Justice Dept. Backs Suit Accusing Harvard of Discriminating Against Asian-American Applicants

[UglyCasanova]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/us/politics/asian-students-affirmative-action-harvard.html

At the heart of the case is whether Harvard’s admissions staff hold Asian-Americans to higher standards than applicants of other racial or ethnic groups, and whether they use subjective measures, like personal scores, to cap the number of Asian students accepted to the school.​

“Harvard today engages in the same kind of discrimination and stereotyping that it used to justify quotas on Jewish applicants in the 1920s and 1930s,” Students for Fair Admissions said in a court filing.​

This is about to get interesting, could be the case that guts race based admission across the nation. Discriminating against applicants based on nothing but skin color is absurd and shouldn’t be happening in this day and age. Let the most qualified rise to the top no matter their skin color.

 

[brycejones]

OP is very concerned about attempts to address long standing racial inequality.

BTW OP you mentioned in another thread you want to see more liberals.

Can you provide us your definition of a "liberal"?

 

[fskimospy]

OP is very concerned about attempts to address long standing racial inequality.

BTW OP you mentioned in another thread you want to see more liberals.

Can you provide us your definition of a "liberal"?

When someone who is black has to work twice as hard to get to the same place as a white person the only fair and equitable way to address that is to pretend that never happened and treat both equally.

 

[umbrella39]

As per usual the OP clearly has every single story about race blasted to his email... Wonder just how consumed you REALLY are with race? Must suck...

Again, please let us know when you get to change places with "fill in your choice" so you can stop being such an oppressed and discriminated against white, male, conservative...

Can't wait till you post pics...

 

[fskimospy]

As per usual the OP clearly has every single story about race blasted to his email... Wonder just how consumed you REALLY are with race? Must suck...

Again, please let us know when you get to change places with "fill in your choice" so you can stop being such an oppressed and discriminated against white, male, conservative...

Can't wait till you post pics...

Considering he claims to be against discrimination in all its forms it would be nice if he started a single, solitary thread about racial discrimination where the victim was black or Hispanic.

 

[shortylickens]

Olde Liberals are pretty racist.

 

[hal2kilo]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/us/politics/asian-students-affirmative-action-harvard.html

At the heart of the case is whether Harvard’s admissions staff hold Asian-Americans to higher standards than applicants of other racial or ethnic groups, and whether they use subjective measures, like personal scores, to cap the number of Asian students accepted to the school.​

“Harvard today engages in the same kind of discrimination and stereotyping that it used to justify quotas on Jewish applicants in the 1920s and 1930s,” Students for Fair Admissions said in a court filing.​

This is about to get interesting, could be the case that guts race based admission across the nation. Discriminating against applicants based on nothing but skin color is absurd and shouldn’t be happening in this day and age. Let the most qualified rise to the top no matter their skin color.

Funny. This story was just on MSNBC. They had 2 Asian women on. The majority of Asians are for race based affirmative action, but I see as usual, you are quite concerned.

 

[Sunburn74]

I think the issue is how important are test scores. I hear Harvard gets pretty much everyone who has perfect SAT scores applying and the number of people nationally with perfect scores alone (talk less of almost perfect scores or even just really good scores) is multiples times larger than the class size per year for the university. They can't take them all so if you feel like just because you have a perfect test score you shouds get into harvard, you should get over yourself. That's my position on this lawsuit. It's a bunch of people with good scores who think that makes them entitled to admission to whatever school they want which is stupid.

 

[Amused]

As per usual the OP clearly has every single story about race blasted to his email...

He signed up for the Daily Stormer mailing list.

 

[frozentundra123456]

When someone who is black has to work twice as hard to get to the same place as a white person the only fair and equitable way to address that is to pretend that never happened and treat both equally.

You have a point, but what if the white person has never discriminated against anyone? Is it "fair and equitable" to essentially punish that person to make up for a wrong that someone else has done?

Edit: In the particular case sited by the OP, I thought Harvard was a private college. If they dont take federal or state money, do the courts have any jurisdiction?

 

[yllus]

University admissions, especially into an elite institution that basically guarantees your employability for life, are a pretty interesting beast. It's not as cut and dry as you'd think.

One dilemma I've heard about is: If you have one candidate who's got perfect test scores versus a second candidate also with perfect test scores but also volunteered overseas in Africa to teach English, do you simply go with the latter over the former? Obviously, right?

Now let's add a bit more information into the mix: The first candidate comes from a modest fiscal background and worked locally during the summer to help support her parents; the second had wealthy parents and had the ability to take that volunteer post without needing to pitch into their household.

Does that change what decision you make? If you do so, you practically guarantee that the only people admitted to Harvard will be those with already well-to-do backgrounds. How do you institute fairness without going too far? Is it actually silly to pretend that race (because of its correlation with wealth) shouldn't be considered during evaluation?

 

[UglyCasanova]

In the particular case sited by the OP, I thought Harvard was a private college. If they dont take federal or state money, do the courts have any jurisdiction?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/richar...osts-and-the-federal-government/#767d20253109

By 2017, however, the federal government has transformed even the Ivy League. Federal research funding is now vitally important. Federal student financial assistance has enabled colleges to raise tuition fees dramatically, as they take advantage of loan and grant programs to extract most of the federal largess for themselves. In an era of relatively high income and estate taxation, tax privileges conferred by the federal government have helped institutions like Harvard build extraordinarily large endowments. So-called private colleges have willingly forfeited some of their independence to federal bureaucrats in order to keep the federal bounty coming.​

 

[fskimospy]

You have a point, but what if the white person has never discriminated against anyone? Is it "fair and equitable" to essentially punish that person to make up for a wrong that someone else has done?

Edit: In the particular case sited by the OP, I thought Harvard was a private college. If they dont take federal or state money, do the courts have any jurisdiction?

Think about it from Harvard’s perspective. You aren’t punishing the white guy, the black person’s accomplishment is just more impressive because he got to the same place while likely overcoming discrimination along the way.

 

[UglyCasanova]

University admissions, especially into an elite institution that basically guarantees your employability for life, are a pretty interesting beast. It's not as cut and dry as you'd think.

One dilemma I've heard about is: If you have one candidate who's got perfect test scores versus a second candidate also with perfect test scores but also volunteered overseas in Africa to teach English, do you simply go with the latter over the former? Obviously, right?

Now let's add a bit more information into the mix: The first candidate comes from a modest fiscal background and worked locally during the summer to help support her parents; the second had wealthy parents and had the ability to take that volunteer post without needing to pitch into their household.

Does that change what decision you make? If you do so, you practically guarantee that the only people admitted to Harvard will be those with already well-to-do backgrounds. How do you institute fairness without going too far? Is it actually silly to pretend that race (because of its correlation with wealth) shouldn't be considered during evaluation?

So take socioeconomic background into account, but leave out skin color. Not every white or Asian person comes from a wealthy household. Account for poverty but skin color should not ever be a deciding factor in anything.

 

[UglyCasanova]

I think the issue is how important are test scores. I hear Harvard gets pretty much everyone who has perfect SAT scores applying and the number of people nationally with perfect scores alone (talk less of almost perfect scores or even just really good scores) is multiples times larger than the class size per year for the university. They can't take them all so if you feel like just because you have a perfect test score you shouds get into harvard, you should get over yourself. That's my position on this lawsuit. It's a bunch of people with good scores who think that makes them entitled to admission to whatever school they want which is stupid.

I’m not a fan of test scores, we don’t want to think our best and brightest are determined by whether they crammed for a single test, it holds too much weight I agree. Point of the article is skin color shouldn’t be used against them.

 

[yllus]

So take socioeconomic background into account, but leave out skin color. Not every white or Asian person comes from a wealthy household. Account for poverty but skin color should not ever be a deciding factor in anything.

Well, hold on, don't declare any "should not ever be"s quite so fast. Let's keep this going as an intellectual exercise. I like to try to find where I'm wrong in my own arguments even when I'm pretty sure I'm right.

I think we'd all agree that Harvard and other institutions should try to judge applicants fairly - or maybe let's say evenly. So that means looking at applicants and account for the positives or negatives they've accumulated along the way.

Now, if you agree that merely being a black man in America makes it harder to succeed than a comparable white man, should you not account for that negative as well? And would you then end up with a policy of affirmative action?

 

[fskimospy]

So take socioeconomic background into account, but leave out skin color. Not every white or Asian person comes from a wealthy household. Account for poverty but skin color should not ever be a deciding factor in anything.

But research shows that skin color matters even after controlling for socioeconomic background. Why should we pretend not to know this?

 

[frozentundra123456]

Think about it from Harvard’s perspective. You aren’t punishing the white guy, the black person’s accomplishment is just more impressive because he got to the same place while likely overcoming discrimination along the way.

Well, it all comes down to "perspective" doesnt it? I am not against remediation for past discrimination, just saying that it is not a simple situation, and will likely be "unfair" to someone no matter what. And just remember that not all white people come from privileged backgrounds either.

 

[UglyCasanova]

Link it.

Our society should not take skin color into account period. Doing so is racist in and of itself. Institutionalized racism like so many on here like to argue. It shouldn’t happen.

 

[fskimospy]

Link it.

Our society should not take skin color into account period. Doing so is racist in and of itself. Institutionalized racism like so many on here like to argue. It shouldn’t happen.

It happens each and every day regardless of if you want it to or not. We can either recognize reality or pretend it doesn’t exist. I choose to live in the real world.

I’m on my phone so I’m not going to go link a bunch of research but I assure you if you google it you will see racial discrimination transcends SES.

 

[fskimospy]

Well, it all comes down to "perspective" doesnt it? I am not against remediation for past discrimination, just saying that it is not a simple situation, and will likely be "unfair" to someone no matter what. And just remember that not all white people come from privileged backgrounds either.

I agree they don’t, but even when white and black people come from similar backgrounds black people often have a significantly harder time.

I just find it to be a waste of time to pretend that racism doesn’t exist for ideological reasons. It does and it’s not wrong for colleges to take that into account.

 

[Jhhnn]

It's probably Trump's revenge for being rejected way back when...

 

[UglyCasanova]

It happens each and every day regardless of if you want it to or not. We can either recognize reality or pretend it doesn’t exist. I choose to live in the real world.

I’m on my phone so I’m not going to go link a bunch of research but I assure you if you google it you will see racial discrimination transcends SES.

I must live in bizarro world because my entire life I’ve grown up with blacks who were on the same playing field as me. I’ve always worked with them, worked for them, friends with them, graduated college together. And then there’s the poor places in town, very poverty stricken black areas and white areas as well. This evening people are discriminated against honestly due to behavior not skin color. A white guy from a trailer park is going to have just as hard of a time finding a decent job as a poor black guy. I think most of y’all live in areas where there aren’t minorities everywhere so you just go by assumptions and stories that you read. Real world is much different.

 

[Sunburn74]

I’m not a fan of test scores, we don’t want to think our best and brightest are determined by whether they crammed for a single test, it holds too much weight I agree. Point of the article is skin color shouldn’t be used against them.

I think the issue from my understanding is that many of these asian candidates have better scores than other candidates of other races but are disproportionately scoring less with personality, creativity, social history and other subjective measures. That seems to be what came out of the discovery of the harvard admissions process.

Nonetheless, I remember reading about this but essentially if test scores were the major defining factor of intelligence and aptitude for harvard then the entire admissions process is a farce because they might as well pick out of a hat since they get so many perfect test scores to begin with, talk less near perfect, and still pretty darn good scores. If test scores are meaningful measures for entry, then honestly Harvard should be more of a lottery system and it would save them and a lot of candidates quite a bit of grief.

I think the argument basically comes down to when it comes to the personality and creativity ratings are Asians actually being discriminated against; I don't think they have a leg to stand on with the test score argument.

 

[fskimospy]

I must live in bizarro world because my entire life I’ve grown up with blacks who were on the same playing field as me. I’ve always worked with them, worked for them, friends with them, graduated college together. And then there’s the poor places in town, very poverty stricken black areas and white areas as well. This evening people are discriminated against honestly due to behavior not skin color. A white guy from a trailer park is going to have just as hard of a time finding a decent job as a poor black guy. I think most of y’all live in areas where there aren’t minorities everywhere so you just go by assumptions and stories that you read. Real world is much different.

Lol, you realize I live in New York, right?