jababaloo

You've got a couple problems in your argument here. Your "thrown in the gutter" argument is pretty silly. People not accepted at harvard (if harvard actually were more honest about qualified admissions) would't fall down a slope into a gutter. They would find their place and ranking elsewhere. Just like you said, you aren't the smartest quickest, you work hard to attempt to make up for it. Clearly you have a place, maybe not at an elite environment where the smarter quicker will save a life or solve a critical failure or set up an infrastructure more efficently. And sure academic testing is flawed and outcomes are chaotic but a school accepting based on various rankings should do so honestly.

The next thing is this. You say, well people of other races might feel uncomfortable if it's too much asian on that campus. So the white or black will feel out of place. But you're being a sort of coddling racist with that kind of thinking. You know what will make somebody out of place in an elite school? Somebody who didn't actually measure up to the standard and got in anyway. Somebody who starts to suspect they don't really deserve to be there and realizes they don't fit and they will take a lot more personal and school resources and probably won't fit much better and so are really a drain on others rather than a contributor.

Because a person who achieves something honestly will have the confidence that they belong and even if the first few days feel weird to them, their work and intelligence will quickly bring them into the fold with their academic peers and teachers. The current biased admission methods will inevitably create tensions too and a bad long term result. If harvard is now confirming a bias, then they leave an elephant in the room. The asians at harvard will look around and notice, say on of their latino classmates is clearly not capable. And that asian will think "my cousin is WAY better than him / her" and she couldn't get in with me. Who is this clown? And so it breaks down their own belief in the school they got into and a tension with their classmates. A non-biased academic admission would mean that conflict or tension like this would be dissolved, the asian would give the latino the benefit of the doubt

It also breaks down the reputation and brand of harvard and so people of minority races with harvard might be suspected as lucking their way in due to color.

No, because that asian student would replace the white would just mean the white would replace the black or latino. the lower end falls off not the middle if you go by the academically qualified here.

As an asian yourself don't belittle your upbringing by assuming you need to be 'improved' by special programs to make you a better all around fit. You're better off being proud of your race or family line and whatever demonstrated intelligence level and then pursue your career interests which (hopefully for us will also align with bettering the world).

Let's face it, the harvard admissions process is secretive they aren't giving all candidates a thorough review, they aren't looking deeply into 150,000 applications in a three month period. They can't. So they dump and dump based on subjective and biased methods being careful to honor first and foremost those requirements like affirmative action. And then they probably get the quota and then start onto the smaller piles. In other words all the activities an Asian might be on, they can and will be overlooked because somebody else has a righter color at the right time when the stack of applications are being sorted by whatever computer or individual at that step.

So to question, "maybe I need a better holistic upbringing?" Bullshit. in this case it's highly likely many many many of these asians had a remarkable upbringing that would satisfy anyone but they got dumped for somebody so the color factor was satisfied.

So then you're saying that Harvard is being discriminatory right? Because they are accepting students with test scores WAY below those of the superior test scores of the asian pacific islander visual demographic. In that way they are being discriminatory, in other words, they don't want too many asians around and they have a certain look for the school they wish to achieve or maintain. So racism. People these days aren't used to hearing about Asian discrimination because black discrimination is thrown in our face so much it's almost fatiguing.

This instance is very much a first world problem (I couldn't get into harvard because I'm asian, but that white or black person did even though they scored lower.) but it's one we have proof of and it's very much worth fixing to set an example everywhere.

You read harvard's reply or reasoning that what they do is ok. Actually depending how you interpret it it could be a complaint by harvard. They said are following STATE Law. Maybe, if we interpret what they said another way, we learn they don't like doing things that way and really shouldn't be held accountable for any so called legal discrimination because they are following the law. Maybe harvard wants us to blame the law and not them. Maybe harvard would like to bring on more asians or more whites but can't even though they perform better and do more research.

Any attempt for harvard or any other school to bring up the holistic student argument is ridiculous. Because Asian students very much participate in extracurricular activities here and in asian countries, objectively so. You won't see a lot on the football or basketball team. You will see a lot of them in other things sports and clubs of all kinds.

Also what do you mean to affirmative action will "correct" society? In what interpretation is a society "corrected" if as you said races are a fiction in your mind? If there's no race, then there's no racism, it's just a bunch of people interacting with a bunch of other people of various colors and any "trends" are meaningless.

You can't have it both ways. You can't say it's a fiction but then wish that any places you go was would be more "correct" if it were more color diverse, (tossing out all concept of people's personal choice or their capabilities.)

Races do exist because groups of people evolved based on their environments and their ancestors ability to procreate. We may not know exactly why because people move and separate and that long span of time has no written record really. But we do know people look different, their languages are different behaviors however "anecdotally" are often different. Their prevalence of various conditions, disease and health are different. Artifacts were different too. Their capabilities on tests across the world are clearly different.

And if various experiments weren't shunned we'd likely understand more about race. They acquired various levels of intelligence and physique due to conditions. The problem is a lot of these things that make people different aren't studied enough. Because universities fear their reputation because even true scientific findings can and have been hidden due to political implications. Thankfully learning about the brain and understanding people are sciences that won't be stopped. So we'll probably learn more over time about race. We most certainly won't be able to find ways to boost equality in humans or find how or where they best flourish if we can't study and be able to honestly interpret the differences in humans.