Asian American Discrimination in Harvard Admissions [pdf]

I am an Asian-American high school senior who is nearing the end of the college admissions process.

I am so frustrated and angry that there is this discrimination, and people defend it. I feel that people don't take racism against Asian-Americans as seriously as racism against other groups.

Here's more about me. Like many people on HN, I'm a programmer. I'm interested in functional programming, programming language theory, and type theory. These interests caused me to discover pure math (such as category theory), and although I do not know as much about math than about programming, I want to learn more because I find these ideas elegant and beautiful. (For example, the Curry-Howard correspondence, which links programming to logic through the idea that programs are proofs, or HoTT, which gives types higher-dimensional structure based on the idea that equality types are the isomorphisms of an infinity-groupoid.)

I applied as a CS major to several colleges where PL theory had an academic presence, and in my supplemental essays, I discussed my interests and my desire to work with professors and do undergraduate research. I have competitive stats. Although other kids in my school got into my "reaches" (e.g. Cornell), I got rejected, but luckily I got into some "match" schools that did PL theory.

It's hard to say if affirmative action made a difference. Maybe if my application were exactly the same, but I weren't Asian, I would have gotten in, and if my application were the same except that I got an A instead of a B+ in a class, I would also have gotten in. I got waitlisted from some highly competitive schools, so I could have been on the edge. A big part of me not knowing how much my race would have made a difference is how non-transparent college admissions are. It's left up to some nebulous idea of "fit" decided by a group of people sitting at a table, who only have a few minutes to spend on each applicant.

But, what bothers me is the stereotypes. They've turned liking math and CS into a bad thing, at least when it's an Asian kid who's doing it. People defend affirmative action by saying that there are simply too many highly competitive Asian kids who want to study computer science. So, if I want to go to a good school, I shouldn't study computer science, even though that's what I want to do, just because of the way I was born? Among non-CS people, CS is probably seen as the stereotype track to get a high-paying job (and cynically, perhaps it's a popular major for this reason), but hopefully on a site such as HN, people will be more empathetic to the appeal of CS.

I'm also frustrated because most people probably don't know how math really is like. People just see it as nerdy word problems, and they've never heard of ideas like constructive math, programs-as-proofs, Cartesian closed categories, etc that I've become so intimate with. Why is it bad that I love math? Shouldn't you encourage me to learn this? I guess it's similar to the old stereotype of the "nerd" with no social skills, except with a racial element now.

It's a Catch-22 because people hold Asians to a higher standard, so we need to get higher grades and test scores to be competitive, then that feeds back into the stereotype that we are overly studious and have no personality. There is no winning for us in this game. Isn't it an objectively good thing to do well in school? If it were someone who weren't Asian, people would see high scores and grades as a positive thing or even cheer it on as a sign of increasing equality. Like all competitive high schoolers (of all races), we must play the game of having loads of AP classes, etc, but people specifically see Asians doing this as a negative stereotype.

But, on the front of us studying too much and not having personality, if you play an instrument, people will assume that you're doing it because your parents made you, or because of college admissions. Music is truly a beautiful thing and I experienced just how heartfelt it can be. (Sidenote: Watch Hibike! Euphonium or Your Lie in April!) But, just like the universal language of math, people have somehow turned Asians practicing the universal language of music into a bad thing. I can't imagine stronger proof of not being a robot, of being human, than experiencing how music can move you.

I implore you, in the meritocratic tradition of the hacker culture, to speak out against affirmative action and support Asian kids who want to pursue these passions.

EDIT: In fact, "affirmative action" is a euphemism. It's a vague-sounding term (an action that affirms something?) because people don't want to say "racial discrimination." Words have power to influence people, so I should start calling it what it is.

American culture has a long history of having an anti-intellectual streak. A football player seen as a hero, while a boy good at math is seen as a "nerd". It's the problem of bad neighborhoods, where the most popular kids in schools have the biggest fists, and who encourage or even force kids more interested in learning to "not be dorks", thus keeping them in the trap of poverty.

There are many reasons why this dynamic could arise. The problem is that it's not entirely gone even now, after like 50 years of "nerds" in engineering and finance having some of the most enviable career paths.

Facing it should be especially hard for Asian kids, as it used to be for Jewish kids in Europe: a different parenting culture helps them achieve more earlier, and actually like studying.

To play the devil's advocate, if these poorer neighborhoods, which may correlate with race, have a culture that discourages kids who study, that might actually be an argument to take race into account, if there's say, a black applicant whose score isn't as good, but it's competitive and they came from a bad place and overcame the odds. Due to my own values and experiences, I'd empathize with someone who values intellectualism but has been kept down due to their outside circumstances. It's an unfortunate situation and I would hope that the kid's hard work pays off.

However, I think that this should stay as judging individuals and their circumstances and putting them in the context of the environment, and it should not justify wide-scale generalizations like secret quotas hidden with personality tests, etc. As you point out, such things further anti-intellectualism and penalize Asians and Jews for working hard.

(It would also be more productive to support people in those neighborhoods from the start, such as by supporting elementary schools, instead of waiting until college admissions.)