That’s my point. **Yogsosoth **is arguing that AA helped Asians in the past, but I think many of them got in on merit.
Why are whites the only ones? If Harvard went down the same path as the UC system - I would expect whites to break even, Asians to come out ahead, and other minorities to be the losers.
Unless they have a white mother who has worked outside of the home.
Because we’re talking about the specific policies at Harvard which penalize Asian applicants in order to preserve spots for white ones, not about ending affirmative action for blacks there.
Wrong. As I cited already (and will repeat below) minority students were not “losers” in the UC case:
A powerful example of these problems comes from UCLA, an elite school that used large racial preferences until the Proposition 209 ban took effect in 1998. The anticipated, devastating effects of the ban on preferences at UCLA and Berkeley on minorities were among the chief exhibits of those who attacked Prop 209 as a racist measure. Many predicted that over time blacks and Hispanics would virtually disappear from the UCLA campus.
…
Throughout these crises, university administrators constantly fed agitation against the preference ban by emphasizing the drop in undergraduate minority admissions. Never did the university point out one overwhelming fact: The total number of black and Hispanic students receiving bachelor’s degrees were the same for the five classes after Prop 209 as for the five classes before.
How was this possible? First, the ban on preferences produced better-matched students at UCLA, students who were more likely to graduate. The black four-year graduation rate at UCLA doubled from the early 1990s to the years after Prop 209.
Second, strong black and Hispanic students accepted UCLA offers of admission at much higher rates after the preferences ban went into effect; their choices seem to suggest that they were eager to attend a school where the stigma of a preference could not be attached to them. This mitigated the drop in enrollment.
Third, many minority students who would have been admitted to UCLA with weak qualifications before Prop 209 were admitted to less elite schools instead; those who proved their academic mettle were able to transfer up to UCLA and graduate there.
It’s already been suggested that numbers be assigned. It’s a simple process to list the metrics used for acceptance ahead of time and choose the highest rated applicant who meets the criteria.
“Holistic” is just another word for discrimination.
You seem to think that wholistic admissions treats students from non-affluent backgrounds well. I don’t:
As for SAT prep, I wish it didn’t exist, but I don’t think it is as big a barrier as you seem to think:
Most of the prep factor could and should be remedied by giving a plus factor to high scores and advanced placement earned by a students at high schools where scores tend to be low. This might seem an unrealistic option today. But if, by some chance, the Asian Americans won, Harvard administrators would have to find a race-neutral way to express their egalitarian impulses. And I think they are smart enough to do it.
The same is true of “holistic,” though. Virtually anything can be concealed behind “holistic.”
They *can *always find a way discriminate. But they shouldn’t.
Prove that is to preserve slots for white students. Maybe Harvard gives those slots to Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans. Or maybe they save it those slots for Catholics and Jews, and instead keep out the WASPs like the Supreme Court.
Yes, the ones who got in graduated, maintaining an equivalent graduation rate, and you and others can claim that is better. I might even agree with you.
But it is also a fact that fewer applicants from the those groups (Black, Latino, Native American) were admitted, and those now open admission slots went to Asian candidates.
Right, but the point being, as in your other example of a particular subset of Asians getting assistance, the purpose of that kind of aid and of affirmative action specifically is to help the disadvantaged, particularly those disadvantaged because of a history of egregious injustices. It’s assuredly not the purpose of AA to “help” those who are spectacularly successful at aggressively looking after themselves, get the highest test scores, and are over-represented in the top elite schools.
The article you linked contained an interesting link to a different article on the subject of why color-blind/racially-blind admissions policy is a terrible idea, specifically with regard to Asians, and written, incidentally, by an Asian. It makes three main points that I’ll paraphrase loosely:
- Merit is a lot more than just a number. [I feel like I must have said this at least half a dozen times by now!]
- Diversity isn’t just a nicety, it’s a compelling national interest.
- Instead of arguing about how to tweak the admissions proportions of the very limited capacities of the top colleges – a zero-sum game in which some group loses for every group that wins – we should be talking about maximizing opportunities for all.
Harvard already sets aside spots for any black student who can demonstrate some preparedness for college. The people competing for the last spots in are Asians with qualifications X and whites with qualifications X * .9. Plus, of course, legacy admissions are overwhelmingly white.
The reality of the system as well as the purpose of it (to give white people from rich families more reason to donate money to Harvard) is that this is giving spots that would go to Asians under an objective system to less qualified whites.
Harvard could end the Asian quota without altering the affirmative action system for blacks, if they wanted. Pretending that it’s impossible to end the anti-Asian quota without harming blacks is a smokescreen designed to spuriously turn the obvious white supremacy of the quota supporters back on the people saying that there should not be a white supremacist system.
More saliently, written by a professional Democratic Party operative.
When the formula for “merit” is adjusted on a yearly basis until it comes out with “less Jews” or “less Asians,” then merit is far less than a number, it’s a joke. That is what Harvard does. They do not have some grand vision of the well-rounded student that transcends test scores, they just have a goal – keep Harvard white – and a bunch of bumper stickers designed to give people who support this goal the thinnest pretext of not being racists.
Not really, no.
The end of affirmative action in California maximized opportunities for all. But in any case, this is an irrelevant point – Harvard can’t plead “why are we talking about Harvard” in response to being sued. In a lawsuit, or thread, specifically about Harvard, we can and will talk about “the admissions proportions of the very limited capacities of the top colleges.”
Please. It has been whites against AA for years, because they felt that undeserving blacks and latinos were getting their slots.
- Bakke vs. the University of California - white plaintiff
- Hopwood vs. Texas - white plaintiff
- Gratz v Bollinger - white plaintiffs (in Michigan)
This is the same song, different plaintiffs. As California showed - drop race, and watch Asian admissions increase, white admissions stay steady, and black and latino admissions drop.
I am reposting this as it was so roundly ignored. AAA at A-level means that students took 3 advanced level tests, essentially the qualifying tests for the U.K. college system, and scored top levels on all of the three they took.
Does Cambridge have a de facto quota? Do they discriminate against Asian students?
Asians “have to” get higher scores than anyone else to get in – check.
Harvard has an Asian quota – check.
Harvard is run by white supremacists – check.
Congratulations on hitting the trifecta in a single post! 
It does seem that white people such as myself are frequently irked that Affirmative Action seems to be targeted at everyone but us, to the apparent disregard of how many of my own ancestors have suffered over the centuries in various places. Many of them had it so bad that they decided that traveling thousands of miles to a place called “America” sounded like a good idea.
In other words, “diversity” ends up meaning “people other than you, because white men can’t possibly be diverse in any way, even if they have an interesting and probably true story about how their great-great-grandma ran away from an orphanage in Cork during the middle of the Irish Famine, was kidnapped in Dublin and forced to work ten years as a servant for some rich English merchant, finally escaped by sneaking onto a boat to Philadelphia, but fell overboard during the voyage and washed ashore in Virginia Beach, where she was anally raped by a gang of French-Canadian sailors over a period of two or three weeks until she was rescued by my great-great-grandpa wielding an early 19th century musket and a quarterstaff.”*.
*No, I made up that story. But I’m sure that plenty of ordinary white people today have that kind of adventure in their ancestry, somewhere.
Quite interesting. Thanks.
It’s obviously run by white supremacists.
OK. In this case, it’s Asians suing Harvard because Harvard has a pro-white, anti-Asian quota. I guess you can keep pretending this isn’t the case even to the point of denying who filed the lawsuit. I literally can’t stop you.