Asian American Discrimination in Harvard Admissions [pdf]

You want to get into a good school? Diversity programs and affirmative action, above board, use the basis of your race to actively advantage you in your admittance if you are black, and do the exact opposite if you are Asian. Quotas for racial makeups almost always necessarily and uniquely disadvantage Asians. Because of being so overrepresented in achievements relative to their makeup of the population, any quota that goes off of anything other than their meritorious accomplishments necessarily puts an arbitrary scarcity on available opportunities for them.

You want to get a good job? Sure, you might find certain employers in particular regions that may be discriminatory on the basis of race to black individuals. But large, highly desirable companies nearly unilaterally have diversity hiring practices that likewise greatly advantage black individuals relative to those who would otherwise hold comparable characteristics to individuals from other populations. YouTube famously had reports from their hiring department that a hold was issued on the hiring of white and Asian individuals for the remainder of some time period in order to ensure that diversity quotas were satisfied. Being Asian in a "sea of hyper-qualified Asian applicants" _is_ a distinct disadvantage, and the degree of competence needed to stand out from a group that is already associated with high achievement is uniquely unfair.

What about dating? I have worked in this space. Every dating app shows the same thing: Asian men and black women are the least desirable groups for getting responses or being sought after, by quite a bit. I have worked in this space, and what is admittedly anecdotal, I have heard "I'm just not attracted to Asian guys," on many occasions. There doesn't seem to be any taboo in this particular area, it doesn't seem to imply closed-mindedness. I have _never_, _ever_, heard somebody say "I'm just not attracted to black guys," in my personal or professional life. I believe that this would be met with a great deal of social pushback. There seems to be a willingness for people to say things about Asians that is just not felt in other ethnic groups, and it possibly stems from this idea that it's safe to be "punching up."

Lastly I just think there is a general cultural obsession with racial injustices which completely casts Asians aside due to their collective competencies. Think of all of the hullabaloo regarding the fact that there isn't enough black representation in the Academy Awards, regardless of (last I checked) the makeup of Oscars in the last few decades has been about 10% awarded to black individuals, which is about what their 13% of the population in the US would lead you to expect. Asian actors? Something on the order of 4. Nobody cares.

I'm not Asian. I hate racial politics, but I just find it particularly absurd that Asians are ostensibly cast aside in this game when they strike me as having the most to complain about. Most other cases of supposed injustice stem from people comparing the outcomes of two racial populations, and subsequently stipulating that the differences must be due to racism. For the examples I've stated, I'm talking about things that actually net different outcomes for individuals on the basis of their race.

- Want to be able to shop in stores without security guards literally following you around and intimidating you? Better to be Asian.

- Want your doctor to take your concerns seriously and prescribe the most appropriate medicine for your condition? Better to be Asian.

- Want to not get randomly stopped by police while driving? Better to be Asian.

It's not that your reality isn't unfair, but unless you've lived it or really studied the data - you can't underestimate how pervasive and dangerous the discrimination against black people really is. Black people are not just being paranoid when they say they're worried that they could lose their life over these things.

But comparing black and Asian in the US is laughable. On life expectancy, earnings, education etc is completely one-sided.

Sorry, but this is patently absurd. African-Americans have faced (and continue to face) an order of magnitude more difficulty and lack of opportunity than Asian-Americans. The statistics of a dating app or the number of Oscar winners are in no way comparable to centuries of slavery and legal discrimination.

- Want your doctor to take your concerns seriously and prescribe the most appropriate medicine for your condition? Better to be Asian.

Being a biochemist I know that my dad was given a statin drug that should typically be at 1/4 strength for Asians. I came to later find out that I am homozygous for an allele which makes exercise more painful if you take that statin. Ironically my dad didn't die of heart disease (he never had high blood pressure) but died of diabetes and lack of exercise instead.

Anyways, the medical field is broken because by policy we want to treat everyone the same but in some ways biology skews racist.

Edit: the author seems to have removed his comment, which was a long list of studies on education rate, incarceration rate, etc. for African-Americans in the US.

This just tells me that you have zero conception of what life is like for lower class black Americans. Your assumption is that everyone starts at the same starting place, and that these things (education, employment, etc.) are just things one intuitively knows about and can easily gain access to, if you just work hard enough.

The reality is that for many lower class Americans, there is no cultural capital or mechanism for even beginning to understand the process of academic achievement, applying to colleges, getting a professional job, and so on. There are no role models, no family members to offer support, no community that values such things. These cultural patterns, behaviors and built-up knowledge do not exist.

To analyze discrimination on isolated individuals is to entirely miss the point that centuries of slavery and discrimination have destroyed much of this cultural capital, and simply removing the most egregious discriminatory behaviors isn't going to suddenly straighten all that was crooked, especially not in less than a century. And that's assuming that there is no active current discrimination, which is again, blatantly false.

If Asians are approved for bank loans at higher rates than black people, that doesn't mean that it's harder to get a loan as a black person than it is as an Asian person. What I am talking about is that if you were a black person with a given credit score, with a given salary, capital, etc, and you were less likely to get a loan than an Asian with exactly the same criteria, only then would this be you being discriminated against on the basis of your race.

When talking about discrimination against Asians, the examples I'm giving are ones in which the Asian individual can meet or surpass all of the objective criteria necessary for an outcome, but their race is the active factor that harms them. Last I read, if Ivy Leagues were unaware of any racial identifiers, and simply had the objective criteria of SAT scores, GPA, extra-curricular achievements, Asians would make up 40% of their universities. When we say that black Americans have a shorter life expectancy, earnings, or education do you understand how that isn't remotely comparable? You haven't controlled for anything. If you say that there is an epidemic of black students not being admitted to schools despite having identical qualifications as other applicants, only then are you bringing up a comparable example to what I'm discussing.

Nigerian and West Indian immigrants, for example, are among the most successful immigrant groups in the country, and among the most well-educated. Their blackness is not an obstacle in securing positions at universities or employment, because blackness is not the obstacle. In almost every university or large employment opportunity, their blackness works actively in their favor. Compare this with Asian immigrants, and you are now getting to the sort of comparison that I'm making.

1. Affirmative action was designed to benefit African-Americans, that is: the descendants of African slaves brought to the US centuries ago. This is a separate cultural group from recent black immigrants from Nigeria, the West Indies, or other African countries.

2. The percentage of immigrant Africans is also tiny in comparison to the descendants of slaves. So using them as an example to disprove the idea that there is discrimination against black people, is again, not really relevant.

In any case, the problems probably arise from the basing of affirmative action decisions on race/skin color and not cultural background. I don't know if this is a really a solvable problem, but blankety stating that "Asian people have it worse than Black people in America" is so blatantly wrong that I have to call you out on it.

To say that "if you take a black man and an Asian man and control for everything but race, the Asian man will be more disadvantaged in pursuing things that matter" is built on the massive assumption that these things are equally accessible and that the groups are equally culturally prepared for them.

Opportunities in life are not items in a grocery store, easily accessible to any person walking in off the street.

Do you think that the children of uneducated nail salon workers who don't speak English have this cultural capital?

No, probably not, but I think it's fair to say that 1) the broad societal stereotypes applied to them are perhaps less damaging than those applied to black Americans and 2) the children of the Asian nail salon workers will be more likely to socially engage with the children of Asian-Americans that do have this cultural capital (and thus be more exposed to it) than the lower class black American children will be to the equivalent (if only because the equivalent is much less common.)

Again, these are all issues which need to be addressed and no discrimination is okay. But the initial claim was specifically placing them into a certain hierarchy, which I am reacting against.

That premise doesn't make sense when speaking about human beings existing in reality. Race doesn't exist in a vacuum—it comes inherently with decades of cultural and historical context.

This experiment has been done multiple times, and yes this is exactly what happens. In business loans, home loans, ...

See e.g. https://www.huduser.gov/publications/pdf/aotbe.pdf for paired tests comparing white/black and white/hispanic shoppers, done by HUD. I have seen similar tests in the past which asian shoppers, but you’ll have to search around a bit.

Of course. Because academic achievement is highly valued in Asian cultures. I suspect that the situation for Jews is similar, for the same reason.

So sure, universities could just ignore "race" entirely. But then historically disadvantaged groups would be underrepresented. And that would perpetuate the disadvantaged status for those groups.

So how would that be just?

Arguably it's fairest to weight acceptance criteria to admit students in proportion to their groups' population share. And yes, I agree that it sucks if you're Asian, Jewish, or whatever other groups are affected.

And I also get that it's gameable. Someone who's part Asian or Jewish, and part (even a little) Black, would identify as Black. Applicants might even use DNA test data.

The premise of his thought experiment is that things are not equally accessible so we must set all things equal except race in order to measure its effect in isolation.

This would be true only if you were able to tell at a glance which black people are descendants of slaves and which are more recent arrivals. Do you claim to have this ability? Do you claim that this ability is widespread enough to be representative?

You can point to problems in black America, and those problems might be inextricably tied to culture and history. But blacks also live in Africa, and some have a very different culture and history than black America.

And some of those Africans immigrate to America, which then means there are blacks here without the cultural and historical context.

Nigerian-Americans, for instance, are the highest-educated in the U.S. ( https://www.chron.com/news/article/Data-show-Nigerians-the-m... ), surpassing Whites and Asians.

> 8,000 Chinese focused on building the tunnels while another 3,000 laid track ... The Chinese had seen a pay increase from $31 to $35 per month by Spring 1867, but it fell short of the $40 monthly salaries whites were pulling in ... They were also toiling longer hours, often under dangerous conditions, whipped or restrained if they left to seek employment elsewhere. And unlike whites, the Chinese had to foot the bill for their lodging, food, and tools

> When the strike went down ... "They went to their camp and they sat" ... Crocker, meanwhile, took the step of cutting off all food and supplies to the Chinese laborers, hoping that starvation would force them back to work.

> It did.

( https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/150-years-ago-chi... )

I'm not making a comparison between groups. I just think being whipped, restrained, and starved would probably rise above "poor treatment ... which was exceptionally discriminatory" as a description for any reasonable person.

> Denis Kearney, an Irish immigrant ... Responding to high unemployment and a nationwide railroad strike, Kearney in 1877 founded the Workingmen’s Party of California ... the party’s anti-Chinese views were rooted in racism and revulsion at the newcomers’ unfamiliar customs.

> "A bloated aristocracy has sent to China ... for a cheap working slave," Kearney proclaimed in 1878. "It rakes the slums of Asia to find the meanest slave on earth - the Chinese coolie - and imports him here to meet the free American in the labor market

> "These cheap slaves fill every place. Their dress is scant and cheap. Their food is rice from China. They hedge twenty in a room, ten by ten. They are whipped curs, abject in docility, mean, contemptible and obedient in all things."

> The Workingmen’s Party quickly became a force in California and national politics, exerting pressure on Congress and President Chester A. Arthur to act.

> In early 1882, Congress overwhelmingly approved the Chinese Exclusion Act

( https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/08/03... )

Apparently some people at that time thought of the Chinese laborers as "cheap working slave", "the meanest slave on earth", who lived "twenty in a room", "are whipped", etc.

This is just historical context. I know other groups had it terribly as well... I'm not making comparisons.

The point is that being an abused lower class worker is not the same thing as being an actual piece of property, which is what black slaves were. This is not even remotely controversial among historians.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I've detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22975063. Hijacking the top comment was also not cool.

The problem with affirmative action policies is that they end up benefiting a small social layer of mostly well-off black people, and that they do almost nothing for the vast majority of black people. But because affirmative action costs almost nothing to implement, it's an easy policy that many people support.

A real policy that addresses poverty is what is needed, not an arbitrary boost for college admissions based on skin color.

I admit that I'm also disinclined to believe that lenders are in any way concerned with making decisions according to any other criteria than what would return them the highest profits, but I will take a look in greater detail at the study you referenced. It seems exceedingly idiotic to me that lenders would take a datapoint as arbitrarily useless as race into consideration, but I suppose the same could be said for universities taking less qualified applicants for the same reason. Obviously, this would be precisely the sort of discrimination that I would take serious issue with, if present, so I'll be make sure to look into the study. Thanks for the reference. There is a LOT of piss-poor analysis into this issue that controls for virtually nothing, and typical reporting will very often simply differentiate average loan sizes to people of ethnicities, likelihood to get loan approvals, etc, as just baseline differences between populations.

I understand if lenders want to keep their evaluation process secretive, as there could theoretically be a competitive advantage in the manner in which they calculate risk, but I think that the way this stuff is audited could be done in a much clearer fashion. Maybe something like "lenders have to publicly disclose all features they take into consideration in their approval model." And then some independent audit should run some random sample set of their approvals through a sensible model, and then the banks would have to justify what it is in their model that produces any major differences in approval rates. The mechanisms in place to make sure that this stuff is being done appropriately seem like they're horribly designed.

Since you have a long history of flouting the site guidelines here, using multiple accounts, I'd guess that it was flagged because it broke the guidelines.

The problem I was talking about was more about how doctors are less likely to prescribe things like pain medicine or ADHD meds to black people because of presumed criminality and stereotypes. A good portion of doctors legitimately claim that they believe the myth that black people have higher pain tolerance than people of other races: https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/how-we-fail-black-patient...

Black people can also have a problem where doctors assume they are lying about symptoms or being non-compliant with their treatment plan, so if they complain of it not working or of side effects, doctors often don't listen and update the plan of care accordingly. Even in something as straightforward as sharing symptoms of heart disease, doctors were less likely to take their concerns seriously and recommend the necessary diagnostic follow up: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?journal=N+Engl+J+M...

In your example, it's a wash. But in my examples, being Asian is still an advantage over being black.

Those problems that are more closely bound with culture and history won't be solved by focusing on discrimination/bias/prejudice/profiling (and other racial issues).

Moderators, in case anyone is wondering, didn't see it.

The experience of the Chinese was nowhere near that of a poor Irish or Polish worker. That is a blatant rewriting of history.