culture is Asian culture by definition. Of course nobody goes by that metric. So how do people determine Asianness? My estimate is that they do it by otherness. I.e. Asian culture is that which is not European or at this point American-European. A neat corollary to this is that Asianness is associated with a lack of social capital. Hence the insistence on not being Asian that you face in Central and Western Asia. Which ties itself neatly into this problem. Asian-American as a category is borne out of otherness. It's that which is not European or American. And it makes sense that this group would face trouble in getting cultural, if not financial acceptance. What to do about this? Well one thing not to do is to lash out at other people who are struggling to gain social or financial capital. Black and hispanic people are not our enemies here. A society that does not acknowledge the damaging effects of racism in its institutions and in its culture will not be a society that is beneficial to Asians. I'm not sure what the solution is to college admissions. I don't think anybody does. But I'm adamant that it should not be used as a tool to divide minorities.
  • zdragnar 6y ago
    Around these parts, Asian most readily conjures either far east or south. The other option is not simply european, but near East / middle east and central Asian. Though middle east is predominately associated with Arab, there's also plenty of other such as Egypt, which is technically in Africa. Generalizations are useful for generalizations. We should remember that, and abandon them when dealing with individuals. If we want to help the impoverished, then do so. No need to introduce race into the mix, or erroneous assumptions about how race affects a person's character or finances.
• hyperion2010 6y ago
  Discrimination against Asians during the admissions process has been a well known fact inside the academy for over a decade. The fact that this had to go to court is somewhat laughable. The other thread here about the Jews at Harvard is a similar story that comes up in this context and many academics simply nod knowingly and shake their head, probably because no one wants to deal with the nightmare of admissions.
  • MiroF 6y ago
    > The fact that this had to go to court is somewhat laughable. It sounds like you are unfamiliar with admission law, as negative discrimination without quotas is explicitly legal as of now.
• tathougies 6y ago
  Frankly, a degree from Harvard is not that prestigious anymore, due to these kinds of shenanigans. A degree from most any top-notch west coast school is likely to be met with more respect not only in industry but also to the populace at large.
  • freepor 6y ago
    This is... wishful thinking.
    • alibaba_x 6y ago
      Harvard’s reputation is not set in stone. Once Affirmative Action and athletic scholarship grads start to enter the workforce en masse the Harvard brand will gradually erode.
      • wyclif 6y ago
        It's already diluting their brand. Harvard has had a lot of bad publicity in the past few years and it's starting to erode their cachet.
    • scottlocklin 6y ago
      It's really not wishful thinking at this point. Harvard is still an important place for the powerful to meet, but their graduates have thoroughly discredited themselves over the last 40 years.
• BurningFrog 6y ago
  And yet, in today's America, a white man only makes $0.89 for each $1.00 an Asian man makes.
  • toobigtoexist 6y ago
    There are some, like the economist Thomas Sowell for example, who would replace "And yet" with "Despite that". Also, his writings on race and immigration are required reading if you want to get a more nuanced view on these topics. Did you know that the word slave comes primarily from Slavs, who are actually white people [1]? Were you aware that black Africans enslaved white Europeans at certain times in the past? There would be far more signal and far less noise in these types of discussions if everyone was asked to spend a few months reading books written by Sowell. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavs
  • sumedh 6y ago
    How much does a black man make?
• known 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus in USA since 1918
• WholeLottaTrash 6y ago
  This is very clearly a throwaway. I found my experience as someone born in Asia who moved to the United States at a young age terrible, with regards to college admissions. We lived in a 1 bedroom apartment when we moved here, and didn't really advance more. I took quite literally every AP offered at school and did well, played a Varsity sport, and got a perfect 2400 out of 2400 on the SAT, in addition to various extracurriculars like a well-developed photography portfolio and robotics. I also happened to go to a very good public high school because my parents focused on my education instead of buying a house where they could afford one. I was rejected from every school I applied to, from the most prestigious to even "lowly" and "safe" Cal States, except for one. My sister, several years younger than me, with lesser metrics, ended up at a top 5 school with nearly a full ride in scholarships earned. I don't think it was from a lack of a good essay too, because I won several writing awards as a kid, and wrote many of my friend's college essays too, and they all got in. I feel like it set me back tremendously in my life in the things that I value. There's a lot of bitterness here, but even more confusion. Not really sure what else to say.
  • jeffdavis 6y ago
    How did they know you are Asian? Could you have just checked a different box and got in, at least to state schools which don't do interviews? (I am in no way suggesting that it's right to make people misrepresent their ethnicity to get fair treatment.)
    • johntiger1 6y ago
      Not sure if you're serious, but don't they generally have access to a person's name?
      • mirimir 6y ago
        I can imagine being Black with an Asian name.
    • WholeLottaTrash 6y ago
      My name is a dead giveaway that it is foreign.
• enaaem 6y ago
  I’m an Asian immigrant and my mother always told me that I have to work 10 times as hard because of your black hair and yellow skin.
• DeathArrow 6y ago
  Asians are being punished by identity politics for being smart and hard working. If they were less smart and lazier and had less individual achievements, the diversocrats running the US politics and media wouldn't raise barriers against them. Trying to combat discrimination, US is much more discriminating and racist and sexist than it was years ago. There's a lot of prejudice against certain races and against certain genders.
• beaunative 6y ago
  Why are Asian forced to achieve better grades and achivements? Why are Blacks statistically disadvantagous in college admission, but not in metrics? There is a very simple statistical answer to this, that blacks come to the US as labor force are of far larger quantity than asians, forced or not. Let's assume it to be 50x vs. 1x But for the new immigrants, the percentage is in the same magnitude, as the US implemented quota-based immigration system for countries. Let's say its 4x vs. 4x, and added together, it's 54x vs. 5x Why do Asians Americans in general have better socio-economical status? Because the US simply doesn't allow new immigrants with low socio-economical status to become American citizens. And for those Asian Americans who's in the lower half and in much worse shape because their socio-economical status, their difficulties are destined to be worsened by affirmative action rather than alleviated. Affirmative actions benefits the top percentiles of racial groups, rarely the lower percentiles. Let's say the affirmative action benefits the top ten percents. For African American, it's 5.4x which is more than the 4x who are new immigrants. For Asian American, it's 0.5x, which is less than one eighth who are new immigrants. New immigrants always come from better half of the socio-economical status. That is, with affirmative action, if your ancestors are labour force came to the US forced or not, your life would be much harder as a Asian American than as a African American. Because as an Asian American, you are competing mostly with new immigrants who are top talents/money. And fortunately as African Americans, you are competing with people with largely similar socio-economical status.
• ofcourse 6y ago
  I wonder why this sort of study comes out at a time when relations between the US and China are at all-time lows. The timing couldn't be better for certain interests.
• chvid 6y ago
  I have a feeling that this is only going to accelerate after COVID19.
• MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  Am I right in thinking this paper was written by 3 academics, but has not been peer-reviewed?
• botwriter 6y ago
  When they are talking about asian americans here who are they talking about outh asian (Indian/pakistani) or oriental / east Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Thai, etc)
• Dumblydorr 6y ago
  I have a similar concern for med school applications. There are charts that clearly show African American and latino undergrads need much lower GPAs and MCAT scores to get into medical school than white and asian students. The data is telling us there is a premium placed on being a minority. This could be due to needing more minority doctors in minority communities, to affirmative action, or to students' choices about where to apply. There is also a strong argument that we're in need of Spanish speaking doctors, therefore someone with that skill should be advantaged. In the end, I think the best potential doctors should be chosen, and political machinations should stay out of selecting our nation's future professionals.
  • wan23 6y ago
    https://hbr.org/2018/08/research-having-a-black-doctor-led-black-men-to-receive-more-effective-care https://hbr.org/2018/08/research-having-a-black-doctor-led-b... It's a well-documented phenomenon that the background of providers has an effect on the care given. If "best potential doctors" means has the best effects on the health of Americans, then it is clearly important that this be taken into account. For an organization like the AMA in particular, if they want to retain their (unjustified) monopoly on providing healthcare they should want to make sure that no politically active group can point to admissions policies that create worse health outcomes for that group.
• tomohawk 6y ago
  This sounds similar to how many large orgs try to put in place 'fair' promotion practices. It turns out that the easiest, and probably fairest, is to just eliminate the candidates that obviously do not make the cut, and then have a lottery of the remaining candidates. I recall going to a very good state engineering school. Because it was a state school, it had to accept a certain number of people from each school district in the state. It was not a policy that worked out well for the students who were from weak districts. They flunked out or transferred to less rigorous programs. They were obviously smart, but completely unprepared. They would have been much better off going to a community college and getting prepared, then transferring in.
• joyj2nd 6y ago
  It also works the other way around. Hitler never got promoted in the army during 4 years of war but showed decent leadership skills afterwards. GRN
  • MiroF 6y ago
    What was the point of this comment? I want you to state it explicitly.
    • joyj2nd 6y ago
      You could have asked this nicely and not demanding. So in your case: "It is a waste of time to explain someone a thought if an innuendo is not sufficient" Nicolás Gómez Dávila
      • arbitrage 6y ago
        fuck off, nazi
        • wbronitsky 6y ago
          This is exactly how we should be dealing with the issue of hateful, bad faith actors in this community; point them out and tell them they don’t belong. Thank you for posting this, truly. We will never beat back the hate that has consumed this site without action like this. Shame on the mods for continuing to use the “we didn’t see it argument.” It no longer holds water
          • joyj2nd 6y ago
            I am not sure that I can still post here, but let me try. Look, GRN* indicates that this was kind of a joke. But, as in any joke, there is a lot of truth in it. 1. Hitler was an immigrant himself, since he was not a born German and we were talking exactly about a similar scenario. 2. Making a career in an Army and making a corporate career - and we were taking exactly about this scenario - are two very different things. Both require sound leadership and some of the best and most impressive leaders I have seen were in the military. This being said, due to the differences success in one of them may help in the other but is no guarantee. In some Armies, promotions are also based on seniority or heritage. Last but not least, calling Hitler a person a strong leadership skills does not include any moral judgement about him since leadership has no inherent moral value (US Army Handbook on leadership would disagree). Calling some "compassionate" does. I think MiroF with his unsubstantiated bitching says more about him that it does about me.
• AzzieElbab 6y ago
  Don't take it personally, it is not about race or personalities. It is about Harvard officials wanting to have a final say on who gets in. In other words, it is about corruption
• zarkov99 6y ago
  The open discrimination and outright racism Asian Americans are subject to in Academia, in Hollywood is maybe the hallmark of the age of hypocrisy and bullshit we live in. Against all odds, AA have succeeded and contributed immensely to American Society, and despite that, perhaps because of that, they are the one group towards institutionalized, open racism is just fine.
  • frog_squid 6y ago
    What I find really funny is that the current American far left, who are very vocal about any kind of racial inequality towards Blacks and Latinos, are the ones most vocal in their support for affirmative action. They don't see it as racist at all, but actually they believe they're supporting the fair and moral choice and patting themselves on the back for being such virtuous people. They only care about the end goal, which is equity not equality, and it's clear that any method used to get there is fine by them. It's absolutely sickening the delusion and hypocrisy these people have. Their principles are not set in stone, like holding a set of ideas that must be applied similarly across differing situations, but rather, their supposed principles, like tools, are selectively used or ignored for particular situations that they stand to benefit or lose from.
    • JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      This is the usual BS argument, voiced to make discrimination OK again. Seems obvious you have to look at race, to work to level inequalities in race. But the kneejerk response is to say "Hey that's just more racism!" They are different in kind. One (racism) works to systematically suppress one segment of the population. The other, taking action, works to correct this effect. Both operate on racial lines, but that's where the similarity ends. You have a car that pulls slightly to the left; so you steer a little to the right to correct. Sure, we'd all like a car that steers straight. But it pulls to the left, what you gonna do? {I know the previous comment was probably some robotic troll, and I should ignore it. But that lame justification for racism gets my dander up.}
      • frog_squid 6y ago
• tayistay 6y ago
  I'm all for Asian Americans getting fair treatment. More broadly than this study, what bothers me about this story, is that by focusing so much on Harvard, it reinforces the hierarchy of educational institutions that we have. It does not challenge the underlying rot, which is the notion of prestige and status conferred to schools. We could all do without the snob-factor of our educational hierarchy. Alumni networking is a gross non-meritocratic thing as well. Harvard, in particular, is a despicable place. Just now, during this shutdown, they've laid off some of their most vulnerable staff (food service workers, etc) to save money, when they have a $40bn endowment. Anyone with a sense of what is right should not apply there. Alumni should be ashamed.
  • adchari 6y ago
    I fully support this, Harvard has definitely committed some questionable acts recently. However, Ivy League schools in general are well known for their prestige, and they usually have a rather high quality of education in most subjects. Why should any one group of applicants be excluded from seeking out that opportunity? The same systems are in place at most private schools; all of them have affirmative action, holistic review, and control who gets in with their final say. Even public universities have this issue, look at gender-based admissions in CS for example.
    • tayistay 6y ago
      > Why should any one group of applicants be excluded from seeking out that opportunity? They shouldn't. If I seemed to imply that above, then I didn't articulate my point well. Going to Harvard, etc. is not about getting the best education (public schools like the University of California system are great), it's about acquiring prestige. It's about the connections and networking to ascend to the highest levels of society. The flaw being that such networking is important, as opposed to more meaningful forms of achievement.
• gvd 6y ago
  One thing gets overlooked here and it's America's sickening love with elite universities (and other elite institutions). Put some effort in raising the baseline.
• codyZ 6y ago
  I'm not sure what's evoking more emotion in me now because of the comments here: Me being angry at the fact that many comments show an inherent but unconscious racism or Me resigned to the fact that despite the educated and 'informed' discussion, there are HN commentators reducing discrimination to a data collection/flaw-in-the-study argument. I'm disappointed in you HN.