If Mort Divine ruled the world

[rms]

Laotians are Asians, that's my point

Yeah, hbb beat me to it

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Actually rereading my post I meant to say that treating Asians as a homogeneous group hurts Laotians more, whereas treating them heterogeneously potentially treats all of them equally (but still worse than all other races). My bad. The problem is that I haven't seen much evidence that universities do differentiate between various Asian ethnic groups, so I'm inclined that they do not to any major extent. We know, for example, that African immigrants and Caribbeans are over-represented in universities relative to descendants of black American slaves. Universities don't report individual ethnicities for statistical and governmental purposes, they report races.

 

[rms]

And I imagine there's a growing resentment towards Africans traveling abroad and black americans

 

[Einherjar86]

Unfortunately there's not much evidence one way or another, as far as racial quotas are concerned. I've read about universities using "holistic admission policies," or something like that, which certain Asian American groups believe is a benefit to their applications process (the piece specifically cited Laotians and Cambodians).

I have no idea what the parameters are for affirmative action admissions, but I took whatever I read to mean that there are ways in which admissions boards differentiate, despite not classifying prospective students as anything more specific than "Asian American."

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Unfortunately there's not much evidence one way or another, as far as racial quotas are concerned. I've read about universities using "holistic admission policies," or something like that, which certain Asian American groups believe is a benefit to their applications process (the piece specifically cited Laotians and Cambodians).

I have no idea what the parameters are for affirmative action admissions, but I took whatever I read to mean that there are ways in which admissions boards differentiate, despite not classifying prospective students as anything more specific than "Asian American."

There is plenty of evidence that admissions forms have checkboxes for race and not national ethnicity. Two quick results on Google, one reflecting the thoughts of an Asian advocacy group with skin in the game:

https://www.theatlantic.com/educati...-and-the-future-of-affirmative-action/489023/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/30/...hat-the-affirmative-action-debate-misses.html

Sure, admissions boards *can* differentiate, but realistically, when UCLA gets 120k applications a year and 90% of them are turned away, they're going to use ethnic quotas and SAT/ACT scores to cut away a large chunk of those applicants. Admissions boards cannot read 120k personal statements, and by the admission of the story linked on the previous page, simply being an immigrant and having a strong GPA and playing violin since elementary school doesn't really cut it if you're an Asian these days. Of course, if someone was black, they would get in with no problem at all. This is why new wealthy immigrants from Nigeria and elsewhere are slaughtering poorer/less educated slave-descended blacks:

https://newsone.com/214021/black-immigrants-overrepresented-at-ivy-league-schools/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10080304

The main reason universities care about race is because the government makes a big deal out of it in the post-civil rights era. The main instrument for measuring race are a half-dozen options on an admissions question form. It's very obvious that affirmative action policies hurt certain minority groups, even the ones that affirmative action is in theory supposed to help.

 

[Einherjar86]

There is plenty of evidence that admissions forms have checkboxes for race and not national ethnicity. Two quick results on Google, one reflecting the thoughts of an Asian advocacy group with skin in the game:

https://www.theatlantic.com/educati...-and-the-future-of-affirmative-action/489023/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/30/...hat-the-affirmative-action-debate-misses.html

You actually cited the article that I read a while back--the Atlantic piece. It talks about the uncertainty surrounding the use of racial quotas and the potential benefits of holistic admissions.

AAJC believes that race-conscious holistic admissions actually benefit Asian Americans, particularly groups like Cambodians and Laotians that do face significant barriers to education. “Many of the things we have fought for in continuing to maintain both the policies and principles behind affirmative action are designed not only to help the overall population but also specific subgroups such as my community,” said Mee Moua, a Hmong American who serves as the president and executive director of AAJC. “The way in which the story [about Asian American opposition to affirmative action] is being told is through this assumption of the model-minority myth … There’s a presumption that somehow this highly achieving community doesn’t care about the impact of affirmative-action policies.”

According to Moua, “the faction of Asian Americans publicly opposed to affirmative action is misguided and doesn’t understand that what they’re opposed to is ‘negative action’”—i.e., quotas and discrimination, even though such practices are blatantly illegal. Indeed, some research has suggested that it isn’t affirmative action that hurts Asian Americans, but rather negative action, and that eliminating affirmative action would hurt Asian Americans. AAJC, Moua said, strongly opposes negative action, but “we can’t do anything about that until there’s a set of facts.”

There’s little, if any, concrete evidence to suggest that elite colleges are indeed using racial quotas. The Education Department, for example, last September said it didn’t have enough proof to conclude Princeton University had discriminated against Asian students, as alleged in a complaint. And although groups like SFFA cite Asian American enrollment statistics in California as evidence that the Ivy League schools are proactively capping their Asian numbers, the reality is that such students have long attended UC schools in large numbers—even before the affirmative-action ban. In 1992, Asian Americans accounted for about 40 percent of new freshmen at UC Berkeley, for example; in 2012, it was 43 percent. Perhaps that relative stagnation is because Berkeley—like Harvard and Yale and Brown and Dartmouth—practices holistic admissions. And perhaps holistic admissions effectively result in some racial leveling.

As far as detriments to Asian American applicants go, I'm not denying that it looks like many are disenfranchised; and I understand the political motivations behind race-based quotas at universities. But the full picture isn't really that clear, and there is evidence that some universities at least take measures to combat the homogeneous approach of, say, SAT scores. I'm not sure how often such holistic policies are actually used or closely followed, but that Atlantic piece does a very good job of expressing the disagreement over affirmative action even within the Asian American community.

 

[rms]

that last paragraph is now proven wrong, right? didn't my piece specifically mentioned Princeton gives +230 to blacks, +185 to hispanics and -50 to asians?

I just don't get how non-model-asians benefit from federal programs where don't distinguish ethnicities. Do uni's see lower SAT scores and assume they aren't asian/chinese/korean? or a lack of "extracurriculars" ? Then that is terrible in its own right.

 

[Einherjar86]

It does, but that's not actually what happens. Those numbers are statistical conversions derived from a broad number of considerations that go into admissions procedures, not actual "bonuses" applied to SAT scores.

Turns out, the actual study concludes the exact opposite of what Ann Lee’s powerpoint presentation concludes. In the “Princeton University Study” research, the authors reach three conclusions:

1) Colleges provide lots of preferences that benefit certain students and not others including legacy admissions; despite this,

2) affirmative action in admissions processes that only serve to benefit Black and Hispanic minorities, regardless of SAT scores, are the only ones that are surrounded in controversy; and

3) without these preferences for Blacks and Hispanics (because of the ways in which racial and socio-economic disparities intersect in the country at large), members of these groups would be disproportionately unable to be admitted to elite universities.

What the article actually says is:

It is possible to convert the magnitude of these preferences to a common SAT metric. The bonus for African-American applicants is roughly equivalent to an extra 230 SAT points (on a 1600-point scale), to 185 points for Hispanics, 200 points for athletes, and 160 points for children of alumni. The Asian disadvantage is comparable to a loss of 50 SAT points. [p. 1431]

Where is the confusion between this research and Ann Lee’s powerpoint about the research? Ann Lee, the author of the LA Times article, and all those who cite that article and discuss Lee’s presentation misinterpret the study and assert some version of the following related to SAT scores:

African Americans received a “bonus” of 230 points, Lee says…. “Hispanics received a bonus of 185 points.”

The disparity between the powerpoint presentation and the research is that there is no bonus points on the SAT but instead there are a combination of considerations that go into decision making to accept any person that applies to a college, one of which is the SAT. These considerations can be “converted” statistically to have a value that can look like SAT points, which is done in the research in order to demonstrate the weight of these alternate considerations. The researchers use the idea of “bonus” points as a metaphor to demonstrate to the reader of the research that the SAT is insufficient as a single marker for admission. The authors note other considerations for enrollment like athletics and legacy that also could be converted as part of a “bonus” score to demonstrate that lots of students benefit over others because of these considerations and, yet, these considerations affecting non Hispanic and non Blacks are viewed as uncontroversial (and not dismissed as an unearned handout).

http://thecommunicatedstereotype.com/no-minorities-do-not-earn-bonus-points-on-the-sat/

So, Asian Americans don't have 50 points deducted from their SAT scores, or whatever. Rather, the admissions procedures, on average, appear to disadvantage Asian Americans (again, on average--it doesn't affect every Asian American negatively) in a way that can be correlated to roughly -50 points on an SAT exam.

 

[rms]

I guess it's important to specify what exactly is meant by the +230 and the +185, but it doesn't change anything. Universities have standards and those standards are shifted for non-asians because they generalize blacks and hispanics don't have legacy or enough violin or dance hours or whatever other silly metric they use and they do not account for non-model asians. This is a terrible practice and discriminatory. And again, I feel like any time we talk about bad leftist practices we focus on minute details instead of large systemic shortcomings because we're scared of the optics on black Americans.

Minneapolis police chief excluded

 

[Dak]

Extracurriculars shouldn't have any part in a university admissions process.

 

[rms]

outside of athletics I agree

 

[Dak]

outside of athletics I agree

Big 3 athletics need to be stripped from unis as well, but that's unlikely to happen.

 

[rms]

yeah. it will be interesting when hoops, football, soccer, baseball and hockey all leave colleges

 

[Oblivious Maximus]

BUSD teacher, activist Yvette Felarca arrested Tuesday

 

[CiG]

BUSD teacher, activist Yvette Felarca arrested Tuesday

Yoda really looks like shit these days.

 

[Einherjar86]

And again, I feel like any time we talk about bad leftist practices we focus on minute details instead of large systemic shortcomings because we're scared of the optics on black Americans.

Ha, this is funny to me, seeing as I'm typically accused of focusing on large systemic shortcomings.

And for what it's worth, it does change something. Having 50 points deducted from an SAT score is a more invasive offense than a combination of factors observed after the fact that correspond to approximately -50 points.

The former describes an intentional and determined attack on Asian Americans; the latter describes an unintentional and contingent effect of admissions procedures. They're two very different things.

 

[CiG]

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...s/news-story/3e86ec78deb28d79ff88213a1f979127

Outgoing Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat blames the media for what he says is a false narrative about backlash against the casting of a woman in the show's title role.

"There has been so many press articles about the backlash among the Doctor Who fandom against the casting of a female Doctor," Moffat said Sunday at Comic-Con.

"There has been no backlash at all. The story of the moment is that the notionally conservative 'Doctor Who' fandom has utterly embraced that change completely - 80 per cent approval on social media, not that I check these things obsessively. And yet so many people wanted to pretend there's a problem. There isn't"

Jodie Whittaker will take over the role of the Doctor from Peter Capaldi beginning next season. Whitaker will be the 13th actor to play the character, and the first woman.

Doctor Who fans, Moffat said, "are more excited by the fact that there's going to be a brilliant actress playing the part than the fact that she's a woman. It's been incredibly progressive and enlightened and that's what really happened. I wish every single journalist who is writing the alternative would shut the hell up."

 

[rms]

the latter describes an unintentional and contingent effect of admissions procedures

this whole thing clearly demonstrates an intentional positive bias for black and hispanic applicants. i don't get how you can say this, universities don't 'edit' SAT scores from another agency.

 

[Dak]

It's clearly intentional.

 

[Einherjar86]

The only thing it clearly demonstrates is a positive bias for blacks and Hispanics. It doesn't clearly demonstrate intentionality during the process.

The original study, which the LA Times piece mis-characterizes, only states that a combination of factors correspond roughly to plus or minus a certain number of SAT points. This is an entirely descriptive claim, not prescriptive; it's not identifying a clear intent to disenfranchise Asian Americans, it's showing a clear tendency (or pattern) that we can recognize after the fact.

It's clearly intentional.

The study itself indicates no clear intention. That you're saying this signals to me that you're either being sarcastic, or you're consumed by your own predispositions and can't judge the study on its own merits.

I'd expect you of all people to acknowledge that intent cannot be proven or effectively demonstrated one way or another, based on the data provided by the study.