> Do any of these people railing against affirmative action really think that Native/African/Hispanic Americans should be locked in a self-reinforcing cycle of declining educational and economic outcomes?

Of course not, and it's a terrible strawman argument to frame this as a simple dichotomy of "agree with positive discrimination" or "condemn black people to poverty for ever"

There are many roads to try and resolve this, personally I think it should be bottom up. Instead of the easy political points of enforcing a few quotas on universities and companies.

Then it should be based on poverty, not race. The people that didn’t deserve to get in to those top tier schools can make just as much money after graduating from a “lesser” school.

I live in a $3 million house and would be COMPLETELY OK with my kids being rejected from their dream schools for poverty-linked affirmative action. They have a vastly easier path to academic achievement, and if they got 90 points on a test and a poor kid got 80 points, that other kid just plain old outperformed them.

You'll find a lot of us out there who are vehemently opposed to race-based affirmative action but would enthusiastically support wealth/class-based affirmative action.

The fact that you would be willing to sacrifice your children’s future for “the Greater Good” is deeply troubling to me. I would want the best for my kids even at the expense of social justice and the common good.

I don’t think making my children compete fairly with others is sacrificing their future, quite the opposite. If they will ever achieve anything meaningful they’ll need to build their own engine instead of just riding on the skis that I’ve greased underneath them.

> Maybe going to your second choice school is an ok tradeoff for trying to raise and entire segment of society from relative poverty and discrimination.

this is inaccurate in many ways

It's so amusing how when Asians ask for respect and equal treatment in American society, that we get painted as uppity and are told we should step aside for others. Even by our own group, who have been raised in that American society to think this way. Look, if you want to make the argument that more disadvantaged people should be given the leg up, I totally agree. What I disagree with is the way people think it's okay to ask Asians to settle for less, to step aside, or to leave if they don't like it when they would never treat any other minority this way.

This is why they can put us into internment camps. No one cares.

On another note, what makes you think Asian Americans aren't being discriminated against at their second or third choice schools either?

You need to stop thinking this is a fight between Asian Americans and other disadvantaged groups. The fight is about Asian Americans being systemically treated unfairly in American society. It is not acceptable. It wouldn't even be up for debate if we were talking about any other disadvantaged group. Not all Asians come from wealthy families and are trying to get into Harvard.

I mean you're half right here, but who do you really think in American society is doing that much better than Asians? Hispanics? African Americans? Women? The poor? The middle class for that matter?

The reality is that rich, white men have been entrenched in power since long before American society was a thing. You might consider whether retreating into tribalism and picking a fight over affirmative action is eroding or entrenching that advantage by dividing the consensus to change it.

https://www.vox.com/2018/3/28/17031460/affirmative-action-as...

It's not about tribalism or picking a fight over affirmative action. It's about being treated fairly. We don't call African Americans or Hispanics coming together tribalism. They're just justifiably fighting for their rights. But when Asians want to be treated fairer, it's tribalism now? It's wrong when Asians ask for justice?

There must be a way for all disadvantaged peoples to be treated fairly under the law. I reject the idea and seeming consensus that American society has come to in deciding that it's Asians who should be thrown under the bus in favor of other groups, even though on an individual level, many impoverished Asian people are being passed in favor of other people from wealthy families who happen to be the favored race/ethnicity at the time.

Equality.

Thrown under the bus? Asians have by far the highest household income of all racial groups in the US[1]. Where's the beef?

Is it fair to be born into a racial group thats 50% or 25% less likely to earn a degree?[2] Perhaps taking a person's circumstances into consideration, while narrowly and individually unfair, is actually fairer in a broader sense. That goes for race, socio-economic status, and whatever else impairs your opportunities.

It's just disappointing to see the victimization being thrown around here, especially in contrast to the groups being vilified. The sad truth is that a sense of empathy and being able to see the bigger picture will get you a lot farther in life than the words on your diploma.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...

Since there's no use in trying to reach through you, I'll leave you with something your posts made me recall.

It was a thought I had in the past as a young Asian American person, that maybe other people didn't stand up for Asian people in America because we didn't really stand up for each other. Something I observed in other groups like African Americans and Hispanic Americans was that they generally will back each other up and give their group support without questioning it, because it's intuitively the right thing to do. Us vs them. On the other hand, Asians can be pretty divided amongst each other. Some even hate each other. A number of them hate themselves. The unity isn't there. So when someone like you would see another Asian person being systemically discriminated against, you wouldn't go to bat for that person. You'd tell him that they're unempathetic and that he should think about people who are worse off than him. And I can't help but think back over my life being online, at school, observing other people, other Asians, and realizing how often this was the case. I was even guilty of thinking like this in the past. Because I'm such an individual and I don't think tribally unlike those other minorities! I thought. And now I realize that wasn't really a good way to think. Because while other groups got together and fought for their rights in American society, us Asians were left behind. We left each other behind by not going to bat for the little guys in our group. We didn't want to cause trouble or bring negative attention to ourselves. That's how we were raised. And that's how we'll die.

Maybe they just choose other groups to associate and tribalize with instead of the ethnic one, like say, the startup community.

If you don't grow up in an asian community or have a lot of asians at your work place, you wouldn't even have an opportunity to form a community, let alone start thinking that you need to prioritize the needs of that community.

The mental calculus to shift to a community-first mindset might be analogous to forming/joining a union. You give up some of your own individual upside to get better benefits together as a group. You'll certainly better improve the "floor" of the group, but harder to tell if doing so ends up improving or lowering the "average" of the whole group.

What happens if you're a poor Asian kid in America? You get screwed over twice! Once for being poor and once again for being Asian and having a racist education system that requires you to meet a higher bar in order to get into the same kinds of universities as other kids.

What happens if you're a rich Black or Latino kid in America? You Get Two advantages! You get to be raised in a wealthy family and you need to accomplish much less than other kids to be admitted to the same prestigious universities.

Trying to fight inequality from birth with racism is not the right approach.