Reply to New study on relative impact of Harvard Admissions Preferences

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Fascinating.

So, the best way to help Asian Americans who, as you say, have been subject to much injustice in the past...is to discriminate AGAINST them in college admissions?

This is beyond absurd. It's plain obscene.[/quote]

Again, many people are arguing based on an incorrect premise.

Racial balance in college admissions is not designed to hurt of help any one race.

Racial balance in college admissions is designed to help colleges better achieve their mission.

Past injustices, while horrible and possibly worthy of social correction, are completely irrelevant to this topic, and to insist they are indicates you do not understand.[/quote]

Well you can definitely count me in as a person who also finds it fascinating. I haven't heard a single reason - reasonable or otherwise - for such blatant discrimination yet.

What if I went through life, avoiding people of a certain race even when I have a lot of power over them and it really hurts them for me to do so, and then I just claimed, "oh it's not discrimination or illegal in the slightest, I just have a mission to not interact with people from x race, and that's what I'm doing." Would that be okay with you?

Saying that it's a "mission" is the exact same thing as saying "because I want to". It's not a reason. It's not a justification. It's not a defense against racism. Not when the stakes are so high here.[/quote]

You point is a great one -- but it works totally against your position.

[quote][i]What if I went through life, avoiding people of a certain race even when I have a lot of power over them and it really hurts them for me to do so, and then I just claimed, "oh it's not discrimination or illegal in the slightest, I just have a mission to not interact with people from x race, and that's what I'm doing." Would that be okay with you?[/i][/quote]

Its seems like you are arguing [b]for[/b] racial balance.

That's what colleges feel they need -- a balance of ALL races that reflects the population of the country so that students of all races can be comfortable and want to attend and the colleges can attract as many students as possible.

It's not racism because it benefits all races, (such as an Asian applicant at Notre Dame  or Grinnell, a black student at Harvard or Middlebury a white student at Spelman or Morehouse) even though it may make it harder for certain students at certain schools.  [/quote]

So if I ran a sports team, a team where it really helps the talented people in the community to have access to it, and then I turned away people from races x and y because I told them "sorry, I'm only interested in people of race z now" and went to get more people from race z who were nowhere near as good as the ones I turned away, just because it's my "mission" to have that many people from race z there.... you'd be okay with that?

I think the only way that would be remotely reasonable is if I didn't claim that my team was a meritocracy or that admission was based on talent, and instead called it the "rainbow team" or some such and made it very clear to everyone involved that the team's mission is primarily about racial exposure, like so each race can be exposed to a representative sample of the other races as they would find in the entire USA. And playing the sport is something we do while there.
[/quote]

You can certainly do what you want with your team.

Harvard does not claim to be an academics-only institution. Here’s what they say their mission is:

“The mission of Harvard College is to educate the citizens and [b]citizen-leaders[/b] for our society. We do this through our commitment to the transformative power of a liberal arts and sciences education.“ from the Harvard website.

Note the term citizen-leaders. Harvard wants a portion of their students to graduate and serve as leaders in the future- and leadership has many aspects to it, which go beyond academic accomplishment. Leaders need to be able to interact with people from many walks of life, so it is important for a school like Harvard to admit students as many different types of backgrounds as possible.

[/quote]

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