To even be realistically considered for admission to Harvard, you need to be among the elite. Regardless of race. Our society is not really a meritocracy : the majority of all citizens of America, regardless of race, do not get to go to top notch high schools. They do not get private tutoring for the SATs. They do not have parents who both have IQs above average and thus do not start with a huge advantage right from birth.
And this is true for black applicants the same as white applicants the same as asian applicants. Only the best of the best realistically get considered at all.
SO…if the only black folks actually being considered were born with the richest parents, the best genes, and got to go to the best schools…ditto for the other races…what “wrong” is being rectified with affirmative action? Most people of most races are generally being screwed over most of the time. That’s how American society currently works. It’s only a weak meritocracy. The black folks who are being discriminated against to this day, or still suffering the harms from slavery, don’t get considered for Harvard. Other black applicants are going to be accepted over them.
Why don’t they just make it a pure merit based system. If that means the student body is 80% asian, 20% white folk, and 1 black guy, so what? That must have been the best group the school could find. Anything else should be illegal.
Well, yes. Asians are already represented in large disproportion to their population. Latinos are not. Therefore it makes sense to make efforts to increase the proportion of Latinos and decrease the portion of Asians, if you believe in some degree of demographic parity. I realize that you don’t.
Smart people are represented in large disproportion to their population at these schools. Why isn’t there an effort to increase the number of dumb people? Because I guarantee you that everyone that graduates from these schools is going to have to deal with dumb people most days for the rest of their lives. Why is racial diversity in and of itself an important enough factor to override merit?
Why does it make sense to decrease the number of Asians?
Because people identify strongly as members of ethnic groups and seeing enough “people like me” in top schools is a good way to get all ethnic groups to stay invested in / loyal to the American political project?
I actually disagree with the Anglo-American model of elite education in general, as it merely serves to reproduce privilege (I’d rather the entire academic landscape be dominated by public universities as it is in most other countries), but this is a separate discussion from affirmative action so let’s not take it further afield.
That’s a good argument but it only has limited utility and has nothing to do with proportional representation of racial groups. If a school is 60% white, 30% Asian, 5% black, and 5% Hispanic, it’s way out of wack proportionally but is definitely diverse as far as people of any race being able to go there and see people who look like them.
The other weakness in the argument is how much race matters. It seems to matter a great deal to whites and blacks and much of our racial policies seem to be built around the sensibilities of these two groups, who seem to place high value on skin color. But in my experience, Asians, Latinos, Arabs, Africans, Caribbean peoples, and Pacific Islanders are far more likely to care about cultural compatibility than skin color. And many of these people will find that although schools have plenty of people who look similar to them, ,they don’t really have that much in common. And they probably wonder why stupid Americans care so much about skin tone, while a Haitian kid is being told, “Oh, we have so many of your people here for you to associate with”. Then supposedly educated administrators scratch their heads at why this one black kid is always hanging out with the Canadians.
Wouldn’t the knowledge that “people like me” are being discriminated against at top schools cause ethnic groups to be less loyal to the American political project?
And what of the Asians who see “people like me being discriminated against”?
The American political project includes the concepts of fairness and meritocracy as well. Its hard to see how making people feel better about themselves because people of their race are getting into good schools based on a racial quota system should trump merit.
Why does it make sense to cap the number of Asians? Or is that just a side effect of making the colleges look more representative of the population in general?
I am not familiar with every school system in the world but AFAICT many of the school systems with public education seem to have elite schools as well. I mean there are elite state schools in this country too.
What helps reproduce privilege in the US is legacy preferences, non-scholarship athletic recruiting, and to some extent AA.
AFAICT, Every top school in every country in the world has a disproportionately low percentage of kids form really poor families.
Seoul University is undoubtedly the top school in Korea and it is notoriously hard to get in there without merit. And you will find many more children of professionals than children of day manual laborers even though there are many more of the second than the first.
The goal is making colleges more representative (not necessarily perfectly representative, but let’s say for example that each ethnic group should be entitled to 75-125% of its share of the college age population). Which groups are helped or hurt would be a side effect.
Nah, this is how it is everywhere, in school and in life. Americans are obsessed with skin tone. Most foreigners are more interested in culture and language. A Haitian kid will feel more comfortable with Canadians, especially Quebecois, than with African-American kids. A Japanese kid will be more likely to hang out with kids of any race who share whatever his interests are, rather than hang out with Chinese and Korean kids just because they sorta look like him. Arab Muslims may prefer to hang out with African-American Muslims rather than Arab Christians. And if a minority student is a REALLY small minority such that few or none of his people are at the school, then he’s not going to just go find the people who share his skin tone. He’s going to look for people who share his interests. This is apparently too complicated for college administrators to get, or it could be that they do understand this and just want to look like they are on the side of the angels to other right-thinking people. “What, most of our black students aren’t African-Americans from modest backgrounds, but actually mostly Africans and Caribbeans or well off African-Americans? Eh, doesn’t matter, they have dark skin, we’re such great people.”
I’m not really sure you are defending this particular position but why is proportional representation at top schools a more important goal than merit and fairness?
I didn’t say it was more important, I said it was of comparable importance, so we need to trade different goals off against each other.
As for fairness I think fairness to groups is as important as fairness to individuals. Your point about merit is more interesting, but I don’t think it does all the work you want it too. Let’s take my field for example. I’m a biologist. There are more highly trained and qualified biologists out there than there are (say) tenure-track jobs at universities, or jobs at research institutes, which means that if we were to give hiring preferences to Black biologists, we wouldn’t be rewarding people who don’t ‘deserve’ their jobs, we would be selecting a small subset of deserving people (based on race) out of the larger group of deserving and qualified candidates.
The only way to be fair to a group is to be fair to the people in the group. If every biologist is equal than it would be fair to hire them randomly. I don’t see any reason to assume that every biologist is equal since human beings differ in their skills and qualifications in every other area of life.
Is anyone arguing that universities are actually using Asian quotas?
Is anyone arguing that universities aren’t basing their admissions primarily on socioeconomic factors?
Because the reporting I’ve seen merely say that the average scores for Asian applicants are higher than the general average while the average for African Americans is lower. This could just be because there are many more African Americans from poor and shitty backgrounds which make up for their low test scores while more Asians come from more priviledged backgrounds.
OK so explain how it is of even comparable importance? What benefit is there to admitting less qualified whites and Hispanics over more qualified Asians that overcomes fairness and merit?
I’m fine with quotas for blacks and American Indians so can we try to focus on whites and Hispanics? Tell me why Hispanics and whites deserve those jobs over better qualified Asians if Hispanics are a standard deviation below the average of all biologists? You still haven’t made the argument that diversity for diversity’s sake is a worthy enough goal to cap Asian admission.
When you cap the number of Asian biologists, those jobs don’t go to the blacks and American Indians. We effectively have quotas and carveouts for them, they’re not competing for the same spots as Asians. When we cap Asians we are making room for other applicants who DON’T have carveouts and quotas set aside for them. AKA whites. What is the rationale?