Its pretty close to zero sum.
If Harvard said tomorrow that they would expand their freshman class by 100 students and would reserve those seats for blacks, that would be 100 seats that others would not have access to. As long as only one person can sit in a seat its pretty close to zero sum.
Wait. WHAT!?!?! You think Affirmative Action is being FORCED on white college administrators? They’re the ones trying to protect Affirmative Action!
By being racist against Asians?
So tell me about all the racism we are seeing in the University of California system after they made AA illegal in the UC system. Its been a few decades so the racism has had plenty of time to creep in and yet we see the administrators trying to sneak in AA under various guises on an almost annual basis.
I won’t argue that the people who conceived of and launched affirmative action were doing so for racist/ reverse racist reasons.
But in a practical sense, society is improved by things like this. It saves lives, reduces crime, reduces intolerance, etc.
If the world was left alone, the children of the poor would receive parenting that included mostly poor financial advice (given that their parents are poor), they would go to the worst schools, all of their friends would be the poorest kids, all of the contacts and connections that they would have would be only for the worst jobs. Kids who grow up believing that they have no real prospects in life tend to exhibit fatalist behavior, engage in crime, and create poor babies out of sheer boredom and nihilism.
On the whole, no good comes of this.
Contrariwise, if you level the playing field for everyone, e.g. create a true socialist state, then you end up with everyone being poor, except those who embrace an economy of “favors” and “fixing”.
But, between those two lines in the sand, you gas free the opportunity to retain value in working hard and honestly, while giving opportunities to those who otherwise wouldn’t have any.
That all said, the sort of thing I’m talking about shouldn’t be linked to race, but it probably serves as some form of proxy.
Here is a thought experiment:
If we said:
“instead of this 1.5 trillion dollar tax cut, we are going to put this race thing to bed once and for all and put the 1.5 trillion in a pool and to be shared equally by anyone that is entitled to a share”
Would we put recent Nigerian immigrants in that pool and say “well they were subject to racism too by virtue of the color of their skin so…” Probably not. it is only because there is no actual cost (from the perspective of those in favor of AA) to letting in the Nigerian immigrant.
Would we let Hispanics into the pool? Probably not.
Would we let the wealthy descendants of slaves with 100% slave ancestry into the pool? Probably so? I mean why wouldn’t you. This is reparations not needs tested welfare.
So why does AA apply to all these people? Because the proponents of AA think its costing them nothing, but in fact it is. Those Hispanics and Nigerian immigrants are taking a portion of a pool of benefit that should be reserved for the descendants of slaves.
Anything else is merely a melanin test for admissions.
Asians generally have to be better applicants than white applicants to get in. Some people think that there is basically a cap on Asian admissions and Asians compete among themselves for those 20% seats. Whites don’t have to compete against Asians.
I think your instinct is correct. A cap is not affected by the removal of a preference somewhere else. The cap on Jews at Harvard in the early 1900s would not have changed a whit if Harvard decided to give blacks a preference.
The SAT gap between Asians and whites is about 140 points on the SATS and the gap between Asians and blacks is something like 450 points on the SATs. That’s pretty significant.
So a bunch of old white guys got together and figured out how to construct a test to help out Asians? Teachers (who are mostly not Asian) are giving Asians a preference? What advantages do Asians have over whites that justifies the gap?
“Best candidate” is subjective.
I find the whole thing makes a lot more sense if you take a step back.
Given that there is no inherent reason why people of difference races should be of different intelligence, a fair, non-racist system should wind up with a student population that roughly the same as the population at large. If it there is a large difference, then racism must be at play.
The entire concept here comes from assuming that the Asian students are inherently smarter and should wind up with higher percentages. But that’s the same racist idea as assuming that black people are inherently dumber and should take up a lower percentage.
Quotas are bad because they don’t allow for natural variation across the various schools. But trying to roughly balance it out to the population is the only way to remove the racism that created the disparity in the first place.
As long as AA is geared towards trying to match the population, the no one is being discriminated against. Only if they try to change it are they engaging in racism.
Call it “reverse racism” if you want. That just means it’s correcting an imbalance already in the system. It is reversing racism to create egalitarianism.
It seems as if you’ve stepped so far back that you are unable to see the situation clearly. There is no “assumption” that Asians are inherently smarter, there is clearly demonstrated academic performance.
You don’t have to go back very far in US history to see a time when mainstream attitudes towards Asians clearly assumed that they were interior to white people, nobody woke up one day and started making these assumptions about Asians.
This is where your assumption is off. There are numerous factors that go into who-gets-into-Ivy-League-and-who-does-not, and intelligence is only one of them. Other such things as culture, focus on academics, parenting, etc. play a huge role as well.
Then how do you explain that Asians currently* are indeed* represented in elite universities as a much higher percentage, relative to their percentage of the general population, per capita, than black students? Did school administrators say, “We want more Asians and fewer blacks?”
And then how do you explain that Asians also have to score much higher than black people on the SAT to stand the same chance of admission?
Finally, how do you explain higher Asian performance on the SAT than those of African-Americans? Are SAT officials purposefully doctoring all the score results to favor Asians?
Only to a point. Harvard’s non-profit status depends on it being an educational institution rather than a social experiment. Academics are supposed to be the focus of its mission.
But maybe I’m missing something.
How do you explain the fact that the asian population at top schools has remained pretty steady over the last 30 years while the Asian population in the general populace as increased 4 times over.
Given that there is no reason why people of different races should be of different athletic ability, a fair, non-racist system should wind up with professional athletes with a player profile that roughly approximates the general population. if there is a difference, then racism must be at play.
Oh wait. We only apply this sort of faulty logic when the discrimination is against Asians.
So who are the racists that are trying to squeeze more Asians into the ivy league? Where are these evil old white men? Or has America’s institutions been taken over by Asians?
How do you explain the fact that the number of Asians attending many top universities has remained relatively flat over the last 30 years but the Asian population has increased several times over in that same period?
So I understand the notion that racists might assume that blacks are dumb. 400 years of death penalty for learning how to read would hamper literacy. But which racists are assuming that Asians are smarter? Why would a bunch of racists set up Asians to be smarter than whites?
Quotas aren’t just bad, they are unconstitutional. It seems like you are conflating affirmative action and caps on Asians. Why were caps on Jews in the Ivy Leagues so universally accepted as wrong by the left, but caps on Asians are just a necessary evil in the pursuit of racial justice (because the racists in charge are trying their darndest to help the Asians get into good schools.
Wait, so you think that denying better applicants in order to achieve racial parity is not discrimination based on race? Its almost a textbook example of discrimination based on race.
So in what way are Asians benefiting from racism? I’m still trying to figure out why all these white racist institutions are trying so hard to elevate Asians above whites.
I think his point is that none of this NONE of it should play a role because if the world were REALLY fair, then there would be proportionate racial representation at these schools.
Heck, if the world were really fair, 80% of Americans would be living on less than $10/day.
Whites are underrepresented at a lot of these schools. So the another question is whether school administrators said “we want more Asians and fewer whites”
This one’s easy. Racism against blacks. And the system is rigged in favor of Asians because all those racists that control these majority white institutions are secretly rooting for those immigrant Asian kids.
No, they are engineering the test to help out Asians. I believe they make you fill out the scan tron by holding your number 2 pencil with chopsticks.
I don’t see anything in the Internal Revenue Code that suggests their 501(c)(3) status is in jeopardy due to their decisions about who the best candidates are passing your undefined “point”. Perhaps you could point us to it.
How do you explain it?
I find it disturbing how many posters immediately react to any discussion of discrimination against Asians as an attack on Affirmative Action and are eager to throw Asians under the bus.
I’m sorry that high Asian achievement has become an inconvenient fact in the argument for Affirmative Action but discrimination against Asians is not a necessary pre-condition for Affirmative Action. You can in fact eliminate discrimination against Asians while maintaining Affirmative Action. Blacks and Hispanics get about 20% of the seats at top schools. I think most Asians would be OK with getting a fair shot at the other 80% of seats but they don’t get that.
On Affirmative Action. The average Asian admit has to score at the 99th percentile while black and hispanic students have to score in the 60th to 75th percentile for the same chance of admission. Now of course there are differences in background and stellar score form an upper middle class Asian kid isn’t as impressive as a stellar score from a poor black kid but go to these schools and take a look at the socioeconomic background of the black students being admitted. If you think the blacks being admitted are all the descendants of slaves that grew up in violent inner city environments then you’ve got another think coming.
Sure it s the part that says it has to be an educational institution rather than a social experiment. Just like a church is supposed to be a religious institution rather than a political action committee. They may get away with it, possibly forever, but that is not their charitable purpose.
I thought I was pretty clear. These school have a de facto cap on how many Asians they accept. How do YOU explain it? This is like the 5th time I am asking this question in this thread and the answer seems to be a wall of silence.
If all races have the exact same intelligence then differences in academic achievement are the results of effort or bias. Since there is no reason white males would purposely set up a system that advantages asians and females over white males, bias is unlikely to be the reason. Thus the more likely reason is effort. Studiesshow that on average asian students do 63.5% more homework than black students. Why should schools give preference toward the lazy or the unmotivated?