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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."
Isn't racial discrimination the definition of affirmative action? I'm not sure what makes them think they have any actionable complaints against the university.
The corner of a round room
"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.""
OR... we could just evaluate students on their merits, rather than their skin color. Remove the race/ethnicity indicators from the application forms altogether and don't make them a factor during interviews.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
I'm 100% against using race or gender as a first pass system for sorting HOWEVER, it's a private school, they can accept who ever they want to. If the government was flipping the bill for post secondary education then the story would be different but the second you are funded by the students, then you can the decision about which students you want to let in . If you really want to fix this issue, you need to conceil the identity of the student down to a numeric identifier.
He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.
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I'm just trying to keep track since first they weren't white, then they were white when everyone wanted to attack the tech industry and particularly google for being "too white", and now apparently they're not white again. Is there a newsletter I can subscribe to? Maybe a calendar or twitter feed that keeps us all up to date on who's "white" or not today?
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
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.
Someone is about to learn about Simpson's paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
Yes, it's news. Yes, it's probably important. But WHY IN THE HELL is it on Slashdot? It's crap like this that keep my away.
If there are racist recruiters, there should be little difficulty tracking them down and firing them.
However, if there is racism, it is presumably systemic bias that is inadvertent and unconscious and there is no single person who is actually acting in a prejudiced way. Telling them 'cease and desist' is ineffective.
It's quite conceivable that there is discrimination that is not based on race but only loosely correlated with it, perhaps actually due to income, culture, or command of English, which might or might not be part of a legitimate application process.
Hopefully Harvard has a few people with knowledge of statistics to figure it out.
and damned if you don't There are only so many seats. They either try to distribute those as evenly as they can ( affirmative action ), or they fill it up with just the best candidates ( read that, test scores ) where they later catch nothing but hell because their student population isn't diverse enough. :|
So they get hit with discrimination claims either way. Just from different groups.
What this really shows is that not all colleges are equal. A Law degree from X is not the same as a Law degree from Y.
So the folks complaining about discrimination are themselves enabling it, just later on down the road.
In case I lost you with that last sentence here's how I explain it.
Folks go to the Ivy League schools why ?
Because they know top tier employers will choose students from those schools over other qualified candidates who didn't go to an Ivy League school.
Two perfect candidates for the job, one with Ivy League credentials, one without. Who do you think will get picked up ? :|
( and everyone knows it, thus the competition to get in )
While not race based, it's still discrimination based on school reputation. Were all schools funded and staffed equally, this becomes a non-issue.
The complaint is on behalf of Asian-Americans, that is American citizens of asian race or ethnicity.
If the 1500 children of mainland Chinese billionaires are actually American citizens, they should not be discriminated against.
...One Wednesday last July, and I noticed something: a large percentage of the people on campus were Asian. I have no idea which were students and which were just other visitors, but on that day at least the campus teemed with Asians, many in large groups.
Social justice warriors, go ahead and hate white people and all that "colonialist," "imperialist" civilization has wrought. I saw our worthy successors that day in Cambridge, and when you try to take them on you will wish you still had our compliant legal system to use as your playground. Asians will build their bullet trains and their giant telescopes wherever they want to, totally ignoring whatever standards of political correctness you have been used to imposing on everyone else. Long may they rule.
That's what this is really all about, isn't it? That Latinos and Blacks should be present in higher numbers for social equality reasons?
Everyone deserves an equal chance, but it happens that the Asian culture highly values education and family, and instills those values (Jewish culture is similar). It seems to work.
If Latinos and Blacks grow up in a culture that values these things to a lesser degree, they start off with a disadvantage. But giving them a free boost (artificially lowered admission standards via preference or however) doesn't seem right either (matter of opinion, that's my opinion), but more importantly, I don't think it's sustainable.
So what's the answer? I think as usual it's to work on the root cause. Make sure kids aren't disadvantaged by accident of birth. Now, that's a lofty aspiration, and very hard to accomplish. But in the end I think it's the only real and lasting answer.
Side note: I'm an MIT alum, graduated way back in 1970. At the time, MIT was trying to attract Black students who they thought could succeed. One of the administration's ideas was to guarantee a four-year full scholarship to such Black students.
Do you know who opposed that policy? The Black Student Union! The BSU said that help for the first year was a good thing, for the student to get started, but guaranteed help for four years sends the message that the Black student can't make it on his/her own, while other students can. My respect for the BSU was really, really high. They were straight shooters.
*All* Asians make up ~5.6% of the population of the United States, but they make up 20% of those admitted to Harvard. Discrimination?! https://college.harvard.edu/ad... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
I'm just floating a theory here, so please don't pounce all over me.
For hundreds of years, getting into the better jobs meant passing written exams in China. Thus, the population may have been genetically filtered (bred) to be better test takers.
Table-ized A.I.
I don't get why people are basically saying 'fuck you, tough shit'.
These are kids who worked their asses off to get into college and have to OUTPERFORM peers to to get into the same schools. This is not the case of an under qualified or underachieving person getting in simply because of their race (which I never liked), but getting pushed out even though THEY'RE BETTER CANDIDATES because of their race.
How does anyone think this is fair or just? Jesuz fuck people, imagine if that was your kid....
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
Like when peaceful white protesters have had dogs and fire hoses set on them by all black police departments? When white families were denied access to housing in black neighborhoods? When job applicants were looked over simply because they had a white sounding name? When white kids were more likely to be suspended or expelled from school for the same offenses as black kids? When black felons were more likely to get a job offer than a white person with a clean record? How about when whites were directed toward subprime mortgages while black counterparts at the same credit rating were given better interest rates? When whites were given the death penalty at higher rates than blacks for the same offense? When white jail time in general was longer than blacks for the same offense? When unarmed, non-resisting whites are much more likely to be killed by police than blacks? You mean when whites are referred to as "thugs" in the media when black folks aren't?
You must mean that "reverse racism" since that has been the racism that black folks have been living through, but in reverse.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
If only there was some sort of test that people could take to unearth their biases...
Oh, here are some! https://implicit.harvard.edu/i...