Reply to Northam’s “Anti-Asian, Anti-Immigrant” School Initiative

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Reply to "Northam’s “Anti-Asian, Anti-Immigrant” School Initiative"

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[quote=Anonymous]We should all hopefully be able to recognize the good intentions behind trying to promote underrepresented minority participation in TJ/AAP programs.  The main problem I see with it is that using an approach which undermines merit will have the unintended effect of defeating the internal consistency of any minority rights argument.

In any society, some group or groups will be minorities, due to the fact that neither perfect homogeneity nor perfect heterogeneity are possible.  In any democracy, a minority is at a disadvantage due to the simple fact that a minority, by definition, has less representation than other groups.  Being at a disadvantage is thus, not in and of itself the problem.  The real reason we care about minority rights is that the majority of the population may be able to take certain rights or benefits for granted, whereas minorities may be left out of what everyone else has, for no good reason.  In this case, the simple participation in advanced programs raises expectations and level of performance in ways which significantly influences the success of not just one person, but a whole group of people, in the future.  It's a problem if a minority is completely left out of that kind of advantage, because it will unnaturally multiply over time.  So it's perfectly reasonable to say "we want more minorities."

The real problem is how we go about doing it.  If we do it by trying to defeat the merit system which keeps people out, while [i]at the same time[/i] denying entry to 1-percenters to open extra spots in the program (we've already started to see this happen under the "holistic" process used for AAP, which is immune to scrutiny), then we have two problems.  First, we're granting privileges to minority groups which the population at large never got to enjoy.  Second, if we're leaving out 1-percenters to make ends meet, then we've broken the claim that minorities are just getting the same opportunities that everyone else already has - those 1-percenters more often than not didn't get to where they are by bending standards.  Either way, we've defeated our reason for claiming that minorities deserve these opportunities.

Maybe the exceptional measures are justified because minorities need the benefit of these opportunities to pay off past transgressions from less tolerant times.  But if that's true, isn't a bit cynical that the kids who are footing the bill for these past transgressions are by-and-large Asians and eastern Europeans, groups who were never a historically significant part of the African slave trade?[/quote]

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