Slashdot Mirror
Harvard Hit With Racial Bias Complaint
An anonymous reader writes: A coalition of 64 organizations filed a complaint against Harvard on Friday alleging the university discriminates against Asian-American applicants hoping to attend classes there. "Many studies have indicated that Harvard University has been engaged in systemic and continuous discrimination against Asian-Americans during its very subjective 'Holistic' college admissions process." One such study shows Asian-Americans had to score an average of 140 points higher than white students on their SAT test to have an equal chance of getting in. The complaint seeks a federal investigation and demands Harvard "immediately cease and desist from using stereotypes, racial biases and other discriminatory means in evaluating Asian-American applicants."
Suit yourself, it'll be 95% Asian / 4.9% Caucasian in no time. Then it'll be the Whites crying discrimination.
Back when Kennedy coined the term "affirmative action", he was directing federal agencies to take "affirmative action to ensure that race is not a factor" in hiring decisions.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
According to Hillel (http://www.hillel.org), Jews are 25% of the undergrads, and 63% of graduate students.
It's not whites crowding out qualified Asian-Americans, it's Jews.
And that has what to do with discrimination against Asian Americans?
Affirmative action is what t says it is; instead of passively assuming that civil rights makes people equal overnight, there needed to be an active response to try and make things equal.
Meanwhile, those of us who came of age having nothing whatsoever to do with slavery or Jim Crow are disadvantaged because of the crimes of yesteryear. Corruption of blood is antithetical to American values. So is ignoring both the letter and spirit of the Equal Protection Clause. The only people who advocate in favor of Affirmative Action are those that believe the "original sin" is being born with a low melanin count.
Don't give a shit about the melanin count. It's actually illegal to give a shit about melanin count in a quantifiable sense.
Do give a shit that folks like Mitt Romney can arrange it so their kids maximize their SAT scores and GPAs, while using their superior knowledge of the college admissions process to ensure that when their kid spends a couple months obsessed with silly-ass hobby it's something that colleges give points for (ie: computer programming) rather then something they consider more suited to the hoi polloi (ie: learning to be a car mechanic).
Most Affirmative Action programs that have survived the court system look at the "whole student," so that a kid from a school system that has no AP classes doesn't get penalized for not having those classes, particularly compared to the kid whose Mom got them above 4.0 by refusing to let little Timmy take anything but the 5 AP classes offered his senior year. They look at the numbers, but they are allowed to consider the fact that, yes, little Timmy has GPA and test scores in the top 4%, but compared to his actual peers at $50k a year Prep Schools he's more like 12th percentile. OTOH Billy Bob from West Virginia was top in his class, spent time doing things that look shitty on a college resume (like hunting and car races), and he still got a test score in the top 5%.
Billy Bob could be taught to be the smartest man in the country. Timmy from Prep School is gonna be lucky if he turns into Dubya.
By the by, since TFA is about Asian-Americans, perhaps you'd care to explain why that group has done so well for itself? They were rounded up and put into camps within recent memory, to say nothing of the racially biased immigration laws of the late 19th/early 20th centuries, or the more subtle racism directed towards their group even into modern times.
Here's another inconvenient truth for you: The biggest predictor of success in life isn't how much money your family has or what your melanin count is. It's whether or not you come from a two parent household. That Tea Party zealot known as Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed this out decades ago but was completely ignored by the policymakers of the day. Government can't compel people to stay in relationships (nor should it try) but it could provide mechanisms to remove some of the stresses of American society on families.
The problem with that is that nobody wants to marry a working class guy with a part-time gig in retail, but nobody wants to give working-class guys without a very nice degree and some good networking skills any other type of job.
If they try to get ahead by getting that college education, some Tiger Mother will notice their mother didn't make their applications 100% perfect, and sue the school for racial discrimination because the white/asian-types who have perfect apps are racially different then the black-Latin-white types who make up the working class.
Note that the obvious solution (having Harvard accept lots more kids) is untenable because part of the USNews college ranking formula is how many kids they say no to.
We could start with a decent family leave system (something half as good as the Nordic Countries and/or Canada) that would actually enable both parents
My sister worked in Ivy undergrad admissions. She actually tells a story of how an Asian father called her asking WHY they let his son in - his grades and test scores weren't perfect. Her answer was- because he actually played sports, had hobbies, and joined clubs that weren't just resume builders... the kid was interesting.
They actually had a name for this: "atypical asian"