Reply to Here's how much legacy/athlete preferences matter at Harvard

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m not ignoring the elephant in the room - where did I say that removing racial preferences had no effect?I’m just saying that calling it systemic racism when it’s not just about race is incorrect. It’s a system of preferences. You want to reduce everything to race, go ahead, but it says more about you than the system.

As far as whether the numbers lie or. I don’t know. This is one poorly sourced footnote with no explanation or data. The number itself and the conclusions people are drawing here are suspect for reasons I’ve stated elsewhere. But I’m not going to say it’s wrong because I don’t actually know.

By the way if the numbers are accurate, then removing racial preferences results in 60% of the opened spots going to Asians. The number of whites admitted once the racial preference is not much larger than those admitted by legacy and athletics. Note that this number does not include development and faculty which also favors rich whites. Which means my original statement that middle class whites are screwed by rich whites is just as accurate as yours laying all the blame at the feet of race. The study itself says that the ALDC preferences largely help the affluent. [/quote]

Omnibus pp here.  I've done a lot of data science and statistical analysis professionally and I spent a lot of time with the numbers in the Harvard lawsuit yesterday.  It took awhile to unravel the real story but it's all there in black and white (pardon the pun).

The best way I can summarize it is that Harvard makes whites compete against each other in a racial silo.  When Harvard helps an ALDC white, it's at the expense of a non-ALDC white.  As you say: "middle class whites are screwed by rich whites".  Put another way, when Harvard admits a less academically qualified white legacy or white athlete, a more academically qualified white applicant is rejected.  This is why if you remove ALDC preferences, while the type of white students admitted would change, the number of white students admitted does not change.

On the other hand, Asians, african americans, and hispanics are forced to compete against each other in a multi-racial competition.  In this multi-racial competition, Harvard has applied a substantial affirmative action advantage to african americans and somewhat less of an advantage to hispanics.  As a result, academically more qualified Asians are being rejected to make room for less academically qualified african americans and hispanics, and in very large numbers.  Personally, I'm not totally against this, because I think diversity is important.  But if I were Asian, which I am not, I might have a different view.

It's ironic because so much of the daily political discussion around me is about the search for institutional racism or systemic bias.  I think that, perhaps except for certain examples in law enforcement, this Harvard admissions policy is the clearest example of institutional racism that I have seen in the last decade.  My perception is that people don't seem to care as much because it involves Asians and they are perceived to be very successful and therefore not in need of any advocacy.  I do not envy the Supreme Court is needing to figure this one out.[/quote]

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