asians-are-smart-deal-with-it: asian-americans & affirmative action

since I seem to be the guy who starts all of ILX's asian & asian american threads why stop now

http://blog.angryasianman.com/2012/10/guest-post-by-carmina-ocampo-top-five.html

http://acpacsje.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/a-real-talk-primer-on-affirmative-action-fisher-college-admissions-and-race/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/opinion/asians-too-smart-for-their-own-good.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/12/19/fears-of-an-asian-quota-in-the-ivy-league?hp

probably the irony of all this is that white ppl who are against affirmative action talk a lot about 'merit' but if college admissions were truly merit based then white ppl would still get their lunches eaten by all the azns and they would not attain their ultimate goal (more white ppl in college)

(other goal: perpetuating the kyriarchy)

white ppl r dumb

if college admissions were truly merit based then white ppl would still get their lunches eaten by all the azns and they would not attain their ultimate goal (more white ppl in college)

ho ho ho, you nailed us

I got roped into a debate about this article recently:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/

It's long and I see a lot of flaws in the methodology, and some of the conclusions are slightly o_O, but still interesting and worth a read. I see a couple of separate but not unrelated issues: one is how we define merit in the first place. E.g. if Asians overall do better in math and science portions of admissions tests and other groups (e.g. Jews) do better in verbal portions of tests, and Harvard emphasizes the verbal portion more than MIT and CalTech, well, Harvard has a much heavier liberal arts and social sciences bent and MIT and CalTech are science and engineering-oriented schools, and I don't agree with the privileging of math and science "merit" over verbal "merit." If, on the other hand, there are arbitrary standards that are keeping down the numbers of otherwise equally qualified asian students, then obviously fuck that.

I think the latter is much more likely the case

A very good friend of mine works in Harvard admissions and the horror stories she tells us about entitled families who just assume that their wealth will get their kid admitted even though s/he is woefully unqualified are amazing. (Also the financial aid conversations, where families will call up and yell without irony that, since they only make $1 million/year, they are middle class and should qualify for financial aid.)

i read in the chronicle of higher learning just yesterday (fine i just read the headline) that more schools were using "non-cognitive measures" (not test scores) to determine acceptance. i didn't read any more because my school has an open admissions policy, but i bet it would be related to this topic.

http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/chinese-parents-sue-after-2-2-million-consultant-fails-to-get-sons-into-harvard/

If, on the other hand, there are arbitrary standards that are keeping down the numbers of otherwise equally qualified asian students, then obviously fuck that.

― space phwoar (Hurting 2), Tuesday, January 15, 2013 10:09 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think the latter is much more likely the case

― 乒乓, Tuesday, January 15, 2013 10:11 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

all standards are going to be on some level arbitrary / 'equally qualified' is hard to define when we're comparing people with extremely different skills/backgrounds/potential. but it is clear that the arbitrary standards that exist today don't work in the favor of asian american students who go to a public high school. i.e. none of the many forms of affirmative action that exist today (for athletes, legacies, private school kids, rich people and racial minorities) are particularly beneficial for asian americans. you could easily imagine a different set of - equally arbitrary standards - that would benefit asian americans. but they'd still be arbitrary.

yeah I agree w/ that

really we just need to lay to rest the foundational myth of our county that we are a meritocracy

a whiteocracy more like it

it is strange that no matter how many "arbitrary" standards you have they don't seem to militate against traditionally wealthy/powerful sections of a society

well even the arbitrary standards that aren't by nature 'beneficial for the rich' - for example 'meritocratic' SAT etc. scores - can be used to their advantage via personal tutoring etc.

that's true, i just don't believe arbitrary standards are ever really arbitrary

You can make the effort to select bright pupils from struggling schools over high-achieving pupils from private schools, and that works to some degree. There's evidence to suggest that it might not make that much difference in the long term though. State school pupils outperform private school pupils at university in the UK but private school students, presumably through better connections, find it easier to get prestigious graduate jobs. It would be interesting to see some of the principles of affirmative action applied to the workplace.

that american conservative article was weird -- 2/3 of it was about implicit quotas for asian applicants and then suddenly it pivots to "the fault is with the shadowy jewish power structure and the real victims here are non-jewish white people"

jews are just the worst

harvard et al. don't really have incentives to be part of an oligarchic conspiracy but they also don't have incentives to help more middle class asian kids when the opportunity cost is another $100m donation. so you can say the standards are ultimately arbitrary in a way that reflect the interests of the institution (this includes a limited amount of racial affirmative action, which is good PR and allows these places to avoid the trickier subjects because they're already 'doing the right thing')

xp

meanwhile, while we're talking about the weird racial anxieties attached to Asia and cognition, this bit of business from the Edge's "What Should We Be Worried About?" special:

These IQ gene-sets will be found eventually—but will probably be used mostly in China, for China. Potentially, the results would allow all Chinese couples to maximize the intelligence of their offspring by selecting among their own fertilized eggs for the one or two that include the highest likelihood of the highest intelligence. Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple typically differ by 5 to 15 IQ points. So this method of "preimplantation embryo selection" might allow IQ within every Chinese family to increase by 5 to 15 IQ points per generation. After a couple of generations, it would be game over for Western global competitiveness.

http://edge.org/responses/q2013

those

^ classic thread

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/how-americas-top-colleges-reflect-and-massively-distort-the-countrys-racial-evolution/267415/

haha oh Princeton

for an article where he 'let graphs speak for themselves' he made dumb graphs

like, UT has more hispanics than the national average...also...texas has a more hispanics than the national average...which means that they're underrepresented at UT not overrepresented. likewise california has more than twice 'the national average' of asians and hispanics...which put each berkeley graph in a different perspective

My parents were hopeless idealists who believed that education was supposed to make you educated, not wealthy or high status. I say, Harvard and Yale should admit asian-american students to the point where they crowd out almost everyone else, if that's what is fair. it's no skin off my nose. all the saddo rejects can go to Brown U. and be damned.

de facto quotas for asian americans can severely limit the opportunities for asian americans who are part of distinct ethnic subgroups that are separate from east asians or south asians. groups like cambodian americans, laotian americans, hmong americans have really different immigration patterns from other asian americans - in fact, iirc, almost all of them are refugees from the fallout of the vietnamese war. when they immigrated they were handled by the us government but in ways that were really... not opportune. i think 'smart' admissions departments probably have ways of allowing for diversity at this level through inferring from surnames, maybe, or maybe they have an open-ended ethnicity box or something. but i think in general it's really easy to look at a university's demographics and say "wow, 20% asian american? way overrepresented!" and move on.

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:19 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

did i not start a thread on this?

― the late great, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:20 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean there was something ridiculous like 10 afrocaribbean students in a single year compared to 30 people from eton or whatever

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:20 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah we did discuss it and the bias against east asians at ivies etc was prima facie clear iirc

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

even within east asian and south asian communities there are huge gaps between those who are skilled professionals who migrated over during times of oppressive political climate or limited opportunity and those who are economic immigrants (i.e. from the coastal regions). it seemed that all the asian americans i knew at yale had parents who were doctors, scientists, researchers.

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xxp - I don't think the quotas work the same way now as they did back in the day where there were official quotas on the number of jewish students.

― You must be very cold in the sack. (sarahell), Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the landscape of asian in america changed dramatically after 1965 when the de facto ban on asian immigration was lifted by new federal legislation. coincidentally that's also around the time of the cultural revolution etc.

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no they're soft quotas, and they're not reachable by law at most private universities. but it's been statistically proven that asian americans have to score 100-150 higher on sats than a white student to get admitted

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:23 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

white ppl r dumb

― You must be very cold in the sack. (sarahell), Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you're right though that the 'holistic' admissions process that lessened the focus on raw testing scores was implemented to keep the number of jewish students down

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

white people have other valuable things to offer universities, such as rich parents and lacrosse skills

― iatee, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's been said that affirmative action or diversity concerns for underrepresented minorities takes away from spots for asian americans. that's not true. letting in more white kids takes away spots from deserving asian american students.

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and everybody else. except white kids.

― contenderizer, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:26 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thank u all very much for listening. if u have any questions now is the time to ask

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:27 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i am white btw

― You must be very cold in the sack. (sarahell), Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:27 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well there is a quota for white kids, it's just a big quota

― iatee, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:27 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, we're not really taught to think of the admission of white kids as fulfilling a 'quota' - it's easier to assume that they got there by their merits & dedication to hard work & overcoming adversity

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you post about college stuff a lot

― You must be very cold in the sack. (sarahell), Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is v much a disinterested view from afar so caveat lector but american elite private college admissions both historically and currently seem centred on creating an ideal type of student coterie rather than seriously addressing socioeconomic disparity, so they seek a platonically apt proportion of this or that subgroup (not just races but athletes, legacies, science bros etc)

hence the headline figure of black students which might seem quite 'reasonable', even if there are a lot of people like my friend (the scion of nigerian oil trader) who mostly idled through school in england while the chance of someone going from whichever deprived inner city suburb to columbia is still fairly remote

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

american elite private college admissions both historically and currently seem centred on creating an ideal type of student coterie rather than seriously addressing socioeconomic disparity, so they seek a platonically apt proportion of this or that subgroup (not just races but athletes, legacies, science bros etc)

"platonically apt proportion" = 'diversity.' don't get me wrong, i'm a huge fan of the concept but i acknowledge that we really only talk about this stuff in terms of 'diversity' because we're no longer allowed to think about racial make-up in terms of remediation for past historical discrimination and continuing structural discrimination that still exists

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the concept of diversity was iirc pioneered by harvard and other elite colleges in the 80s when it looked like racial quotas were not gonna be upheld by courts? i dunno if the ivy league ever practiced *real* affirmative action in their admissions.

― 乒乓, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it tends to just end up being mostly upper and upper-middle class kids of whatever racial background -- like when I went to college and realized how many of my classmates' parents were professors, all I could think of was "reproducing the means of production"

― You must be very cold in the sack. (sarahell), Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:37 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's not in their economic interests to practice real affirmative action, it is good pr to practice a tiny bit

― iatee, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:37 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that is p much what 'diversity' means to white ppl, a heuristic to solve the aesthetic affront of having 100% white people, which might be predicated to some degree on guilt but isn't essentially about justice

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

http://i.imgur.com/hj3fe1D.png

'hmong'?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hmong_people

yeah i googled it a few seconds after i posted it because i realised i was being that guy

poverty is very high hmong them

the largest Hmong community in the US is in the Twin Cities, which is the main reason I know about them

xp

dude

yeah the hmong refugee immigration was handled by the us government who stuck them in the midwest

I actually know two of General Vang Pao's sons (not that big a deal, he had quite a few of them). When he passed a few years ago it was kind of a huge event in Manitowoc and Sheboygan.

when i went to see room 237, there was a short mini-doc that showed beforehand about the plight of iraqis who had cooperated with the US during the war... basically the bar for them to legally immigrate to the US is very high, and there's no political willpower to pass something like the refugee immigration acts in the 70s and 80s that allowed southeast asians to immigrate over. i think the fear is that you dont want to be the guy who signed off on the bill that POTENTIALLY LETS TERRORISTS IN. so iraqis who helped the US have been systematically targeted + tortured + killed by insurgent groups inside iraq, it's p terrible. reminds me a lil of the hmong american immigration history

I wonder how much of the hmong poverty is due to being sent to like fresno/detroit

would be interesting to see stats on social mobility for those groups as well - poverty among first generation vs. non first generation

I remember visiting relatives in wisconsin about 20 years ago and hearing them talking about "mongs" and at first I thought they were using some kind of horrible ethnic slur.

i read a book about communications difficulties between hmong refugees in california and the medical community there called the spirit catches you and you fall down (three guesses!) and it was rly interesting

Excellent book. Been assigned to classes on reserve here for a while which is how I learned about it (seeing I'm the reserves guy).

that's a really great title

I have heard of that book before; think it's been mentioned on ilx somewhere before

ugh, what a sad story

as for the original topic, I still think it's important to look at what metrics you're talking about and what school you're talking about. The most commonly cited stats in this debate are higher asian american scores in math and science-related tests and achievements. Those results ARE reflected in the student bodies of STEM-intensive schools like MIT and CalTech. The Ivies are still heavily liberal arts schools, and while I think it's fair to question the emphasis on things like legacy and lacrosse, I've also seen other people in this debate (not necessarily here) dismiss the value of verbal scores and liberal arts-related achievements. I don't think that's right. I get the fixation on the Ivies to an extent, because they are perceived as a gateway to being part of an elite, but there are plenty of other paths to prosperity.

lol I had to scroll up to see if you'd actually copied your first post to the thread verbatim or not (you hadn't but it was pretty close)

Most of my Hmong friends are second-generation and therefore don't really know about this but I know a few who were among the refugees who came over and apparently it was pretty nasty for them back in the 80's. I mean outside of the Hmong the area I'm in isn't exactly known for racial diversity. One guy said that someone literally took off his shoe and threw it at him from across the street. I wonder exactly what that guy was thinking.

I wonder how much of the hmong poverty is due to being sent to like fresno/detroit

― iatee, Friday, 26 April 2013 20:32 (20 minutes ago)

that probably doesn't help, but they are predominantly rural people with no prior experience of how to navigate an urban society let alone a very foreign one

i saw the hmong episode of greys anatomy

lol I had to scroll up to see if you'd actually copied your first post to the thread verbatim or not (you hadn't but it was pretty close)

― Call me at **BITCOIN (DJP), Friday, April 26, 2013 3:58 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bahahaha

totally unremembered

i get pho in frogtown on the reg, if we're sharing experiences here

i love u dayo

I often wonder what happened to the Hmong dude from my graduating class in high school; he was a great sprinter and wrestler and I think he went into the military after we graduated, haven't heard hide nor hair of him since

I get the fixation on the Ivies to an extent, because they are perceived as a gateway to being part of an elite, but there are plenty of other paths to prosperity.

― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Friday, 26 April 2013 20:57 (2 minutes ago)

this 'fixation' represents the cachet immigrant groups are most likely to be drawn to? if you are from a solidly bourgeois white american family then you know you can live a very prosperous life without having to make the effort to gain admittance to a super elite institution, but to someone with limited cultural capital 'go to harvard' seems like an option worth striving for

i love u dayo

― horseshoe, Friday, April 26, 2013 4:01 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

aw thank u hs!! i have to say, ur posts about race are one of the big reasons i got to thinking + reading about this stuff

i think the other interesting thing about southeast refugee migration was that the US policy was to 'spread' refugees around, make sure that there weren't more than X number of refugee sper square mile, done ostensibly to prevent 'overload' the area they were settling in. i think the assumption was that the kindness of white strangers would be enough to help them assimilate + find jobs and get economically started in america. but most refugees iirc were like "fuck this" and undertook what's called a 'secondary migration' to find other ppl of their ethnicity to be with and congregate with. that can't have been very conducive to building stability, not at least in the beginning.

i read an article in my teacher cert course about Hmong students in, i want to say Minneapolis, and their changing cultural identification from the first to second generation. the whole frame for the analysis was this imo pretty problematic "voluntary v involuntary immigrant" heuristic, where blacks and Latinos are understood as involuntary immigrants and all other nonwhite immigrants are voluntary, basically. the point of the article is that first-generation Hmong high school students had bought in to some extent to the notion of American social mobility and not faced the disaffection/cultural alienation problems that black and Latino students disproportionately do, but then when they graduated and did not find a lot of economic opportunity, their children increasingly identified with African American culture as a means of resistance basically? there are a ton of problems with this perspective on education and achievement, not least of which is the pretty fucking euphemistic characterization of being kidnapped and enslaved as "involuntary immigration," but also the idea that culture is the explanation for the achievement gap. but at any rate i did think it was interesting in terms of exploring how Hmong Americans define themselves racially.

the article was called "learning about race, learning about 'america'" in the anthology beyond silenced voices, which i generally liked, so now i am going to reread the article to make sure i'm not misrepresenting its argument.

okay the kids went to high school in Wisconsin, is the first thing i got wrong

okay i was also wrong about the article adopting the involuntary/voluntary immigrant frame, thank goodness. i think it was my professor who did that, which led to a lot of rmde in class iirc. it's a good article, about how the faculty and administration at the high school unwittingly equated the culture of the good student with the culture of being white and upper middle class, leading to Hmong students feeling alienated. + that by the second generation the kids had intuited the de facto white supremacy of the social structure that awaited them post-high school.

i read a book about communications difficulties between hmong refugees in california and the medical community there called the spirit catches you and you fall down (three guesses!) and it was rly interesting

I haven't read it, but my wife LOVED that book.

yeah that's super interesting! i think about how nonwhite and nonblack people in america racialize themselves all the time, i guess it's no longer as true as it once was that race dynamics in america are primarily a black/white binary, but it's still hard to figure out where asians 'fit in.' i keep on thinking about jay caspian kang's article written during linsanity, i guess the point is that black culture is the most visible minority culture in america and maybe therefore the easiest to substitute in for or is the closest to your own experience. i keep on wondering why there isn't more for east asian americans to latch on to than being proud about 'bubble tea' and lion dances during the lunar year. i dunno.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7601157/the-headline-tweet-unfair-significance-jeremy-lin

And yet, while you're never fully aware, you're never fully not aware, either. Like many of the Asian American kids of my generation stuck somewhere between white and black, I filled the vacant parts of my identity with basketball and hip-hop. It was misdirected and yawningly suburban, sure, but by the time I walked to the plate in that softball game, I had built up a glittering yet utterly fragile structure of black iconography, all of which stood in nicely for my reality as an Asian kid without many friends who spent almost all his time worrying about debate tournaments and all the pretty, unattainable girls on the fast track to sorority row. I suppose that's why my friend's comment finally cut through, why it still lingers today. He kicked dirt over two distinct fantasies and made me stare down two very hard truths. The first: My friends had, in fact, noticed that I wasn't white. The second: I could stalk Rasheed Wallace around Chapel Hill, memorize KRS-One lyrics, rock Timberland boots, and read Eldridge Cleaver and Cornel West without any critical distinction (all things I did in high school), but blackness would always be further away than whiteness and there was a wide gulf of bad history that ensured the distance.

Of all the news that has come out about Lin's former life — and there hasn't been much — none excited me as much as a screenshot from his Xanga. In a series of captioned photos, a 15-year-old Lin wears a headband in the style of different NBA stars. It's a funny, endearing look into Lin's childhood and hints at a sense of humor that has mostly been absent from his media obligations. But none of the photos or the captions is as telling as the Xanga account's name: ChiNkBaLLa88.

i had forgotten all about this detail. i love it because my screenname for the longest time when i was a preteen/young teen was 'theangryoriental'

i guess i should also mention that when i played basketball everybody called me the 'blazin asian' (._. ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiiMrDhuk_o

(insert a thousand rap lyrics about getting high and getting chinky eyed)

honorary member of the choom gang

In 2009, Strider,Flava, Kenzie, Krazy and Rocky B announced that they would be reuniting as a five-piece, and in June 2009, released their comeback single, 'Let's Start Again'the single only peaked at #54 on the UK Singles Chart. Despite their record label wanting to drop them following the lack of success of the single, they had signed a bonding contract to release an album. The label issued a Greatest Hits compilation via digital download and thereby ended the contract with the group.

lol

you guys. a friend of mine just posted a link to this facebook posting from a bike shop.

Have you seen this bike? Yes, someone took this Sirrus Elite size Medium, Graphite/Grey/Neon Green for a test ride on Friday at 6:30 but he never returned. He is a short gentlemen of Asian descent. Please keep an eye out.

I commented:

asian descent!? were you able to make out if he mongolian or israeli?

Did I do ok? What would have made this comment more effective/better?

including an animated gif of you nodding with a shit eating grin

ps ugly color scheme sucka

well Israelis are not 'asians' but I admire the sentiment

If admitting shit-tons of Asian-Americans to ivy league schools somehow broke the whole stupid ivy league stranglehold on prestige jobs, because the old boy network blew a fuse trying to absorb that many outsiders, then I say the sooner it happens, the better.

well Israelis are not 'asians' but I admire the sentiment

Lol Steve Shasta

I had some deece Chinese food in Tel Aviv fwiw

Http://isreality.com/2006/10/17/tel-avivs-chinatown/

Bah Autocorrected

http://israelity.com/2006/10/17/tel-avivs-chinatown/

several xps to dayo: one of my high school friends was "mentaloriental" on msn for years

i too have a friend who to this day uses an "azn" handle. i'm really embarassed for him

we're consistently told that american students underperform compared to asian ones on standardized tests

is the same true of asian-americans? i.e. do korean students in america do as well as students in korea on tests?

i guess this has become the thread to debunk the asian american model minority stereotype so

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-asian-american-poverty-20130502,0,7842601.story

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-chen-fisher-asian-affirmative-action-20130613,0,6358807.story

good writeup although fisher is really gonna only affect public schools, not ivy league schools

yeah the % of schools that discriminate against asian americans is v. low because most schools do not have selective admissions or an abundance of asian applicants. and most of the public schools that fit those two criteria are in california, where aa is already (de jure) not happening.

well i still think it matters that although overall it only makes up a very small % of schools, the fact that ivy league schools / top tier private schools discriminate against AAs is still worth noting

ya it matters big picture because those schools are gateways to the american ruling class

it's a bad deal for us, but what i find really disgusting is the pitting of Asian Americans against other minorities; an old retread. but i'm always disappointed in conservative AAs

UCAS stats suggest that 50% of British Chinese A-Level students go on to university, compared to 29% of white kids.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/jul/23/white-pupils-university-ethnic-groups

The data is potentially misleading, though - particularly in relation to black (34%) and other Asian (40%) students. Would be more useful to track the % of all kids who go on to university, rather than just looking at those still in education at 18.

this article was new to me, so maybe it's old news, but did anyone read this New York Magazine piece from a few years ago?

it talks about bias (unconscious or not) against Asian-Americans in the workplace, but then goes into some stuff about how the values that are often reinforced in Asian-American households aren't the values that are frequently rewarded in the workplace, particularly for leadership positions. Sample:

The law professor and writer Tim Wu grew up in Canada with a white mother and a Taiwanese father, which allows him an interesting perspective on how whites and Asians perceive each other. After graduating from law school, he took a series of clerkships, and he remembers the subtle ways in which hierarchies were developed among the other young lawyers. “There is this automatic assumption in any legal environment that Asians will have a particular talent for bitter labor,” he says, and then goes on to define the word coolie,a Chinese term for “bitter labor.” “There was this weird self-selection where the Asians would migrate toward the most brutal part of the labor.”

By contrast, the white lawyers he encountered had a knack for portraying themselves as above all that. “White people have this instinct that is really important: to give off the impression that they’re only going to do the really important work. You’re a quarterback. It’s a kind of arrogance that Asians are trained not to have. Someone told me not long after I moved to New York that in order to succeed, you have to understand which rules you’re supposed to break. If you break the wrong rules, you’re finished. And so the easiest thing to do is follow all the rules. But then you consign yourself to a lower status. The real trick is understanding what rules are not meant for you.”

This idea of a kind of rule-governed rule-breaking—where the rule book was unwritten but passed along in an innate cultural sense—is perhaps the best explanation I have heard of how the Bamboo Ceiling functions in practice.

challenging opinions?

The law professor and writer Tim Wu grew up in Canada with a white mother and a Taiwanese father, which allows him an interesting perspective on how whites and Asians perceive each other.

this line of thinking is kinda suspect

By contrast, the white lawyers he encountered had a knack for portraying themselves as above all that. “White people have this instinct that is really important: to give off the impression that they’re only going to do the really important work. You’re a quarterback. It’s a kind of arrogance that Asians are trained not to have.

sounds OTM to me

although i might replace "white people" in that second formulation with "Americans"

american men

yeah

stay away from me-hee

i've only skimmed a few pages of that article but it seems all sorts of OTM

But intrinsic intelligence, of course, is precisely what Asians don’t believe in. They believe—and have ­proved—that the constant practice of test-taking will improve the scores of whoever commits to it. All throughout Flushing, as well as in Bayside, one can find “cram schools,” or storefront academies, that drill students in test preparation after school, on weekends, and during summer break. “Learning math is not about learning math,” an instructor at one called Ivy Prep was quoted in the New York Times as saying. “It’s about weightlifting. You are pumping the iron of math.” Mao puts it more specifically: “You learn quite simply to nail any standardized test you take.”

so OTM

especially upper-middle to upper class white american men, xp.

That idea is kind of portrayed in a nutshell in the opening of Harold & Kumar, iirc. Harold's white co-workers pass a bunch of shit work off on him so they can go party, and it very much has to do with him being Asian.

FWIW, not exactly proud of this, but I have noticed I have a little bit of that "important work" instinct in the workplace. I kind of caught myself falling into this dynamic with a female co-worker, and it felt like the male and female higher-up and the associate herself all fell into the dynamic as well (i.e. it's not like I was like "here, female co-worker, you do the grunt work" but it felt like everyone tacitly agreed on that and I played into it).

What do you think you should (could?) have done differently in that situation?

in teh vernacular this phenomenon would be referred to: 'like a boss'

"yeah that's super interesting! i think about how nonwhite and nonblack people in america racialize themselves all the time, i guess it's no longer as true as it once was that race dynamics in america are primarily a black/white binary, but it's still hard to figure out where asians 'fit in.' i keep on thinking about jay caspian kang's article written during linsanity, i guess the point is that black culture is the most visible minority culture in america and maybe therefore the easiest to substitute in for or is the closest to your own experience. i keep on wondering why there isn't more for east asian americans to latch on to than being proud about 'bubble tea' and lion dances during the lunar year. i dunno."

its to do with years of white people only seeing black as the 'significant racial other'. in the 70s, black was used in england to mean anyone non-english. easier to just lump everyone non white as being 'black'. extends/extended to media too. youd always get a token black actor, to represent the 'other', as if to cover all non-white bases in one swoop.

I have all sorts of problems with Wesley yangs article but the description of workplace dynamics is kind of otm

tell us about yr issues with it

FWIW, not exactly proud of this, but I have noticed I have a little bit of that "important work" instinct in the workplace. I kind of caught myself falling into this dynamic with a female co-worker, and it felt like the male and female higher-up and the associate herself all fell into the dynamic as well (i.e. it's not like I was like "here, female co-worker, you do the grunt work" but it felt like everyone tacitly agreed on that and I played into it).

I am definitely familiar with this workplace dynamic, but had not thought about the implications for Asians in the workplace--I had always considered it a gendered thing, mostly.

tell us about yr issues with it

― the late great, Friday, January 24, 2014 9:57 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

Well he's right to point out that APA males do have to deal with stereotypes that situate them "lower" in the social hierarchy vis-a-vis white men

But it's not acceptable to advocate as a response an embracement of a misogynistic and damaging Western masculinity that sees validation only in picking up white women and inhabiting all those gross patterns of behavior

Like the answer is not for APA males to go out and become pickup artists

i didn't get that far in the article o_O

is that really what he says?

He interviews and attends a PUA session conducted by an APA PUA

And then he finishes the article with

There is something salutary in that proud defiance. And though the debate she sparked about Asian-American life has been of questionable value, we will need more people with the same kind of defiance, willing to push themselves into the spotlight and to make some noise, to beat people up, to seduce women, to make mistakes, to become entrepreneurs, to stop doggedly pursuing official paper emblems attesting to their worthiness, to stop thinking those scraps of paper will secure anyone’s happiness, and to dare to be interesting.

jeez well i only read the first three pages

i will admit, there's a much younger and less wise version of myself that can relate to that impulse

Yeah I mean the whole thing seems very much like, fight against these stereotypes by becoming... more white

IDK I totally understand the assimilationalist impulse but I feel that there's a lot of room before you get to becoming a full blown jock dude asshole

I like Mordy's distinction between assimilation/acculturation

where is that?

Oh I don't think there's like a dictionary definition

Just the notion that you can acculturate to the dominant culture of the society without completely assimilating

it's a tough journey, to be sure

While I don't think it's good to aspire to beating people up and becoming pick up artists, I can certainly relate to the feeling, when you feel like people of your group are usually the ones getting picked on, to know that it's at least possible for people from your group to beat others up or be pickup artists. That's what the whole Eric Bana/Munich joke in Knocked Up is about. I also think it has a lot to do with the oft-seen American Jewish infatuation with Israel and the IDF

I read an interesting review of a book about the US Jewish community and the way in which Jewish gangsters were idolised by many completely law-abiding people for overturning stereotypes about victimhood and power, a while ago. It's not a response that's impossible to understand.

I do admit to loving stories about triads, both in China and Chinatown

I do admit to loving stories about triads, both in China and Chinatown

Did you play Sleeping Dogs? It's should scratch that same itch, only in the genre wrapper of a GTA game

Come to think of it, I can't wait for SL2, as the first game is bad-ass, in that it eschews firearms in exchange for power-ups in the form of dim sum and energy drinks, and supporting characters like Uncle Salty

isaak babel's early stories, abt powerful colorful jewish gangsters in odessa, are full of this kind of uncomfortable attraction to violence (like, it makes babel uncomfortable, not just me). there's a bunch of early-soviet literary theorizing abt the stereotype-breaking archetype of the "jew on horseback" (shades of django) that gets tangled up w theorizing abt the rigteousness of revolutionary violence, violence inherently+fundamentally different than the violence of the oppressors; gorky liked this too--but then you read babel's diaries from the civil war front and you get this fear that violence is just violence and is stronger than its own reasons. not going anywhere w this but the stories are good.

Yeah I have bought Sleeping Dogs but lack a platform to play it on xp

I used to feel that way about my own grandpa's stories of growing up in gangster chicago -- he was not a gangster himself in any way as far as I can tell, but he was in a lot of fights, esp with italian kids, was slashed with a knife, and allegedly bricked a kid in the head to get out of danger once. I was definitely fascinated by his stories as a kid and he was the image of "tough jew" for me. Was also very skilled in "manly" stuff like carpentry and home repair, which I am not.

so dyao ive kinda noticed this trend in a bunch of recent-ish books where white authors imagine the near-future and china is this scary, impervious survivor of w/e ecological political or economic disasters that have devastated the_west. and not one of the authors ever really explains why china is exempt from the disruptions that bring down western nations except by vaguely waving at chinas authoritarian, militaristic nature. as an e.g. in david mitchells new novel the world suffers a global economic collapse from an oil shortage and climate change (yah) but china becomes this hugely prosperous superpower. despite the fact that ecosystem collapse would hit china way harder than say western ireland where our white protoganists have been plunged into 'a new dark age'

i dont really have a qn except i was wondering if you had noticed this kind of stuff - i feel like theres a weird mix of fear and admiration amongst western elites for what the see as chinas 'strength' thats starting to materialize in cultural products and its feels racist or at least kinda gross and telling of how ppl in power in the_west feel about the less powerful idk

Hah nakh probably has more thoughts on this than I do

One sec lemme think

also do you think its weird that there are so many threads on ilx about white guys dating azn girls??

I think the genesis for this sort of belief comes from China's response to the 2007 financial meltdown

While the US was mired in political kabuki, trying to push through TARP, thinking up ideas like "too big to fail" to sell the idea of injecting massive amounts of cash into the economy to help it stay liquid to the public, and failing as I think most people would agree

China w/ its 'authoritarian' government was able to ram a financial bailout plan by forcing its state banks to lend out massive amounts of money so as to keep its infrastructure projects going, its markets liquid (And I think you can see that it's starting to catch up as principal repayments are coming up and a lot of bad debt is having to be written off)

This was widely credited to the CCP being in control of enough organs of executive power that they could orchestrate this without any or much opposition from say, an opposing political party also in power

Probably western elites admire this sort of top down authoritarian exercise of power where the CCP has its members in every province, city, town, and village, and where dealing with the CCP is a prerequisite for almost anything of import to get done

Think the major mistake of this model is thinking that authoritarian government = a unity of power and effect that gets expressed from the top to the very bottom

The CCP is actually very much more factionalized than most people think, probably incredibly so, it's very hard to get a read since their operations are so secretive, but it definitely exists

Don't think that the CCP can be counted to react with one voice to every major regime-threatening cataclysm like they did in 2007, it's a spurious assumption

/despite the fact that ecosystem collapse would hit china way harder than say western ireland/

sup

yeah i noted some of this infatuation with china in a uk context at the end of the class thread but possibly the answer to this lies in the narcissism at the centre of all western declinist narratives, china being a placeholder for the projected 'vitality' that the feckless west has lost

what are the racial politics of mitchell like in general? i don't want to read his books for aesthetic reasons but it would be useful to think he is also racist or at least orientalist

And yeah definitely depending on the nature of the threat China wouldn't be more immune than any other country, a stoppage on the production of fossil fuels e.g. would probably bring China to a complete halt given how much they import, and China already stopped being self-sufficient with food ~10 years ago and has had to import

And yeah I have definitely noticed the_west's obsession, I chalk it up to the_west's longstanding secret, or not so secret obsession with fascism

Just bad for the_west that it depends on a bunch of incorrect assumptions

Feel like ~fear~ of the rise of China or the East in general is probably more xenophobic than racist, not sure what the_west is concerned about, the quality of food consumed would rise up all across the world

also do you think its weird that there are so many threads on ilx about white guys dating azn girls??

― Lamp, Tuesday, September 16, 2014 10:14 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

Don't find it weird for a board where the majority of the postership since its inception in 1999 has been straight white guys, at least half of whom have seen Chungking Express & also claim to be fans of Tsai Mingliang and Bong Joon-ho

Always great to look up a Momus thread on Japan for a down day

dyao thats makes sense. although i feel like i had come across this exact sentiment in places like the wsj and the economist pre-2007 where they would gesture at human rights abuses but boy those chinese sure can get things done. esp contrasting it to our superior but admittedly inefficient and maybe too-precious western democracy. but its particularly interesting to me how this idea of chinas political culture as particularly resilient is portrayed in culture. i guess its preferable to stuff like 'world war z' where the near extinction of the human race has its origin in chinas corrupt and untrammeled economic expansion but idk

racial politics of mitchell are usually pretty good or least well-meaning but the latest one is embarrassingly bad but outside the purview of this thread. of interest to old ilx his wife is japanese (and very nice). the imperial china of the future thing is hardly him along though i just finished richard morgan's black man where the same thing is present. and there was a bit of it in gary sh. 'super sad...'. i had a few other example in mind as i biked home from work today but lost them at some point.

Think the major mistake of this model is thinking that authoritarian government = a unity of power and effect that gets expressed from the top to the very bottom

The CCP is actually very much more factionalized than most people think, probably incredibly so, it's very hard to get a read since their operations are so secretive, but it definitely exists

Don't think that the CCP can be counted to react with one voice to every major regime-threatening cataclysm like they did in 2007, it's a spurious assumption

― 龜, Wednesday, 17 September 2014 03:25 (3 minutes ago)

this is all true -- ccp is perceived as being 'ruthlessly efficient', also somewhat enigmatic because while lacking identifiable charismatic personalities (at least as understood in the west since deng) it has a sort of lustre of institutional charisma to the western right, nevermind its corruption or internal conflict

Yeah I mean those sentiments definitely existed pre-2007, China's economy has been growing for what, 20 straight years?

And manufacturers have been offshoring to China for at least that long

2007 just reified those expectations

This discussion reminds me of the (apocryphal?) story that immediately after Tiananmen, H.W. condemned the crackdown but then privately phoned Deng and said to him "You did the right thing"

These perceptions also play into a perception of China in America that's more than a century old, Yellow Peril & the threat of an invasion of faceless (or rather same-faced) Mongol hordes

Think if you dug really deep into these assumptions you might find a core analogy of China as an insect colony, with a central hivemind that issues commands to its personality-less and obedient worker adults, an analogy much too offensive to be voiced directly but which manifests itself in innocuous comments like [X azn is great, such a worker bee], or crude (but maybe gesturing at something real) binaries like the Chinese are collectivists while Americans are individualists

My favorite of the above is the association of Korean Starcraft players with the Zerg, kekeke ^_^

yeah thats something interesting. as i was typing my last post i was recalling something i had read about east asians being 'unsuited for democracy' but all i could recall was stuff from robertson davies 'tempest-tossed' parodying that attitude and general fear of 'the yellow peril'. a friend of mine works for [european luxury brand] and recently she was complaining about how 'the chinese girls all want the same bag. like the exact same' and how that was warping the luxury bag market. its the 'rich manhattan children learning mandarin' mindset. was kind of everywhere when i was in nyc for fashion week. i do think theres an assumption of... lack of individuality is the graceless way i am phrasing it. idk. i am trying to think of instances in tv/film where these concerns pop up and coming up blank

sorry for rambling like i said i just read three books recently where this idea of future china was present and am interested in how widespread and influential it is generally

xp dayo otm
I loved the game Alpha Centauri, but this faction definitely had some relation to what you said

I feel like this is different in some ways but similar in others to the mingled fear and admiration of Japan that was prevalent in the 80s in the midst of Reagan-era malaise. See e.g. the Japanized future LA of Blade Runner.

The 'unsuited for democracy' trope has probably been parroted in China as much as it has in the_west, probably moreso, the CCP has as much of an interest in keeping its citizens from being interested in democracy as the_west does in trying to portray China as being unsuited for democracy

It's pretty much patently untrue though, look at Taiwan and Hong Kong, what is true is that democracy practiced in China would look very different than it does in most countries of the_west, and I think that's a good thing, it'd be silly to completely mimic a form of government created more than 200 years ago without even introducing a few changes

The thing with the bags, what I see is a billion people trying to become middle-class, if you take any quantifiable segment of that population and look at it in isolation of course it's going to look pretty humongous in comparison to anything around it, you probably have another friend at [european luxury brand 2] who has the same exact complaint about another bag, they're just encountering different segments of the same overall population

How it comes across in TV/film can be pretty subtle I think - I definitely recall one big tentpole movie from within the past year or two where this was present but I'm blanking on the movie, what's a big Hollywood blockbuster that had some Azn actors and actresses??

I mean obvious there was the remake of Red Dawn

the david mitchell thing instantly reminded me of "man in the moone," a 17th c british book in which a spaniard goes to the moon and meets a race of super advanced aliens and then goes to china and comments on how similar they are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_Moone

Trigault's account of the Chinese language gave Godwin the idea of assigning tonality to the Lunar language, and of appreciating it in the language spoken by the Chinese mandarins Gonsales encounters after his return to Earth. Gonsales claims that in contrast to the multitude of languages in China (making their speakers mutually unintelligible), the mandarins' language is universal by virtue of tonality (he suppresses it in the other Chinese languages). Thus the mandarins are able to maintain a cultural and spiritual superiority resembling that of the Lunar upper class, which is to be placed in contrast with the variety of languages spoken in a fractured and morally degenerate Europe and elsewhere.

anyway i would say this is not a recent phenomenon at all, and yes i think it's borne of a fascination with fascism

dyao thats makes sense. although i feel like i had come across this exact sentiment in places like the wsj and the economist pre-2007 where they would gesture at human rights abuses but boy those chinese sure can get things done.

I recall this kind of sentiment around the time of the SARS outbreak - China could contain the disease by enforcing quarantine at gunpoint over a broad area etc.

See e.g. the Japanized future LA of Blade Runner.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, September 16, 2014 10:04 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hah or the sinicized LA in Her

Would be interested in how your friend describes the type of person who would want the Longchamp le pliage

The building in Die Hard was owned by a Japanese company, 'Nakatomi' I think?

xp dayo otm
I loved the game Alpha Centauri, but this faction definitely had some relation to what you said

― Nhex, Tuesday, September 16, 2014 11:03 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

Damn that's some shit

yeah the obsession with japanese corporate management in the late 80s was probably a manifestation of similar ideas - sadly i read tom clancy's 'debt of honor' which is probably where i am remembering the east asians are culturally incompatible with democracy stuff from

dyao - i think she would describe them as 'really rich chinese girls'. we were talking about how quickly the shape of it bags gets replicated cf. mansur gavriels bucket bag in 2014 vs. celine trapeze bags from a few years ago and she was like well its because of china (american professionals blaming things 'on china' has to have reached self-parody at this point) and thats how the discussion came about that i am not recounting on this message board and getting self-conscious about

Lol I remember the celine

I mean the most I'd be willing to generalize would be that yeah, Chinese culture probably values veblen & status symbol goods moreso than American culture as a whole, spoken as someone who has brought two Chanel bags to China through customs for various relatives

It goes both ways, most luxury brands are trying desperately hard to 'make it' in China, it's a huge market

There's another narrative of old vs new money too that is simultaneously intersecting with the east vs. west binary

fwiw while i cant really argue about society as a whole the american upper classes arent materially different from the chinese upper class in terms of their interest in status goods &c. and having spent some time in china and hong kong there are obv more avant-garde leaning fashion ppl they just arent the ones coming to soho to buy 5K hand bags so they remain invisible to western industry ppl for the most part except sometimes on instagram

anyway one of the other novels that used this trope was '2312' although there i think it was a little more plausible

where they would gesture at human rights abuses but boy those chinese sure can get things done. esp contrasting it to our superior but admittedly inefficient and maybe too-precious western democracy

And all this time, I thought that was called "The Texas Miracle."

http://gothamist.com/2014/09/20/video_were_iphone_6_mega_lines_take.php

http://i.imgur.com/YdO8DIP.png

Lmao

ambulatory flesh sacks used up precious hours of their finite lives

tried to tell them
u are wasting your lives,
ambulatory flesh sacks!
hang on your egoless progressivism on any tree, geeks!
they wouldnt listen

wowzers

http://i.imgur.com/uMCn5Oo.jpg

Boat carrying 138 iPhone 6's was caught trying to enter HK

it seems a professional fun-haver broke this story

re: the long history of the unsuited-for-democracy trope, was reading D.R. SarDesai's Southeast Asia & came across this quote from 1880s Malay governor Sir Frederick Weld:
"Moreover, I doubt if Asiatics will ever learn to govern themselves; it is contrary to the genius of their race, of their history, of their religious system, that they should. Their desire is a mild, just and firm despotism."
P.similar vibes re: propping up local elites to smooth the path for corporate interests &c.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-17/activists-sue-harvard-and-unc-for-discriminating-against-asians

:-\

good, imo

Look at who's filing the lawsuit

Impure hearts

yeah, but society can't just ignore the issue

will be very interested to see how white americans attitudes toward affirmative action change as they begin to need it to get into college!

their attitudes won't matter if it's declared unconstitutional

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/opinion/is-harvard-unfair-to-asian-americans.html

Conservatives point to Harvard’s emphasis on enrolling African-Americans (currently 12 percent of freshmen) and Hispanics (13 percent) but overlook preferences for children of alumni (about 12 percent of students) and recruited athletes (around 13 percent). The real problem is that, in a meritocratic system, whites would be a minority — and Harvard just isn’t comfortable with that.

What I've been saying all along - Asian American applicants should be judged against white applicants, not other applicants of color

I think we hashed it out a little upthread, but obviously the definition of "meritocratic" is itself always going to be a problem and is going to be open to adjustments that benefit one ethnicity vs another (and one class vs another).

Sure but let's make it a problem for white people instead

:)

http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-wang-says-ivy-league-discriminates-against-asians-2015-5

"There was nothing humanly possible I could do" after getting rejected by Stanford and 6 out of 7 Ivy League schools

Mike Wang
Salutatorian
4.67 weighted GPA
36 ACT
2230 SAT
13 Advanced Placement classes
National speech & debate contestant
National math contestant
Sang on the choir at Obama's 2008 inaugaration

sad

if he really wanted to maximize his chances he'd have played a sport and been in student government, so i'm putting it down to he's a slacker

don't worry lil guy, i know people who went to williams and then got phds at harvard

Fuck that dude lmao

He's mad at the wrong people

seriously

as much as i absolutely believe in the bamboo ceiling afa college admissions, a white guy with that resume would be lucky to even get into penn

Come on dude college campuses are filled to the brim with underachieving white ppl who are legacies / go to feeder schools / paid $$$$ to college admissions prep counselors / are athletes / etc.

Admit this kid over any of those white ppl and stop pretending that affirmative action is taking ur spot

Penn and every other ivy could do a class that was only 25% white no problem. But they are cowards

the role of athletics at ivy league schools was ridiculous to me at the time, and now is even more so ... if dude was an athlete (well, depending on the sport), he'd be golden. On the other hand, he could try applying to transfer to one of those schools next year or the year after. Drop out/transfer rate at Ivies after freshman year is pretty significant iirc.

dude you're just wrong on the numbers here. a 2230 salutatorian is average or lower stats at an ivy, with urms included.

i'm sure there are asian students out there who deserve white students' spots, he's just not one of them

what saddens me more is that he's trapped in the game; like this guy make his way without breaking into an Ivy, but too dumb or ambitious to see it, and likely because of what he's been told and taught about life.

dude you're just wrong on the numbers here. a 2230 salutatorian is average or lower stats at an ivy, with urms included.

i'm sure there are asian students out there who deserve white students' spots, he's just not one of them

― een, Tuesday, June 2, 2015 2:10 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

Lol so 'average asians' can't get into Ivy's? Fuck off, average white ppl go to Ivy's all the time

too bad he didn't add anything about his parent's legacy status or offer an endowment. that really would have put him over the top.

i'm not really sure we need a "meritocratic" system that lets more people like this guy in. that said it'd be nice if white people were held to a similar standard

sorry if i'm missing something but this guy applied for, and got into, an ivy league school, correct?

yeah but he wanted to get into all of them

because Penn wasn't good enough apparently

Come on dude college campuses are filled to the brim with underachieving white ppl who are legacies / go to feeder schools / paid $$$$ to college admissions prep counselors / are athletes / etc.

harvard doesnt want white people like this either tho

I feel like this guy should be disqualified just on grounds of having taken both the ACT and the SAT. Who loves standardized tests that much?

They still take them to make sure alumni donations are up to par

People who know they can't rely on extracurricular factors like rich parents and legacies? xp

My best friend tutors UES white kids exclusively in NYC and the stories he tells of the deals they cut w/ ivy league schools to get admission

yeah that was my point, harvard doesnt want middle class strivers with great test scores regardless of race.

i mean i also wonder how much mike wang would want go to a harvard w/o any well-connected idiots? americas oligarchy is just as capable of ensuring its continuity at connecticut college as it as at yale

the stories he tells of the deals they cut w/ ivy league schools to get admission

As a guy who lives in the Midwest and is very aware of how hard it is for extremely smart HS kids here to get into Harvard, please tell me more

Drop out/transfer rate at Ivies after freshman year is pretty significant iirc.

Retention rate after freshman year at Harvard is 97%. http://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/harvard-university/academic-life/graduation-and-retention/#

My best friend tutors UES white kids exclusively in NYC and the stories he tells of the deals they cut w/ ivy league schools to get admission

I have a friend from undergrad who works for Harvard admissions and she openly laughs at these people and calls them morons with too much money.

wonder what will happen when john paulson's kids apply, she'll laugh at them too I bet

If they aren't qualified, she will.

Of course, Harvard's applicant pool allows it to craft the shape of its student body down to the millimeter. Even the other Ivies can't laugh at rich morons with as much impunity as Harvard can.

As a guy who lives in the Midwest and is very aware of how hard it is for extremely smart HS kids here to get into Harvard, please tell me more

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, June 9, 2015 10:30 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

Don't really want to divulge too much on a public forum

I would say that yr average midwestern applicant probably has 'geographical diversity' going for him but not by much, it's probably a bigger effect for the Southern states

Why would anyone from the South care about Harvard, they're not even BCS.

Of course, Harvard's applicant pool allows it to craft the shape of its student body down to the millimeter. Even the other Ivies can't laugh at rich morons with as much impunity as Harvard can.

― Aimless, Tuesday, 9 June 2015 18:24 (41 minutes ago)

Kushner is the eldest son of Seryl (née Stadtmauer) and the New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner.[1][2] He was raised Orthodox Jewish in northern New Jersey.[3] He graduated from the Frisch School, a private, coed yeshiva high school in Paramus, New Jersey, and from Harvard University in 2003. His father had made a $2.5 million donation to the university.[4]

he met Harvard's criteria, obv

dude you're just wrong on the numbers here. a 2230 salutatorian is average or lower stats at an ivy, with urms included.

i'm sure there are asian students out there who deserve white students' spots, he's just not one of them

― een, Tuesday, June 2, 2015 2:10 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

Lol so 'average asians' can't get into Ivy's? Fuck off, average white ppl go to Ivy's all the time

― 龜, Tuesday, June 2, 2015 7:23 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"average or lower" was too nice: a 2230 salutatorian is considerably below average for a non-urm student at an ivy league school.

reducing an applicant to their grades and test scores is troubling. but 1.) colleges obviously do this to everyone regardless of race, and 2.) it's a strange argument for Mike Wang to make, because it seems like his whole claim to being discriminated against is that his grades and scores were the same or better as those of white people who got into schools he wanted to get into (which again, go to collegeboard and look up the statistics on SAT scores by race, then go look at the average SAT scores at ivy league schools, then go look at the percentages of asians and white people admitted to ivy league schools, is not true).

that people are able to buy their way into college is horrifying. again i'm failing to see what this has to do with differentiating asian and white applicants. asian americans are wealthier than white americans on average (look it up, that's true too), and they make donations to colleges all the time.

maybe the component of your argument i missed is that historically speaking the way white people got the money they have right now was much more unfair than the way asian people got the money they have right now. i don't think any fair minded person could disagree with that. i would say that this is not just a good reason asian applicants should be treated the same as white applicants, but that it means asian people should receive preferential aa-type treatment over white people in the admissions process.

legacies (as in, in a tie-break situation, admitting one student over another solely because his parent went to the same school) are also atrociously inappropriate as a consideration in college admissions. i can't think of any way to research whether or not legacies still impact college decisionmaking. nevertheless i'm pretty comfortable assuming that they do, and if that's true it's fucked up.

Lol what. Your arguments are so bad

asian americans are wealthier than white americans on average (look it up, that's true too)

http://i.imgur.com/hj3fe1D.png

That's as of 2000. Even if asians are slightly wealther on average than whites now it's only because they aggregate all asian americans together without accounting for subethnic groups within the asian american population

i would say that this is not just a good reason asian applicants should be treated the same as white applicants, but that it means asian people should receive preferential aa-type treatment over white people in the admissions process.

Yes this is exactly my point. Admit asians over white ppl every day of the week

You're acting like the bottom 25% of Ivies are made up only of URMs. That's simply not true, tons of mediocre white kids in there too

Based on SAT score obv

and they make donations to colleges all the time.

Man no asian americans in the US are throwing around money like Pulitzers, Bernsteins, Mellons (to name a few families who sent kid to the ivy i went to)

Picking an Ivy at random 2230 puts this guy right in the middle of Columbia's middle 50% between 2150 and 2320 http://undergrad.admissions.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/classof2017_profile.pdf

IDK where you're getting ex-URM numbers. You probably have friends in an admissions office, maybe

he got into princeton. he has no case

lacrosse

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21669595-asian-americans-are-united-states-most-successful-minority-they-are-complaining-ever

itt we confuse over 3 billion people with the highest-achieving thousands sprung off mostly of the self-selecting 20 million who, often with means or a job offer, jumped the backyard pond

oh i didn't realize there were 3 billion Asian Americans

oh i didn't realize the thread title said "asian americans are smart"

that's cause you're a dullard

rly enjoying listening to wesley yang discuss entrance to stuyvesant on this wk's longform podcast. tangentially fascinated hearing his thoughts on language, delivered in incredibly balanced clause-ridden paragraphs

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/opinion/stuyvesant-new-york-schools-de-blasio.html

I support this policy. tell me why I’m wrong

I'm half asian and made the mistake of putting ssian on my college applications. It worked against me for 2 schools. I still support the above though. (I actually turned down one school because when I visited...too many asians).

ssian=asian...derp

Lol, I never considered before whether ticking that box could work against me when it comes to job applications. (I imagine no.)

I remember my guidance counselor called one school to find out, because it was like that asian guy above who wanted to get into all the ivy schools: weighted above 4.4 gpa, salutorian, national awards, clubs, sports, nailed my interviews. The school told her it was because I was ranked against the other asians. I was mad at the time but whatever. Part of education is being around different people. But yeah, my old boss (who was also asian american) and I used to take long lunches from our corporate job because "white people are slow" and we didn't understand why it took them so long to do everything. We had a lot of spare time.

There are billions of Asians. Some of them must be a bit slow, too.

Oh yeah, my brothers are really not bright. One's a cop.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-secret-joke-at-the-heart-of-the-harvard-affirmative-action-case

well, there is an awful lot to chew on here

Trying to parse this part, I have no idea what the author is suggesting here:

This raises complicated questions about how we define racial discrimination—if white applicants are implicitly favored over Asian American ones, is it right to place the blame for that on race-conscious affirmative action? Or does that instead suggest that an even more transparent consideration of race for underrepresented minorities could help reduce the risk of hidden discrimination against racial minorities who are overrepresented?

I struggled with that as well

I just read it five times and need someone to break it down for me more better

"should we blame affirmative action for 'prioritizing white people' over Asian Americans? ...just kidding, we don't actually give it a shit, but it's a good wedge for us to kill the whole thing and bring it back to the way it was before."

the origin of the term "affirmative action" was simply a description of the sorts of action that would be necessary to redress the effects of nationwide organized injustice and oppression against racial minorities, in a federal court ruling that such organized oppression was illegal and could not be addressed simply by repealing unjust laws that had done massive continuing damage to whole populations for centuries.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/nyregion/specialized-high-schools-black-students-stuyvesant.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

this is seems like something that can’t possibly continue forever

Thought this affirmative action revive might be about: Civil service interns must be working class, government says

The aims and objectives seem good - but having dabbled in the CS and observed its senior management, I have zero confidence that this will be run effectively.

yeah kevin k, i read that article and found it mildly disturbing, to say the least.