Anonymous wrote:You won't see much important from parents here. They're mostly white and love making fun of black students at any moment. I'd reach out to other parents in your community who are sympathetic. People here like inequality.
People here like the students admitted to top colleges to be equally qualified. Do you really think that super-liberal Pomona would stop offering admission to highly qualified black kids if they had the opportunity? If you do, you are delusional. The number of college-ready whites and Asians dwarfs the number of college-ready blacks and Hispanics. It's time we get to work on K-12 and fix that, but fudging it with doctored college admissions serves no ones interests.
yes there was a such a bad crisis that when Pomona had a nearly 18% black class, the graduation rate plummeted and the GPAs diminished to 0....oh wait, that never happened and the graduation rate, fellowship achievement, and average gpa all stayed the same! It's almost like there's a lot more "college ready" kids than DCUM thinks, but it doesn't fit a certain (racist) narrative.
Very few universities fail students out unless they don’t show up to class.
The question is whether universities should have race based standards for admissions.
Asians are not being "targeted" by OP. The issue is the Asian and White students will not want to be friends with and share in life with the non Asian or White students, so why would a non Asian or non White student subject themselves to that? What "Asians" have to understand is that you never want people talking about you, even in a netural way, otherwise you claim "Asian hate" but at the same time all over DCUM, "Asisans" have so much to say about black people, and even white people at times.
Most absurd assertion. Not in NYC anyway.
Come to California. Berkeley is insanely racially segregated. All asian groups basically everywhere that judge white students and especially other minority students. White students flock towards the greek life for their "community." It's pretty clear when these campuses are heavily segregated, and you really get to see how this generation operates. There are many other parts of the country where people are very very race-sensitive, and California is one of them.
Yes. I don't get this generation, as a Gen Xer. It is like they are turning back time. Or, did we increase immigration too fast in the past 20 to 30 years and there is not longer a sense of cohesion in this country at all?
Part of it is immigrant students who come from cultures where homogeneity is good and they prefer to stay with their cliques of international/their race students. Another part is higher ed becoming very diverse, potentially way too quickly and expecting the northeast boarding school generationally wealthy student to hang out with the rural, conservative queer kid is very unlikely to work in your favor. Diversity is great, but students will always find infrastructure and network in a way to stick to what they are used to and what they know.
Showing your true color. Xenophobia
...nothing about that is xenophobic. I'd stick with American students too if I were to go to college abroad.
Immigrants' kids are still Americans. Are you excluding them from your circle just because they are Asian immigrants' kids?
Oh my god you’re so dense. I’m specifically talking about Asian immigrant students, who are significant block of American higher ed
They aren’t a block.
Seriously, why are Americans so set on lumping more than half of the world’s population into one category?
Do you really think a Korean kid and a Sri Lankan kid see each other as members of some tribe together?
This isn’t unique to Asian people. That’s just how race works.
+1, this is a weird insistence by people on this forum that Asian people are so foreign to the rest of us that we wouldn’t understand that people from different countries…have different cultures and practices. Yes, we are aware. You aren’t special. Just be a person beyond your race.
You get it! We shouldn’t be thinking about how “diverse” we are in one race. Just treat people as people with respect.
+1 just be a person beyond your race. You can take pride in your heritage, acknowledge the wrongs and work on addressing current problems but you’re ultimately hurting and limiting yourself by making everything in life about race. Signed, minority parent.
when someone calls themselves a "minority" they mean Asian or Hispanic, just so you know. They float between being a "minority" when it is convenient or on the other hand part of a superior "family-oriented, education-oriented" culture when convenient.
This cannot be more racist! You are saying minority cannot be family-oriented, education-oriented?
Saying that “my culture is family-oriented” or “education-oriented” can sound like a benign expression of pride, but it often carries an unintended sting. When you frame these qualities as special to your own group, you implicitly invite comparison: if my culture is the one that cherishes family or schooling, what does that say about yours? The compliment to oneself doubles as a yardstick against which other communities can appear indifferent or deficient, even if that is not what the speaker intends. Because most societies prize kinship and learning in their own ways, labeling these values as uniquely ours comes across as a quiet form of ethnocentrism.
That sting is sharper in places like the United States, where “family-oriented” and “education-oriented” have long been coded into racial and immigration debates. Praising Asian Americans as especially studious, for example, props up the “model-minority” myth, which has historically been used to shame Black and Latino communities by suggesting they fall short through cultural flaws rather than structural barriers. Politicians who laud “hard-working, family-centered immigrants” often do so to single out certain nationalities for approval while casting others as less desirable. In these contexts, what sounds like a simple self-celebration actually reinforces old hierarchies.
This is the most Bizarre and twisted rubbish.
When someone says “my culture is family-oriented” or “education-oriented,” their immediate aim is often to explain what shaped their own attitudes and behaviors—nothing more. This is a descriptive claim, not a prescriptive one. In everyday conversation, people routinely name the earliest influences on their values: “I grew up in a community that always put family first,” or “Education was all my parents talked about.” If we immediately assume every such statement carries a hidden comparison or hierarchy, we risk discouraging honest self-description. Intent matters: most of the time people merely want to share where they come from, not measure others against that standard.
It’s possible to celebrate cultural strengths without implying that those strengths are absent elsewhere. For instance, saying “In my family, elders always gather every Sunday to share a meal” does not necessarily mean “Your family doesn’t.” In practice, everyone’s definition of “family-oriented” will look different. By framing it as “for us, this is especially important,” you can leave space for others to tell their own stories. In other words, you can express pride in your upbringing without forcing a zero-sum comparison.
You assumes that labeling any value as “special to my group” automatically positions other groups as deficient. But cultures are not monoliths, nor are all members of a culture identical. If you say “In my Korean American community, education is pitched as the surest path to stability,” you acknowledge a particular historical and social context—namely, the immigrant experience, Confucian legacies, or post-1965 university admissions patterns—without claiming that every other community lacks those same motivations. Being precise about why a community emphasizes schooling (for example, to overcome language barriers, or because of first-generation immigrant pressures) keeps the statement grounded in particular circumstances, rather than a global comparison.
+1000
Immigrants particularly Asian immigrants don’t have much left for support, family and education are the two things they can rely on to survive here.
This thread really reveals how much hate some hold against Asian Americans. We are not even allowed to say the most important things that matter to us.
What’s next? Are you going to take away those two things from Asian Americans? Are you going to send us to internment camps?
They think highlighting our reliance on family and education is a slight to their community, do they truly believe that families who’ve been in this country for generations don’t hold those same values? Of course they hold the same values. It’s unsettling to see people react as if we’re somehow “less American” or “too focused on grades.” Telling us our values are offensive or exclusionary, telling us to abandon them? Internment is a dark reminder of how quickly fear and prejudice can strip away rights. The hate beneath the surface is real.
Hate is far too strong of a word here. They do not hate and they have fair points which are dismissed by so many, especially on this board.
Most of this is driven by the behaviors and attitudes of the immigrants (particularly the tech focused immigrants) of the last 30 years. Their vocal advocacy for test based admissions systems like they grew up in along with their dismissal of the inequities of the US secondary education system and the lived experience challenges of some minorities causes pushback by others. Their failure to recognize that US schools value traits beyond test scores causes pushback by others. Their cries of 'anti-Asian racism' towards those who disagree causes pushback by others. Many in the community are pretty open in their opinions that certain groups "can't keep up" and do not deserve top educational opportunities. And this causes pushback by others.
I was ready to bow out of this thread, but since the discussion is still going, allow me add one more point.
When DCUM talks about “immigrants” or “tech-focused immigrants” as a single bloc, they treat individuals as interchangeable members of a group instead of recognizing their variety, it slips into stereotyping and racism. Within the Chinese-American community alone there is wide political and cultural diversity. For example, the relatively small number of Chinese Americans who take a hard-line MAGA stance tend to live in solidly red states such as Ohio or North Carolina, while many Chinese professionals in New York or California are comfortable with diversity, equity, and inclusion. Voting data bear this out: the majority of Asian-American voters in NYC or California, have backed Democratic candidates in recent elections. Geography shapes outlook far more than race does.
Regardless of politics, most these families still view standardized tests as one of the fairest measures of college readiness—not because they (at least not all) lack empathy for marginalized groups, but because they believe the overall academic rigor of the United States has slipped from its former peak drastically. Whether standardized testing should remain a requirement is up for debate. That said, most elite colleges have concluded that test scores are a useful indicator of academic readiness, and have reinstated test requirement. Unfortunately, DCUM crazies and racists responded in ways that are irrational—dismissing Asians as “not interesting” and disparaging their core values like being family-focused or education-focused. (Some of the most extreme posts were removed, so I can’t quote them anymore.) And we see Black students do not wish to befriend with Asian students as if they are Dalit.
"because they believe the overall academic rigor of the United States has slipped from its former peak drastically." This is comical. They support testing because and only because they believe that it will favor their children. They could care less about the rigor at any school other than the ones that they so desperately want their children to attend.
I fully support testing but I also believe that it should be used in the context of a students opportunities. The stated belief by many in the Asian community that the only things that merits consideration for admission is GPA and test score is a narrow and inadequate view, one not shared by the general public at large nor the universities themselves.
Yes, parents want their own kids to benefit, but honestly this is much bigger than pure self-interest. We are in an era of rampant grade inflation. SAT test is one of the few data points that isn’t curved by a local school district, so families who value academic rigor understandably defend it. Test scores predict college performance roughly four times better than high-school GPA. After Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, and MIT brought back required testing, Asian did not actually benefit from that as the Asian admits did not increase significantly. These elite colleges found that test data helps identify talent across socioeconomic backgrounds and can be more egalitarian when read in context. So, test required benefits fgli who are truly talented.
Most Asian parents do not want scores to be the only factor. Their kids engage in a variety of ECs in sports, art, music, debate, etc. What they want is a fair holistic review process, one that does not automatically give Asian kids a score of 1 in personality rating (similar to DCUM crazies saying "Asians are just not interesting").
Prior to Covid GPA predicted college performance better than test scores though the difference in predictive value was small. Post Covid I believe that test scores are now more predictive and will continue to be so. But they are not and hopefully never will be 4x predictive so that number is just made up by someone.
I believe that you are sincere but there are far too many instances of “test score/GPA should be the only criteria” posting; almost all by Asian parents to agree with”most”. The system revolves around school priorities, not parent priorities which makes it opaque. Regarding your comment on Asian students automatically getting a 1. This is a good example of Asian parent priorities for children growing up not aligning with an admissions rubric based on institutional priorities. The kids aren’t deficient in any way; they just don’t align with the rubric and there are many thousands of qualified applicants to choose from.
Asians are not being "targeted" by OP. The issue is the Asian and White students will not want to be friends with and share in life with the non Asian or White students, so why would a non Asian or non White student subject themselves to that? What "Asians" have to understand is that you never want people talking about you, even in a netural way, otherwise you claim "Asian hate" but at the same time all over DCUM, "Asisans" have so much to say about black people, and even white people at times.
Most absurd assertion. Not in NYC anyway.
Come to California. Berkeley is insanely racially segregated. All asian groups basically everywhere that judge white students and especially other minority students. White students flock towards the greek life for their "community." It's pretty clear when these campuses are heavily segregated, and you really get to see how this generation operates. There are many other parts of the country where people are very very race-sensitive, and California is one of them.
Yes. I don't get this generation, as a Gen Xer. It is like they are turning back time. Or, did we increase immigration too fast in the past 20 to 30 years and there is not longer a sense of cohesion in this country at all?
Part of it is immigrant students who come from cultures where homogeneity is good and they prefer to stay with their cliques of international/their race students. Another part is higher ed becoming very diverse, potentially way too quickly and expecting the northeast boarding school generationally wealthy student to hang out with the rural, conservative queer kid is very unlikely to work in your favor. Diversity is great, but students will always find infrastructure and network in a way to stick to what they are used to and what they know.
Showing your true color. Xenophobia
...nothing about that is xenophobic. I'd stick with American students too if I were to go to college abroad.
Immigrants' kids are still Americans. Are you excluding them from your circle just because they are Asian immigrants' kids?
Oh my god you’re so dense. I’m specifically talking about Asian immigrant students, who are significant block of American higher ed
They aren’t a block.
Seriously, why are Americans so set on lumping more than half of the world’s population into one category?
Do you really think a Korean kid and a Sri Lankan kid see each other as members of some tribe together?
This isn’t unique to Asian people. That’s just how race works.
+1, this is a weird insistence by people on this forum that Asian people are so foreign to the rest of us that we wouldn’t understand that people from different countries…have different cultures and practices. Yes, we are aware. You aren’t special. Just be a person beyond your race.
You get it! We shouldn’t be thinking about how “diverse” we are in one race. Just treat people as people with respect.
+1 just be a person beyond your race. You can take pride in your heritage, acknowledge the wrongs and work on addressing current problems but you’re ultimately hurting and limiting yourself by making everything in life about race. Signed, minority parent.
when someone calls themselves a "minority" they mean Asian or Hispanic, just so you know. They float between being a "minority" when it is convenient or on the other hand part of a superior "family-oriented, education-oriented" culture when convenient.
This cannot be more racist! You are saying minority cannot be family-oriented, education-oriented?
Saying that “my culture is family-oriented” or “education-oriented” can sound like a benign expression of pride, but it often carries an unintended sting. When you frame these qualities as special to your own group, you implicitly invite comparison: if my culture is the one that cherishes family or schooling, what does that say about yours? The compliment to oneself doubles as a yardstick against which other communities can appear indifferent or deficient, even if that is not what the speaker intends. Because most societies prize kinship and learning in their own ways, labeling these values as uniquely ours comes across as a quiet form of ethnocentrism.
That sting is sharper in places like the United States, where “family-oriented” and “education-oriented” have long been coded into racial and immigration debates. Praising Asian Americans as especially studious, for example, props up the “model-minority” myth, which has historically been used to shame Black and Latino communities by suggesting they fall short through cultural flaws rather than structural barriers. Politicians who laud “hard-working, family-centered immigrants” often do so to single out certain nationalities for approval while casting others as less desirable. In these contexts, what sounds like a simple self-celebration actually reinforces old hierarchies.
This is the most Bizarre and twisted rubbish.
When someone says “my culture is family-oriented” or “education-oriented,” their immediate aim is often to explain what shaped their own attitudes and behaviors—nothing more. This is a descriptive claim, not a prescriptive one. In everyday conversation, people routinely name the earliest influences on their values: “I grew up in a community that always put family first,” or “Education was all my parents talked about.” If we immediately assume every such statement carries a hidden comparison or hierarchy, we risk discouraging honest self-description. Intent matters: most of the time people merely want to share where they come from, not measure others against that standard.
It’s possible to celebrate cultural strengths without implying that those strengths are absent elsewhere. For instance, saying “In my family, elders always gather every Sunday to share a meal” does not necessarily mean “Your family doesn’t.” In practice, everyone’s definition of “family-oriented” will look different. By framing it as “for us, this is especially important,” you can leave space for others to tell their own stories. In other words, you can express pride in your upbringing without forcing a zero-sum comparison.
You assumes that labeling any value as “special to my group” automatically positions other groups as deficient. But cultures are not monoliths, nor are all members of a culture identical. If you say “In my Korean American community, education is pitched as the surest path to stability,” you acknowledge a particular historical and social context—namely, the immigrant experience, Confucian legacies, or post-1965 university admissions patterns—without claiming that every other community lacks those same motivations. Being precise about why a community emphasizes schooling (for example, to overcome language barriers, or because of first-generation immigrant pressures) keeps the statement grounded in particular circumstances, rather than a global comparison.
+1000
Immigrants particularly Asian immigrants don’t have much left for support, family and education are the two things they can rely on to survive here.
This thread really reveals how much hate some hold against Asian Americans. We are not even allowed to say the most important things that matter to us.
What’s next? Are you going to take away those two things from Asian Americans? Are you going to send us to internment camps?
They think highlighting our reliance on family and education is a slight to their community, do they truly believe that families who’ve been in this country for generations don’t hold those same values? Of course they hold the same values. It’s unsettling to see people react as if we’re somehow “less American” or “too focused on grades.” Telling us our values are offensive or exclusionary, telling us to abandon them? Internment is a dark reminder of how quickly fear and prejudice can strip away rights. The hate beneath the surface is real.
Hate is far too strong of a word here. They do not hate and they have fair points which are dismissed by so many, especially on this board.
Most of this is driven by the behaviors and attitudes of the immigrants (particularly the tech focused immigrants) of the last 30 years. Their vocal advocacy for test based admissions systems like they grew up in along with their dismissal of the inequities of the US secondary education system and the lived experience challenges of some minorities causes pushback by others. Their failure to recognize that US schools value traits beyond test scores causes pushback by others. Their cries of 'anti-Asian racism' towards those who disagree causes pushback by others. Many in the community are pretty open in their opinions that certain groups "can't keep up" and do not deserve top educational opportunities. And this causes pushback by others.
I was ready to bow out of this thread, but since the discussion is still going, allow me add one more point.
When DCUM talks about “immigrants” or “tech-focused immigrants” as a single bloc, they treat individuals as interchangeable members of a group instead of recognizing their variety, it slips into stereotyping and racism. Within the Chinese-American community alone there is wide political and cultural diversity. For example, the relatively small number of Chinese Americans who take a hard-line MAGA stance tend to live in solidly red states such as Ohio or North Carolina, while many Chinese professionals in New York or California are comfortable with diversity, equity, and inclusion. Voting data bear this out: the majority of Asian-American voters in NYC or California, have backed Democratic candidates in recent elections. Geography shapes outlook far more than race does.
Regardless of politics, most these families still view standardized tests as one of the fairest measures of college readiness—not because they (at least not all) lack empathy for marginalized groups, but because they believe the overall academic rigor of the United States has slipped from its former peak drastically. Whether standardized testing should remain a requirement is up for debate. That said, most elite colleges have concluded that test scores are a useful indicator of academic readiness, and have reinstated test requirement. Unfortunately, DCUM crazies and racists responded in ways that are irrational—dismissing Asians as “not interesting” and disparaging their core values like being family-focused or education-focused. (Some of the most extreme posts were removed, so I can’t quote them anymore.) And we see Black students do not wish to befriend with Asian students as if they are Dalit.
"because they believe the overall academic rigor of the United States has slipped from its former peak drastically." This is comical. They support testing because and only because they believe that it will favor their children. They could care less about the rigor at any school other than the ones that they so desperately want their children to attend.
I fully support testing but I also believe that it should be used in the context of a students opportunities. The stated belief by many in the Asian community that the only things that merits consideration for admission is GPA and test score is a narrow and inadequate view, one not shared by the general public at large nor the universities themselves.
Yes, parents want their own kids to benefit, but honestly this is much bigger than pure self-interest. We are in an era of rampant grade inflation. SAT test is one of the few data points that isn’t curved by a local school district, so families who value academic rigor understandably defend it. Test scores predict college performance roughly four times better than high-school GPA. After Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, and MIT brought back required testing, Asian did not actually benefit from that as the Asian admits did not increase significantly. These elite colleges found that test data helps identify talent across socioeconomic backgrounds and can be more egalitarian when read in context. So, test required benefits fgli who are truly talented.
Most Asian parents do not want scores to be the only factor. Their kids engage in a variety of ECs in sports, art, music, debate, etc. What they want is a fair holistic review process, one that does not automatically give Asian kids a score of 1 in personality rating (similar to DCUM crazies saying "Asians are just not interesting").
Prior to Covid GPA predicted college performance better than test scores though the difference in predictive value was small. Post Covid I believe that test scores are now more predictive and will continue to be so. But they are not and hopefully never will be 4x predictive so that number is just made up by someone. I completely agree that testing should be a major factor in evaluation as long as scores are used in the context of the testing students circumstances.
I believe that you are sincere but there are far too many instances of “test score/GPA should be the only criteria” posting; almost all by Asian parents to agree with”most”. The system revolves around school priorities, not parent priorities which makes it opaque. Regarding your comment on Asian students automatically getting a 1. This is a good example of Asian parent priorities for children growing up not aligning with an admissions rubric based on institutional priorities. The kids aren’t deficient in any way; they just don’t align with the rubric and there are many thousands of qualified applicants to choose from.
Anonymous wrote:You won't see much important from parents here. They're mostly white and love making fun of black students at any moment. I'd reach out to other parents in your community who are sympathetic. People here like inequality.
People here like the students admitted to top colleges to be equally qualified. Do you really think that super-liberal Pomona would stop offering admission to highly qualified black kids if they had the opportunity? If you do, you are delusional. The number of college-ready whites and Asians dwarfs the number of college-ready blacks and Hispanics. It's time we get to work on K-12 and fix that, but fudging it with doctored college admissions serves no ones interests.
yes there was a such a bad crisis that when Pomona had a nearly 18% black class, the graduation rate plummeted and the GPAs diminished to 0....oh wait, that never happened and the graduation rate, fellowship achievement, and average gpa all stayed the same! It's almost like there's a lot more "college ready" kids than DCUM thinks, but it doesn't fit a certain (racist) narrative.
Very few universities fail students out unless they don’t show up to class.
The question is whether universities should have race based standards for admissions.
Anonymous wrote:You won't see much important from parents here. They're mostly white and love making fun of black students at any moment. I'd reach out to other parents in your community who are sympathetic. People here like inequality.
People here like the students admitted to top colleges to be equally qualified. Do you really think that super-liberal Pomona would stop offering admission to highly qualified black kids if they had the opportunity? If you do, you are delusional. The number of college-ready whites and Asians dwarfs the number of college-ready blacks and Hispanics. It's time we get to work on K-12 and fix that, but fudging it with doctored college admissions serves no ones interests.
yes there was a such a bad crisis that when Pomona had a nearly 18% black class, the graduation rate plummeted and the GPAs diminished to 0....oh wait, that never happened and the graduation rate, fellowship achievement, and average gpa all stayed the same! It's almost like there's a lot more "college ready" kids than DCUM thinks, but it doesn't fit a certain (racist) narrative.
Very few universities fail students out unless they don’t show up to class.
The question is whether universities should have race based standards for admissions.
If they were worse students, why would they be receiving fellowships and why wouldn't average gpas fall? How come the first Rhodes scholar in two decades of the college's history is a black woman: https://www.pomona.edu/news/2025/04/24-shark-mutulili-25-named-rhodes-scholar ? You're telling me grad schools would accept poorer quality students for the fun and giggles of it? We really need to start identifying people like you for who you are: a racist. You dislike black people, you don't believe they can achieve things, and you want them to fail because it needs to be true for your personal narrative that you've built up. It's gross and bordering an illness, but people like you continue out in the world ruining workplace and academic environments with your trashy attitudes.
Asians are not being "targeted" by OP. The issue is the Asian and White students will not want to be friends with and share in life with the non Asian or White students, so why would a non Asian or non White student subject themselves to that? What "Asians" have to understand is that you never want people talking about you, even in a netural way, otherwise you claim "Asian hate" but at the same time all over DCUM, "Asisans" have so much to say about black people, and even white people at times.
Most absurd assertion. Not in NYC anyway.
Come to California. Berkeley is insanely racially segregated. All asian groups basically everywhere that judge white students and especially other minority students. White students flock towards the greek life for their "community." It's pretty clear when these campuses are heavily segregated, and you really get to see how this generation operates. There are many other parts of the country where people are very very race-sensitive, and California is one of them.
Yes. I don't get this generation, as a Gen Xer. It is like they are turning back time. Or, did we increase immigration too fast in the past 20 to 30 years and there is not longer a sense of cohesion in this country at all?
Part of it is immigrant students who come from cultures where homogeneity is good and they prefer to stay with their cliques of international/their race students. Another part is higher ed becoming very diverse, potentially way too quickly and expecting the northeast boarding school generationally wealthy student to hang out with the rural, conservative queer kid is very unlikely to work in your favor. Diversity is great, but students will always find infrastructure and network in a way to stick to what they are used to and what they know.
Showing your true color. Xenophobia
...nothing about that is xenophobic. I'd stick with American students too if I were to go to college abroad.
Immigrants' kids are still Americans. Are you excluding them from your circle just because they are Asian immigrants' kids?
Oh my god you’re so dense. I’m specifically talking about Asian immigrant students, who are significant block of American higher ed
They aren’t a block.
Seriously, why are Americans so set on lumping more than half of the world’s population into one category?
Do you really think a Korean kid and a Sri Lankan kid see each other as members of some tribe together?
This isn’t unique to Asian people. That’s just how race works.
+1, this is a weird insistence by people on this forum that Asian people are so foreign to the rest of us that we wouldn’t understand that people from different countries…have different cultures and practices. Yes, we are aware. You aren’t special. Just be a person beyond your race.
You get it! We shouldn’t be thinking about how “diverse” we are in one race. Just treat people as people with respect.
+1 just be a person beyond your race. You can take pride in your heritage, acknowledge the wrongs and work on addressing current problems but you’re ultimately hurting and limiting yourself by making everything in life about race. Signed, minority parent.
when someone calls themselves a "minority" they mean Asian or Hispanic, just so you know. They float between being a "minority" when it is convenient or on the other hand part of a superior "family-oriented, education-oriented" culture when convenient.
This cannot be more racist! You are saying minority cannot be family-oriented, education-oriented?
Saying that “my culture is family-oriented” or “education-oriented” can sound like a benign expression of pride, but it often carries an unintended sting. When you frame these qualities as special to your own group, you implicitly invite comparison: if my culture is the one that cherishes family or schooling, what does that say about yours? The compliment to oneself doubles as a yardstick against which other communities can appear indifferent or deficient, even if that is not what the speaker intends. Because most societies prize kinship and learning in their own ways, labeling these values as uniquely ours comes across as a quiet form of ethnocentrism.
That sting is sharper in places like the United States, where “family-oriented” and “education-oriented” have long been coded into racial and immigration debates. Praising Asian Americans as especially studious, for example, props up the “model-minority” myth, which has historically been used to shame Black and Latino communities by suggesting they fall short through cultural flaws rather than structural barriers. Politicians who laud “hard-working, family-centered immigrants” often do so to single out certain nationalities for approval while casting others as less desirable. In these contexts, what sounds like a simple self-celebration actually reinforces old hierarchies.
This is the most Bizarre and twisted rubbish.
When someone says “my culture is family-oriented” or “education-oriented,” their immediate aim is often to explain what shaped their own attitudes and behaviors—nothing more. This is a descriptive claim, not a prescriptive one. In everyday conversation, people routinely name the earliest influences on their values: “I grew up in a community that always put family first,” or “Education was all my parents talked about.” If we immediately assume every such statement carries a hidden comparison or hierarchy, we risk discouraging honest self-description. Intent matters: most of the time people merely want to share where they come from, not measure others against that standard.
It’s possible to celebrate cultural strengths without implying that those strengths are absent elsewhere. For instance, saying “In my family, elders always gather every Sunday to share a meal” does not necessarily mean “Your family doesn’t.” In practice, everyone’s definition of “family-oriented” will look different. By framing it as “for us, this is especially important,” you can leave space for others to tell their own stories. In other words, you can express pride in your upbringing without forcing a zero-sum comparison.
You assumes that labeling any value as “special to my group” automatically positions other groups as deficient. But cultures are not monoliths, nor are all members of a culture identical. If you say “In my Korean American community, education is pitched as the surest path to stability,” you acknowledge a particular historical and social context—namely, the immigrant experience, Confucian legacies, or post-1965 university admissions patterns—without claiming that every other community lacks those same motivations. Being precise about why a community emphasizes schooling (for example, to overcome language barriers, or because of first-generation immigrant pressures) keeps the statement grounded in particular circumstances, rather than a global comparison.
+1000
Immigrants particularly Asian immigrants don’t have much left for support, family and education are the two things they can rely on to survive here.
This thread really reveals how much hate some hold against Asian Americans. We are not even allowed to say the most important things that matter to us.
What’s next? Are you going to take away those two things from Asian Americans? Are you going to send us to internment camps?
They think highlighting our reliance on family and education is a slight to their community, do they truly believe that families who’ve been in this country for generations don’t hold those same values? Of course they hold the same values. It’s unsettling to see people react as if we’re somehow “less American” or “too focused on grades.” Telling us our values are offensive or exclusionary, telling us to abandon them? Internment is a dark reminder of how quickly fear and prejudice can strip away rights. The hate beneath the surface is real.
Hate is far too strong of a word here. They do not hate and they have fair points which are dismissed by so many, especially on this board.
Most of this is driven by the behaviors and attitudes of the immigrants (particularly the tech focused immigrants) of the last 30 years. Their vocal advocacy for test based admissions systems like they grew up in along with their dismissal of the inequities of the US secondary education system and the lived experience challenges of some minorities causes pushback by others. Their failure to recognize that US schools value traits beyond test scores causes pushback by others. Their cries of 'anti-Asian racism' towards those who disagree causes pushback by others. Many in the community are pretty open in their opinions that certain groups "can't keep up" and do not deserve top educational opportunities. And this causes pushback by others.
I was ready to bow out of this thread, but since the discussion is still going, allow me add one more point.
When DCUM talks about “immigrants” or “tech-focused immigrants” as a single bloc, they treat individuals as interchangeable members of a group instead of recognizing their variety, it slips into stereotyping and racism. Within the Chinese-American community alone there is wide political and cultural diversity. For example, the relatively small number of Chinese Americans who take a hard-line MAGA stance tend to live in solidly red states such as Ohio or North Carolina, while many Chinese professionals in New York or California are comfortable with diversity, equity, and inclusion. Voting data bear this out: the majority of Asian-American voters in NYC or California, have backed Democratic candidates in recent elections. Geography shapes outlook far more than race does.
Regardless of politics, most these families still view standardized tests as one of the fairest measures of college readiness—not because they (at least not all) lack empathy for marginalized groups, but because they believe the overall academic rigor of the United States has slipped from its former peak drastically. Whether standardized testing should remain a requirement is up for debate. That said, most elite colleges have concluded that test scores are a useful indicator of academic readiness, and have reinstated test requirement. Unfortunately, DCUM crazies and racists responded in ways that are irrational—dismissing Asians as “not interesting” and disparaging their core values like being family-focused or education-focused. (Some of the most extreme posts were removed, so I can’t quote them anymore.) And we see Black students do not wish to befriend with Asian students as if they are Dalit.
"because they believe the overall academic rigor of the United States has slipped from its former peak drastically." This is comical. They support testing because and only because they believe that it will favor their children. They could care less about the rigor at any school other than the ones that they so desperately want their children to attend.
I fully support testing but I also believe that it should be used in the context of a students opportunities. The stated belief by many in the Asian community that the only things that merits consideration for admission is GPA and test score is a narrow and inadequate view, one not shared by the general public at large nor the universities themselves.
Yes, parents want their own kids to benefit, but honestly this is much bigger than pure self-interest. We are in an era of rampant grade inflation. SAT test is one of the few data points that isn’t curved by a local school district, so families who value academic rigor understandably defend it. Test scores predict college performance roughly four times better than high-school GPA. After Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, and MIT brought back required testing, Asian did not actually benefit from that as the Asian admits did not increase significantly. These elite colleges found that test data helps identify talent across socioeconomic backgrounds and can be more egalitarian when read in context. So, test required benefits fgli who are truly talented.
Most Asian parents do not want scores to be the only factor. Their kids engage in a variety of ECs in sports, art, music, debate, etc. What they want is a fair holistic review process, one that does not automatically give Asian kids a score of 1 in personality rating (similar to DCUM crazies saying "Asians are just not interesting").
Prior to Covid GPA predicted college performance better than test scores though the difference in predictive value was small. Post Covid I believe that test scores are now more predictive and will continue to be so. But they are not and hopefully never will be 4x predictive so that number is just made up by someone.
I believe that you are sincere but there are far too many instances of “test score/GPA should be the only criteria” posting; almost all by Asian parents to agree with”most”. The system revolves around school priorities, not parent priorities which makes it opaque. Regarding your comment on Asian students automatically getting a 1. This is a good example of Asian parent priorities for children growing up not aligning with an admissions rubric based on institutional priorities. The kids aren’t deficient in any way; they just don’t align with the rubric and there are many thousands of qualified applicants to choose from.
I am not sure if you are sincere. You kept lumping an enormously diverse group into a single narrative (last time it was tech-focus immigrant). I’m uncomfortable with how you framed this. Saying “Asian parent priorities” don’t align with the admissions rubric reduces an incredibly diverse group of families to one single stereotype—and it shifts the blame for an opaque system onto one community.
This would be my last post in this thread. Good day.
Anonymous wrote:You won't see much important from parents here. They're mostly white and love making fun of black students at any moment. I'd reach out to other parents in your community who are sympathetic. People here like inequality.
People here like the students admitted to top colleges to be equally qualified. Do you really think that super-liberal Pomona would stop offering admission to highly qualified black kids if they had the opportunity? If you do, you are delusional. The number of college-ready whites and Asians dwarfs the number of college-ready blacks and Hispanics. It's time we get to work on K-12 and fix that, but fudging it with doctored college admissions serves no ones interests.
yes there was a such a bad crisis that when Pomona had a nearly 18% black class, the graduation rate plummeted and the GPAs diminished to 0....oh wait, that never happened and the graduation rate, fellowship achievement, and average gpa all stayed the same! It's almost like there's a lot more "college ready" kids than DCUM thinks, but it doesn't fit a certain (racist) narrative.
Very few universities fail students out unless they don’t show up to class.
The question is whether universities should have race based standards for admissions.
If they were worse students, why would they be receiving fellowships and why wouldn't average gpas fall? How come the first Rhodes scholar in two decades of the college's history is a black woman: https://www.pomona.edu/news/2025/04/24-shark-mutulili-25-named-rhodes-scholar ? You're telling me grad schools would accept poorer quality students for the fun and giggles of it? We really need to start identifying people like you for who you are: a racist. You dislike black people, you don't believe they can achieve things, and you want them to fail because it needs to be true for your personal narrative that you've built up. It's gross and bordering an illness, but people like you continue out in the world ruining workplace and academic environments with your trashy attitudes.
Anonymous wrote:DD is entering a top liberal arts college and has joined the class instagram page and group chat. It is bewilderingly white and asian compared to past classes, and even when she looks into the instagram pages of these students, their high school environments were clearly mostly white and/or asian. She is starting to regret her choice and is worried about fitting in. It's sad because this used to be one of the most diverse schools in the country, but it is clear politics has obliterated any chance of that returning.
If you daughter wants to work with competent and smart people, she is going to have to get used to this.
Anonymous wrote:DD is entering a top liberal arts college and has joined the class instagram page and group chat. It is bewilderingly white and asian compared to past classes, and even when she looks into the instagram pages of these students, their high school environments were clearly mostly white and/or asian. She is starting to regret her choice and is worried about fitting in. It's sad because this used to be one of the most diverse schools in the country, but it is clear politics has obliterated any chance of that returning.
If you daughter wants to work with competent and smart people, she is going to have to get used to this.
You can find majority people of color work environments that are competent and smart. This is casual racism.
Anonymous wrote:DD is entering a top liberal arts college and has joined the class instagram page and group chat. It is bewilderingly white and asian compared to past classes, and even when she looks into the instagram pages of these students, their high school environments were clearly mostly white and/or asian. She is starting to regret her choice and is worried about fitting in. It's sad because this used to be one of the most diverse schools in the country, but it is clear politics has obliterated any chance of that returning.
If you daughter wants to work with competent and smart people, she is going to have to get used to this.
You can find majority people of color work environments that are competent and smart. This is casual racism.
I think their high school/hometown experience would also play a big role in how a Black or Hispanic student would fit in a university with low URM numbers.
My kids are Hispanic, but were involved in ECs with mostly non-Hispanic kids. One is in college now, and their friend group is mostly White kids, with one Black kid and another of South Indian heritage. This is at a medium to large sized state university.
Now, had my kid grown up around more Hispanic kids, then they probably would not feel comfortable at a mostly White/Asian LAC.
Anonymous wrote:DD is entering a top liberal arts college and has joined the class instagram page and group chat. It is bewilderingly white and asian compared to past classes, and even when she looks into the instagram pages of these students, their high school environments were clearly mostly white and/or asian. She is starting to regret her choice and is worried about fitting in. It's sad because this used to be one of the most diverse schools in the country, but it is clear politics has obliterated any chance of that returning.
If you daughter wants to work with competent and smart people, she is going to have to get used to this.
You can find majority people of color work environments that are competent and smart. This is casual racism.
+1
Why are groups that are new to this country so insistent on making it their goal to let white people know that hey, those black people are worthless, we are not like them! Some seek to be so aligned to whiteness that they think getting there involves stepping on others.
Anonymous wrote:I think their high school/hometown experience would also play a big role in how a Black or Hispanic student would fit in a university with low URM numbers.
My kids are Hispanic, but were involved in ECs with mostly non-Hispanic kids. One is in college now, and their friend group is mostly White kids, with one Black kid and another of South Indian heritage. This is at a medium to large sized state university.
Now, had my kid grown up around more Hispanic kids, then they probably would not feel comfortable at a mostly White/Asian LAC.
The point is not how your kid or the OPs kid "feels". I am sure you and the OP raise your kids to be understanding and friendly to all. The issue is despite this, will the white and Asian kids accept your kid and the OPs kids as friends, roomates, lab mates, romantic partners, etc. It takes two to tango, and to some, black kids are practically invisible.
Asians are not being "targeted" by OP. The issue is the Asian and White students will not want to be friends with and share in life with the non Asian or White students, so why would a non Asian or non White student subject themselves to that? What "Asians" have to understand is that you never want people talking about you, even in a netural way, otherwise you claim "Asian hate" but at the same time all over DCUM, "Asisans" have so much to say about black people, and even white people at times.
Most absurd assertion. Not in NYC anyway.
Come to California. Berkeley is insanely racially segregated. All asian groups basically everywhere that judge white students and especially other minority students. White students flock towards the greek life for their "community." It's pretty clear when these campuses are heavily segregated, and you really get to see how this generation operates. There are many other parts of the country where people are very very race-sensitive, and California is one of them.
Yes. I don't get this generation, as a Gen Xer. It is like they are turning back time. Or, did we increase immigration too fast in the past 20 to 30 years and there is not longer a sense of cohesion in this country at all?
Part of it is immigrant students who come from cultures where homogeneity is good and they prefer to stay with their cliques of international/their race students. Another part is higher ed becoming very diverse, potentially way too quickly and expecting the northeast boarding school generationally wealthy student to hang out with the rural, conservative queer kid is very unlikely to work in your favor. Diversity is great, but students will always find infrastructure and network in a way to stick to what they are used to and what they know.
Showing your true color. Xenophobia
...nothing about that is xenophobic. I'd stick with American students too if I were to go to college abroad.
Immigrants' kids are still Americans. Are you excluding them from your circle just because they are Asian immigrants' kids?
Oh my god you’re so dense. I’m specifically talking about Asian immigrant students, who are significant block of American higher ed
They aren’t a block.
Seriously, why are Americans so set on lumping more than half of the world’s population into one category?
Do you really think a Korean kid and a Sri Lankan kid see each other as members of some tribe together?
This isn’t unique to Asian people. That’s just how race works.
+1, this is a weird insistence by people on this forum that Asian people are so foreign to the rest of us that we wouldn’t understand that people from different countries…have different cultures and practices. Yes, we are aware. You aren’t special. Just be a person beyond your race.
You get it! We shouldn’t be thinking about how “diverse” we are in one race. Just treat people as people with respect.
+1 just be a person beyond your race. You can take pride in your heritage, acknowledge the wrongs and work on addressing current problems but you’re ultimately hurting and limiting yourself by making everything in life about race. Signed, minority parent.
when someone calls themselves a "minority" they mean Asian or Hispanic, just so you know. They float between being a "minority" when it is convenient or on the other hand part of a superior "family-oriented, education-oriented" culture when convenient.
This cannot be more racist! You are saying minority cannot be family-oriented, education-oriented?
Saying that “my culture is family-oriented” or “education-oriented” can sound like a benign expression of pride, but it often carries an unintended sting. When you frame these qualities as special to your own group, you implicitly invite comparison: if my culture is the one that cherishes family or schooling, what does that say about yours? The compliment to oneself doubles as a yardstick against which other communities can appear indifferent or deficient, even if that is not what the speaker intends. Because most societies prize kinship and learning in their own ways, labeling these values as uniquely ours comes across as a quiet form of ethnocentrism.
That sting is sharper in places like the United States, where “family-oriented” and “education-oriented” have long been coded into racial and immigration debates. Praising Asian Americans as especially studious, for example, props up the “model-minority” myth, which has historically been used to shame Black and Latino communities by suggesting they fall short through cultural flaws rather than structural barriers. Politicians who laud “hard-working, family-centered immigrants” often do so to single out certain nationalities for approval while casting others as less desirable. In these contexts, what sounds like a simple self-celebration actually reinforces old hierarchies.
This is the most Bizarre and twisted rubbish.
When someone says “my culture is family-oriented” or “education-oriented,” their immediate aim is often to explain what shaped their own attitudes and behaviors—nothing more. This is a descriptive claim, not a prescriptive one. In everyday conversation, people routinely name the earliest influences on their values: “I grew up in a community that always put family first,” or “Education was all my parents talked about.” If we immediately assume every such statement carries a hidden comparison or hierarchy, we risk discouraging honest self-description. Intent matters: most of the time people merely want to share where they come from, not measure others against that standard.
It’s possible to celebrate cultural strengths without implying that those strengths are absent elsewhere. For instance, saying “In my family, elders always gather every Sunday to share a meal” does not necessarily mean “Your family doesn’t.” In practice, everyone’s definition of “family-oriented” will look different. By framing it as “for us, this is especially important,” you can leave space for others to tell their own stories. In other words, you can express pride in your upbringing without forcing a zero-sum comparison.
You assumes that labeling any value as “special to my group” automatically positions other groups as deficient. But cultures are not monoliths, nor are all members of a culture identical. If you say “In my Korean American community, education is pitched as the surest path to stability,” you acknowledge a particular historical and social context—namely, the immigrant experience, Confucian legacies, or post-1965 university admissions patterns—without claiming that every other community lacks those same motivations. Being precise about why a community emphasizes schooling (for example, to overcome language barriers, or because of first-generation immigrant pressures) keeps the statement grounded in particular circumstances, rather than a global comparison.
+1000
Immigrants particularly Asian immigrants don’t have much left for support, family and education are the two things they can rely on to survive here.
This thread really reveals how much hate some hold against Asian Americans. We are not even allowed to say the most important things that matter to us.
What’s next? Are you going to take away those two things from Asian Americans? Are you going to send us to internment camps?
They think highlighting our reliance on family and education is a slight to their community, do they truly believe that families who’ve been in this country for generations don’t hold those same values? Of course they hold the same values. It’s unsettling to see people react as if we’re somehow “less American” or “too focused on grades.” Telling us our values are offensive or exclusionary, telling us to abandon them? Internment is a dark reminder of how quickly fear and prejudice can strip away rights. The hate beneath the surface is real.
Hate is far too strong of a word here. They do not hate and they have fair points which are dismissed by so many, especially on this board.
Most of this is driven by the behaviors and attitudes of the immigrants (particularly the tech focused immigrants) of the last 30 years. Their vocal advocacy for test based admissions systems like they grew up in along with their dismissal of the inequities of the US secondary education system and the lived experience challenges of some minorities causes pushback by others. Their failure to recognize that US schools value traits beyond test scores causes pushback by others. Their cries of 'anti-Asian racism' towards those who disagree causes pushback by others. Many in the community are pretty open in their opinions that certain groups "can't keep up" and do not deserve top educational opportunities. And this causes pushback by others.
I was ready to bow out of this thread, but since the discussion is still going, allow me add one more point.
When DCUM talks about “immigrants” or “tech-focused immigrants” as a single bloc, they treat individuals as interchangeable members of a group instead of recognizing their variety, it slips into stereotyping and racism. Within the Chinese-American community alone there is wide political and cultural diversity. For example, the relatively small number of Chinese Americans who take a hard-line MAGA stance tend to live in solidly red states such as Ohio or North Carolina, while many Chinese professionals in New York or California are comfortable with diversity, equity, and inclusion. Voting data bear this out: the majority of Asian-American voters in NYC or California, have backed Democratic candidates in recent elections. Geography shapes outlook far more than race does.
Regardless of politics, most these families still view standardized tests as one of the fairest measures of college readiness—not because they (at least not all) lack empathy for marginalized groups, but because they believe the overall academic rigor of the United States has slipped from its former peak drastically. Whether standardized testing should remain a requirement is up for debate. That said, most elite colleges have concluded that test scores are a useful indicator of academic readiness, and have reinstated test requirement. Unfortunately, DCUM crazies and racists responded in ways that are irrational—dismissing Asians as “not interesting” and disparaging their core values like being family-focused or education-focused. (Some of the most extreme posts were removed, so I can’t quote them anymore.) And we see Black students do not wish to befriend with Asian students as if they are Dalit.
"because they believe the overall academic rigor of the United States has slipped from its former peak drastically." This is comical. They support testing because and only because they believe that it will favor their children. They could care less about the rigor at any school other than the ones that they so desperately want their children to attend.
I fully support testing but I also believe that it should be used in the context of a students opportunities. The stated belief by many in the Asian community that the only things that merits consideration for admission is GPA and test score is a narrow and inadequate view, one not shared by the general public at large nor the universities themselves.
Yes, parents want their own kids to benefit, but honestly this is much bigger than pure self-interest. We are in an era of rampant grade inflation. SAT test is one of the few data points that isn’t curved by a local school district, so families who value academic rigor understandably defend it. Test scores predict college performance roughly four times better than high-school GPA. After Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, and MIT brought back required testing, Asian did not actually benefit from that as the Asian admits did not increase significantly. These elite colleges found that test data helps identify talent across socioeconomic backgrounds and can be more egalitarian when read in context. So, test required benefits fgli who are truly talented.
Most Asian parents do not want scores to be the only factor. Their kids engage in a variety of ECs in sports, art, music, debate, etc. What they want is a fair holistic review process, one that does not automatically give Asian kids a score of 1 in personality rating (similar to DCUM crazies saying "Asians are just not interesting").
Prior to Covid GPA predicted college performance better than test scores though the difference in predictive value was small. Post Covid I believe that test scores are now more predictive and will continue to be so. But they are not and hopefully never will be 4x predictive so that number is just made up by someone.
I believe that you are sincere but there are far too many instances of “test score/GPA should be the only criteria” posting; almost all by Asian parents to agree with”most”. The system revolves around school priorities, not parent priorities which makes it opaque. Regarding your comment on Asian students automatically getting a 1. This is a good example of Asian parent priorities for children growing up not aligning with an admissions rubric based on institutional priorities. The kids aren’t deficient in any way; they just don’t align with the rubric and there are many thousands of qualified applicants to choose from.
I am not sure if you are sincere. You kept lumping an enormously diverse group into a single narrative (last time it was tech-focus immigrant). I’m uncomfortable with how you framed this. Saying “Asian parent priorities” don’t align with the admissions rubric reduces an incredibly diverse group of families to one single stereotype—and it shifts the blame for an opaque system onto one community.
This would be my last post in this thread. Good day.
Well the one community is the one complaining, so yes, they have decided to act as a group, telling all that their smarts are not respected as valuable. Don't talk to us like we are dense--but I guess this discourse can happen when someone thinks their people group are inherently smarter than others.
Asians are not being "targeted" by OP. The issue is the Asian and White students will not want to be friends with and share in life with the non Asian or White students, so why would a non Asian or non White student subject themselves to that? What "Asians" have to understand is that you never want people talking about you, even in a netural way, otherwise you claim "Asian hate" but at the same time all over DCUM, "Asisans" have so much to say about black people, and even white people at times.
Most absurd assertion. Not in NYC anyway.
Come to California. Berkeley is insanely racially segregated. All asian groups basically everywhere that judge white students and especially other minority students. White students flock towards the greek life for their "community." It's pretty clear when these campuses are heavily segregated, and you really get to see how this generation operates. There are many other parts of the country where people are very very race-sensitive, and California is one of them.
Yes. I don't get this generation, as a Gen Xer. It is like they are turning back time. Or, did we increase immigration too fast in the past 20 to 30 years and there is not longer a sense of cohesion in this country at all?
Part of it is immigrant students who come from cultures where homogeneity is good and they prefer to stay with their cliques of international/their race students. Another part is higher ed becoming very diverse, potentially way too quickly and expecting the northeast boarding school generationally wealthy student to hang out with the rural, conservative queer kid is very unlikely to work in your favor. Diversity is great, but students will always find infrastructure and network in a way to stick to what they are used to and what they know.
Showing your true color. Xenophobia
...nothing about that is xenophobic. I'd stick with American students too if I were to go to college abroad.
Immigrants' kids are still Americans. Are you excluding them from your circle just because they are Asian immigrants' kids?
Oh my god you’re so dense. I’m specifically talking about Asian immigrant students, who are significant block of American higher ed
They aren’t a block.
Seriously, why are Americans so set on lumping more than half of the world’s population into one category?
Do you really think a Korean kid and a Sri Lankan kid see each other as members of some tribe together?
This isn’t unique to Asian people. That’s just how race works.
+1, this is a weird insistence by people on this forum that Asian people are so foreign to the rest of us that we wouldn’t understand that people from different countries…have different cultures and practices. Yes, we are aware. You aren’t special. Just be a person beyond your race.
You get it! We shouldn’t be thinking about how “diverse” we are in one race. Just treat people as people with respect.
+1 just be a person beyond your race. You can take pride in your heritage, acknowledge the wrongs and work on addressing current problems but you’re ultimately hurting and limiting yourself by making everything in life about race. Signed, minority parent.
when someone calls themselves a "minority" they mean Asian or Hispanic, just so you know. They float between being a "minority" when it is convenient or on the other hand part of a superior "family-oriented, education-oriented" culture when convenient.
This cannot be more racist! You are saying minority cannot be family-oriented, education-oriented?
Saying that “my culture is family-oriented” or “education-oriented” can sound like a benign expression of pride, but it often carries an unintended sting. When you frame these qualities as special to your own group, you implicitly invite comparison: if my culture is the one that cherishes family or schooling, what does that say about yours? The compliment to oneself doubles as a yardstick against which other communities can appear indifferent or deficient, even if that is not what the speaker intends. Because most societies prize kinship and learning in their own ways, labeling these values as uniquely ours comes across as a quiet form of ethnocentrism.
That sting is sharper in places like the United States, where “family-oriented” and “education-oriented” have long been coded into racial and immigration debates. Praising Asian Americans as especially studious, for example, props up the “model-minority” myth, which has historically been used to shame Black and Latino communities by suggesting they fall short through cultural flaws rather than structural barriers. Politicians who laud “hard-working, family-centered immigrants” often do so to single out certain nationalities for approval while casting others as less desirable. In these contexts, what sounds like a simple self-celebration actually reinforces old hierarchies.
This is the most Bizarre and twisted rubbish.
When someone says “my culture is family-oriented” or “education-oriented,” their immediate aim is often to explain what shaped their own attitudes and behaviors—nothing more. This is a descriptive claim, not a prescriptive one. In everyday conversation, people routinely name the earliest influences on their values: “I grew up in a community that always put family first,” or “Education was all my parents talked about.” If we immediately assume every such statement carries a hidden comparison or hierarchy, we risk discouraging honest self-description. Intent matters: most of the time people merely want to share where they come from, not measure others against that standard.
It’s possible to celebrate cultural strengths without implying that those strengths are absent elsewhere. For instance, saying “In my family, elders always gather every Sunday to share a meal” does not necessarily mean “Your family doesn’t.” In practice, everyone’s definition of “family-oriented” will look different. By framing it as “for us, this is especially important,” you can leave space for others to tell their own stories. In other words, you can express pride in your upbringing without forcing a zero-sum comparison.
You assumes that labeling any value as “special to my group” automatically positions other groups as deficient. But cultures are not monoliths, nor are all members of a culture identical. If you say “In my Korean American community, education is pitched as the surest path to stability,” you acknowledge a particular historical and social context—namely, the immigrant experience, Confucian legacies, or post-1965 university admissions patterns—without claiming that every other community lacks those same motivations. Being precise about why a community emphasizes schooling (for example, to overcome language barriers, or because of first-generation immigrant pressures) keeps the statement grounded in particular circumstances, rather than a global comparison.
+1000
Immigrants particularly Asian immigrants don’t have much left for support, family and education are the two things they can rely on to survive here.
This thread really reveals how much hate some hold against Asian Americans. We are not even allowed to say the most important things that matter to us.
What’s next? Are you going to take away those two things from Asian Americans? Are you going to send us to internment camps?
They think highlighting our reliance on family and education is a slight to their community, do they truly believe that families who’ve been in this country for generations don’t hold those same values? Of course they hold the same values. It’s unsettling to see people react as if we’re somehow “less American” or “too focused on grades.” Telling us our values are offensive or exclusionary, telling us to abandon them? Internment is a dark reminder of how quickly fear and prejudice can strip away rights. The hate beneath the surface is real.
Hate is far too strong of a word here. They do not hate and they have fair points which are dismissed by so many, especially on this board.
Most of this is driven by the behaviors and attitudes of the immigrants (particularly the tech focused immigrants) of the last 30 years. Their vocal advocacy for test based admissions systems like they grew up in along with their dismissal of the inequities of the US secondary education system and the lived experience challenges of some minorities causes pushback by others. Their failure to recognize that US schools value traits beyond test scores causes pushback by others. Their cries of 'anti-Asian racism' towards those who disagree causes pushback by others. Many in the community are pretty open in their opinions that certain groups "can't keep up" and do not deserve top educational opportunities. And this causes pushback by others.
I was ready to bow out of this thread, but since the discussion is still going, allow me add one more point.
When DCUM talks about “immigrants” or “tech-focused immigrants” as a single bloc, they treat individuals as interchangeable members of a group instead of recognizing their variety, it slips into stereotyping and racism. Within the Chinese-American community alone there is wide political and cultural diversity. For example, the relatively small number of Chinese Americans who take a hard-line MAGA stance tend to live in solidly red states such as Ohio or North Carolina, while many Chinese professionals in New York or California are comfortable with diversity, equity, and inclusion. Voting data bear this out: the majority of Asian-American voters in NYC or California, have backed Democratic candidates in recent elections. Geography shapes outlook far more than race does.
Regardless of politics, most these families still view standardized tests as one of the fairest measures of college readiness—not because they (at least not all) lack empathy for marginalized groups, but because they believe the overall academic rigor of the United States has slipped from its former peak drastically. Whether standardized testing should remain a requirement is up for debate. That said, most elite colleges have concluded that test scores are a useful indicator of academic readiness, and have reinstated test requirement. Unfortunately, DCUM crazies and racists responded in ways that are irrational—dismissing Asians as “not interesting” and disparaging their core values like being family-focused or education-focused. (Some of the most extreme posts were removed, so I can’t quote them anymore.) And we see Black students do not wish to befriend with Asian students as if they are Dalit.
"because they believe the overall academic rigor of the United States has slipped from its former peak drastically." This is comical. They support testing because and only because they believe that it will favor their children. They could care less about the rigor at any school other than the ones that they so desperately want their children to attend.
I fully support testing but I also believe that it should be used in the context of a students opportunities. The stated belief by many in the Asian community that the only things that merits consideration for admission is GPA and test score is a narrow and inadequate view, one not shared by the general public at large nor the universities themselves.
Yes, parents want their own kids to benefit, but honestly this is much bigger than pure self-interest. We are in an era of rampant grade inflation. SAT test is one of the few data points that isn’t curved by a local school district, so families who value academic rigor understandably defend it. Test scores predict college performance roughly four times better than high-school GPA. After Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, and MIT brought back required testing, Asian did not actually benefit from that as the Asian admits did not increase significantly. These elite colleges found that test data helps identify talent across socioeconomic backgrounds and can be more egalitarian when read in context. So, test required benefits fgli who are truly talented.
Most Asian parents do not want scores to be the only factor. Their kids engage in a variety of ECs in sports, art, music, debate, etc. What they want is a fair holistic review process, one that does not automatically give Asian kids a score of 1 in personality rating (similar to DCUM crazies saying "Asians are just not interesting").
Prior to Covid GPA predicted college performance better than test scores though the difference in predictive value was small. Post Covid I believe that test scores are now more predictive and will continue to be so. But they are not and hopefully never will be 4x predictive so that number is just made up by someone.
I believe that you are sincere but there are far too many instances of “test score/GPA should be the only criteria” posting; almost all by Asian parents to agree with”most”. The system revolves around school priorities, not parent priorities which makes it opaque. Regarding your comment on Asian students automatically getting a 1. This is a good example of Asian parent priorities for children growing up not aligning with an admissions rubric based on institutional priorities. The kids aren’t deficient in any way; they just don’t align with the rubric and there are many thousands of qualified applicants to choose from.
I am not sure if you are sincere. You kept lumping an enormously diverse group into a single narrative (last time it was tech-focus immigrant). I’m uncomfortable with how you framed this. Saying “Asian parent priorities” don’t align with the admissions rubric reduces an incredibly diverse group of families to one single stereotype—and it shifts the blame for an opaque system onto one community.
This would be my last post in this thread. Good day.
I'm sorry that you feel that way. I am quite sincere because I live it everyday deep in the tech world living in the heart of the silicon valley. The narratives hold for far too many people. I am third generation with an immigrant wife and children of Asian descent living and working as a leader at a FAANG adjacent company after years of working at multiple FAANGs. We are very tied into the immigrant tech community and this thread reflects very common discussions. You are correct in that I am not familiar with other regions but I know my own well and it is a STEM focused, Ivy and top UC obsessed world. It is also the region where the most Asian applicants to top schools comes from.
I never shifted "the blame for an opaque system" onto anyone. I just pointed out that the academic priorities of these families do not necessarily align well with the reality of elite college admissions in the United States. I'm sorry if that makes you uncomfortable but the reality is when you see 20 5th graders lined up outside of a Kumon on a Sunday morning waiting for it to open you are looking at families who are doing what worked where they came from, not what works here.
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