Asian American Discrimination in Harvard Admissions [pdf]

It is a pity nobody knows how to have a civil and thoughtful public debate on these topics. The Asian experience throws a large number of spanners into what I assume is the common narrative around race.

In particular, that the people bringing in affirmative action policy are acting on some sort of evidence. It is difficult to sustain the idea that pre-university racism was the most important variable when the Asians are such intellectual dynamos despite facing pretty stiff racial headwinds.

The play devil's advocate, affirmative action isn't supposed to just compensate for what an individual's upbringing was before college, but the multigenerational racial discrimination that led to his community and family not being able to prepare him for college. The Asian American historical experience was very different from the Black American historical experience. Most Asian Americans today are descendants of well trained technical immigrants post 1950s. The US immigration process acted like a filter that selected for immigrants that were already above average in their respective societies. Asian Americans don't just outperform other minorities in the US, they likely outperform their compatriots back in Asia due to this filter. Black Americans, on the other hand, weren't exactly chosen to immigrate to the US because of their technical skills. They were forced to migrate due to the legacy of slavery. An Asian and a Black student clearly do not have the same family or historical background. Even within the Asian American community, you see differences in achievement between descendants of economic migrants and descendants of refugees. Indian and Korean Americans do much better than Vietnamese or Hmong.

Great. Now give Asian Americans affirmative action in the NBA.

Any mental gymnastics used to support affirmative action in business or schooling should also apply to sports. If I hear someone complaining about lack of representation of X in certain field I will gladly point at NBA and Asian Americans ask them out that.