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Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by dwoozle on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @04:47PM (#21130438)
Harvard and UC are trying to do different things. Harvard is trying to admit the future leaders of the world, so it can point to them and say “They are Harvard men.” UC is trying to give an academically rigorous education to the most academically qualified students.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by rohit2412 on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @05:39PM (#21130996)
So, asians are less likely to be leaders because of their race? African-Americans are more likely to be leaders because of their race?
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by habnds on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @06:44PM (#21131678)
No but it might be possible that an African american with the same grades as an asian american is much more likely to be successful in the future because they got the same results from what is likely a much more difficult starting point. The context of someone's acheivements matters and race is part of that context.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by rohit2412 on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @06:54PM (#21131758)
But if it's starting position you're worried about, you'd be worried about class. You would give affirmative action based on economic status, not race. That I would agree with.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by Anechoic on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @07:27PM (#21132001)
You would give affirmative action based on economic status, not race

But race also matters in terms of starting position.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by rohit2412 on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:06PM (#21132219)
Yes, a lot in terms of cultural differences. So Asian-americans are being discriminated against because their parents make them study hard?
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by simmanian on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:46PM (#21132446)
Isn't it interesting to see so many people being okay with Asians getting discriminated against? It's almost as if it's not institutional racism to funnel Asians to colleges that mass produce worker class people instead of leaders of tomorrow. People will almost directly say that Asians make poor leaders because all they care about is school grades, when in reality Asians are taught to work harder than their peers to overcome exactly that prejudice. Let's try evening out the playing field and see how many Asians flourish in all areas of life in America like they do in Asia.

Asians need to organize like people of other races and take bigger pieces of the pie.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by zhugeIiang on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @09:22AM (#21136105)
Agreed, it is time to stand up for our rights.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by habnds on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @08:47AM (#21135778)
My parents were really supportive of me in school; someone whose parents weren't as supportive of them, who got the same grades as me is probably a better student and will be more sucessful with a given set of resources than I would since they overcame more adversity than I did.

It's a little crude to use race maybe, but it probably isn't a terrible approximation. What would be great is if people had to disclose any paid preparation for the SAT or the hours their parents spent with them growing up but that's probably a long way off.

Overall, this issue is framed to be as controversial as possible by political interests but it really isn't that big a deal.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by rohit2412 on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @08:31PM (#21198753)
> who got the same grades as me is probably a better student and will be more sucessful with a given set of resources than I would since they overcame more adversity than I did.

Isn't that contradictory? Are you saying that african americans achieve the same as asian americans even though they did not have to study hard? Then why would affirmative action be necessary?

Affirmative action is applied to upgrade the scores of candidates with lower scores if they are of a disadvantaged minority. So, an asian american with higher scores (and who worked harder) will miss out on an opportunity to an african american with lower scores (who did not work as hard).

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by sjg007 on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:24PM (#21132332)
I guess in the end, like life, it's not about grades... sadly.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by yourbandsucks on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @07:20PM (#21131956)
And it would help their preferred races, too. But it wouldn't play nearly as well on HN or Twitter.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by JamesBarney on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @06:57PM (#21131774)
You're misreading the statistics. If students are admitted in a race blind way then you get 16 times as many Asians as African Americans. He's just arguing they're not 16x more likely to be leaders than African Americans.
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Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by anonu on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @10:50PM (#21133094)
This article is really interesting. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. it feels borderline bigoted, basing it's entire argument on some unmeasurable "return to the average".

Also not sure why the parent user is posting it multiple times. Not cool...

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by changchuming on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @11:04PM (#21133149)
7 day account. Not gonna say it's a troll but I'm suspicious.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by richmunk567 on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @01:01AM (#21133559)
On average, everyone returns to the average. This is about the _rate_ of cognitive development. And it's easy to measure with standard tests. Obviously there are a ton of accomplished Asians in America, its just more difficult to identify them in adolescence. There' nothing bigoted about that.

Sorry for posting it a lot, its just relevant to what I wanted to say in my other comments.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by dang on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @03:29AM (#21134099)
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. That is against the site guidelines and destroys the curiosity that this site exists for, regardless of what you're fighting for or against.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by hackinthebochs on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @07:07PM (#21131854)
Sure. Power concentrates not by "merit" (narrowly construed as GPA/test scores), but through complex social and cultural factors, and race is obviously politically relevant. Existing institutions will favor a black Harvard graduate over an Asian graduate becoming a leader of some political institution. Asians as a whole outnumber blacks, but are far more politically and culturally diverse.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by hos234 on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @06:17PM (#21131376)
Asia hasn't produced a Kanye yet. They got work to do.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by krapp on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @06:23PM (#21131461)
G-Dragon, maybe?
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Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by simmanian on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @09:08PM (#21132581)
Isn't it against the site policy to post blatant white supremacist content?
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by richmunk567 on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @09:22PM (#21132658)
Unz is Jewish.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by dwoozle on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @06:22PM (#21131453)
A grades and SAT admission model creates a class that is ~70% Asian. America’s future leadership class is categorically not 70% Asian.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by rohit2412 on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @06:52PM (#21131736)
Why not? If Asians are hardworking enough to occupy 70% of the top positions, why not?
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by barry-cotter on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @07:38PM (#21132073)
Because “leadership” in anything requiring a democracy requires people to vote for you or at least not actively work against you. This is far from impossible, America’s leadership class heavily overweights Yankees and Jewish people compared to their share of the population but change is always hard. It’s probably a lot harder if there’s a constant drum beat of race talk insisting that X-Americans have a completely different life experience from Y-Americans but it’s not like this is unprecedented. Anti-semitism was widespread across Europe before, during and after Jewish Emancipation and in every country where Hitler and the locals didn’t kill them Jews are over represented in the professional and leadership classes.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by simmanian on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:32PM (#21132370)
Are you arguing that Asians inherently make worse leaders than people of other races? To me, Harvard keeping Asians out would create a negative feedback loop where Asians are not perceived as leader materials.
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Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by ballark on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @09:38PM (#21132727)
This article is full of obvious logical errors.

They claim that East Asians develop cognitive capacity at an earlier age than other races and that gives East Asians a compounding practice advantage that gives them the edge in academic scores. The article claims, based on this premise, that universities like Harvard should actually discriminate even more against East Asians.

The article is full of obvious leaps designed to sound smart but are actually logically vacuous.

Much of the article essentially boils down to this: Young East Asians test highly > The quantity of older East Asian who are successful don't reflect the quantity of young East Asians who achieve academically > Therefore, East Asians start smart and then other races catch up cognitively in adulthood A) Racism is likely factor here. East Asians are less represented in leadership because leadership perceives East Asians are being less leaderly. Now we're using the symptoms of racism in order to justify the racism itself. B) Nurture versus nature is a complicated and unsettled debate yet the author tries to claim that because China has a creativity problem, it's proof that East Asians as a race has a creativity problem. Never mind that Japan is a world leader in innovation. C) Article repeatedly use test scores to say something qualitatively about the characteristics of a race. For example, East Asians test high on math therefore East Asians have more quantitative reasoning capabilities. You could just as easily attribute this to cultural differences in study priorities.

2) "If these children are scoring as high as 120 on average at the age of four (despite being hospitalized for malnourishment) and 110 to 112 at the age of ten, it is implausible that their IQ goes up as they grow older" Come on. Why? You can't just assume that hitting a high IQ at an early age means that it cannot continue growing. Especially when these IQ scores are being compared against age groups.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by richmunk567 on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @10:03PM (#21132851)
There are no logical errors, and the article is not logically vacuous.

>East Asians are less represented in leadership because leadership perceives East Asians are being less leaderly.

Can you provide evidence that this is what's going on instead of something else? Plenty of leaders in the US are East Asian.

>using the symptoms of racism in order to justify the racism itself

You didn't present your own evidence that the 'symptoms' are actually due to racism. The author presents a compelling explanation backed up with data that explains what we see.

>Never mind that Japan is a world leader in innovation

The article quotes the Japanese government stating it believes it has an innovation challenge as well.

>You can't just assume that hitting a high IQ at an early age means that it cannot continue growing

IQ is relative to others the same age. This is evidence that East Asians develop cognitive ability more quickly than other populations. All healthy children continue getting smarter as they develop. This is all discussed in the article.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by changchuming on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @11:01PM (#21133138)
Except that China is rapidly catching up to the US in terms of innovation. Take a look at the number of patents filed by China and US in recent years. People look at China 30 years ago and use that as evidence of China today, ignoring the fact the the country has changed so much over these years.

There are more Asian leaders in the world's top tech companies than there are Europeans. Why do you think that so many Asian people in Asia are able to assume leadership roles and grow their companies at breakneck pace and yet Asian Americans are somehow unfit to do the job in America?

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by richmunk567 on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @12:47AM (#21133510)
As mentioned in the article, the Chinese government itself admits the quality of its patents are suspect and not indicative of true innovation.

It's wonderful how much economic progress China has made, and serious academic progress as well. But that's not relevant here.

China discourages non-ethnic Chinese from having control over Chinese companies, and has extremely few foreigners to begin with so that's not a valid comparison.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by kart23 on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @05:30PM (#21130913)
Honestly not sure why this is being downvoted. UC and Harvard are practically opposites in terms of the character they are looking for. One has alumni interviews for every serious applicant, the other has a gpa cutoff to filter out most students and then still just goes off numbers. Replace the words 'college' with 'job', and this whole thing looks silly.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by microcolonel on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @05:43PM (#21131034)
> Replace the words 'college' with 'job', and this whole thing looks silly.

I don't know about silly, it certainly looks unlawful to me.