11 ms·

I advised a student to not publish evidence of reverse racism

• amitport 5y ago
  Can anyone please explain to me why is this being flagged? I'm honestly not sure I follow. I get that people disagree, but is this the sole reason?
• chris_overseas 5y ago
  [flagged]
• coldtea 5y ago
  An alternative title could be: "I saved a naive student from career suicide"
  • raxxorrax 5y ago
    Some like to do science, some like to do a career. You are not wrong though. We should listen to the people that want to do science.
  • johntdaly 5y ago
    Yes, he definitely did that. What sucks for people like his student is that they counted as a minority and got shafted by that until they didn’t count as a minority anymore and got shafted by that too. It sucks to be an invisible minority.
    • yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
      In both cases, Daniel was shafted by racism, ergo, affirmative action is racist.
      • johntdaly 5y ago
        Daniel is also a smart kid who can make his way through university without getting a leg up anywhere along the way and come out to be successful afterwards. Just calling affirmative action racist isn’t helping. Things are a bit more nuanced than that and should be treated as such so that useful conversations can happen instead of two sides just calling each other names. Besides, “affirmative action is racist” doesn’t fallow from “Daniel was shafted by racism” and is attackable based only on that point. If you want to argue against affirmative action here you could say: 1) The action is taken towards a group that is already privileged (well performing university students) and is superfluous 2) That the action is more likely to build up bad feelings towards the recipients by deserving individuals that get ignored 3) That the recipients of this action can never be as secure in their achievement and will suffer doubt from outside and inside because of it Argue your point, don’t just assert it. What be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
        • yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
          I think I support your latter point more generally, but I'm not sure I need to further substantiate my comment with evidence, given that the evidence for the shafting is provided in the article. My comment doesn't provide new information — it's merely a laconic summation of arguments implicit in the article.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • thrwaway9871 5y ago
    And this is why no one listens to scientists. When it comes to actually standing up for something objectively right they fold like author and fall in line with status quo. Why do climate denial or anti-vax movements exist? Its because academia lost all integrity in the eyes of the public. You can wave all the research you want in front of their eyes but no one will listen as science is just another part of marketing nowadays. Let it sink in that speaking out the truth is career suicide and institutions publicly portrayed as sources of truth are actively pushing for it to stay that way.
    • Ancapistani 5y ago
      > When it comes to actually standing up for something objectively right they fold like author and fall in line with status quo. Where do you get that from the article? The author’s purpose seemed to be to make sure that “Daniel” didn’t fall victim to his own naivety. His advice was based on his own judgement of Daniel’s understanding of the situation. Standing up for what you believe is right is great - if you understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, how likely you are to succeed, and the what the consequences are if you don’t.
• brobdingnagians 5y ago
  It isn't "Reverse Racism", it is all Racism. Any race to any other race, it is Racism. "Reverse Racism" is as meaningless as "Square Circle".
  • gorjusborg 5y ago
    I don't think meaningless is the right word. The right word is racist.
  • comboy 5y ago
    Going with your analogy your comment seems more like "It isn't a square, it's a rectangle. 4 corners, two parallel sides, that's always a rectangle". Maybe explain what is your problem with distinguishing these two behaviors? Are you afraid that a fix would only be applied to a subgroup? Naming patterns makes communication more efficient.
    • ramblerman 5y ago
      Not OP, but if we accept the common definition of racism as "prejudice or discrimination against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group" And then now define a new term, "reverse racism" to mean a better/lesser quality of racism based on which racial or ethnic group it originates from, you are being racist in your very definition. It is as ridiculous as a square circle.
      • darkerside 5y ago
        > better/lesser quality of racism This is the really questionable comment
      • comboy 5y ago
        Gee, it's some complicated meta game. I agree, this division is racist. But at the same time, if you are not thinking about the races, just about what's happening, the distinction is not racist, it's just a different pattern of behavior. To disconnect emotions something like: scientist first not including some outliers in the data set, but after having been scolded for that, adding a few random points here and there so that he's not accused of it again. Both bad, both fabricating data, but we can still talk about them naming them differently. That said, since racism is in the name of that subgroup, I can see parent comment's point more clearly now, and yes it makes sense, at least given that name.
• vippy 5y ago
• gcau 5y ago
  I think people should be treated equally, and not given better or worse treatment based on their race.
  • vbezhenar 5y ago
    That leads to some groups of people being excluded from certain selections. Culture is a thing.
    • manigandham 5y ago
      Culture is by choice and can be changed. Not race. That’s the difference.
      • bloak 5y ago
        But it's not quite that simple, is it? You can change the culture of a child by forcibly separating them from their parents, putting them in a boarding school, beating them when they try to speak their mother tongue with other children, and so on, methods that have been successfully applied in Australia and Canada, I believe. Changing the culture of an adult is more difficult, though they may have tried similar methods rather more recently in ... you know where. You can to a certain extent change your "race" simply by changing your dress, hairstyle and name, provided your physical appearance is roughtly consistent with several "races", which is not an unusual situation in many of the societies in which "race" is a thing.
        • manigandham 5y ago
          Yes, it's that simple. Difficult is not impossible. Choice still exists. Meanwhile dress, hairstyle and name are not race, and race cannot be changed. You're making extraordinary reaches to redefine words and concepts, which is another societal problem.
        • Chris2048 5y ago
          Why is it necessary to deprive them of their mother tongue? There are plenty immigrants that speak multiple languages, and benefit from it. also: > forcibly separating them > beating them when why is violence necessary? What - specifically - are we trying to change?
• SassyThrowaway 5y ago
  Tangentially to the topic of discussion, I have seen analogies of the following phrase so many times by now: > I’d also formed a hypothesis, based on a certain bluntness and lack of social tact he exhibited, that Daniel might be on the autism/Asperger’s spectrum. And yet I am not sure what people mean to communicate by bringing in autism and Asperger's into the picture. What is up with questioning people's mental health just to explain bluntness and lack of social tact? Is that an instant self-correction to the negative observation about somebody, to remind yourself to be compassionate just in case?
  • sersi 5y ago
    Ironically, if he were truly diagnosed as being on the spectrum, it could be a plus from a diversity standpoint and might increase his chances of being hired...
    • fmajid 5y ago
      We're at least 30 years away from neurodiversity being considered a protected class.
  • nicoburns 5y ago
    > What is up with questioning people's mental health just to explain bluntness and lack of social tact? For one thing, I wouldn't necessarily consider Autism or Aspergers a mental health condition. It's certainly a difference in mental functional, but unlike something like depression it's not so clear cut that it's always a negative thing. Secondly, I think the quality of an autistic outlook on the world is very different to simply lacking social tact. It also typically includes a disregard for social norms (sometimes because they are not understood, but sometimes also because they are understood but are rejected), and a very strong sense of morality, both of which are relevant here.
    • viraptor 5y ago
      > For one thing, I wouldn't necessarily consider Autism or Aspergers a mental health condition. Are you thinking about high functioning autism? Sure, sometimes it's just "that person has weird behaviours". But on the other side of scale there are people who cannot communicate at a level required for independent daily living.
• familymart 5y ago
  • sharikous 5y ago
    He mentions his parents were discriminated too, as not being of the right ethnicity. So why do you state without evidence that "he is where he is due to racism"?
    • familymart 5y ago
      • sharikous 5y ago
        > Based on the article he is probably Asian. Based on the article he is Jewish. Had you read it you would have known. Your rant about Asians is useless and out of place > It's sad that he's upset that life isn't fair. I am sure everyone on earth could tell him that. Discrimination, be it "reverse" or not is opposed to so many human and intellectual values that it's understandable he is upset. Would you have said the same thing about Rosa Park's stand?
        • familymart 5y ago
  • shajue 5y ago
    • familymart 5y ago
      [flagged]
  • jackdh 5y ago
    > It's a tough pickle. He is where he is due to racism. Both as someone who beat everyone in life by being the right color and then having people trying to equalize him because of his color. > He got upset that he wasn't put on the pedestal as usual. You don't have proof that he is where he is due to racism, but assuming the is the author is telling the truth we do have proof he was discriminated against because of his colour.
• stefanve 5y ago
  back in the day this was called positive discrimination. While I'm not totally against it, merit should still be a factor. That is fair to all involved. You don't want that people think you where just selected because you are a minority since that will become discriminatory very quickly
  • effry-much 5y ago
    “Positive” discrimination is still discrimination.
  • tromp 5y ago
    It's also known as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action
    • Chris2048 5y ago
      But is it AA if it's not explicitly declared? Is covert AA still AA?
• carmenchaos 5y ago
  "he proceeded to tell me about a “plan” he had come up with to ensure he would be accepted by a good graduate school. He told me that two of his four grandparents were descended from Sephardic Jews who’d fled Spain in the 1500s. This, he said, made him “technically, part Hispanic”—and thus eligible for preferential admission to graduate-school programs. I tried to discourage Daniel from putting this plan into action. I told him I thought it was deceptive and dishonest." But how do they determine ethnicity when it comes to affirmative action? Just subjective self-identity? Visually? I.e "measuring skulls and skin colors"? Ask your peers what they think you are and base it on that? Need at least N generations of ancestry to some specific place? N % DNA match common to some specific group of genes?
  • pawelmurias 5y ago
    > But how do they determine ethnicity when it comes to affirmative action? Racists tend to determine race visually.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • daniel-thompson 5y ago
    Setting value judgments about this stuff aside, I'm laughing just thinking about the logistical & administrative nightmare that would result from an admissions department actually trying to verify student-provided race & ethnicity with any degree of rigor. Hiring genealogists to investigate and verify family ancestors. Upgrading department policies, procedures, and facilities to process DNA samples. Providing an appeals process for and handling student protests of the committee's assessment of their race. Schools are already so bad at IT, admin, etc, can you even imagine how much effort they would have to put in to make something like this work.
    • hihihihi1234 5y ago
      Well this is a story as old as racism itself. There's never been a clear-cut way to unambiguously decide which "race" everybody is, and segregationist regimes have always struggled with edge cases. E.g. back in the days of Jim Crow it was sometimes possible for a particular "black" person to become legally "white" just by crossing state lines.
• roenxi 5y ago
  Although interesting, it is easy to miss the important aspects here. At the end of the day, we know there are examples of racism everywhere. It may be novel that it is employed against Caucasians in the US, but that isn't very exciting. Bad luck to the Asians too, worst of both worlds. The problem here is that if this is systematic - and there is reason to believe it is systematic - then there is a chance that the next generation of elites (I'm thinking high level government bureaucrats, corporate executives and down the line towards more successful supervisors) might end up being measurably less competent than the last. Success at universities is treated as a signal of academic ability. If that signal is corrupt there are going to be some poor choices made. As troops are currently crossing the Russian border, it is worth reflecting that some decisions we do want the best and brightest working on.
  • Chris2048 5y ago
    I think the relevance here is that this racism stems from DEI initiatives, not in spite of it.
  • 7537736638 5y ago
    Racism (no matter what race is targeted) is wrong and unfair to the individuals affected, but I don't think it will have any real effect on job performance because I don't think the selection processes used correlate well with performance anyway. Going back to using race and sex as a basis for selection is immoral and unfair, but it was the norm until recently. Many of the old white men at the top of government and corporate leadership now received more help on account of their race and sex than a young black woman is likely to receive today. I'm not saying this to justify racism today, just to say that I don't think we are likely to notice any difference by swapping one privileged class for another.
    • raxxorrax 5y ago
      Far more common than motivated by racism, people elevate others through nepotism. Rules based on ethnicity even enable that to a huge degree. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. Of course the people that enable racist admissions will get compensated respectively. Contrary to the current echelons of power, which at least openly favor humanism, you would get racists instead. > Racism [...] is wrong and unfair to the individuals affected, but [...] Maybe search for better "solutions".
• billsmithaustin 5y ago
  The tone and writing style make me think this was a piece of undergraduate fiction rather than a factual account written by a PhD.
  • zeppelin101 5y ago
    Yes.. of course.. laughs nervously
  • vehemenz 5y ago
    Either way, the author is protected by pseudonymity. Yay!
  • ashwagary 5y ago
    Quillete writers have published a lot of unverifiable nonsense. So much so that I need proof of every claim they make.
• lloydatkinson 5y ago
  It should have been published anon!
• Blackstone4 5y ago
  In the coming decades, I think a lot more of this will come out... I am not saying it is right or wrong...just my observation... on my university course, women were offered lower entry grades to boost numbers. A white male friends is worried he will not make MD at a large US bank because he is not the right sex, race or sexual orientation...The established white male MDs are entrenched and it is the up and coming generation which is getting discriminated against. Will people start to withhold information on race and sex in their applications for fear of being discriminated against? I think so...
  • jl6 5y ago
    He could always just come out as non-binary to get almost all of that access at almost no personal cost.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • amcoastal 5y ago
      • bloak 5y ago
        I agree that "Daniel" doesn't sound like the sort of person who could easily "come out as nonbinary" but there are people with more "flamboyant" personalities who would rather relish an excuse for drawing attention to themselves and winding people up in that way. There are a few people like that on every university campus, I think: the sort of people who are not trans or any kind of queer but cross-dress just for a laugh. So the trolly suggestion might work for a few people.
      • jl6 5y ago
        They wouldn't need to make any physical or behavioural changes, so I don't see why they would lose any of the things you mention.
        • 5y ago
• Jiejeing 5y ago
• huhtenberg 5y ago
  "Daniel" sounds like a construct for making author's own findings and experiences known.
• alexb_ 5y ago
  This article is written in such a way to maximize outrage and the amount of people who will share it, which makes me immediately suspicious. Who is behind quillette.com?
  • yc-kraln 5y ago
    Quillette is a libertarian fantasy website. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quillette https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quillette
• oblio 5y ago
  I have a question for commenters here. Let's assume that you have group A, in a position of power, wealth, education, connections, etc. There is also group B, which has none of that. Let's assume that naturally group A doesn't want to give that up. If you don't agree, you don't know enough about human nature and I'd really like to see studies that back up your opinion. Let's assume that most people are ordinary and statistically most people don't break through to a higher position. How do you equalize groups A and B?
  • danuker 5y ago
    There is a difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. When you take from those that contribute to society and give to those that don't, in order to equalize, fewer and fewer will keep contributing.
    • oblio 5y ago
      There is no equality of opportunity, that's the thing. The game is rigged. In Romanian we say "cine se aseamănă, se adună": "those who are alike, gather together". It's something that needs to be fought actively otherwise the first mover advantage is eternal. Why do Americans speak English? Surely the non-British immigrants greatly outnumber the British ones?
  • everdrive 5y ago
    Why would you presume that individuals share blame or benefit with their groups? If one member of a group acts poorly, is it fair to penalize another member of that group? If one member of a group is privileged, is it fair to penalize a non-privileged member of that group to "even out" the groups?
    • oblio 5y ago
      Because there are in-groups and out-groups and we're tribal animals, social animals. None of this is new, the Ancient Greeks knew this (zoon politikon). So your proposal is just to abandon the second group, am I right?
• cloutchaser 5y ago
  > He told me that he was not a racist. He had voted for Democrats in the 2016 election and hated Donald Trump. And as it happens, I had reason to believe this was true. The morning after that election, Daniel had come to visit me in my office, deeply troubled by what a Trump presidency might mean for scientific research and funding. Unfortunately by voting for democrats you are giving a democratic mandate for this type of racist policy. Stop doing it.
  • native_samples 5y ago
    Yep. My sympathy was lost when Daniel said he supported racism in college admissions, just not the part of the career path where he was. He's a victim of policies he supports, well who cares. He should probably learn a lesson but somehow, likely he won't.
• andrewclunn 5y ago
  Does every one of these have to have the "I hate Trump, yet understand the motivations of his followers," claim? I get the article is for "well meaning progressives" who want all these policies, just maybe 20% less, but the author and their intended audience have no clue what motivates people who fundamentally disagree with them. My advice to the author is to endure. Academia is the corrupt bed you nade, now sleep in it
• kingkawn 5y ago
  [flagged]
• red_admiral 5y ago
  What the university needed to do, this dean said, was “make the program look more like America as a whole.” Given how many Americans as a whole don't go to a university at all, and a huge majority don't go to a "top university" (however you measure that), I think this phrasing from the dean should be nominated for some kind of Orwellian Newspeak of the Year award.
  • darkerside 5y ago
    That's exactly what people are trying to change. I'm not for affirmative action, but at least I understand why people are doing it when they do.
• vorhemus 5y ago
  Critics might now argue that the goal of the diversity movement was never to create equal opportunities for everyone but to promote specific groups. Anyway, the illogic of this movement already starts with the fact that only certain characteristics are seen as a source of discrimination, while others are not. Skin color and gender are known to be factors of discrimination. But what about "beauty," "social origin" or "age"? It is known from studies that attractive people are considered to be more competent or more successful and are promoted more often - less attractive people therefore suffer an unfair disadvantage. Shouldn't this therefore also become part of any effort to stop discrimination?
  • julius_deane 5y ago
    • marcellus23 5y ago
      Instead of being coy and smug maybe you can just actually write out your argument?
      • julius_deane 5y ago
        I don't get paid to educate you
        • skrebbel 5y ago
          Maybe don't argue on the internet if you don't want to argue on the internet
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
        • marcellus23 5y ago
          This isn't Twitter.
        • dang 5y ago
• tangent-man 5y ago
  The term racism is racist. There's only 1 race the human race.
  • ashwagary 5y ago
    >There's only 1 race the human race. Somebody needed to explain that to Europeans for about 600 years.
• alexb_ 5y ago
  Let's put aside all of the questions of the source's validity and assume this is true. What the hell should anyone do about it? You have to remember that you, the individual, have absolutely zero power whatsoever to make any sort of significant change. No matter what, anything you do to fight these types of systems will just make you look like a worse person, while changing nothing. Mapping out the possibilities of outcomes: - You fight the system, win and become known (not a good thing, because remember you don't have any power to make a societal change!) or lose and not get into the college you want - You play to the system, and it either doesn't work (same situation you were in before doing any action) or it does work (you get in!). There is no logical scenario where you should do ANYTHING other than play into the system. So put down that 1% Hispanic.
  • raxxorrax 5y ago
    The optimized approach is to lie about your ethnicity in the current state. Perhaps about your sex too at some point.
  • cloutchaser 5y ago
    That's a pretty nihilistic attitude. And if everyone always thinks this way, nothing will improve.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • akudha 5y ago
    The first time someone points to something that is wrong, unjust etc, they are going to be laughed at, retaliated etc. Maybe the second, third, fourth time too. But they plant the seed, people hear about it and think about it, even if they don’t come out and say/support it openly. This doesn’t mean the first person’s actions are useless, even if nothing happens immediately. The question then becomes who has the balls to be the first, most likely ruining their own career in the process?
  • curtisblaine 5y ago
    Additionally: if you play the system and encourage other people to do so, the system becomes inefficient. Imagine 80% of the candidates claiming to be part of racial a minority, and no way to verify that without doing proper DNA-based racial profiling (which no company / university / association wants to do). When everyone is / claims to be a minority, there are no more minorities.
• transitory_pce 5y ago
  Why not design affirmative action based on generational economic status regardless of race? This is lazy, vote-bank appeasing policy making.
  • darkr 5y ago
    While this could potentially lead to “fairer” outcomes, it would likely be difficult and/or expensive to implement. Also, Affirmative Action as an official policy would likely be illegal; what is being described here is the more modern and surreptitious form in “positive discrimination”
  • fmajid 5y ago
    Have you noticed how universities flaunt diversity statistics on their web sites, but getting stats on socioeconomic background is like pulling teeth, if you can get to the data at all?
  • ashwagary 5y ago
    It's not based on race since we know white women are the primary beneficiaries. Affirmative action should redesigned to specifically target the founding/native group of black Americans that were systematically disenfranchised, enslaved, and robbed by the dominant society.
  • blindmute 5y ago
    Because when you do that, White and Asian people are still "over-represented". That's really the only reason.
• ianai 5y ago
  People get “competitive” over scarce resources. I wonder if an alternative way to address systemic issues from things like what’s suspected by OP here is expansion. Colleges could increase their enrollments if their endowments similarly expanded. Further, make lists like those mentioned here bigger-especially easy if the financial costs with the list are negligible (not saying it is). I realize this may not be feasible. But being a growing society does come with benefits.
• 0atman 5y ago
  I'm very suspicious of this line: > "I’ve never been quite clear on how we’re supposed to get over centuries of judging people by their skin color or ethnicity by paying more and more attention to skin color and ethnicity." This seems like the author fundamentally doesn't understand the difference between equality and equity. I'll cite the Monopoly example. If you and I are 100 turns in to a game where I have been given $2000 every time I pass GO, and you have been given $2, you can't just give both of us $200 going forward and expect our inequality to be solved. For starters, I probably own all the board. What's the solution? I don't know. But it's clear from this wording that the author is unwilling to accept relatively small concessions to fix enormous historical oppression.
  • johntdaly 5y ago
    I think you have to consider that many of us where born in a time where “not seeing color” was touted as “the solution” to racism. And while there are points for “correcting” based on skin color the ting is presented and perused rather badly by many rather well meaning people. AND during a time where skin color is becoming less and less of an indicator for who needs help. > What's the solution? I don't know. But it's clear from this wording that the author is unwilling to accept relatively small concessions to fix enormous historical oppression. The confession you want the teacher to just accept is bullshit. Why should anybody accept a relatively huge advantage for some of an ethnic group (while the rest of that group gets nothing) as an acceptable form of restitution? Worse still, the advantage goes to people in that group that are already advantaged! I honestly see this as a problem, the problem that you need to be important enough in you “group” to get those advantages to get ahead while the rest need to go without. Can you imagine how it feels to be on the wrong side of that line? These types of practices aren’t giving people who need a leg up a leg up. They are pulling more lines where more people landing on the wrong side of. I know that the type of solution I prefer is many, many small solutions rather than a few big ones. If I land on the right side of some and the wrong side of others I still have something that boosts my self worth and supports me in some small way. P.S.: The “equality vs equity” argument makes more sense too if you leave skin color out of it. When I think about equity I think about water fountains and entryway that are accessible for people in a wheelchair, not about skin color.
  • 5y ago
• captaincaveman 5y ago
  Reverse racism is like using a regex to solve a problem ... now you have two problems :P
• SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago
  Affirmative Action is not "reverse racism". Measuring someone's achievements relatively to the external difficulties they faced along the way is not "reverse racism". I don't believe we still have to spell this out. And going to the specifics of the student "evidence", the deans list is extremely biased for socioeconomic conditions (which are correlated to race or ethnicity), so by using that as the single data source, the student built an admission's list extremely biased towards rich (white) people. I find it incredible that the student couldn't see such glaring bias in his study, and that he would leap to such unfounded conclusions.
  • janto 5y ago
    If you keep spelling things out then you're not very convincing or you're not understanding the opposite perspective.
  • yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
    How do you measure the external difficulties someone faced along the way? My personal heritage includes one of mankind's most horrific periods of slavery. Can you tell me which external difficulties I have faced? Can you tell me what I am owed by society?
    • yucky 5y ago
      >How do you measure the external difficulties someone faced along the way? Apparently you base it all on their skin color, unless I am misreading OP's statement. Doesn't seem logical, maybe they can clarify.
  • 7537736638 5y ago
    Affirmative action is not measuring someone's achievements relatively to the external difficulties they faced. It's treating people differently because of their race. I.e. Racism. You could give an advantage to people who grew up in poor areas, had poor parents, graduated from poorly preforming schools (or failed to graduate at all), etc. If you wanted to help people who faced more adversity. Affirmative action discriminates in favour of the children of millionaires who had every opportunity to succeed but happen to be black, and against white and Asian kids who grew up in a trailer park and went to a school that couldn't afford books. It's what happens when you target statistics without caring about people. People are individuals, not statistical representatives of demographic groups. You can't fix discrimination by discriminating, but you can hide it and that's what affermtive action seeks to do.
• hongloumeng 5y ago
  All these comments about a story about an undergrad with a chip on his shoulder analyzing data he PULLED OFF OF SOCIAL MEDIA. I suppose, despite the provenance of the data, that causal inferences taken on this data are valid because (1) he seems to be on the spectrum, (2) did well in physics, and (3) did "various types of statistical analysis".
• red_admiral 5y ago
  > Should I tell Daniel about the colleague I’d spoken with just a few weeks earlier, who’d told me, with much frustration and a touch of anger in his voice, that he was getting out of academia because he’d concluded that it is now virtually impossible for a white male to get a tenure-track position in his field? This young man had finished his PhD and published a book. He had applied for scores of tenure-track jobs, but had finally concluded he was not likely to get one. “Picking me,” he explained, “won’t do anyone any good. It won’t help the institution show that it is combatting racism, and it won’t allow any of the members of the hiring committee to assuage their white liberal guilt.” Shortly thereafter, this colleague took a non-academic job as a computer programmer. There are several things that I notice in this paragraph. The first is that the underlying claims deserve to be analysed with the same rigor that Daniel applied in creating his spreadsheet. If, for example, the chances of a Black male getting a tenure-track position are even lower than that of a White male getting one, then however low the absolute values, one could make a coherent argument for affirmative action. Without the data I can't judge the situation any better than just forming a personal opinion. The claim that it's virtually impossible for a White male to get a tenure-track position is undoubtedly true (for a not completely unreasonable definition of "virtually"), that is by design and has nothing to do with race. It has everything to do with academia's business model in extracting maximum surplus from grad students and non-tenured faculty. For example, ACOUP (that some HN readers will be familiar with) talks about how terrible the grad student experience is in the humanities [1], and others have likened academia to a drugs gang [2], which I think was also posted on HN when it came out. Tenured positions are in very short supply by design, and subscribers to ACOUP's newsletter can read the author's regular updates on his attempts to get a tenured position (so far with no luck). Some of these are public in his "Fireside Friday" threads. Also, the bar for a tenured position (or even tenure-track position) is much higher than "had finished his PhD and published a book". Generally in STEM, being able to obtain grant income and produce a steady stream of not-too-terrible publications are the table stakes. One of the problems why, as the article mentions, "I’d seen plenty of searches in which members of the hiring committee went out of their way to try to hire persons of color" but many of these searches still fail, is that there might be structural problems in the pipeline before you come to the tenure-track decisions, that means PoC are much less likely to get a PhD in the subject in the first place. If this could be shown with the same rigour as Daniel did to demonstrate affirmative action later on in the pipeline, then there are many other motives than "white liberal guilt" for affirmative action later on. [1] https://acoup.blog/2021/10/01/collections-so-you-want-to-go-to-grad-school-in-the-academic-humanities/ https://acoup.blog/2021/10/01/collections-so-you-want-to-go-... [2] https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/12/11/how-academia-resembles-a-drug-gang/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/12/11/ho...
• yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
  I don't think the author did the right thing, though I empathise with their position. As for Daniel, if it were me, I would have resorted to changing my identity (although I'm not sure this would work in practical terms in this given instance). Superficially, this seems petty, but I think at this point it's the only way to effect change in so called progressive societies.
• mjw_byrne 5y ago
  Regardless of where you land on the racism/reverse racism/affirmative action/culture discussion, it's a sad day for science, academia and truth when simply presenting evidence (rather good evidence in this case, it seems) is frowned upon because it doesn't fit the current societal mood.
• blackboxlogic 5y ago
  I wonder if the author's advice would have changed if the student was seeking transparency instead of "fairness". Would there be administrative resistance to publishing their goals and process? Does the secrecy of the process affect the success of the goals? The student was upset primarily because the outcome was unexpected.
• pxue 5y ago
  Asians (East and South) have been silently dealing with this ever since we started playing the game. It's interesting to see that we're now grouped along with the "Whites". We've played the game so well, that we're no longer in the "Others" category.
• taylodl 5y ago
  I am a white male. I've seen this policy in play and it's not even new - it's been going on for decades. Here's the thing - there are N "good jobs" and the population of N doesn't reflect the population of America - namely, there's too many white males holding those jobs. If you adjust the composition of N to better reflect the population of America then that will necessarily lead to fewer white males having those "good jobs." There's no way of avoiding that. If you decide to go off "merit" - well, there are some people who were born on 2nd base and when they advance to third the claim they hit a triple. Meanwhile there's other people who weren't born anywhere close to the field, had to get the equipment to play, learn the rules of the game, and worked their butts off to hit a double. Which of these two people have shown more "merit"? I think part of the problem we're having is we're not having the right conversation, what we should be discussing is why are there only N "good jobs." Even better, why are there any "bad jobs"? What does it mean for a job to be bad and why then would we expect, even demand, that people do such jobs? I think we'll have more meaningful and productive conversations focusing on those questions rather than focusing on race.
  • sharikous 5y ago
    > If you decide to go off "merit" - well, there are some people who were born on 2nd base and when they advance to third the claim they hit a triple. Meanwhile there's other people who weren't born anywhere close to the field, had to get the equipment to play, learn the rules of the game, and worked their butts off to hit a double. Which of these two people have shown more "merit"? Only problems - is "merit" an indicator of knowing to do the job better? - are you able to evaluate "merit" - specifically whether a person started from second base or not?
  • blindmute 5y ago
    Do you really care how hard your surgeon worked to get there? Or do you care about their core competency?
• zephrx1111 5y ago
  I'm an Asian. I learned 2 lessons after I came to America. First, I was taught racism here. I didn't aware any racism in my home country. Here, after I became a victim of reverse racism, I learned how this industry works: holding the barometer needle and pretending the pressure are changing. Second, for the competitiveness, we can't fool ourselves, and others as well. If I join a competitive group that I don't deserve because of my quality, I know I don't deserve to be here, hence will feel inferior. I can fool the admission office, but cannot fool myself. Top science requires top brains. Now I can see US is importing more and more top brains worldwide, because she cannot produce enough here. Immigration country is built on sand. Top brains can easily find other better places to live, if you don't treat them equally, no matter what the so called "original intention" is. That's how free market works. Above are my 2 lessons.
  • raxxorrax 5y ago
    If the original intention makes you believe it allows you to discriminate, you have successfully rationalized racism for yourself. Intentions are relevant, but it remains what it is. I believe that some people are quite apt at fooling themselves is a problem here too. There is difficulty of breaking out of a culture and certain cultures do not play well with classical education. Compliant cultures will always excel in a conventional schooling system, which can only approximately determine performance. The lack of individual education leads to very smart people often having trouble in school, the effect mostly lessens in higher education at some point. Additionally there is a positive feedback for behavior not relevant to education and I think that is a large problem. There are countless problems with the way people get educated, how resources are artificially restrained and how the profession of teaching is seen in wider society. But not enough of a problem to allow for racism at any point.
  • anon13098709134 5y ago
    One thing that I rarely see expressed clearly enough in these discussions is a breakdown of what /value/ someone brings to a group. We're always talking about whether or not you should hire the one best suited for a position, without going into what that actually means. The obvious part of that is how skilled the applicant is at the task to be performed in that role. This is where the "hire the one best suited for the job" argument comes in, and usually where it stops. At least in the case of a group/organisation that will work together though there is the more hidden value of differing viewpoints. That, in itself, also has value. I think there's a clear argument to be made that the value in hiring, for example, a developer with weaker (though still "good enough") programming skills in many cases could be the better option when that developer is expected to bring additional value in differing viewpoints compared to a developer having stronger programming skills but otherwise fitting the norm in the industry/business. That is, for the weaker programmer, the sum of the contributed values might still be higher than for the stronger programmer. I think, expressing the problem this way, and being clear about it, makes it easier to reason about. If the aspects taken into consideration were expressed in this way in a job application, I would probably be easier to accept for rejected applicants too, possibly both in the parent comment and in the article. There is however the question of what, exactly, the motivation is for diverse hiring. I'd argue that in a healthy business, it should be what I outlined above; the team is, overall, expected to perform better with more diverse viewpoints. Although, I'd wager a guess that many times is more about the image of the business than actual performance. While the image is important, and of course will affect profit, it would probably be hard to justify, publicly, such hiring choices on those grounds.