Asian American Discrimination in Harvard Admissions [pdf]

Sure, but the (mostly) white and Asian commentators here agitating for an end to affirmative action for under-represented minorities are similarly not doing it just due to their severe opposition to racial discrimination in all forms.

This opposition is just as much, if not more, motivated by people feeling like their class interests are at risk.

> "This opposition is just as much, if not more, motivated by people feeling like their class interests are at risk."

Are under-represented minorities not highly "motivated by people feeling like their class interests are at risk" in the form of a desire to increase their class? Seems improbable to me, invalidating the rather unkind suggestion that it's only one side that's all about the money.

> invalidating the rather unkind suggestion that it's only one side that's all about the money.

I certainly didn't mean to suggest that, so I'm sorry if my comment was unclear to you. Indeed, I was actually replying to GP which seemed to be making the insinuation that only one side was about the money, so perhaps your comment would function better as a reply to that one?

I think it's pretty transparent that advocates of affirmative action are interested in promoting the economic interests of under-represented minorities, so I didn't think it needed to be explicitly said. Further, many of the advocates of affirmative action are not of the group being benefited directly, whereas most of those with a stake in dismantling diversity policies seem to stand to benefit from it.

> "Indeed, I was actually replying to GP which seemed to be making the insinuation that only one side was about the money, so perhaps your comment would function better as a reply to that one?"

Oh, if that's the case, my apologies for the misunderstanding .

I tend to agree with much of what you've posted in this comment section, but I want to point out that economic incentives are not what is truly at the heart of the moral underpinnings of affirmative action. If that was the point, then wouldn't cash or capital transfers be better? Instead, affirmative action, in its least cynical ideal, must be about the social value of higher education, which precludes consideration of income in lieu of race. Unless, of course, everything is ultimately about money. That's the last topic affirmative action naysayers want to breach, though, if they know what's good for them.

These days it's in the class interests of Whites and Asians to be against racial discrimination in all forms which in effect means not being able to be racist officially but not being an effective barrier to unofficial racism. Which is very much in Whites and Asians interests.

Still affirmative action just looks more arbitrary and nonsensical every year. I don't see how anybody can see what's happening to Asians as anything but racially discriminatory and arbitrarily penalizing.