The false dichotomy that AA for Black students harms Asian students. That’s exactly the false conflict that racists try to create to pit minorities against each other instead of against White Supremacy.
I’m sorry for not being clear there. My comment was not target people actually in need of those programs. I was preferring to the people that driving brand name cars, having business, and still claiming those social programs by using putting their children name on those. By doing so, they’re effective “penniless” but still have access to their wealth. Some of them even wrongfully claim disability.
I’m not highly educated on military matters so I’m willing to believe my take is wrong. There was a time when I wouldn’t immediately go for the most dumbed-down “they did it because it’s evil” explanation, but these days it most often seems to be the correct one, since the Republican party has both dumbed itself down and stopped pretending it does anything with the intention of fixing problems rather than causing them. But what you said makes sense to me.
Reagan, is that you?
Not an american, so i don’t know exactly how it works there, just a broad idea.
Aren’t university admission very subjective, i.e., not like other countries were you just take an exam and is ranked by grade (and then some affirmative action may happen), but also consider other achievements from the candidates, ranging from extracurricular to voluntary work?
Apart from setting a goal of having x % of minorities students or other very direct mentions of race, aren’t the universities free to pick proxies to race to achieve what AA was doing?
Because i also don’t see it as removing any race information mention to make the admission race “blind”.
Happy Cake Day!
Sure in theory. But we know that in practice, removing racial quotas or affirmative action or whatever you want to call it reduces the diversity of the student body in that black, Hispanic and Native Americans end up underrepresented relative to the general population, especially at elite schools. This has been demonstrated in all the states that have already outlawed affirmative action, including California.
When you’re represented at a third of your population in admissions- no one gets to argue in good faith that you’re the problem.
Oh, don’t be silly, Kathy; this is the Persecution Olympics - we can only care about one oppressed minority at a time, and ‘intersectionalism’ isn’t a thing.
/s
Funny story, true story, where I went to college, they had a goal of:
50:50 male:female ratio on campus and:
American born:
45% POC
45% White
Then
10% international students
Laudable diversity targets, imo.
While I was there they had to lower admissions standards for men to keep the male:female ratio intact, because not enough men were making it.
Last year when a male friend was saying AA had gone too far and now we’re facing a crisis of boys and young men feeling ”left out” or “left behind” I mentioned that last part, about how standards were being lowered to make sure we ‘had enough men’ and he thought that was a good thing.
So, AA type policies are bad, except if they benefit those who have already historically benefitted from subjective standards, but not if it benefits those who’ve been historically marginalized?
And yet Harvard admissions staff consistently gave Asian-American applicants worse “personality” and “leadership” scores than to Caucasian students, where alumni interviewers had no such bias. The statistical evidence for Asian quotas is overwhelming, no p-hacking needed.
There’s an assumption in there that could use some support- that one group of raters was more accurate than the other group. Both have responsibility for the admission process, correct? So both are Harvard ratings.
Are admissions employees less accurate and more biased in that assessment than legacies? Not sure how you would tease that out. Leadership not being academic or having grades or testing to use.
And are leadership and likability presumed to be equally distributed- then you need to consider what % of those populations apply to Harvard respectively. Because the assumption in your argument is of equal distribution and that meaning a disparity in the assessment. But that doesn’t comport if there’s a difference in the relative numbers of applications per population size.
Regardless- it’s clear that there’s a quota against African American students straight up - and for white students with legacies. Though the legacy benefit will favor Asian students in the future at a higher rate than others given their higher representation per population as admissions.
And - of course- are Harvard’s procedures the same as other elite universities?
One survey said 70%, the other said 53% of Asian Americans support affirmative action. There is not widespread agreement that they’re being discriminated against because of it. Rather, there is an understanding both that Asians have benefited from it and that its main focus needs to be on the groups most historically disadvantaged in the U.S.:
“I would make a point of saying that most Asian Americans understand that … there is racism aimed particularly at communities of color and Black communities,” said Aarti Kohli, executive director of Advancing Justice – Asian Law Caucus, noting that there is a sense that policies like affirmative action — which emerged during the Civil Rights movement — are vital to address that.
Interestingly, no Asian American testified against Affirmative action, whereas they did testify for it:
In the end, the two Supreme Court cases did not feature testimony from any individual Asian American plaintiffs, who remained broadly anonymous. Asian American students did testify, however, in favor of affirmative action.
And of course, assuming people whose heritage comes from the largest continent on Earth are a monolith of socio-economic values serves only the white supremacists, rather than the many Asians who don’t fit the stereotype:
The model minority myth has collectively obscured the immense diversity among Asian Americans, as well as major income and education disparities within the group in a manner exploited by SFFA. “It really plays into the model minority myth that Asian Americans don’t benefit from race-conscious policies or Asian Americans don’t need policies that address racism because they are monolithically successful,” says Chen.
Your argument would be more plausible if the Ivies’ admission process wasn’t based on Harvard and Yale’s, introduced in the 1920s specifically to discriminate against Jewish applicants.
Not so coincidentally, that was around the time the legacy admissions boost was also introduced.
They certainly did do that a century ago. Just as they kept out queer students.
But that doesn’t address the concerns about your argument regarding what is and isn’t happening today. Or the arguments raised in court and here that affirmative action is bad when it supports African American students but somehow becomes good when it supports White and Asian students.
It’s not as if they weren’t discriminating against African American students for centuries as well.
As you note, the Ivies have been plausibly accused of discriminating against Asian Americans using one of the same “soft” mechanisms they once used against Jewish applicants: the interview process, where they could reject based on the pretext of vaguely defined “cultural fit” and “personality”. There were also games being played with the assessment of choices of extracurricular activities (a more recent admissions criteria that wasn’t weaponised during the Jewish quota years).
However, there’s no evidence of this being done to enforce specific and formal quotas, especially those related to affirmative action (which also post-dates the Jewish quots and was not implemented to rectify that situation). “We have too few Black students” does not necessarily (and indeed often does not actually follow) from “we have too many Asian students.”
“No Black person would be able to succeed in a merit-based system.” Yup, sounds like a lefty position. Not. That is some serious bullshit. Thanks for playing, Next!
[Since I can’t edit in slow mode, a continuation of my comment here.]
First, in service of accuracy, while the discriminatory mechanisms of the “Jewish quota” days weren’t (or simply couldn’t be) replicated in whole by the Ivies against Asian applicants today, the “cultural fit” interview dodge wasn’t the only one they recycled. The Ivies have also been credibly accused of limiting Asian admissions through the choice of high schools where they would recruit. This isn’t brought up by those who want to end affirmative action for obvious reasons.
Secondly, anyone interested in looking at all the myriad ways the Jewish quota was implemented at the Ivies in the 20th century will find this recent podcast of interest:
https://www.tabletmag.com/podcasts/gatecrashers
Finally, I want re-iterate the important point others have made: one of the most distasteful aspects of the conservatives’ already disgusting assault on affirmative action has been their use of elite schools’ discrimination against Asian students to support renewed exclusion of Black and Latinx students. Divide and conquer as usual (and don’t touch the legacy or donor or athletics admissions!)