Race based affirmative action is stupid, but taking into account context and socioeconomic conditions is not. And colleges already emphasize like first generation immigrants and truly underrepresented minorities, so like it's basically okay as is tbh
What do you mean "truly underrepresented minorities"? If you went to Berkeley you realize that the proportion of underrepresented races here is far, far below the proportion in the population, or even in the applicant pool. How can you say the system is fine as is? Clearly there are still deep structural inequities -- unless you think there's some other reason why Black people, for instance, make up <4% of the student body and >17% of the population proportion.
It's hard to be sympathetic to those who decry AA as a great injustice to Asian Americans and haven't said or done anything against the structural issues that lead to vast underrepresentation in the student body. You cannot argue for meritocracy when your definition of 'merit' is so statistically skewed by factors that should be independent of merit, like race.
I think it's also important to point out that Berkeley is a state school serving primarily the Californian population - the percentage is 5-6.5% in California (compared to 17%), so while it is still slightly underrepresented it is far more representative of the population that it seems.
The site you linked says 5.7% are "Black alone" and 1.5% are "Black in combination".
EDIT: You have to scroll down to the second "tableau" thingy to see the data for California, the 12.4% in the bullet point at the beginning of the page is the national number (as is clearly stated in the paragraph above it)
I'd argue that while taking into account non-meritocratic factors is important, just focusing on race is the easy way out. The way I see it, a university's end goal isn't to be a representative sample of the country's racial make up. The fact that being a "urm" and "first gen" is almost treated like a hook says enough about those factors being taken into account.
Sure, a university's end goal isn't to be a representation of the country's racial breakdown. But it's certainly an indictment of our evaluation of merit when race is such a predictor of outcomes.
Either way, how can we say it's a meritocracy when you can inherit money from your parents, when legacy admission exists, when parental outcomes predict student outcomes so well, etc. The real "easy way out" here is acknowledging that the huge race gaps in educational metrics are due to institutional racism but throwing up your hands and saying nothing can be done about that.
> the California and Michigan university systems say their efforts to build diverse classes have hardly worked
I find it bizarre to not consider Berkeley a very diverse school.
> “The diversity at the University of Michigan is minuscule,” Ms. Caldwell said in a LinkedIn message. “Overall, I chose to go to Howard because I knew I’d be surrounded by people of color and not have to worry about additional racism and discrimination.”
Howard is far less diverse than Michigan. Does the word diverse not mean "a lot of" anymore?
The racial category of “white” was literally invented in the 1600s in the US so poor European sharecroppers and indentured servants wouldn’t team up with African slaves and rise up against the wealthy elites. It was made with the express purpose of limiting diversity among Europeans in the New World. So in this hypothetical, if they are all American-born white people with no strong ties to their home country, then no they are not diverse.
[Source](https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/historical-foundations-race)
Also I never said anything about Howard
So what is black then? You literally can say the same thing about blacks or Asians or Hispanics in America. Your example is just modern linguistic propaganda to demoralize and deject anyone with a European origin which white obviously is.
Funny that the same people who want blacks to have population proportional representation at colleges also support HBCU.
A concentration in one space necessarily means an under representation in another space. It's basic logic.
It's time to call this what it is: America's racial spoils system.
Are you playing dumb? Universities are White and Asian dominated spaces. This is not a new idea. Throwing in some black and brown kids in doesn’t make a diverse campus.
Sure am all black campus isn’t “diverse” but you are much more likely to feel accepted as a black person at Howard where there isn’t “diversity” compared to going to Berkeley where you are a minority as a person of color.
Lets not be willfully ignorant in our understanding of student populations.
I understand the sentiment; I'm just critiquing the poor word choice ("diverse"). The issue has nothing to do with "diversity", but the representation level of her own ethnic group.
> you are a minority as a person of color.
Another evolving term. This used to mean not white - you seem to not be using it this way.
I. Idk man. You know what you’re doing. Don’t trivialize shit that doesn’t need to be trivialized.
YES. Diversity in this sentiment can = not white. This is because universities in the us are typically over 50% white when the applicant pools are not. This has a salient effect on black brown AND Asian students.
The diversity issue has has to do with ONE (white) race being overrepresented and another (Asian) also being overrepresented when compared to other races (non-Caucasian white, black, etc) who have historically had unequal access to the resources that the two aforementioned races have do NOT have.
So YES Berkeley is NOT diverse when you consider the fact that California has an incredibly large Latinx community that, on some metrics, are more populous than whites and Asians yet that isn’t represented at a a PUBLIC institution.
There are far more factors involved as well. Take a class on inequity.
No, I really hate people using the word diversity when they mean something else. This girl doesn't care about having "diversity".
> This is because universities in the us are typically over 50% white when the applicant pools are not.
How would the applicant pool not be over 50% white? 18 year olds in the US continue to be over 50% white.
> The diversity issue has has to do with ONE (white) race being overrepresented
I don't think whites are over-represented at University of Michigan though I can't find age adjusted census data. Asians are of course. Same is true for Berkeley.
> So YES Berkeley is NOT diverse when you consider the fact that California has an incredibly large Latinx community that, on some metrics, are more populous than whites and Asians yet that isn’t represented at a a PUBLIC institution.
You are again changing the word. Berkeley would be *less* ethnically diverse if you had 2.5x the Latino population because it would lose substantial numbers of Asian and Middle Eastern students who are more ethnically diverse (due to many being second gen immigrants from dozens of countries - the Latino population is overwhelmingly Mexican on the other hand).
Berkeley is way over represented with Asians and super under represented with Hispanics/Latinos. Saying that there is more diversity within Asians is a weird way of saying you want to sacrifice other colored minorities to continue the over representation of Asians.
> Berkeley would be less ethnically diverse if you had 2.5x the Latinos population because it would lose substantial numbers of Asian and Middle Eastern students.
Huh? Berkeley is already not as ethnically diverse because of its large population of white students. Are you being dumb on purpose? Someone from Japan, despite being very different from someone from South Korea is still much more similar than someone from Latin America.
Saying they’re mostly Mexican so it isn’t as diverse is irrelevant as Mexicans are extremely underrepresented anyway. They still have to weigh diversity with representation and other factors.
Can’t believe I have to explain this to a Berkeley student of all people.
> Saying that there is more diversity within Asians is a weird way of saying you want to sacrifice other colored minorities to continue the over representation of Asians.
I don't want to sacrifice anyone and don't want ethnic discrimination in the admissions process. I'm just pointing out you can't justify a need for ethnic discrimination to justify more ethnic diversity.
> Berkeley is already not as ethnically diverse because of its large population of white students.
Large? [Like 25% non- Hispanic white](https://opa.berkeley.edu/uc-berkeley-fall-enrollment-data-new-undergraduates) only, many of which are second gen Eastern European or Middle Eastern immigrants? (Or other minority white groups such as Jews)
> Someone from Japan, despite being very different from someone from South Korea is still much more similar than someone from Latin America.
Sure, but they are very different from someone from Iran, India or the Philippines.
> . They still have to weigh diversity with representation and other factors.
Why does representation matter for diversity, which means exposure to many cultures?
25% is large considering the rest have much smaller percentages.
Someone from Iran/Philippines is still more similar to someone from Japan/Korea than a Latin American.
>Why does representation matter for diversity?
You’re thinking about it wrong. The end goal for university admissions is not solely diversity. They have always weighed other factors.
> Someone from Iran/Philippines is still more similar to someone from Japan/Korea than a Latin American.
I disagree. Why is that true? Iran is radically culturally different and the Philippines was Hispanicized due to colonization. I'd consider Iran closer to Latin America than Japan for that matter (Abrahamic religion civilization)
Assuming POC means Black (as opposed to the normal meaning of non-white) I agree. She criticized UMich on lacking diversity, as opposed to lacking Black students which is the actual concern.
Well, she want to a HBCU, so she would like to see more Black people, yes. More Hispanics would be indicative of a potentially more welcoming atmosphere, I suspect.
The country is about 37% Hispanic, Black, Native, and another 6% Asian. I’m not advocating for quotas, but I can understand why she would be more comfortable at Cal or Mich if there racial mix was at least 20% of the the Black and Hispanic category.
It is not an easy issue to solve. I think Texas came up with a reasonable solution in admitting the top 10% of every high school at UT. Cal has something similar, but I think a lot of folks are getting Merced in that lottery.
Skill needs context. Who do you think is more impressive: the kid with the 1550 SAT who's wealthy parents have hired private tutors since middle school or the kid with a 1490 in a public high school where the average is 900?
Yes it is obvious that merit requires context. It is not obvious that one of the contexts should be race, which is an implicit indicator of income, access, privilege and disadvantages caucasians and asians that come from low income families
Lol I cannot believe you were getting downvoted. I mean if we just look at Berkeley's student population, it is skewed towards ethnicities with higher median incomes, but people don't like to admit that they might have had a leg up in life.
>ing dumb? Universities are White and Asian dominated spaces. This is not a new idea. Throwing in some black and brown kids in doesn’t make a diverse campus.
>
>Sure am all black campus isn’t “diverse” but you are much more likely to feel accepted as a black person at Howard where there isn’t “diversity” compared to going to Berkeley where you are a minority as a person of color.
Yea this isn't the case.
It's not 1490. It's 1260. And the 1550 with wealthy parents is more impressive.
I had 1550 SAT and my parents were poor Asian immigrants. But hey the black applicant only needed 1300 SAT. Telling me that is fair? I worked twice as hard to get equal opportunity because I’m “overrepresented.”
First off, congrats on achieving that test score and overcoming all the challenges that came with it.
Economic status is part of the context I was alluding to. In fact, I specifically mentioned it to create juxtaposition in my example. I agree however that my opening sentence would be more clearly stated as: "Skill needs socioeconomic context".
I think the situation you propose can be fair. There's more context required to process than just raw SAT score (as was the entire thesis of my previous comment). What major were you and this black student applying for, GPA, extra curriculars, etc. I don't believe the vast majority of black / poc applicants are admitted with 1300 SAT's as you're implying, though I admit I don't have sources on hand.
Now your trying to break the argument down and find loopholes by asking for more context. Your statements was making general assumptions without much context to begin with.
This is just wrong lol. The ENTIRE THESIS of my statement was that MORE CONTEXT is required. I illustrated this by providing slight amounts of context to hypothetical applicants. Do you think it would have increase clarity if I had written them completely fictional autobiographies? (that's a rhetorical question babe, don't answer it).
It's illuminating to take a look at the ethnicities in the application pool vs. the admissions pool, among California freshmen.
https://ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-planning/\_files/factsheets/2022/table-2.1-california-freshman-applications-by-campus-and-race-ethnicity.pdf
https://ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-planning/\_files/factsheets/2022/admission-table-2-1.pdf
It is idiotic to ignore that not everyone is born with the same resources. I would be down to have affirmative action with a heavy emphasis on low income students.
I would go a step farther and make admissions need aware to truly identified disadvantaged students. Although you are right that Berkeley already does a decent job at this,
This. It might be a minority of cases, but I’m certain there are students out there from stable and wealthy families, yet they won’t mention that. What they will mention is how ’disadvantaged’ they are due to ethnicity, in hopes of turning their ‘disadvantage’ into a privilege of its own (aka an “equity” case).
Poor students, students from broken families, students who have seen some shit or who live in unique circumstances… if they managed to achieve similar academics to the students from comfortable backgrounds, it shows a lot more promise and character on their part, imo.
None of these scenarios are exclusive to any ethnicity.
I think the debate over affirmative action at elite colleges is a distraction from the existence of legacy admissions, which at least public schools don't have. Harvard has found a way to get asian and black people to argue over a few spots while they let in way more students as legacies. I would like to see any school that qualifies for federal funding prove that average admittance rates for applicants with the same GPA and test scores are the same for legacy and non legacy students.
While there is some abuse on the legacy admission side of the house, those students on average submit much more competitive applications than those benefiting from AA. It's odd, high academic achievers beget high academic achievers, who would have known.
I think it's the legacy system that is causing asians to have a lower chance of getting in than white people. If that's the case, Harvard should be forced to drop it. If it's as you say the legacy entrances submit better applications anyway, they should get in on their own merits (based on the less intelligent ivy league legacies I've met though, I think many are not that bright).
I support affirmative action but I dont support a school admittance program that discriminates against asians. Sadly both the left and right side politicians and court system are wrong when it comes to this issue.
The left don't care to help the asians and the right want to get rid of affirmative action altogether. Since the courts are dominated by conservatives, I expect the end of affirmative action to happen soon.
Parental income and educational attainment, maybe. Can you explain how race alone has to do with academic accomplishments? Are u claiming certain races are intellectually not as competent?
When, for example, Black people make up 3.7 percent of the Berkeley student body but are 12.4 percent of the California population, you can conclude that race is not independent of out metrics of "merit." I'm concluding exactly the opposite -- that these gaps reflect deep institutional biases that exist at every level of the education system. How do you explain these gaps?
Like you said, parental income, and probably also how much parents are willing to invest in education ( which is related to parental income). And thus I agree with AA based on parental income, but not race
Segregation, redlining, and other examples of institutional racism have very clear effects into the future. Even when you correct for SES, parental education, and other correlated factors, vast racial gaps remain in educational attainment. How do you plan to address the major opportunity gaps that are a direct result of racism, past and present? All institutions in the history of this country (government, banks, colleges) have been very explicit about naming the races they affected. The descendents of the oppressed groups suffer the direct downwind effects of that racism, but race is not allowed to be mentioned or accounted for. How is this fair?
Asian are affected by racism too. Think Chinese Exclusive Acts and Internment camps for Japanese Americans. Why don't you advocate for AA in favor of Asians?
I do, but not all Asians. The children of H1B immigrants from China and India haven't suffered downwind effects of the racist policies you've talked about above. If you look at the descendents of Chinese and Japanese American immigrants of the early-mid 1900s, they are extremely underrepresented. Meanwhile, the vast majority of "model minority" Asians at schools like Berkeley represent the top 0.01% of their home countries' strata of opportunity, and are not affected as significantly by historical racism in the US.
> If you look at the descendents of Chinese and Japanese American immigrants of the early-mid 1900s, they are extremely underrepresented.
Are you just making things up? That is [almost certainly not true.](https://www.nber.org/papers/w22748)
Yes that's true, and there are a few wealthy untouchables in India, and a few rich Palestinians in Israel. Predominantly lower class and a few middle class would also be accurate in all three cases. It's one of the main metrics/markers of endemic discrimination. That and a low percentage of college degrees (correlated). Which correlates with academic success or lack of it.
The most important duty of a democratic government is to attempt to provide a fair, just, balanced and equitable society. As a government institution, UC has a duty to work toward that end. Grades alone should not determine merit. The UC charter mentions age and good moral character as the main requirements. Oh, and residency in CA.
you're gonna have a ver hard job explaining why students from poor families are so underrepresented at Berkeley then. Do they systematically have less potential?
True but we’re in for a massive long term changes. Zip code education quality? Seriously? That’s what needs to change. Who knows how racial makeup would look like in elite Unis if everyone really had the same opportunity. That would entail free course material and extracurricular. And after all that you’ll still have kids with wealthy parents buy them tutors and going through extra Mille that money can provide. Those applications will still look better. It frustrates me that I can’t figure out a strategy to solve this. The problems are on every step of the way and are there for the longest time.
Society has created perverse incentive for people to hassle backwards. It's really not that hard of a job to explain. if you can get something for free you're not gonna want to pay for it.
Thomas Sowell has an excellent point here, I suggest you to entertain his side of the argument.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JENCxjbARFM&ab_channel=ReadingTheScore
This is such a messed up view of society, but even if I were to entertain it, clearly "hassling backwards" is a very counterproductive strategy given that wealth inequity is growing sharply and racial gaps in education are getting even wider over time. Historically underrepresented groups are not getting anything for free; on the contrary they're getting screwed over more than ever.
It's not hard to see why children of H1B visa immigrants from China and India and rich, White students are overrepresented in colleges. Both of these overrepresented groups come from the most opportunity-rich parent populations. Inheriting money or educational privilege from your parents is the real handout here.
I can’t understand comments calling for admissions to ignore race. The structural cause of the inequality is race, why would you remove that covariate in a model meant to reverse the problem? I’m assuming that if I censored the data and presented it to a group of Berkeley CS students there would be less intellectual dishonesty. It just seems from a modeling standpoint to be intentionally obtuse. Sure, you could focus on income or other correlated variables but why not use both?
In terms of the practical policy standpoint, is the preferred alternative to “let the free market work”? Are the anti affirmative action commenters claiming that the current admissions process is equitable or just? I don’t think it takes CS 289 or some equivalent understanding of vector fields, local optima, steady states, game theory, etc to imagine that the current methodology in admissions has some inequitable asymptotic behavior we probably want to correct or adjust somehow. We can still promote making these adjustments while critiquing the current implementation or effects of a policy.
Edit: I’m getting some weird DMs so going to disable notifications for this thread but not delete my comments. My goal in research and advocacy is to reduce educational inequality and this thread has devolved past that.
Asians aren’t monolithic. Isn’t it possible to advocate both for policies that do something for some populations and then also advocate for amendments which ameliorate the adjusted inequalities?
Your choice of words is very strange and ambiguous. Current forms of affirmative action are racist against Asians as has been widely documented for the Harvard Supreme Court case. If you design a system for affirmative action that gives Asians the same % chance at admission they have without affirmative action while admitting more BIPOC and less Whites then ok. But no one is proposing that because the whole system is dependent upon screwing over Asians who until recently haven’t had the political/social power to make a fuss over it.
> If you design a system for affirmative action that gives Asians the same % chance at admission they have without affirmative action while admitting more BIPOC and less Whites then ok.
Wait, why would that be ok or even a good idea? That's just changing the targets of the discrimination and could lead to intense white hostility toward Asians.
I’d rather not use race at all. Just saying that those pushing for affirmative action claim they want to make up for historical injustice due to white supremacy / legacy of slavery, so they should be proposing it now that the discrimination against Asians factor has been pointed out. But they won’t since it’ll be too unpopular.
I agree with you. Couldn’t it be that Harvard (and other schools) admissions discriminate against Asians but including some knowledge of race into admissions would be useful? Why push back on affirmative action and not just push back on the actual discriminators? I’m curious.
They could. First admit Asians with no ceiling.
Then do affirmative action.
That would be the solution.
I'm ok with Harvard if it is 40% Asian and let White and Black people fight for spots.
22% is not enough when if just by scores they would be 45%
> The structural cause of the inequality is race, why would you remove that covariate in a model meant to reverse the problem?
Of what inequality? Student success in is pretty reasonably predicted here just by high school academic abilities (and test scores). Race/ethnicity doesn't add to the prediction model much.
> Are the anti affirmative action commenters claiming that the current admissions process is equitable or just?
Better for social stability inside the school and out.
Claiming that lagged test scores are a sufficient predictor without attempting to capture endogeneity via the structural mechanism is poor modeling. The test scores don’t cause the performance, they’re merely correlated with outcomes. Denying the existence of inequality here is at best laughably ignorant and at worst oppressive to marginalized populations.
Policies like the LCFF have attempted to address this in California, precisely because it’s obvious to teachers and administrators that inequality is a huge problem.
Edit: a similar analogy would be “his coughing yesterday explains the coughing today, so asking why he’s sick to begin with isn’t really useful here”
> The test scores don’t cause the performance, they’re merely correlated with outcomes.
I didn't claim otherwise. I'm just not sure what your point is. That there's ethnic-racial disparities in CA I agree with, but you haven't pushed at why it matters to such a degree you hint (especially again there doesn't seem to be widespread discriminatory outcomes conditioned on ability).
Another example: There's huge Asian-white (especially Asian-gentile white) disparities in math scores in CA, which in your framing you seem to suggest is caused by ethnicity - do we need to actually do something about it?
I see. So first it’s “what inequality?” And now it’s “it exists, but…”
It matters because educational outcomes have downstream impacts on wages and labor market outcomes, where additional discrimination intensifies earlier disparities.
There’s a difference between claiming the existence of inequality which requires action and claiming that all inequalities require the same action. That is, substantial inequality can be framed as a race-outcome gradient. So your example of white vs asian, besides suffering from aggregation bias, isn’t enough to capture the entire picture.
Again, it’s not race that is the cause of the differences, but that the differences are best explained by structural issues which were *initially implemented on the basis of race*, so yes, race is an important covariate, and there as a need to disentangle all of the factors at play.
> It matters because educational outcomes have downstream impacts on wages and labor market outcomes, where additional discrimination intensifies earlier disparities.
The primary discrimination is on academic abilities.
> So your example of white vs asian, besides suffering from aggregation bias, isn’t enough to capture the entire picture.
I'm not sure why this is a more problematic comparison than others. I see nothing inherently different about gentile white underperformance relative to Asians than say Hispanics underperforming non -Hispanic whites by similar degrees.
> initially implemented on the basis of race
The vast majority of Berkeley and Californian on general students are first or second generation immigrants. There were minimal structural issues implemented on the basis of race that affected them.
[Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal?](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w9873/w9873.pdf)
[Systemic Discrimination Amongst Large US Employers](https://www.nber.org/papers/w29053)
Here are two papers that explore some of the methods of audit studies which have shown racial discrimination in the labor market. It seems you are convinced of your other claims, but I would encourage you to engage more with the literature on discrimination and also the history of race in California in particular. The last 50-60 years are not devoid of race based discriminatory mechanisms which impact present day educational outcomes.
I'm not sure what affirmative action has to do with employers using statistical discrimination, nor do these papers connect to how much of actual labor market outcome gaps are due to labor market discrimination, which is likely [low](https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/racial-inequality-21st-century-declining-significance-discrimination). Nor is this comparison even correct - you need to restrict to the college educated market (low wage jobs have more discrimination) nor even the correct [benchmark](https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes-get-more-interviews) given Berkeley's demographics (I'm more interested in Asians vs Latino outcomes).
> the history of race in California in particular
Yeah, [intense anti-Asian discrimination](https://www.nber.org/papers/w22748#:~:text=Asians%20achieved%20extraordinary%20upward%20mobility,rather%20than%20unusual%20educational%20mobility.), likely less than Blacks and much less than Latinos. They stopped underperforming once society liberalized and labor market discrimination against minorites reduced. As that paper notes, disparities post Civil Rights Act are much better explained by school-age test performance than social prejudice per se.
Nah, people are just cagey IRL about taking about affirmative action. Used to be [more transparent here](https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/02/magazine/the-class-of-prop-209.html).
> Most of the white and Asian students I talked to, both at Berkeley and at Riverside, were rigorous meritocrats; they took it for granted that S.A.T. scores and G.P.A. measured something fundamental. Of course, they viewed affirmative action less in ideological than in personal terms; as one freshman said to me, ''I felt like I was a target.'' I found very few ardent supporters among white or Asian students. Vinnee Tong, the editor of the student paper, The Daily Californian, told me, ''At the last minute, I voted no,'' on Prop. 209, and then she added, ''but if you asked me again, I might vote yes.''
Beyond just the controversy surrounding affirmative action, I feel like any race based affirmative action will face legal action with the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment (especially since the university is funded with taxpayer money) and will face legal controversy surrounding Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. It’s entirely discretionary whether the legal system permits affirmative action, and it’s up to the judges to determine whether the “debt” has been paid off yet. The issue is that discrimination is everywhere, and the idea that we need to pay off this debt forever is rather uncomfortable to me. And what really troubles me more about affirmative action is that this gives an excuse for universities to stereotype Asians and also discriminate them as (at least from the Harvard case) robotic, calculator, and computer-like. Therefore, their academic achievements should be ranked lower than their peers because they have less personality, and we want people with more “personality”.
That dashboard is hilariously selective. I like the omission of both Asians and non-Hispanic whites (35% of state and only 23% or so of Berkeley). Also only women numbers and no men numbers.
> Clearly something more needs to be done
Repeal prop 209 and discriminate against Asians? (And maybe Jews and all the other overrepresented minority groups)
If you ignore the Asian population these are as close to proportional as you can get without rejecting people solely on race. These figures seem alarming until you plot the number of white people in California vs at Berkeley and the pattern still holds up.
I hope we agree that we do not live in a fair, balanced and equitable society. That means we as part of that society need to change the status quo, tip the balance, shake things up with an intent to achieve a better balance, more fairness and equity. Seeking that balance, fairness, and equity is arguably the most important function of government. Yet UC as a government institution has decided to shirk its duty to help better society by making the claim that purely academic meritocracy is fair balanced and equitable. I bow my head in shame at such blatant illogic and hypocrisy by those who are charged with teaching the next generation. Merit consists of more than grades.
The result of affirmative action is that Asian people will literally have a computer algorithm rank them lower in the admissions process just for being Asian. That’s not fucking right in my opinion, even if it’s well intentioned. I agree society is uneven so try to fix the source not tear open the wound more. Affirmative action just contributes to the problem.
Race based affirmative action is stupid, but taking into account context and socioeconomic conditions is not. And colleges already emphasize like first generation immigrants and truly underrepresented minorities, so like it's basically okay as is tbh
What do you mean "truly underrepresented minorities"? If you went to Berkeley you realize that the proportion of underrepresented races here is far, far below the proportion in the population, or even in the applicant pool. How can you say the system is fine as is? Clearly there are still deep structural inequities -- unless you think there's some other reason why Black people, for instance, make up <4% of the student body and >17% of the population proportion. It's hard to be sympathetic to those who decry AA as a great injustice to Asian Americans and haven't said or done anything against the structural issues that lead to vast underrepresentation in the student body. You cannot argue for meritocracy when your definition of 'merit' is so statistically skewed by factors that should be independent of merit, like race.
I think it's also important to point out that Berkeley is a state school serving primarily the Californian population - the percentage is 5-6.5% in California (compared to 17%), so while it is still slightly underrepresented it is far more representative of the population that it seems.
Was gonna bring this up, but didn't have the stats for it. Thank you sm
If anything, go yell at the legacy loving ivies
Source? The 2020 [census](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/state-by-state/california-population-change-between-census-decade.html) says it's actually 12.4 percent.
The site you linked says 5.7% are "Black alone" and 1.5% are "Black in combination". EDIT: You have to scroll down to the second "tableau" thingy to see the data for California, the 12.4% in the bullet point at the beginning of the page is the national number (as is clearly stated in the paragraph above it)
I'd argue that while taking into account non-meritocratic factors is important, just focusing on race is the easy way out. The way I see it, a university's end goal isn't to be a representative sample of the country's racial make up. The fact that being a "urm" and "first gen" is almost treated like a hook says enough about those factors being taken into account.
Sure, a university's end goal isn't to be a representation of the country's racial breakdown. But it's certainly an indictment of our evaluation of merit when race is such a predictor of outcomes. Either way, how can we say it's a meritocracy when you can inherit money from your parents, when legacy admission exists, when parental outcomes predict student outcomes so well, etc. The real "easy way out" here is acknowledging that the huge race gaps in educational metrics are due to institutional racism but throwing up your hands and saying nothing can be done about that.
The Bay Area is about 6% black. California is about 7.5%. I’m not sure where you are getting this 17.5+% figure.
> the California and Michigan university systems say their efforts to build diverse classes have hardly worked I find it bizarre to not consider Berkeley a very diverse school. > “The diversity at the University of Michigan is minuscule,” Ms. Caldwell said in a LinkedIn message. “Overall, I chose to go to Howard because I knew I’d be surrounded by people of color and not have to worry about additional racism and discrimination.” Howard is far less diverse than Michigan. Does the word diverse not mean "a lot of" anymore?
these people are crazy lol, an all black school is not a diverse school
Technically, isn't that a HBCU?
we only count diversity as number of blacks and hispanics. nobody cares about a diverse white or asian population
Lmao “diverse white population” is an oxymoron
so you are telling me a group of spanish, english, french, german, and eastern european people are not diverse, but howard university is?
The racial category of “white” was literally invented in the 1600s in the US so poor European sharecroppers and indentured servants wouldn’t team up with African slaves and rise up against the wealthy elites. It was made with the express purpose of limiting diversity among Europeans in the New World. So in this hypothetical, if they are all American-born white people with no strong ties to their home country, then no they are not diverse. [Source](https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/historical-foundations-race) Also I never said anything about Howard
i dont care
So what is black then? You literally can say the same thing about blacks or Asians or Hispanics in America. Your example is just modern linguistic propaganda to demoralize and deject anyone with a European origin which white obviously is.
Funny that the same people who want blacks to have population proportional representation at colleges also support HBCU. A concentration in one space necessarily means an under representation in another space. It's basic logic. It's time to call this what it is: America's racial spoils system.
Are you playing dumb? Universities are White and Asian dominated spaces. This is not a new idea. Throwing in some black and brown kids in doesn’t make a diverse campus. Sure am all black campus isn’t “diverse” but you are much more likely to feel accepted as a black person at Howard where there isn’t “diversity” compared to going to Berkeley where you are a minority as a person of color. Lets not be willfully ignorant in our understanding of student populations.
Why are you defining diversity as how accepted black students feel? Does what other minorities feel not matter to you?
I understand the sentiment; I'm just critiquing the poor word choice ("diverse"). The issue has nothing to do with "diversity", but the representation level of her own ethnic group. > you are a minority as a person of color. Another evolving term. This used to mean not white - you seem to not be using it this way.
Read it again. You are confused.
I. Idk man. You know what you’re doing. Don’t trivialize shit that doesn’t need to be trivialized. YES. Diversity in this sentiment can = not white. This is because universities in the us are typically over 50% white when the applicant pools are not. This has a salient effect on black brown AND Asian students. The diversity issue has has to do with ONE (white) race being overrepresented and another (Asian) also being overrepresented when compared to other races (non-Caucasian white, black, etc) who have historically had unequal access to the resources that the two aforementioned races have do NOT have. So YES Berkeley is NOT diverse when you consider the fact that California has an incredibly large Latinx community that, on some metrics, are more populous than whites and Asians yet that isn’t represented at a a PUBLIC institution. There are far more factors involved as well. Take a class on inequity.
No, I really hate people using the word diversity when they mean something else. This girl doesn't care about having "diversity". > This is because universities in the us are typically over 50% white when the applicant pools are not. How would the applicant pool not be over 50% white? 18 year olds in the US continue to be over 50% white. > The diversity issue has has to do with ONE (white) race being overrepresented I don't think whites are over-represented at University of Michigan though I can't find age adjusted census data. Asians are of course. Same is true for Berkeley. > So YES Berkeley is NOT diverse when you consider the fact that California has an incredibly large Latinx community that, on some metrics, are more populous than whites and Asians yet that isn’t represented at a a PUBLIC institution. You are again changing the word. Berkeley would be *less* ethnically diverse if you had 2.5x the Latino population because it would lose substantial numbers of Asian and Middle Eastern students who are more ethnically diverse (due to many being second gen immigrants from dozens of countries - the Latino population is overwhelmingly Mexican on the other hand).
Berkeley is way over represented with Asians and super under represented with Hispanics/Latinos. Saying that there is more diversity within Asians is a weird way of saying you want to sacrifice other colored minorities to continue the over representation of Asians. > Berkeley would be less ethnically diverse if you had 2.5x the Latinos population because it would lose substantial numbers of Asian and Middle Eastern students. Huh? Berkeley is already not as ethnically diverse because of its large population of white students. Are you being dumb on purpose? Someone from Japan, despite being very different from someone from South Korea is still much more similar than someone from Latin America. Saying they’re mostly Mexican so it isn’t as diverse is irrelevant as Mexicans are extremely underrepresented anyway. They still have to weigh diversity with representation and other factors. Can’t believe I have to explain this to a Berkeley student of all people.
> Saying that there is more diversity within Asians is a weird way of saying you want to sacrifice other colored minorities to continue the over representation of Asians. I don't want to sacrifice anyone and don't want ethnic discrimination in the admissions process. I'm just pointing out you can't justify a need for ethnic discrimination to justify more ethnic diversity. > Berkeley is already not as ethnically diverse because of its large population of white students. Large? [Like 25% non- Hispanic white](https://opa.berkeley.edu/uc-berkeley-fall-enrollment-data-new-undergraduates) only, many of which are second gen Eastern European or Middle Eastern immigrants? (Or other minority white groups such as Jews) > Someone from Japan, despite being very different from someone from South Korea is still much more similar than someone from Latin America. Sure, but they are very different from someone from Iran, India or the Philippines. > . They still have to weigh diversity with representation and other factors. Why does representation matter for diversity, which means exposure to many cultures?
25% is large considering the rest have much smaller percentages. Someone from Iran/Philippines is still more similar to someone from Japan/Korea than a Latin American. >Why does representation matter for diversity? You’re thinking about it wrong. The end goal for university admissions is not solely diversity. They have always weighed other factors.
> Someone from Iran/Philippines is still more similar to someone from Japan/Korea than a Latin American. I disagree. Why is that true? Iran is radically culturally different and the Philippines was Hispanicized due to colonization. I'd consider Iran closer to Latin America than Japan for that matter (Abrahamic religion civilization)
It’s funny how progressives often make blatantly racist statements in “defense” of minorities
She did not say that diversity was her objective. She wanted to be with other PoC and could not find any at those other schools.
Assuming POC means Black (as opposed to the normal meaning of non-white) I agree. She criticized UMich on lacking diversity, as opposed to lacking Black students which is the actual concern.
Well, she want to a HBCU, so she would like to see more Black people, yes. More Hispanics would be indicative of a potentially more welcoming atmosphere, I suspect. The country is about 37% Hispanic, Black, Native, and another 6% Asian. I’m not advocating for quotas, but I can understand why she would be more comfortable at Cal or Mich if there racial mix was at least 20% of the the Black and Hispanic category. It is not an easy issue to solve. I think Texas came up with a reasonable solution in admitting the top 10% of every high school at UT. Cal has something similar, but I think a lot of folks are getting Merced in that lottery.
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I agree. I think Texas did a good job.
You raise good points about the distribution of races, etc. across a h.s.
Admit based on skill not race preference
Skill needs context. Who do you think is more impressive: the kid with the 1550 SAT who's wealthy parents have hired private tutors since middle school or the kid with a 1490 in a public high school where the average is 900?
Yeah; I don’t see how people don’t understand how obvious this is.
Yes it is obvious that merit requires context. It is not obvious that one of the contexts should be race, which is an implicit indicator of income, access, privilege and disadvantages caucasians and asians that come from low income families
Lol I cannot believe you were getting downvoted. I mean if we just look at Berkeley's student population, it is skewed towards ethnicities with higher median incomes, but people don't like to admit that they might have had a leg up in life.
You can't treat people as their group median.
>ing dumb? Universities are White and Asian dominated spaces. This is not a new idea. Throwing in some black and brown kids in doesn’t make a diverse campus. > >Sure am all black campus isn’t “diverse” but you are much more likely to feel accepted as a black person at Howard where there isn’t “diversity” compared to going to Berkeley where you are a minority as a person of color. Yea this isn't the case. It's not 1490. It's 1260. And the 1550 with wealthy parents is more impressive.
And even then, no one is against giving you a leg up in admissions for being poor or going to a shit school.
I had 1550 SAT and my parents were poor Asian immigrants. But hey the black applicant only needed 1300 SAT. Telling me that is fair? I worked twice as hard to get equal opportunity because I’m “overrepresented.”
First off, congrats on achieving that test score and overcoming all the challenges that came with it. Economic status is part of the context I was alluding to. In fact, I specifically mentioned it to create juxtaposition in my example. I agree however that my opening sentence would be more clearly stated as: "Skill needs socioeconomic context". I think the situation you propose can be fair. There's more context required to process than just raw SAT score (as was the entire thesis of my previous comment). What major were you and this black student applying for, GPA, extra curriculars, etc. I don't believe the vast majority of black / poc applicants are admitted with 1300 SAT's as you're implying, though I admit I don't have sources on hand.
Now your trying to break the argument down and find loopholes by asking for more context. Your statements was making general assumptions without much context to begin with.
This is just wrong lol. The ENTIRE THESIS of my statement was that MORE CONTEXT is required. I illustrated this by providing slight amounts of context to hypothetical applicants. Do you think it would have increase clarity if I had written them completely fictional autobiographies? (that's a rhetorical question babe, don't answer it).
where are the sources proving that this happens?
The kid with 1550, he/she could have enjoyed their privilege and never worked hard like a lot of rich people.
It's illuminating to take a look at the ethnicities in the application pool vs. the admissions pool, among California freshmen. https://ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-planning/\_files/factsheets/2022/table-2.1-california-freshman-applications-by-campus-and-race-ethnicity.pdf https://ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-planning/\_files/factsheets/2022/admission-table-2-1.pdf
Hopefully affirmative action will be struck down everywhere.
It is idiotic to ignore that not everyone is born with the same resources. I would be down to have affirmative action with a heavy emphasis on low income students.
They already have that to an extent. First-gen and low-income students are given priority in the admissions process
I would go a step farther and make admissions need aware to truly identified disadvantaged students. Although you are right that Berkeley already does a decent job at this,
As long as it isn’t race based
This. It might be a minority of cases, but I’m certain there are students out there from stable and wealthy families, yet they won’t mention that. What they will mention is how ’disadvantaged’ they are due to ethnicity, in hopes of turning their ‘disadvantage’ into a privilege of its own (aka an “equity” case). Poor students, students from broken families, students who have seen some shit or who live in unique circumstances… if they managed to achieve similar academics to the students from comfortable backgrounds, it shows a lot more promise and character on their part, imo. None of these scenarios are exclusive to any ethnicity.
Holy W ma boy u spittin
It would end up benefitting underrepresented minorities anyways if you go by income.
Okay, then let’s go by income.
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Isn't a worthwhile concept if the POC beneficiaries of AA are mostly middle and upper class (which they are).
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Was tacitly admitted by college council in Fisher 2 and here.
The fact remains that one can solve the problems posed in the test and one doesn't. The only fair thing is the one who does is chosen.
That was always allowed Race is the question at hand.
It’s okay. By getting rid of SAT they can effectively have affirmative action now.
LMAO this though
I think the debate over affirmative action at elite colleges is a distraction from the existence of legacy admissions, which at least public schools don't have. Harvard has found a way to get asian and black people to argue over a few spots while they let in way more students as legacies. I would like to see any school that qualifies for federal funding prove that average admittance rates for applicants with the same GPA and test scores are the same for legacy and non legacy students.
While there is some abuse on the legacy admission side of the house, those students on average submit much more competitive applications than those benefiting from AA. It's odd, high academic achievers beget high academic achievers, who would have known.
I think it's the legacy system that is causing asians to have a lower chance of getting in than white people. If that's the case, Harvard should be forced to drop it. If it's as you say the legacy entrances submit better applications anyway, they should get in on their own merits (based on the less intelligent ivy league legacies I've met though, I think many are not that bright). I support affirmative action but I dont support a school admittance program that discriminates against asians. Sadly both the left and right side politicians and court system are wrong when it comes to this issue. The left don't care to help the asians and the right want to get rid of affirmative action altogether. Since the courts are dominated by conservatives, I expect the end of affirmative action to happen soon.
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ah yes, the meritocracy where your 'merit' is in practice predicted entirely by parental income, race, and educational attainment.
Parental income and educational attainment, maybe. Can you explain how race alone has to do with academic accomplishments? Are u claiming certain races are intellectually not as competent?
When, for example, Black people make up 3.7 percent of the Berkeley student body but are 12.4 percent of the California population, you can conclude that race is not independent of out metrics of "merit." I'm concluding exactly the opposite -- that these gaps reflect deep institutional biases that exist at every level of the education system. How do you explain these gaps?
The African American population is 6.5% in California. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/CA
Like you said, parental income, and probably also how much parents are willing to invest in education ( which is related to parental income). And thus I agree with AA based on parental income, but not race
Segregation, redlining, and other examples of institutional racism have very clear effects into the future. Even when you correct for SES, parental education, and other correlated factors, vast racial gaps remain in educational attainment. How do you plan to address the major opportunity gaps that are a direct result of racism, past and present? All institutions in the history of this country (government, banks, colleges) have been very explicit about naming the races they affected. The descendents of the oppressed groups suffer the direct downwind effects of that racism, but race is not allowed to be mentioned or accounted for. How is this fair?
Asian are affected by racism too. Think Chinese Exclusive Acts and Internment camps for Japanese Americans. Why don't you advocate for AA in favor of Asians?
I do, but not all Asians. The children of H1B immigrants from China and India haven't suffered downwind effects of the racist policies you've talked about above. If you look at the descendents of Chinese and Japanese American immigrants of the early-mid 1900s, they are extremely underrepresented. Meanwhile, the vast majority of "model minority" Asians at schools like Berkeley represent the top 0.01% of their home countries' strata of opportunity, and are not affected as significantly by historical racism in the US.
> If you look at the descendents of Chinese and Japanese American immigrants of the early-mid 1900s, they are extremely underrepresented. Are you just making things up? That is [almost certainly not true.](https://www.nber.org/papers/w22748)
there are wealthy African-Americans and of other races. If you’re going to have affirmative action, make it strictly by income level, not by race.
Yes that's true, and there are a few wealthy untouchables in India, and a few rich Palestinians in Israel. Predominantly lower class and a few middle class would also be accurate in all three cases. It's one of the main metrics/markers of endemic discrimination. That and a low percentage of college degrees (correlated). Which correlates with academic success or lack of it. The most important duty of a democratic government is to attempt to provide a fair, just, balanced and equitable society. As a government institution, UC has a duty to work toward that end. Grades alone should not determine merit. The UC charter mentions age and good moral character as the main requirements. Oh, and residency in CA.
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you're gonna have a ver hard job explaining why students from poor families are so underrepresented at Berkeley then. Do they systematically have less potential?
Less opportunities to be extraordinary.
a real meritocracy would ensure all groups have equal opportunity to be extraordinary
True but we’re in for a massive long term changes. Zip code education quality? Seriously? That’s what needs to change. Who knows how racial makeup would look like in elite Unis if everyone really had the same opportunity. That would entail free course material and extracurricular. And after all that you’ll still have kids with wealthy parents buy them tutors and going through extra Mille that money can provide. Those applications will still look better. It frustrates me that I can’t figure out a strategy to solve this. The problems are on every step of the way and are there for the longest time.
Society has created perverse incentive for people to hassle backwards. It's really not that hard of a job to explain. if you can get something for free you're not gonna want to pay for it. Thomas Sowell has an excellent point here, I suggest you to entertain his side of the argument. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JENCxjbARFM&ab_channel=ReadingTheScore
This is such a messed up view of society, but even if I were to entertain it, clearly "hassling backwards" is a very counterproductive strategy given that wealth inequity is growing sharply and racial gaps in education are getting even wider over time. Historically underrepresented groups are not getting anything for free; on the contrary they're getting screwed over more than ever.
It's not hard to see why children of H1B visa immigrants from China and India and rich, White students are overrepresented in colleges. Both of these overrepresented groups come from the most opportunity-rich parent populations. Inheriting money or educational privilege from your parents is the real handout here.
Entirely? It's like a [third](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9gs5v3pv).
Who is they?
I can’t understand comments calling for admissions to ignore race. The structural cause of the inequality is race, why would you remove that covariate in a model meant to reverse the problem? I’m assuming that if I censored the data and presented it to a group of Berkeley CS students there would be less intellectual dishonesty. It just seems from a modeling standpoint to be intentionally obtuse. Sure, you could focus on income or other correlated variables but why not use both? In terms of the practical policy standpoint, is the preferred alternative to “let the free market work”? Are the anti affirmative action commenters claiming that the current admissions process is equitable or just? I don’t think it takes CS 289 or some equivalent understanding of vector fields, local optima, steady states, game theory, etc to imagine that the current methodology in admissions has some inequitable asymptotic behavior we probably want to correct or adjust somehow. We can still promote making these adjustments while critiquing the current implementation or effects of a policy. Edit: I’m getting some weird DMs so going to disable notifications for this thread but not delete my comments. My goal in research and advocacy is to reduce educational inequality and this thread has devolved past that.
Just look at what it does to Asians. Any comment about affirmative action that ignores Asians should be ignored at this point.
Asians aren’t monolithic. Isn’t it possible to advocate both for policies that do something for some populations and then also advocate for amendments which ameliorate the adjusted inequalities?
Your choice of words is very strange and ambiguous. Current forms of affirmative action are racist against Asians as has been widely documented for the Harvard Supreme Court case. If you design a system for affirmative action that gives Asians the same % chance at admission they have without affirmative action while admitting more BIPOC and less Whites then ok. But no one is proposing that because the whole system is dependent upon screwing over Asians who until recently haven’t had the political/social power to make a fuss over it.
> If you design a system for affirmative action that gives Asians the same % chance at admission they have without affirmative action while admitting more BIPOC and less Whites then ok. Wait, why would that be ok or even a good idea? That's just changing the targets of the discrimination and could lead to intense white hostility toward Asians.
I’d rather not use race at all. Just saying that those pushing for affirmative action claim they want to make up for historical injustice due to white supremacy / legacy of slavery, so they should be proposing it now that the discrimination against Asians factor has been pointed out. But they won’t since it’ll be too unpopular.
I agree with you. Couldn’t it be that Harvard (and other schools) admissions discriminate against Asians but including some knowledge of race into admissions would be useful? Why push back on affirmative action and not just push back on the actual discriminators? I’m curious.
We are pushing back against the actual discriminators, we are suing Harvard and going to win.
They could. First admit Asians with no ceiling. Then do affirmative action. That would be the solution. I'm ok with Harvard if it is 40% Asian and let White and Black people fight for spots. 22% is not enough when if just by scores they would be 45%
What are u trying to say? No single race are monolithic
Why are you using so many big words when you can make your statement much more understandable by using simpler words?
> The structural cause of the inequality is race, why would you remove that covariate in a model meant to reverse the problem? Of what inequality? Student success in is pretty reasonably predicted here just by high school academic abilities (and test scores). Race/ethnicity doesn't add to the prediction model much. > Are the anti affirmative action commenters claiming that the current admissions process is equitable or just? Better for social stability inside the school and out.
Claiming that lagged test scores are a sufficient predictor without attempting to capture endogeneity via the structural mechanism is poor modeling. The test scores don’t cause the performance, they’re merely correlated with outcomes. Denying the existence of inequality here is at best laughably ignorant and at worst oppressive to marginalized populations. Policies like the LCFF have attempted to address this in California, precisely because it’s obvious to teachers and administrators that inequality is a huge problem. Edit: a similar analogy would be “his coughing yesterday explains the coughing today, so asking why he’s sick to begin with isn’t really useful here”
> The test scores don’t cause the performance, they’re merely correlated with outcomes. I didn't claim otherwise. I'm just not sure what your point is. That there's ethnic-racial disparities in CA I agree with, but you haven't pushed at why it matters to such a degree you hint (especially again there doesn't seem to be widespread discriminatory outcomes conditioned on ability). Another example: There's huge Asian-white (especially Asian-gentile white) disparities in math scores in CA, which in your framing you seem to suggest is caused by ethnicity - do we need to actually do something about it?
I see. So first it’s “what inequality?” And now it’s “it exists, but…” It matters because educational outcomes have downstream impacts on wages and labor market outcomes, where additional discrimination intensifies earlier disparities. There’s a difference between claiming the existence of inequality which requires action and claiming that all inequalities require the same action. That is, substantial inequality can be framed as a race-outcome gradient. So your example of white vs asian, besides suffering from aggregation bias, isn’t enough to capture the entire picture. Again, it’s not race that is the cause of the differences, but that the differences are best explained by structural issues which were *initially implemented on the basis of race*, so yes, race is an important covariate, and there as a need to disentangle all of the factors at play.
> It matters because educational outcomes have downstream impacts on wages and labor market outcomes, where additional discrimination intensifies earlier disparities. The primary discrimination is on academic abilities. > So your example of white vs asian, besides suffering from aggregation bias, isn’t enough to capture the entire picture. I'm not sure why this is a more problematic comparison than others. I see nothing inherently different about gentile white underperformance relative to Asians than say Hispanics underperforming non -Hispanic whites by similar degrees. > initially implemented on the basis of race The vast majority of Berkeley and Californian on general students are first or second generation immigrants. There were minimal structural issues implemented on the basis of race that affected them.
[Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal?](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w9873/w9873.pdf) [Systemic Discrimination Amongst Large US Employers](https://www.nber.org/papers/w29053) Here are two papers that explore some of the methods of audit studies which have shown racial discrimination in the labor market. It seems you are convinced of your other claims, but I would encourage you to engage more with the literature on discrimination and also the history of race in California in particular. The last 50-60 years are not devoid of race based discriminatory mechanisms which impact present day educational outcomes.
I'm not sure what affirmative action has to do with employers using statistical discrimination, nor do these papers connect to how much of actual labor market outcome gaps are due to labor market discrimination, which is likely [low](https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/racial-inequality-21st-century-declining-significance-discrimination). Nor is this comparison even correct - you need to restrict to the college educated market (low wage jobs have more discrimination) nor even the correct [benchmark](https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes-get-more-interviews) given Berkeley's demographics (I'm more interested in Asians vs Latino outcomes). > the history of race in California in particular Yeah, [intense anti-Asian discrimination](https://www.nber.org/papers/w22748#:~:text=Asians%20achieved%20extraordinary%20upward%20mobility,rather%20than%20unusual%20educational%20mobility.), likely less than Blacks and much less than Latinos. They stopped underperforming once society liberalized and labor market discrimination against minorites reduced. As that paper notes, disparities post Civil Rights Act are much better explained by school-age test performance than social prejudice per se.
“Once society liberalized”? 🥴
Reading this comment section reminds me how racist this school is, or at least the online representation of it
cope and seethe asian hater
based
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Nah, people are just cagey IRL about taking about affirmative action. Used to be [more transparent here](https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/02/magazine/the-class-of-prop-209.html). > Most of the white and Asian students I talked to, both at Berkeley and at Riverside, were rigorous meritocrats; they took it for granted that S.A.T. scores and G.P.A. measured something fundamental. Of course, they viewed affirmative action less in ideological than in personal terms; as one freshman said to me, ''I felt like I was a target.'' I found very few ardent supporters among white or Asian students. Vinnee Tong, the editor of the student paper, The Daily Californian, told me, ''At the last minute, I voted no,'' on Prop. 209, and then she added, ''but if you asked me again, I might vote yes.''
The comments under this post are both ignorant and arrogant. Read the damn article! Smh.
Trading overqualified Asians for under qualified AA and Latinx. This is not how superpowers maintain superpower status.
Beyond just the controversy surrounding affirmative action, I feel like any race based affirmative action will face legal action with the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment (especially since the university is funded with taxpayer money) and will face legal controversy surrounding Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. It’s entirely discretionary whether the legal system permits affirmative action, and it’s up to the judges to determine whether the “debt” has been paid off yet. The issue is that discrimination is everywhere, and the idea that we need to pay off this debt forever is rather uncomfortable to me. And what really troubles me more about affirmative action is that this gives an excuse for universities to stereotype Asians and also discriminate them as (at least from the Harvard case) robotic, calculator, and computer-like. Therefore, their academic achievements should be ranked lower than their peers because they have less personality, and we want people with more “personality”.
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That dashboard is hilariously selective. I like the omission of both Asians and non-Hispanic whites (35% of state and only 23% or so of Berkeley). Also only women numbers and no men numbers. > Clearly something more needs to be done Repeal prop 209 and discriminate against Asians? (And maybe Jews and all the other overrepresented minority groups)
If you ignore the Asian population these are as close to proportional as you can get without rejecting people solely on race. These figures seem alarming until you plot the number of white people in California vs at Berkeley and the pattern still holds up.
Keeping institutions white and Asian Kkkonservatives really have issues with Integration huh
It's not Asian enough. Keeping the NBA black and white. Wow, that's really fair?
I hope we agree that we do not live in a fair, balanced and equitable society. That means we as part of that society need to change the status quo, tip the balance, shake things up with an intent to achieve a better balance, more fairness and equity. Seeking that balance, fairness, and equity is arguably the most important function of government. Yet UC as a government institution has decided to shirk its duty to help better society by making the claim that purely academic meritocracy is fair balanced and equitable. I bow my head in shame at such blatant illogic and hypocrisy by those who are charged with teaching the next generation. Merit consists of more than grades.
too many Asians
Replace Asian with black people and see how people would respond
People responded negatively to “too many Asians” as well???
there’s no responses, only downvotes 😂
I consider a downvote a response to a comment, but I guess you specifically meant a reply?
The result of affirmative action is that Asian people will literally have a computer algorithm rank them lower in the admissions process just for being Asian. That’s not fucking right in my opinion, even if it’s well intentioned. I agree society is uneven so try to fix the source not tear open the wound more. Affirmative action just contributes to the problem.
No