Whether one agrees with Catholics on any number of things (and many reasonable people do not), there is a certain logic to the idea that before you can be better, you have to actually say what's wrong. Forcing a group of people to self label as racist in the way described above is unmoored from reality: even if one had done things that were racist in the past, there is no looking squarely at one's short comings, and there is no taking responsibility for anything. And for someone who hadn't done anything racist, or for someone who claims to have never done anything racist, it's just a show, and things won't actually get better in a meaningful way.
[1] https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/sacraments-and-sacr...
[2] https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s...
You can tell people about factory farms without screaming "cow rapist". You can tell people about privilege without spiraling into some racist cult. But that would probably be class privilege, which is much better at predicting success than the color of your skin.
However, I have also routinely seen cult-like, and racist behavior in diversity training, and frankly in anti-racist activism.
I’m glad you didn’t experience these. I also think that the work can be done in a nuanced way that avoids the pitfalls.
Unfortunately I think this is becoming less and less common as a drive to scale delivery of these kinds of trainings causes the quality to drop.
The second is obviously an opinion piece as well: Being more inclusive isn't "ruining an institution" nor is changing things. It isn't like entrance exams are perfect.
Why would being racist make someone an unworthy sinner? Racism is just treating others differently based on their race. It’s not weird or evil. In fact, it’s perfectly normal and even understandable. Humans have probably always separated themselves into groups. Even chimpanzees do it. I think that’s what the trainings try to get at.
> The second is the destruction of an institution. A school for the gifted and talented with no mechanism to keep out those who are neither rapidly becomes just another school. Once the City University of New York was one of the major public research universities of the USA. Then it moved to open admissions. Now it’s nothing special. In contrast Berkeley instituted affirmative action which allows for different standards for different ethnic groups. It’s probably the top public university.
Meanwhile, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, and UVA all have affirmative action and are doing fine. Decades of supposedly different standards haven’t hurt their standing. They continue to graduate a diverse class of high achievers that are well-represented in just about every field imaginable. How does that square with your claims?
Are you sure you’re not the extremist? You seem to have an axe to grind.
That’s the entire point of comparing CUNY and Berkeley. You can maintain prestige while having different standards for different ethnic groups. You can’t while having no standards. Eliminating entrance exams is how CUNY did it. Different standards is how Berkeley and Harvard etc. do it. That’s not what is being proposed for the gifted school in question. It’s the elimination of standards.
Standardized tests are one measure of academic merit and not even the best one. There are plenty of 1500s reporting to 1250s.
As for affirmative action being an effort to keep out Asians...have you been to Harvard’s campus? There are many, many Asian students there. In fact, nearly one in five students at Harvard are of Asian descent. The idea that elite schools are purposely excluding Asians is absurd on its face. The people pushing the idea have an axe to grind and it usually isn’t actually in the interest of Asian-Americans.
If you're Asian and you're reading this, never forget that the above is what progressives believe about how society treats Asians: transgressions against you get simply waved away. Think twice about supporting them.
For the record, I am Asian and a liberal but definitely not progressive.
I was wrong to minimize the struggles of Asians in this country. There is real discrimination against Asians. Your comment and others have changed my view. Thanks for helping me work through my own blind spots on this issue. I didn’t mean to wave away your pain.
Looks like the courts found that Harvard's admissions system did not qualify as legally discriminatory, but did nonetheless somewhat disadvantage Asian-American applicants. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/us/harvard-admissions-law...
My high school was 70% Asian. Projections are that getting rid of the entrance exam will drop it to about 30% Asian. (Ironically, the group that will benefit the most from the lottery is white people.) The elite schools are capping the percentage of Asians--you can see this by comparing against schools that don't practice holistic admissions.
Affirmative action and lottery-based admissions in particular is, in at least a narrow and direct sense, contrary to "the interest of Asian-Americans" just as its contrary to the interests of white Americans. Standardized testing offers a direct path to the middle and upper middle class for Asian immigrants (as well as other immigrant groups such as Nigerians who come to the U.S. with lots of education but not necessarily money). Asians have extremely high levels of income mobility in the U.S.--an kid growing up in the bottom 20% has a 27% chance of ending up in the top 20%; double the odds for a white kid born in the bottom 20%. My dad was born in a village in Bangladesh. Thanks to the SAT, my brother and I are comfortably in the top 1%. The U.S. system of "meritocracy" (such as it is) is extremely effective at helping us distinguish ourselves from upper middle class white people who have more cultural competency, social connections, etc.
In "How to be an Anti-Racist," Ibram X. Kendi defines "equity" as the representation of a group in an organization reflecting the representation of the group in the general population. Any other distribution, he declares, is the product of systemic racism. I don't think Kendi was thinking about the implications of that statement for non-white, non-Black people, but they are alarming for Asians, Jews, Nigerians, etc. Imagine cutting Harvard down from 20% Asian to 5-6% Asian. Or Google or Facebook! What do you think that would do to Asian income mobility?
Now, I happen to support measures to reduce disparities for ADOS people, because all Americans have a common obligation to remediate the nation's history of slavery and segregation. To that end, I support things like traditional affirmative action.
At the same time, Asians are a minority and have to be realistic about the fact that they are not similarly-situated to either white people or Black people and do not have identical interests to either group. Holistic measures that limit the Asians at elite educational institutions and businesses to 20-25% may be tolerable. Measures like lotteries that would reduce Asian representation down to 5-6% would be a dramatic negative change.
I would argue that understanding the importance of the SAT is a form of cultural competency.
> Holistic measures that limit the Asians at elite educational institutions and businesses to 20-25% may be tolerable. Measures like lotteries that would reduce Asian representation down to 5-6% would be a dramatic negative change.
We shouldn't limit the number of Asians at top universities or companies. But we shouldn't be content with a system that perpetuates a status quo built on our country's original sin. We have to do something proactively. Maybe it's reparations. Maybe it's universal pre-kindergarten or means-tested baby bonds. But it's something instead of nothing.
https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/sat-prep-courses-do-the...
Are there any elite school (so sourcing students from the same pool of applicants) that don't include race in their admission process? Would be interesting to compare the demographics.
There is the in-state vs out of state tuition distinction, so it's not exactly the same pool as east coast universities.
Sources: https://registrar.caltech.edu/records/enrollment-statistics https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/massachusetts-instit....
These are interesting stats but they don't actually mean anything unless you can prove that the applicant pools for Caltech and Berkeley are similar to that of MIT. It's entirely possible, that Caltech and Berkeley have a higher proportion of Asian applications. It's also possible that underrepresented minorities that could be admitted to Caltech or Berkeley pick Harvard or Princeton because they're more well-regarded and more diverse. I wouldn't be surprised. Elite schools compete for the same kids.
Considering their ranking I would be willing to bet their applicant pool might significantly overlap (seeing as they attract world wide talent).
So, as long as you see some people of a given race and it meets some arbitrary % in your mind, that's enough, is that the argument you're making? No discrimination going on then?
This level of lack of critical thinking here is astounding, and it's sad (actually scary) that opinions like this might guide admissions policies.
I'm likely not going to change your mind, and I'm not going to revisit this thread again after I click away, so take this just as one person to another giving some advice as if we were strangers talking to each other honestly with no consequences.
Check yourself once in a while that you don't go falling the hole of deceiving yourself that you're right, using any cobbled together argument you can find. Because you sound like you're ready to trade off people's lives using whatever traits you think are equivalent, in the name of diversity or some symbolic goal you wish to achieve.
When someone lives in a certain state and applies to university, they have the opportunity to show their worth and skills by their achievements. When Harvard seeks to broaden their search for those people to new geographies, all to the better.
When Harvard says that no matter how good you are, because you're Asian, your achievements will be weighed a little less because we have enough of them, I cannot believe that you are unable to see how that's different.
And your principles of how you judge whether there are "enough" Asians, well, sir, they could equally be used by someone to say there are "enough" black students or Hispanic students, or any minority, by someone less well-intentioned.
I would rather have the approach where no one is deciding that there's "enough" of some group based on their favored characteristic of the day.
When is applies to university, they have the opportunity to show their worth and skills by their achievements. When Harvard seeks to broaden their search for those people to underrepresented minorities, all to the better.
I understand why the parallels make you uncomfortable. You’d need to ask yourself why you’re fine giving the kid from Montana a leg up. Better not to think about it.
"According to enrollment data from the Office of Admissions provided by Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson Anna Cowenhoven, 51.5 percent of the non-international students who enrolled in Harvard’s Class of 2018 hail from just four states: New York, New Jersey, California, and Massachusetts." https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/3/26/regional-divers...
The following has numbers by state that seem consistent with the article from the Crimson: https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/harvard-university/s...
It suggests that (New York and New Jersey) have over an order of magnitude more students admitted to Harvard per capita than (Montana and Nebraska).
Chimpanzees murder. Just because primates have been doing something for millions of years doesn't make it acceptable. We have the capability to rise above our instincts and make rational decisions about who we want to be.
Treating others differently based on their race is fundamentally unethical. You're not an irredeemably broken person just because you've done something unethical in the past, but saying "well everyone does it" or "it's just natural" is just refusing personal responsibility.
Maybe some people honestly can't accept the idea that they have done something wrong, and would cling to a belief that deep down they knew was wrong if they didn't have such an "out" to preserve their view of themselves. They'ed rather double down on racism than admit they've knowingly treated people incorrectly.
For most people though, acknowledging a problem is the first step to solving it. Everyone alive today has spent the vast majority if not the entirety of their lives in a world where the idea of racial superiority has been thoroughly discredited. The emphasis on certain features like skin color over others like hair color in segregating people is an entirely learned behavior. For racism to endure to the degree it does today, enormous numbers of people must have actively chosen to learn this behavior and refused to change. It hardly seems unreasonable to conclude that for many, telling them that something is normal and natural robs them of their imperative to change.
The issue is these institutions cast a way wider net for their admission pool compared to a high school.
Really, MIT gets applicants from everywhere in the world and kids will gladly relocate to Boston to attend. A high school, especially a public one, can only expect applicants from its county.
Because those who were enlightened before you now hold the power. They removed the scales from your eyes, so now the power structure has been set. All you need to do is obey.
I'm sure once you're downvoted to invisibility, you're takeaway will be that "HN is a bunch of extremists", instead of the more reasonable "why are a bunch of mild-mannered software developers whose culture has always been open to different types of people strongly disagreeing with what I say?".
Could it be that we see a danger in this that you do not? It's seems fairly obvious to me that our country is starting to crumble around us. Perhaps you're living in a situation where that's not apparant.
The first is not religious in any sense. It appears to be an acknowledgment of the bias's we all have as humans. We all have bias's, unconscious and conscious - its part of being human. In that sense we're all 'racist' to some degree and its important to acknowledge that so as to overcome it.
As far as the second example cited I think more information is missing before jumping to a conclusion.
No. I reject this. No matter how many times you or others tell me that I’m racist and can’t help it, and if I just pray... I mean take enough sanctioned training courses it’ll go away I will not partake. Period. Nobody is racist until proven otherwise, or racist until they’ve taken enough unconscious bias training courses. That’s something you and others are making up to deal with your own insecurities and racism. Being uncomfortable walking down the street at night because you see a black man is your racism. Not mine. No thanks.
This entire “movement” looks exactly like a witch hunt or the Soviet gulags. When someone is inconvenient, you just call them a racist since everybody is magically, automatically guilty of being racist and off they go.
I’m really sick and tired of seeing this crap. It’s ruining western civilization and creating conflict. It’s not even about race anymore. It’s just white people telling everyone they are racist so they can feel good about themselves and create positions of power and authority. Some genuinely believe this, but some also genuinely believe they are saving your soul when they pray for you.
I reject racism. I’m not a racist and you’re not going to tell me or others that we are racist just because you are or you think others are.
For every problem there is a solution that is simple, neat—and wrong. -- H.L. Mencken
and from a different social issue but highlighting how easy it is to go from "good guy" to "bad guy";
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist. -- Hélder Câmara
I am no domain expert but an ammendment to require mens rea for far more felonies as opposed to the farcical nonsense where picking up an unidentified feather could be a crime if the feather turns out to be from a bald eagle.
Racism comes in many forms, it's not just about being scared of black men on the street. That's a wildly exaggerated strawman.
Everyone has biases and prejudices. Everyone. Yes, that includes you.
But people don't have the same biases and prejudices. People differ in what they're prejudiced against (or for!) and they differ in the magnitude of their prejudice.
And let's be clear: this is not just about skin colour. Gender, sexual orientation, class, accent, formal education... people have prejudices against all of these things and more.
Unconscious bias not a type of prayer or cleansing ritual. You don't stop being biased or prejudiced because you do UB training.
It is supposed to help you identify when and how that prejudice manifests itself so that you can take a step back and try and consciously try and remove your prejudices from your decision-making.
And if you reject racism, why not arm yourself with this tool? If you're not racist (or sexist or classist etc...) Why not take a couple of seconds to think "has some stereotype about this person lead me to this conclusion? No? Okay, let's carry on..."
And for the record, unconscious bias training has not been shown to have any correlation with actual discriminatory behavior, and the the researchers who developed the test reject how it is being used in these training sessions.
Everyone is a sinner (not the Pope, tho). Yes, that includes you! Go confess and do your penance
It's _not_ a value judgement. People aren't evil for having biases. They're not sinners because they do, and they don't have to do penance.
Also, for having biases, people are actually getting called evil (racist, nazi, bigot, etc) every day, and are expected to apologize/be fired/read more sacred texts/participate in group exorcisms/etc
It’s ruining western civilization and creating conflict for whom? Western civilization has always been marked by conflict for some.
Seriously? What else do you need? Proclamation of the believe in unseen powers?
Thats a big stretch.
If you're endeavouring to acknowledge, understand and overcome biases, that isn't racism, it's anti-racism.
The second is the destruction of an institution. A school for the gifted and talented with no mechanism to keep out those who are neither rapidly becomes just another school. Once the City University of New York was one of the major public research universities of the USA. Then it moved to open admissions. Now it’s nothing special. In contrast Berkeley instituted affirmative action which allows for different standards for different ethnic groups. It’s probably the top public university.