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These are loathsome comparisons. The experience of Jews in the Soviet Union in 1991 and before are not comparable to the experience of east Asians in America in

These are loathsome comparisons. The experience of Jews in the Soviet Union in 1991 and before are not comparable to the experience of east Asians in America in 2020. For every similarity you might imagine there are 1,000 more important dissimilarities. Surely if you are sincere about reducing discrimination "around the globe" you wouldn't be doing this kind of stylized generalization.

techie128 6y ago
Being a minority in America is tougher than you think.
- rscho 6y ago
  It's always rough for minorities under authoritarian regimes. Whether the dictatorial flavour is communist or fascist makes little difference indeed.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
buran77 6y ago
> Yale uses race as a factor in multiple steps of the admissions process and that Yale “racially balances its classes.” The situation of Jews in the Soviet Union's does not apply too well here because the real vs. stated reasoning behind it were very different. But I see a lot of parallels with the gender and racial discrimination in the workplace in current times. So there is precedent on legally using race or gender in a selection process. When it comes to fixing past discrimination in the workplace it is already considered legally acceptable to have quotas until the situation is brought back to balance. Such a quota all but guarantees that at some point some candidates will have to be rejected based on gender or race even if they would be otherwise accepted. The split was set around the actual gender/race split of the population. For example California's gender or racial diversity bills proposed that at least at Board of Directors level although I don't know if they were ever passed into law. Needless to say, with or without such a law companies all over the world publicly advertise their equality focused hiring targets so I must assume they're not just outing themselves as breaking the law. Is this the case here? The article doesn't really provide that many concrete details and I can imagine a lot of implications coming out of this. Is Yale doing this to have a balance of races based on the split in the population? Are they just arbitrarily picking a ratio for this? What impact will a decision here to eliminate any race criteria from the admission have on already established measure to explicitly consider race or gender as part of the process? What happens if one group ends up naturally being over-represented? We'll have to start paying more attention to equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcome. And whatever is decided at some point we'll also have to start being consistent, not just chase conflicting targets based on what each administration sees as a priority at the time.
- Akronymus 6y ago
  I personally think that anything but basing it on merit is wrong due to X factors: 1. If you reject someone based on race, no matter which, it is racism 2. Those that got in due to quotas, even if they are the most qualified are gonna be having doubts about if they only got in through the quota and are in reality not good enough. 3. There is a stark difference in the percentage of male/female/black/white/etc that go into different fields. Basing it on the wider population would not even be close to approaching a representative percentage. Also: local differences, which basically makes the whole attempting to represent the percentage of the population moot. As an example: There are barely any women working in sewers, should they have quotas for getting about 50% of the sewer workers to be female? In short: Quotas are bad for everyone, are especially hurting those they claim to help and are completely misguided anyways.
  - buran77 6y ago
    I wasn't here to make a value judgement on either option because I know how polarizing the topic is and there's very little room to objectively argue any side before you're drowned by the other. My main point focused on something that I find more important: will we end up in a situation where both views are considered equally legitimate even if they are conflicting?
    - Akronymus 6y ago
      I took your comment as a chance to share my thoughts on it. > will we end up in a situation where both views are considered equally legitimate even if they are conflicting? I personally can't see the standpoints being equally legitimate due to my above problems with it. But for the general population? I think that both can be legitimate in their eyes.
      - buran77 6y ago
        > I personally can't see the standpoints being equally legitimate I took your point. I was thinking of legitimate as in official decisions. There are already laws that implement gender or racial quotas in a work environment. Many companies already advertise this [0] and even public institutions were discussing it at least as far back as a decade ago [1]. One would logically have to assume that they're equally valid for a university. If the issue is indeed that Yale is using such quotas to maintain a certain balance between the different groups based on the population ratios but the courts agree with the Feds that this is illegal then we'll be left holding 2 equally (il)legitimate but contradictory views on the problem: quotas are legal, positive measures to achieve balanced participation and representation [2] but at the same time they are illegal because they discriminate against the other groups. Since the details of the Yale case aren't all that clear right now we'll have to wait for the judgement. They may actually do something more onerous than that I assumed above. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgenehuang/2017/02/14/seeking-women-40-companies-that-have-set-gender-diversity-targets/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgenehuang/2017/02/14/seekin... [1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/SPEECH_11_219 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/SPEECH... [2] https://eige.europa.eu/thesaurus/terms/1203 https://eige.europa.eu/thesaurus/terms/1203
roenxi 6y ago
> These are loathsome comparisons. There are Asians out there that have put in enough effort to get into Yale (which is quite a high bar) and then been excluded because ... well, they're Asian. That isn't going to compare to anything positive or pleasant. Racism should be condemned in strongest possible terms. > The experience of Jews in the Soviet Union... True, but horrific ideology in the government is a totally different kettle of fish than that ideology in a non-government organisation. If my neighbours don't really believe in property rights, I'll call them hippies and laugh about their eccentric antics. If my government doesn't really believe in property rights I'd give serious thought to fleeing the country. Same ideology, but different levels of power.
- sumedh 6y ago
  > Racism should be condemned in strongest possible terms. How exactly are you going to do that?
  - prepend 6y ago
    Passing laws against racism and them investigating and resolving lawsuits from universities violating that law.
- chii 6y ago
  > There are Asians out there that have put in enough effort to get into Yale (which is quite a high bar) and then been excluded because ... well, they're Asian. a take on this problem by an asian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8VP_873kA4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8VP_873kA4

techie128 6y ago

Being a minority in America is tougher than you think.

rscho 6y ago
It's always rough for minorities under authoritarian regimes. Whether the dictatorial flavour is communist or fascist makes little difference indeed.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

buran77 6y ago

> Yale uses race as a factor in multiple steps of the admissions process and that Yale “racially balances its classes.” The situation of Jews in the Soviet Union's does not apply too well here because the real vs. stated reasoning behind it were very different. But I see a lot of parallels with the gender and racial discrimination in the workplace in current times. So there is precedent on legally using race or gender in a selection process. When it comes to fixing past discrimination in the workplace it is already considered legally acceptable to have quotas until the situation is brought back to balance. Such a quota all but guarantees that at some point some candidates will have to be rejected based on gender or race even if they would be otherwise accepted. The split was set around the actual gender/race split of the population. For example California's gender or racial diversity bills proposed that at least at Board of Directors level although I don't know if they were ever passed into law. Needless to say, with or without such a law companies all over the world publicly advertise their equality focused hiring targets so I must assume they're not just outing themselves as breaking the law. Is this the case here? The article doesn't really provide that many concrete details and I can imagine a lot of implications coming out of this. Is Yale doing this to have a balance of races based on the split in the population? Are they just arbitrarily picking a ratio for this? What impact will a decision here to eliminate any race criteria from the admission have on already established measure to explicitly consider race or gender as part of the process? What happens if one group ends up naturally being over-represented? We'll have to start paying more attention to equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcome. And whatever is decided at some point we'll also have to start being consistent, not just chase conflicting targets based on what each administration sees as a priority at the time.

Akronymus 6y ago
I personally think that anything but basing it on merit is wrong due to X factors: 1. If you reject someone based on race, no matter which, it is racism 2. Those that got in due to quotas, even if they are the most qualified are gonna be having doubts about if they only got in through the quota and are in reality not good enough. 3. There is a stark difference in the percentage of male/female/black/white/etc that go into different fields. Basing it on the wider population would not even be close to approaching a representative percentage. Also: local differences, which basically makes the whole attempting to represent the percentage of the population moot. As an example: There are barely any women working in sewers, should they have quotas for getting about 50% of the sewer workers to be female? In short: Quotas are bad for everyone, are especially hurting those they claim to help and are completely misguided anyways.
- buran77 6y ago
  I wasn't here to make a value judgement on either option because I know how polarizing the topic is and there's very little room to objectively argue any side before you're drowned by the other. My main point focused on something that I find more important: will we end up in a situation where both views are considered equally legitimate even if they are conflicting?
  - Akronymus 6y ago
    I took your comment as a chance to share my thoughts on it. > will we end up in a situation where both views are considered equally legitimate even if they are conflicting? I personally can't see the standpoints being equally legitimate due to my above problems with it. But for the general population? I think that both can be legitimate in their eyes.
    - buran77 6y ago
      > I personally can't see the standpoints being equally legitimate I took your point. I was thinking of legitimate as in official decisions. There are already laws that implement gender or racial quotas in a work environment. Many companies already advertise this [0] and even public institutions were discussing it at least as far back as a decade ago [1]. One would logically have to assume that they're equally valid for a university. If the issue is indeed that Yale is using such quotas to maintain a certain balance between the different groups based on the population ratios but the courts agree with the Feds that this is illegal then we'll be left holding 2 equally (il)legitimate but contradictory views on the problem: quotas are legal, positive measures to achieve balanced participation and representation [2] but at the same time they are illegal because they discriminate against the other groups. Since the details of the Yale case aren't all that clear right now we'll have to wait for the judgement. They may actually do something more onerous than that I assumed above. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgenehuang/2017/02/14/seeking-women-40-companies-that-have-set-gender-diversity-targets/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgenehuang/2017/02/14/seekin... [1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/SPEECH_11_219 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/SPEECH... [2] https://eige.europa.eu/thesaurus/terms/1203 https://eige.europa.eu/thesaurus/terms/1203

roenxi 6y ago

> These are loathsome comparisons. There are Asians out there that have put in enough effort to get into Yale (which is quite a high bar) and then been excluded because ... well, they're Asian. That isn't going to compare to anything positive or pleasant. Racism should be condemned in strongest possible terms. > The experience of Jews in the Soviet Union... True, but horrific ideology in the government is a totally different kettle of fish than that ideology in a non-government organisation. If my neighbours don't really believe in property rights, I'll call them hippies and laugh about their eccentric antics. If my government doesn't really believe in property rights I'd give serious thought to fleeing the country. Same ideology, but different levels of power.

sumedh 6y ago
> Racism should be condemned in strongest possible terms. How exactly are you going to do that?
- prepend 6y ago
  Passing laws against racism and them investigating and resolving lawsuits from universities violating that law.
chii 6y ago
> There are Asians out there that have put in enough effort to get into Yale (which is quite a high bar) and then been excluded because ... well, they're Asian. a take on this problem by an asian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8VP_873kA4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8VP_873kA4