Yea, but the point is that its not necessarily causal. It would be like looking at people who died of cancer and determining weight-loss as one the best correlated culprits to ID it. It would probably catch a ton of people who were really sick, but it seems to ignore some of the deeper casualties.

The white thing certainly is problematic culturally, but it's not REALLY the problem its more of a symptom of previous power choosing future power.

I agree with you, overall. So why dance around it? In this country (the US), white people by law got to win more often than others. In India and China and other places other rules were in place. Every place has its rules, and in most, as you put it, previous power chooses future power. With our weird "one drop" laws in the US affecting everything from voting to banking access to property rights to mortgage rates to schooling, race and ancestry are inextricably tied to that in the US. Ruby Bridges only had her 65th birthday this Sept 8. She's younger than my parents.

I think it is utterly fascinating to watch the world change and watch morals and mores change, but still see power reconfiguring, like mercury falling into a groove, to maintain power and bend law to its service! And the naive/idealistic among us say oh, we'd never do things like our ignorant and unenlightened ancestors. We don't see race. We don't see color. We're a pure meritocracy, with advancement ruled only by your access to the best schools ;)

Except in the US, in spite of the historically large majority white demographic makeup of the country, we have done more to be welcoming to other groups in recent history than virtually any other country on Earth. Look at a chart listing salary in America by country of origin. That chart tells the story of a country that gives people from all over the world opportunity to succeed.

> I think it is utterly fascinating to watch the world change and watch morals and mores change, but still see power reconfiguring, like mercury falling into a groove, to maintain power and bend law to its service!

Absolutely beautifully put.

So ... what do you want? To re-initialize Harvard with a 100% randomization of admissions for 10-15 years?

Would help if the abstract didn’t uses phrasing like “benefits whites.”

It doesn’t benefit whites, it benefits kids with rich parents. Similarly, Affirmative Action benefits kids with lesser academics, but explicitly based on their race.

Perhaps if they want to draw apples-to-oranges comparisons they would do well to point this out.

> Would help if the abstract didn’t uses phrasing like “benefits whites.”

You have made two factual misrepresentations about the content of the paper in this thread so far. That doesn't seem like discussing in good faith.

For reference, the abstract of the paper is:

> The lawsuit Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard University provided an un- precedented look at how an elite school makes admissions decisions. Using publicly released reports, we examine the preferences Harvard gives for recruited athletes, legacies, those on the dean’s interest list, and children of faculty and staff (ALDCs). Among white admits, over 43% are ALDC. Among admits who are African American, Asian American, and Hispanic, the share is less than 16% each. Our model of admissions shows that roughly three quarters of white ALDC admits would have been rejected if they had been treated as white non-ALDCs. Removing preferences for athletes and legacies would significantly alter the racial distribution of admitted students, with the share of white admits falling and all other groups rising or remaining unchanged.

The paper does not use the phrase “benefits whites.” Interpreting the paper as such is a racist interpretation. You would do well to read the paper.

pg 2: "legacy preferences will tend to benefit white applicants relative to other racial groups.

pg 34: "Each of the ALDC preferences primarily benefit white students."

I'm sort of troubled by the fast & loose nature of mieseratte's statements; in such a simple matter one might as well be accurate about the location of the statements referenced, and WillPostForFood is correct that the statements that contain "benefit white" students/applicants are not in the abstract but later. I also think that there's a bit of subtle misrepresentation when this discussion is being framed as "benefiting whites". There are many white people in the US who do not have access to college, do not have access to good public education, do not have the financial means to become legacy students, etc. In the sentences from the article, there's some set theory going on: among admitted students, a larger fraction of white students were benefited by ALDC preferences. Among applicants, a larger fraction of white students got the benefit of these admissions. This is a race thing, sure, among people already applying for college -- which is already a substantial filter with its own complexity.

Many colleges care about legacy admissions because they cement a family (and their donations and alumni networks and job help and etc) to a college more securely than anything else. It is also true that this perpetuates the patterns of the past. One of those patterns in the US is that white people got to go to college and others did not. White people should not get too sensitive about this. It's just true.