There seems to me to be overwhelming evidence, despite the smokescreen admissions boards try to kick up by vague assertions and consistent refusal to release statistics, that the current affirmative action policies discriminate against Asians. Not only have studies consistently shown that Asians are held to higher test-score standards, the surge in Asian admissions once states such as California remove such policies (statistics in article) eloquently demonstrate that fact.
Unfortunately, despite the example of Mr. Li, it seems that most Asians lack the political will or leverage to change these policies; only by the mainstream push against these policies (re: Michigan) will this practice be reversed.
While it’s true that “players accepted into Barça Basket are taller than players accepted into Barça Soccer”, well, hell, the tall guys go to the basket tryouts!
PS: I went to graduate school in the States. In my program, GRE’s for foreigners accepted were over 150 points higher than for citizens accepted. GREs for foreigners rejected were higher than for citizens accepted. But you see: only one citizen had asked for admission and, due to the presence of a quota for citizens, she had no competition. We compited all right - but “foreigners” and “citizens” were two separate pools of applicants. In the case listed in the OP, I’m not sure whether there were two separate pools or simply a gap between two groups of the same pool.
Nava, in your example Spaniards and non-Spaniards (or EU and non-EU) are two distinct groups. In the USA this was all Americans, with different ethnic backgrounds. Some people here believe that all admissions should be blind to factors such as ethnicity, while others believe that some ethnic groups should get a preferred status because of socio-economic hardships. The problem becomes when an ethnic group gets penalised for doing too well.
Americans and non-Americans. What I was saying is,
if “all foreigners” run separate from “all Americans”, with a quota for one of the two groups (in my example, Americans had a quota which never got filled for lack of applicants), you’re discriminating.
If there had been no foreign rejects with GREs between those of the foreigner accepteds and that of the American, then there would have been no discrimination… even though we would still have had a bunch of foreigners with high GREs and a single American with a much lower GRE (and an unfilled quota). She would have been the next-best applicant to all of us and the “GRE hole” would have been coincidence, not discrimination.
So without knowing the GPAs/SATs/whatever of the rejects for the groups listed in the OP, we can’t know whether the Asians are being discriminated against. There could be a bunch of Asians who happen to be the top applicants, then a group of middle applicants who are of other extracionts, and either no more Asians or some Asians in the lower end of the applicants.
Is the intention to hold down the numbers of Asians? Almost certainly not. Whereas, once upon a time, elite colleges definitely put obstacles in the way of Jewish applicants, simply because on anti-Jewish prejudice, I’d be astonished if admissions officers today were thinking, “We gotta keep out the #%^ CHinese!”
But at some schools, the net result of admissions policies amounts to the same thing.
There are some schools where black applicants are compared only to other black applicants, whites only to other whites, and Asians to other Asians, largely as a way of achieving a proper ethnic diversity.
Suppose you went to an admissions officer at an elite college and described a hypothetical applicant. “He goes to a mid-level urban high school. He had a A- average, and an SAT score of 1200. What are his chances of acceptance?”
The likely answer would be, “It depends on his ethnicity. If he’s black, yes, he’s in. If he’s white… close call. Probably not, but he might make it onto the waiting list. What, he’s Chinese? Sorry, no chance. There are just too many Asian applicants with stronger numbers.”
What if he didn’t put his race down? What if he only selected “African-American” because he’s American but had African ancestors (500K yrs ago)? AFAIK no college requires students to state their race or ethnicity on the application.
Um…yeah. “Don’t blame the protected minorities, blame whites!” From something called “Diversity Online”, no less. Well let’s see…
Right…which is why pretty much all court cases against Affirmative Action are spearheaded by whites, right? The very fact of the claim in the OP shows that Asians too feel that they are being shafted; they are not simply puppets of Whitey as the article would claim. Essentially the whole article is trying to poison the well of anti-AA sentiment, with absolutely no support for their claims.
Let’s leave aside that opposing AA is now immediately equivalent to “opposing Blacks and Latinos”, conveniently ignoring many representatives of those groups that are also opposed to AA. Why shouldn’t Asians be against a system that unfairly penalizes them and distributes the benefits elsewhere?
But to get to the real crux of the article, which is that since Asians are held to a higher standard than white applicants, affirmative action doesn’t hurt them. That is not only a laughable display of illogic, it overlooks the fact that that discrimination is a result of affirmative action. Affirmative action does not say “let’s give a nice boost to all minorities”, it’s “let’s boost those who fall below standards.” Well, it should be clear that since Asians fall above standards, they would be penalized by that system relative to other groups, including, no matter how you choose to look at it (whites getting a bonus for underperforming, or Asians getting penalized for overperforming). That article’s arguments are without merit.