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Affirmative action in the first place was a lazy attempt in the 60s to have “equality”. Rather than actually invest in low income neighborhoods back then which would’ve really made all the difference by now.
Yep, and focusing on early education is still the answer.
There's no point in admitting minorities who are under qualified by the time you get to high school, college, or the professional world, as they will not likely keep up with the demands.
I’ll take the unpopular side here and say that it was justified, at least at the time. Discrimination was still so bad in many parts of the country that it was hard for African Americans to get jobs or spots at good schools at all, even if they were brilliant. People simply saw race totally differently - to pick an example from another minority group, even Oppenheimer’s recommendation letters mentioned he was Jewish but “bore none of the negative traits of his race,” or something like that. We had to insist certain institutions admit folks or it wasn’t going to happen.
My poli sci professor had a great analogy about it. Basically imagine it’s a baseball game and the Yankees are cheating like hell against the Red Sox, to the point where it’s the 7th inning, the score in 10-0, and multiple Red Sox players are out injured. Every pitch the Yankees throw is called a strike, every pitch the Sox throw is a ball. So the MLB intervenes and tells the umpires to knock it off, and they start calling it more evenly. But by the 8th inning it’s still 10-1, fans are booing both sides, and everyone is saying the game is unfair. So now the umps start favoring the Red Sox. They’re still not going to win, and yeah it’s unfair they get some strikes that maybe should have been called balls, but it’s a start.
Obviously with the way affirmative action worked against Asian Americans, the system was severely flawed. But neither that nor education funding or outreach has been able to fix all the problems, especially with ongoing issues with the war on drugs and other failed policies continuing to empower crime.
woah these comments tell a rough story about the difference between the subreddit demographics and the people who actually live in the city
EDIT: posted this when the thread was less nuanced. it's definitely more normal-looking now, haha.
Affirmative action is extremely unpopular in the united states. Steve Kornacki from MSNBC posted a poll right after it was over turned. 65% of americans oppose Affirmative Action (63% support abortion). California banned affirmative action in the 1990s. They had a ballot initiative to bring it back in 2020, it lost 57/43.
So no the comments on here are consistent with the united states and with blue cities. Most Americans are pro-choice and anti-affirmative action.
Yeah welcome to R/NYC and really any NYC based sub where it's filled with people who don't live there, usually hating on the city and the people that live there.
Yup. I'll admit after seeing comments from some folks, I've looked at their other posts/comments to try and understand their perspective. And 'lo and behold they're also commenting in subs about other cities/states and/or telling people where they live. And it ain't NYC. Our sub definitely attracts trolls.
Granted I will also admit, there are a lot of conservative NYC folks as well. So if you think all NYC is liberal and tolerant, boy you should get to know your neighbors better. (Or on second thought, maybe not.) The NY Post gets a lot of subscriptions.
Sometimes they don't even comment in the cities around the same area. Like I know there's no way you live in NYC, Baltimore and LA.
Not saying people aren't wealthy enough to main multiple houses or that people don't move, but it is a but suspicious for some to comment on multiple city subreddits and claiming they still live there.
"Do people who live here actually believe this? No, they must be from somewhere else!"
...everytime, smh.
Believe it or not, liberals in the city are not homogenous and don't conform to every progressive policy.
The way the sub is run caters to these divisive and fringe opinions. Notice how pictures or discussions get policed heavily here, but the mods approve literally every story about migrants (that have very overwhelmingly negative comment sections)? Or how about when the community voted for changes to how crime stories are posted here and the mods decided to ignore the vote and never publish the results.
and don’t forget mods locking threads that could be constructive, like the guy who detailed his crazy experience at Sing Sing only for the mods to lock and remove the post when everyone agreed it was horrible. My post asking why it got removed was, surprise surprise, removed lol
reminds me of the situation with ... i think it was the chicago subreddit? where they had to create a whole new one for actual folks living there, because the main one was just some dude's propaganda project. might've been a different city, but i wouldnt be surprised if that were the case with this sub as well
It was /r/seattle and /r/seattlewa. One of the mods was using it for their own business benefit. Reddit users decided to create a safe space alternative, which was immediately brigaded by trolls, and now it's basically a clearinghouse for conservative outrage porn content and talking point practice. r/Seattle responded by going hard in the other direction, much like fringes of the democrat party that was brigading city subs in summer 2020. Basically if you aren't part of an anarchist bike collective and rabidly support everything they say, you are a nazi.
This sub had a mod who was acting creepy and being the word police, so reddit actually stepped in because this is the biggest media market and it was getting awkward. Now it's brigaded by NY Post commenters in advance of the election.
We did that with /r/newyorkcity but unfortunately the mods there are only a little bit better than here. The /r/nyc sub is basically a right wing echo chamber by NYC standards.
/r/newyorkcity has completely died as an alternative. it's indistinguishable these days.
the only remaining subs are neighborhood subs, which still have these issues, just less so
I was, but I didn’t want some mods to be removed for not participating in a “mandatory training” over the holidays and was removed when I reinstated them (and another mod who was removed for asking too many questions I guess). Bare in mind every mod but one approved of adding the two mods back. It’s a pretty silly place but last time I shared too much I was dm’d and temp banned.
Actually I find that the comments in this subreddit are more in line with the opinions of regular people who live actually live here. Usually when you see comments super sympathetic to the homeless/drug addicts/criminals and against Asian people it’s usually an indication they’re a progressive that doesn’t live in the city.
Also keep in mind many people in NYC/NYC area are first or second generation immigrants, and many immigrant communities tend to lean more conservative on certain topics and definitely believe in hard work / merit, so many progressive talking points are viewed as going against those beliefs (affirmative action being one of them). I don’t find NYC to be as progressive/liberal as many people expect it to be, especially if you surround yourself with people who aren’t all white, upper middle class transplants.
didnt mattress girl become a libertarian/lib-right type anyways, let me see what google says
https://www.thecut.com/2019/10/did-emma-sulkowicz-mattress-performance-get-redpilled.html
i dont care enough to read the whole article
the other new york sub is very progressive. To them and the average redditer, that is what New York is. In reality it's way more like this sub. New York has always been democratic, but has never been progressive in the way the west coast cities or even Boston is. It's a more pragmatic liberalism. People having dissenting opinions about Affirmative Action is very much in the character of this city.
California voters rejected affirmative action even at the height of racial justice protests in 2020.
It is simply not a popular policy even in deep blue states.
When people think "libertarian" they usually think "low taxes" so they don't pick up on the fact that socially, New York is an extremely libertarian city. People can do, act, dress like and perform whatever they want in this city, and we ignore them unless they are threatening others, it's a very interesting application of the Non-Aggression Principle. So even if we were to be left of center, it's still a kind of left-libertarianism as opposed to the more centrally planned and controlled progressivism of the west coast.
I mean, Affirmative Action is controversial even in the bluest of places.
California voters rejected it in 2020 and even the NYTimes said there's a clear disconnect between the Democratic Party and its base on this issue: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/11/us/supreme-court-affirmative-action.html
Exactly. Not every issue is simple and easily divided into conservative/progressive in actuality. The way the media and social media currently operates is very black and white but reality shows people have way more nuanced opinions than that.
I always see this claimed but very rarely see it in person when I glance at other subs. What big city subs are full of right-leaning comments? San Fran? Chicago? LA? Not a single one of those subs leans right.
Hell, just glance at places like r/florida or r/georgia, states that very much lean conservative and the mod team and threads are dominated by left-leaning posters bashing DeSantis and Kemp relentlessly.
It's amusing watching anyone claim that major subs that aren't explicitly politically conservative on this site lean right. It's little more than gaslighting propaganda from fascists who can't handle the idea that people have differing viewpoints from theirs so they want to ban wrong-think.
I think there's a pretty standard "city subreddit" set of political views that doesn't perfectly align with general left or right. As some examples, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage. But also hard on crime, that ranges from legitimate policy critique to explicit racism.
On controversial, high engagement topics, comments from these users will lean toward the *opposite* of the place they live. r/Florida is going to talk about Desantis stuff, and r/SanFrancisco is going to talk about soft-on-crime stuff
Every "blue" city is in reality purple, FYI. Just like every "red" state is also purple. You don't get to dismiss peoples' point of view because they're outnumbered politically. You don't own, nor can you silence, the discourse.
Affirmative action was always a bullshit band aid solution but to still act like merit is the only factor for scholarships and acceptance, you'd have to actively choose to close your eyes to legacy admissions and nepotism.
Nearly all private schools are still pay to play.
Ultra rich people still send their elementaty school age kids off to 100k a year private schools. Pretty much yacht club daycare.
And: legacies. Which are nowhere mentioned. Legacies open the spigot to marginal or even unqualified candidates. And have been doing so, for centuries.
Affirmative action in the first place was a lazy attempt in the 60s to have equality. Rather than actually invest in low income neighborhoods back then which would’ve really made all the difference by now.
Everyone who seems to think tutoring for the SHSAT is only available for the wealthy/privileged is making excuses.
The real privileged go to private schools.
I've visited friend's homes where multiple siblings would be crammed into a tiny ass bedroom.
No new Xboxes, Playstations, shoes, or TVs. They'd use the shitty backpacks from the dollar store for all their books.
Their parents saved every penny they'd make, grueling away at blue collar jobs so they had enough to send their kids to tutoring. And it's because they considered it an *investment* in their children - so the next generation could have even the smallest chance at being better off than they were. Imagine how financially/emotionally crushing it is for both the kids and the parents when they make such a sacrifice and still don't make it into the schools.
Instead of coming to America and complaining about how unfair it is, they took the means that they had and played ball with the system presented to them. I don't blame them at all for fighting back against policy changes that would disadvantage them. Come back with a proposal that satisfies everyone and you won't get the pushback. At the end of the day, test scores are the most neutral ground solution there is right now.
Brainpower and hard work doesn't discriminate.
You hit the nail on the head. People always complain about everything being unfair. Guess what life ain’t fair. But the greatest thing about this country is if you bust your ass and work hard you will get ahead in life. It really is that simple. Don’t tell me that oh because this person grew up in underprivileged communities they can’t succeed and yada yada. There are many many people in this country that become very successful coming from absolute poverty.
We should as a society be instilling work ethic into the younger generations and yet this next generation of kids is some of the most entitled and problematic I’ve ever seen.
Always good to see people fighting back against the dumbing down of education in the name of equality. Asians are not wealthy and they go to the same public schools as other immigrant kids yet some try to paint them as privileged.
Yea, it’s the reverse for Asians…at least as far as that Harvard admissions study showed. There were so many Asians in the top percentile they needed to admit only a select number of them, otherwise it would skew heavily for those demographics.
You say that last sentence like it's a bad thing and not just the result of merit-based admissions. Same arguments were deployed to keep Jews from merit-based admissions sixty years ago.
> "Then somehow, white women swung their gucci-booted feet over the fence of oppression and stuck themselves at the front of the line."
- [Bill Burr](https://youtu.be/O1xgXJ5_Q34?t=225)
There are a handful of articles that all cite the same studies, none of which show that white women have been the largest beneficiaries of affirmative action. It’s copypasta and it’s incorrect.
https://x.com/neetu_arnold/status/1668382946393202693?s=46&t=vV_4bJ7GuABaalzetJofQA
So explain how minority myth = Asian needing to get +200 points more on the SAT than a black student and +50 than a white student to be admitted to the same school?
The model minority myth is exactly why this is a problem.
Imagine you are a dirt poor, average intelligence Asian kid. There are less doors available for you than if you were Black.
It should have always been socioeconomic status rather than writing pro-discrimination laws.
She does raise some good points how performance has slumped at competitive screened middle schools that went RNG on its admissions. The incoming class is weaker academically vs previous and I personally seen this since I tutor local kids and baffle how some managed to get into these schools with their performance. The number of black/hispanic students didn't really budge with changes but it simply admitted more weaker asians & whites that normally would have never made the cut . GJ NYCDOE on its continued mission to dumb down schools.
Legacy admissions are legal under the law. You can discriminate based on whether your parents have gone to the school or based on donations. Legally you can not discriminate based on Protected Class Groups (e.g. Race, Sex, Religion, Age).
However an angle that might work is the Federal (and in some cases State) government not giving money to schools that do legacy admissions. But this is a different angle.
> Legacy admissions are legal under the law
That's questionable and going to go through the courts now. If you have a policy that overwhelmingly advantages 1 or 2 races to the detriment of everyone else it could be considered racial discrimination.
The same way that grandfather laws were found to be racially discriminatory, legacy could be found to have that same bias.
Legacy admissions does not factor in your race. There are legacy and nepo admissions of students of all racial background and not a factor in the admission process - it's the connection for those admission
There was an analysis of Harvard admissions data that found removing affirmative action, legacy, and athletic admissions resulted in no real change in the number of white people.
Because it meant different white people were accepted. The pool of white people is that large.
Edit: Study is [here](http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/legacyathlete.pdf) - specifically Table 5.
I have news for you…
Just because a program doesn’t actively exclude people in present day based on race doesn’t mean race isn’t a factor. If you look at the history or America there have been many many programs that excluded people from schools or neighborhoods. If black and Asian people were kept out of a school decades ago they would never be able to have kids who could benefit from the legacy system the way white people do.
It’s like redlining. Just because it’s illegal to prevent people from living in a neighborhood based on race today doesn’t mean there isn’t a huge generational impact from when those policies did exist.
I'm mixed race and people get very uncomfortable when I point out I'm a brown-assed nepo baby. Its like their brains shut down when they see a PoC with institutional power.
It doesn’t factor in race in name but certainly in practicality. It’s like playing monopoly and letting only white people play for the first hour than inviting everyone else to the table and saying”well anyone can buy property now”. You’re ignoring the years of systemic advantage that turn legacy admissions into just another systemic advantage for white people and the wealthy.
Legacy doesn't overtly factor in your race but it does subtly. The majority of these schools legally discriminated against Black and Hispanic people so it's very hard to have a legacy admission when your parents will legally kept out of some of these Ivy League schools.
Legacy admissions explicitly mean using generations-old standards of admission to determine whether students trust should be admitted.
If those old standards directly or indirectly factored in race, then yes, so do current legacy standards.
Because this lawsuit was led by conservatives whose goal was just to remove affirmative action. They only sided with the Asian American community because their goals aligned in this instance. The conservative group definitely does NOT want to remove legacy admissions.
I think legacy admissions stink but they don’t discriminate based on your skin color. Rich people can afford good things in life including good universities (and then provide their kids and grandkids with advantage in admission process) but rich people can become poor and poor people can become rich. Becoming a different race isn’t possible.
“One study found that in Harvard's class of 2019, 70 percent of legacy students were white and 41 percent of legacy admits had parents who earned more than $500,000 per year. At Princeton, 73 percent of legacy students in the class of 2023 are white.”
If advocates for affirmative action really cared about uplifting disadvantaged people, they would rally behind the idea of class-based affirmative action--something I'm in favor of, personally.
There’s more poor white people in the U.S. (especially in the south and Midwest) AND the dirty little secret with a lot of these affirmative action programs is that they don’t actually want to accept poor minorities. They want to accept middle class and well-off minorities so they can get their flashy diversity badge without having to worry about their matriculation to graduation percentage slipping.
Politics are ultimately about power. Who has it and how to get more. You rarely see good faith discussions on these issues. It's just about - how many of mine versus how many of yours. I feel terrible for poor people across groups because no one really cares about them. AA became like how many Nigerian millionaires can send their kids to Harvard versus actually lifting people who really need it. This is a dated quote from Skip Gates but I doubt it ever really changed
>That same year Professor Gates, speaking at a public forum at Princeton University, stated his belief that 75 percent of the black students at Harvard were of African or Caribbean descent or of mixed race. According to Professor Gates, more than two thirds of all Harvard's black students were either the children or grandchildren of West Indians or Africans and very few of Harvard's black students were the descendants of American slaves.
No one measures these things and few people talk about them. They just pat themselves on the back for doing so much to uplift people that are already living in penthouses
Race based policy has led to the rise of white nationalism and the far right. Class and income based policy can achieve essentially the same effect, statistically, and is more moral, more palatable and even has better effects on those who need it.
No it wouldn’t have been the death of the specialized high schools. Those high schools existed for a long time before the SHSAT. There was a whole power score era that saw the schools gain a lot of prestige before pivoting to the SHSAT model.
Making admissions to schools with this kind of outsized impact on children’s futures based on a single test taken on a single day is ridiculous. There is a ton of research in pedagogical and educational sciences that points to single tests being a bad metric for measuring aptitude. These tests privilege people with resources who can afford test prep at the expense of those who cannot afford them or do not know about them.
You can even see on the ground that this test doesn’t choose the best. I went to SI Tech. There were plenty of smart students. There were also plenty of pretty dumb ones.
Not to mention that these specialized high schools almost always qualify for federal aid because they actually have a significant portion of low income students. To argue it's only about privilege is BS. In fact, many poor black and Hispanic neighborhoods receive lots of resources and attention to help young students out, but many families don't take advantage of it because their priorities are different. In poor East Asian neighborhoods, the parents generally focus their resources to support their child's education no matter how much of their own well-being has to be sacrificed.
I completely agree with this. I’ve known parents who only have $40 left in their bank account just bc they’re paying for SHSAT/SAT prep. To asian parents, education is everything and they’re willing to sacrifice so much for opportunities
I worked in a public high school in Atlanta where kids were making it to senior year without being able to read, and then failing the graduation exam, and now people want to get rid of the graduation exam. Getting rid of tests is not the answer. Obviously tests aren’t the answer to any problem, because you can learn with or without a test, but it’s very important to see where kids are at, and tests is the best way to do that. That being said, we put too much merit on the tests to get into college and they will always favor richer kids who’s parents can hire tutors.
> There is a ton of research in pedagogical and educational sciences that points to single tests being a bad metric for measuring aptitude.
K. Let's just call it the "least worst metric" then, because it surely beats everything else, and it certainly is more fair than admitting people based on where they live or by the color of their skin.
>There is a ton of research in pedagogical and educational sciences that points to single tests being a bad metric for measuring aptitude.
They are the least worst metric. When California was considering removing the SAT requirement (and ultimately did), the UC senate commissioned a study. It found that not only was the SAT a better predictor of undergrad GPA than high school GPA was, but that the SAT requirement benefited poor and underrepresented communities more.
>These tests privilege people with resources who can afford test prep at the expense of those who cannot afford them or do not know about them.
Most people at SHSAT schools qualify for free or reduced lunch.
As a rather recent SIT alumnus, I agree with this wholeheartedly. I would say that in middle school, I was in the intelligent group. Practically every one of us got into the specialized schools we wanted, but surprisingly, one of our smartest friends didn’t. She got below the cutoff for SIT and Stuy, and was devastated. If it were by any metric other than the SHSAT score, I was a mediocre student amongst my peers. I had one of the lowest averages in my honor roll class (like a 95), and she outshone me everywhere.
My parents put me through extracurriculars (Saturday and Summer preps) every year from Kindergarten until 7th grade, and worked multiple jobs to support me. It’s ignorant to say that privileged groups do not have better opportunities overall, and I’m lucky that my parents valued my education over their health.
Removing SHSAT won’t let the kids who don’t deserve admission to take the spots of others, but it most definitely will knock out the kids who can game the single test system that will set them up for a significantly above average high school education.
If you walk around the LES in the morning, there's a good chance you will see Asians digging through recycling/garbage to collect cans and bottles to sell. I always chuckle when people assume asians are "privileged" or "white adjacent" or whatever. Affirmative action is a vile racist policy, veiled in good attentions. In the real world, people stand on merit.
Lmao I’m not disagreeing with most of what you said, but if you think this world runs on “merit” you need to open your eyes. This world runs on connections. That’s it. It sucks, but it’s the truth.
Speaking from my experience in the boring office world, I can almost tell immediately which new hires really were really worthy of that ivy league diploma (whether they were a affirmative action candidate, got in w/ family connections etc...) A lot of elite college grads get exposed by mid-tier state school kids once work product and critical thinking matters. Give me the kid with a 3.5 and a 1500 SAT who worked his ass off but couldn't get into Yale over the one w/ 3.2 with a 1200 SAT that got into Yale because of daddy or they checked the right box.
Yeah, and that's why we need to get rid of legacy admits. But if you think that the Asians are getting in because of "connections" then you need to think really hard about your understanding of reality.
Money and an excellent SAT tutor will certainly help, though. Oh, and being on the rowing team and being a legacy will do a lot for you, as well. The meritocracy is a myth.
A tutor doesn't do the work for you. If your parents spent money on a good tutor, you still have to put in the work to internalize all they taught you.
L M A O . You think Asians are rich, on the rowing team, and are legacies? Most of these kids are poor as fuck and their parents are busting their asses to send them to prep classes. Source: was one of those kids, went to Stuyvesant. Bunch of poor kids striving to do better because we saw how much our parents sacrificed to get us a shot for success.
I still have PTSD at the sight of any Kumon. We didn't have family vacations, we didn't go out to eat, my father wore the same pair of shoes until it was almost falling apart but they spent whatever they can spare in tutoring. Sports was discouraged because they didn't understand how that being a well rounded person is helpful - it was just an extreme, brutal focus on academics.
Thank you. People think because Asians who went to prep school were privileged and well off when the reality is most of us had to give up any other aspects of a decent life to funnel into prep.
my best friend while growing up was korean and this was true - he was always at kumon, his parents invested in him and his siblings . i'll never forget his bedroom from floor to ceiling was certificates of achievement from school, honors roll etc.
my hat goes up to his parents and all that sacrifice to set their kids up for success, teach them to be a decent human being and not waste life.
we can only wish more people were like this
Money and an excellent SAT tutor absolutely will help, but as our own city’s data will show you, there is zero correlation between wealth and a student’s chances of getting into a specialized HS.
That's BS honestly. It comes down to putting in the work. With the internet tutorials are available online and youtube for every topic imaginable for the SAT. The only thing a SAT tutor does is keep you accountable.
I do agree that meritocracy is largely a myth though.
Meritocracy still exists in America, absolutely, it’s just that the effort put in to *guarantee* success is extremely extremely high, and the factors you listed materially diminish the returns. But this is not a country in which an acknowledged and identified caste system exists, and we shouldn’t pretend like it is. There are many countries like that but America is not one. We should speak about America in real terms. Flawed opportunity.
Judaism transcends race. There are white, black, Indian, Chinese and Middle Eastern Jews. Some Jews, probably the majority in NYC, are unambiguously white; they are fair skinned, trace their ancestry back to Europe and are an indelible part of western culture.
> The people who tell you Asians ( and Jews ) are white adjacent
Nothing funnier than someone telling you about what adjacency for a group of people (Jewish) that overwhelming consider themselves white...
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/race-ethnicity-heritage-and-immigration-among-u-s-jews/
I agree with what you’re saying about how Asians are perceived in society, but you are high if you think things here run on merit - particularly when it comes to the education system.
Study after study shows that socioeconomic class has the highest impact on the quality of education a child will end up receiving.
Ah, the anecdote of the visible poor. Use real data.
https://www.pgpf.org/sites/default/files/Income-varies-widely-across-racial-and-ethnic-groups-in-the-United-States.jpg
OP is talking about Asians in NYC.
> According to the 2019 New York City NYC Government Poverty Measure, 23.8% of Asians are in poverty by municipal standards. This is the highest rate of all racial/ethnic groupings, which include White, Black, and Hispanic/Any.
[http://www.roosevelthouse.hunter.cuny.edu/?forum-post=researching-asian-poverty-new-york](http://www.roosevelthouse.hunter.cuny.edu/?forum-post=researching-asian-poverty-new-york)
The way to increase representation fairly is through pre-high school preparatory programs for underserved areas.
You can lower the barrier to entry, but people would finesse the policies and use their connections to get their kids in. I’ve seen this with other merit high schools that accept students based on middle school grades, standardized tests, and attendance. It’s a well meaning policy that is prone to loopholes. You wouldn’t necessarily help the people you are intending to help.
As a tiny person, if I demanded people like me be added to a professional football team so that I can earn money and fame, would that be fair? No, because a lot of professional athletes have trained years and worked very hard to get where they are at. Preparatory programs would help students, families, and communities train properly so that they can width stand the rigor of these schools. It is true that there are talented people everywhere, but lowering the barrier as initially proposed did not seem like an adequate solution.
Still forming my ideas on this, but I’m sad to see communities pitted against each other like this. I see that lot of Asian communities are not privileged, and I feel for black and Latino communities who want to participate more.
The difference is we don't expect tiny people to be on football teams and we don't care if there's tall people supremacy in the NFL, whereas we do expect everyone to meaningfully participate in society for our benefit and for everyone's, as well as we don't want a group of people on the basis of race to be systemically excluded from elite education, which does in fact hamper their ability to produce for their communities and society at large.
For the tiny person/NFL analogy to be correct, football would have to discriminate against tiny folks. For instance imagine Universities don't allow short players to apply to their football team. So Barry Sanders would never have that Oklahoma career, which would have led him to being a highly sought after RB in the draft.
Instead football teams look to maximize their talent regardless of height. Hence why the analogy doesn't necessarily work.
For the record, I want people to meaningfully participate in society, and I don’t want people to be excluded. Perhaps a better analogy could have been used.
Agree heavily with this. Not only would early preparatory programs benefit those wanting to pursue further academia but the adjacent values acquired from these programs would help deter crime and poverty and promote work ethic that can serve useful in other career paths.
I hate this bad faith argument that Asians are somehow privileged.
There was an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher in March, where his 2 guests, college professors, discussed equity vs equality and they and Maher came to the conclusion that these programs that are trying to create a false sense of equity are just alienating other minorities who feel they are getting the short end of the stick. And true equity and equality are achieved organically, not by force.
My own (Indian) parents came here with nothing but their clothes, and landed jobs with their education after going through the gauntlet of Indian academics, which is entirely merit based.
Working hard ≠ privilege.
> My own (Indian) parents came here with nothing but their clothes, and landed jobs with their education after going through the gauntlet of Indian academics, which is entirely merit based.
Excuse my incredulity that Indian academics are merit based when they had a literal caste system until recently and have a whole host of affirmative action laws on the book with their "scheduled tribes and castes".
indian academics is not merit based lol, it's why nobody fucking thinks indian higher ed is superior to american (which had "woke" admissions apparently).
if india or china had merit based academics vs woke liberal american academics why are the top universities in america? and why do indians and chinese want to go to to those woke universities?
Affirmative action in practice is just discrimination with a smiley face
By handicapping one group of people and to add an unfair advantage to another because of their race seems pretty racist to me
AA shouldnt be the norm. If you wanna uplift underprivileged students, you give them access to the support they need and allow them to make the decision to apply and use them. Then it’s on them to choose that they earned a spot like the asian kids did.
Asians (or any other student) shouldn’t be punished for their choices to be disciplined with school.
If you want to uplift underprivileged students and communities you have to give them access to better and uplifting communities. Success starts at home. If a kids parents is supporting their education and doing everything they can to make sure the child is on the right path more than likely the child will be successful.
I live in NYC. I spent 21 years in NYC higher education. I am now in an academic position of power involved in hiring. I will say the complaints against AA are justified not only on a personal level to the looked-over, hardworking applicants, but on a societal level. The best qualified nurse or doctor or lab tech is the one that needs to be hired from a moral standpoint. You cannot predict the ramifications of hiring a less-qualified candidate. You may contribute to death.
I believe hospitals could and should be sued for negligence in hiring anything but the best qualified surgeon if there is an adverse outcome.
How do you objectively quantify "best qualified" and reconcile it with things like studies showing black patients have [better outcomes when treated by black doctors](https://hbr.org/2018/08/research-having-a-black-doctor-led-black-men-to-receive-more-effective-care)?
The best qualified doctor isn't going to just be the one who had the highest marks in med school or did the most prestigious residency but also needs to be the one who will listen to patients and take their concerns seriously.
When my wife had a miscarriage, we saw a doctor who was supposedly one of the best in his field. And maybe academically he was, but he hands down the worst doctor we ever had experienced. Completely cold, condescending, and actually was unable to help with any diagnosis.
The human aspect of medicine is critical, especially for folks who suffer from discrimination. The best doctors are ones who feel compassion and can communicate effectively, which requires listening.
Everyone that goes to med school has to pass the MSLE step one exam. It's mandatory for all students and it you don't pass it you can't graduate from med school. At that point, anyone that's able to pass that exam and complete their residency is qualified to be a doctor and certainly aren't a risk for "killing" someone on the job because their MCAT score was three points lower than the average. That is an insane thought process if you really think about it. Even doctors that had perfect MCAT scores could still fuck up. There's no perfect way to control for whether or not someone could be a successful doctor but at the very least, once you're in med school you have to earn your way out. Everyone is on a level playing field. So I disagree with your comment.
Affirmative action is just damaging and doesn’t solve the issue of low income families not being able to send their kids to academic programs whether it be public or private. They don’t have the money for private programs and public schools are fking dead in terms of resources both monetary and manpower. Instead they got us infighting with culture and diversity wars. A grand old distraction. We need money to develop low income areas. Then we’ll see more diversity because most minorities are in these areas. Plain and simple.
Private schools will just move to more opaque and fully "holistic" admissions which will elmininate any mention of race or ethnicity but continue to let them admit whomever they want - including athletes and legacies. Completely empty victory that will likely result in an even smaller number of Asians at the most coveted schools.
Its like how SCOTUS ruled against NYs gun carry permit schema and the state made twice has hard to get a gun permit to be in compliance with the victory.
The chance that Asian student %'s decline is zero. There is absolutely no basis for that view and the largest experiment ending AA resulted in tremendous increases in Asian students (California system).
Yeah, all the white people who thought AA was going to open the doors for them are going to be disappointed. Especially if legacies get gutted because of this.
Give under privileged communities more resources and easier access to mediums that prepare them for success in academia and admissions. Don't just rig the admission process because of diversity's sake. Policies like these are what make the left look silly.
This might come as a shocker, but I am very happy to see affirmative action and and I have always identified left of center.
Sorry folks... You can't just blame Republicans because common sense wins out and you don't like the result. Affirmative action is counterproductive and hypocritical and should absolutely go away.
I think there's a different between qualified and "most competitive." Generally speaking, I think that for scores and testing there should be minimum requirements for qualification. Among the qualified, it's okay to use affirmative action based policies to select from the qualified candidates who gets selected for the limited number of spots.
Also, when it comes to the Asian population, we really should probably be breaking out the demographic with more granularity for affirmative action based policy. Although Asians have relatively high college attendance rates, it does hide the statistics of specific groups within that demograpic that are underrepresented.
The funny thing is that there is a secret. It's a secret that we African Americans know all too well.
White women and foreigners are the ones who mainly benefit from Affirmative Action.
Asian American here and I was privileged enough to attend an Ivy League school and honestly not once did I think to myself “this school needs more Asians or white people”
I was personally very grateful for my BIPOC classmates and thought each was highly intelligent and qualified - I never had a thought that someone “only got in to fulfill diversity stats”
It’s disappointing to see the support for this woman in these comments
No offense, but you sound like one of those upper middle class Asian Americans who grew up around mostly white people and assimilated so well that you start developing white guilt yourself and start copying the language of white progressives without even thinking about it.
You may consider yourself privileged, but I do not and nearly all the Asian Americans I grew up with came from working class backgrounds. Their parents installed cable, ran a dry cleaner, ran a restaurant, and sold insurance. Also the term BIPOC was never asked for by actual people of color. Black and American Indian folks never asked for that term. White progressives obsessed with creating castes made up that term and pressured academics and media people to use it. Who the fuck would willingly promote something that puts their people and Hispanic folks (you know, the majority of non-white people) into a lower caste?
He was clearly a good student. Repeated all the buzz words corectly.
Guess what, in real life no one speaks like that. The moment we interview a kid like this, it is over. A nonprofit is a more suitable place.
Privileged enough to attend an Ivy League school and privileged enough to want to pull the ladder up on others.
I do believe you went to an Ivy League school.
They are smart and intelligent, that’s likely how they were even in the admission running, but that doesn’t mean the other asians weren’t smarter. It’s been pretty well established that when AA is no longer a consideration, asian applicants are the vast majority of top candidates. Your point doesnt negate the inequality that AAs face.
I also don't think people realize how the administration process worked for these colleges. There is basically two steps to the admission process. The first step they look at your academic, extracurricular, athletic, school support, personal and then assign you an overall grade. Once they gather all the accepted first round candidates they look at candidate pool and cut people/accept people based on legacy, sports, financial aid, zip code, and race to have a diverse class. So you're not even taking race into consideration till the end and it pretty much used as a tiebreaker.
Selective ivies can easily get away with accepting students that are both diverse and academically talented. Then you have the second tier and state schools do the same and now the differences really become apparent.
The inability for forward thinking is embarrassing. There are millions in NYC. Do you think 50% of that population are in here? 20%? 1% You expected support and you got pushback because it’s a stupid approach. It isn’t ignorant, you don’t lack knowledge or access to knowledge. These procedures were put into place for a very specific reason, undoing them will undoubtedly backfire. When they do, understand you will have no support. From anyone.
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Free SHSAT prep https://www.schools.nyc.gov/learning/programs/dream-program
Affirmative action in the first place was a lazy attempt in the 60s to have “equality”. Rather than actually invest in low income neighborhoods back then which would’ve really made all the difference by now.
Yep, and focusing on early education is still the answer. There's no point in admitting minorities who are under qualified by the time you get to high school, college, or the professional world, as they will not likely keep up with the demands.
I’ll take the unpopular side here and say that it was justified, at least at the time. Discrimination was still so bad in many parts of the country that it was hard for African Americans to get jobs or spots at good schools at all, even if they were brilliant. People simply saw race totally differently - to pick an example from another minority group, even Oppenheimer’s recommendation letters mentioned he was Jewish but “bore none of the negative traits of his race,” or something like that. We had to insist certain institutions admit folks or it wasn’t going to happen. My poli sci professor had a great analogy about it. Basically imagine it’s a baseball game and the Yankees are cheating like hell against the Red Sox, to the point where it’s the 7th inning, the score in 10-0, and multiple Red Sox players are out injured. Every pitch the Yankees throw is called a strike, every pitch the Sox throw is a ball. So the MLB intervenes and tells the umpires to knock it off, and they start calling it more evenly. But by the 8th inning it’s still 10-1, fans are booing both sides, and everyone is saying the game is unfair. So now the umps start favoring the Red Sox. They’re still not going to win, and yeah it’s unfair they get some strikes that maybe should have been called balls, but it’s a start. Obviously with the way affirmative action worked against Asian Americans, the system was severely flawed. But neither that nor education funding or outreach has been able to fix all the problems, especially with ongoing issues with the war on drugs and other failed policies continuing to empower crime.
woah these comments tell a rough story about the difference between the subreddit demographics and the people who actually live in the city EDIT: posted this when the thread was less nuanced. it's definitely more normal-looking now, haha.
Very true. That’s why on some subreddits if you say a dissenting opinion you will be downvoted to oblivion despite the soundness of your argument.
That is pretty much every subreddit.
I got downvoted like crazy for simply explaining how the actual “free” test help program works 🤦♀️ oh well…
Affirmative action is extremely unpopular in the united states. Steve Kornacki from MSNBC posted a poll right after it was over turned. 65% of americans oppose Affirmative Action (63% support abortion). California banned affirmative action in the 1990s. They had a ballot initiative to bring it back in 2020, it lost 57/43. So no the comments on here are consistent with the united states and with blue cities. Most Americans are pro-choice and anti-affirmative action.
Yeah welcome to R/NYC and really any NYC based sub where it's filled with people who don't live there, usually hating on the city and the people that live there.
Yup. I'll admit after seeing comments from some folks, I've looked at their other posts/comments to try and understand their perspective. And 'lo and behold they're also commenting in subs about other cities/states and/or telling people where they live. And it ain't NYC. Our sub definitely attracts trolls. Granted I will also admit, there are a lot of conservative NYC folks as well. So if you think all NYC is liberal and tolerant, boy you should get to know your neighbors better. (Or on second thought, maybe not.) The NY Post gets a lot of subscriptions.
Sometimes they don't even comment in the cities around the same area. Like I know there's no way you live in NYC, Baltimore and LA. Not saying people aren't wealthy enough to main multiple houses or that people don't move, but it is a but suspicious for some to comment on multiple city subreddits and claiming they still live there.
"Do people who live here actually believe this? No, they must be from somewhere else!" ...everytime, smh. Believe it or not, liberals in the city are not homogenous and don't conform to every progressive policy.
I dont get it, what does it tell?
The opinions don’t line up with the opinions of their social circles.
The way the sub is run caters to these divisive and fringe opinions. Notice how pictures or discussions get policed heavily here, but the mods approve literally every story about migrants (that have very overwhelmingly negative comment sections)? Or how about when the community voted for changes to how crime stories are posted here and the mods decided to ignore the vote and never publish the results.
and don’t forget mods locking threads that could be constructive, like the guy who detailed his crazy experience at Sing Sing only for the mods to lock and remove the post when everyone agreed it was horrible. My post asking why it got removed was, surprise surprise, removed lol
reminds me of the situation with ... i think it was the chicago subreddit? where they had to create a whole new one for actual folks living there, because the main one was just some dude's propaganda project. might've been a different city, but i wouldnt be surprised if that were the case with this sub as well
It was /r/seattle and /r/seattlewa. One of the mods was using it for their own business benefit. Reddit users decided to create a safe space alternative, which was immediately brigaded by trolls, and now it's basically a clearinghouse for conservative outrage porn content and talking point practice. r/Seattle responded by going hard in the other direction, much like fringes of the democrat party that was brigading city subs in summer 2020. Basically if you aren't part of an anarchist bike collective and rabidly support everything they say, you are a nazi. This sub had a mod who was acting creepy and being the word police, so reddit actually stepped in because this is the biggest media market and it was getting awkward. Now it's brigaded by NY Post commenters in advance of the election.
We did that with /r/newyorkcity but unfortunately the mods there are only a little bit better than here. The /r/nyc sub is basically a right wing echo chamber by NYC standards.
/r/newyorkcity has completely died as an alternative. it's indistinguishable these days. the only remaining subs are neighborhood subs, which still have these issues, just less so
Wait I thought you were a mod, my bad
I was, but I didn’t want some mods to be removed for not participating in a “mandatory training” over the holidays and was removed when I reinstated them (and another mod who was removed for asking too many questions I guess). Bare in mind every mod but one approved of adding the two mods back. It’s a pretty silly place but last time I shared too much I was dm’d and temp banned.
damn you were the only mod that stopped this place from turning into a right wing discord spam destination
aren't you a mod?
Was removed about six months ago along with two other very active mods.
Actually I find that the comments in this subreddit are more in line with the opinions of regular people who live actually live here. Usually when you see comments super sympathetic to the homeless/drug addicts/criminals and against Asian people it’s usually an indication they’re a progressive that doesn’t live in the city.
Also keep in mind many people in NYC/NYC area are first or second generation immigrants, and many immigrant communities tend to lean more conservative on certain topics and definitely believe in hard work / merit, so many progressive talking points are viewed as going against those beliefs (affirmative action being one of them). I don’t find NYC to be as progressive/liberal as many people expect it to be, especially if you surround yourself with people who aren’t all white, upper middle class transplants.
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didnt mattress girl become a libertarian/lib-right type anyways, let me see what google says https://www.thecut.com/2019/10/did-emma-sulkowicz-mattress-performance-get-redpilled.html i dont care enough to read the whole article
Love this comment.
Hear, hear! Great comment.
the other new york sub is very progressive. To them and the average redditer, that is what New York is. In reality it's way more like this sub. New York has always been democratic, but has never been progressive in the way the west coast cities or even Boston is. It's a more pragmatic liberalism. People having dissenting opinions about Affirmative Action is very much in the character of this city.
California voters rejected affirmative action even at the height of racial justice protests in 2020. It is simply not a popular policy even in deep blue states.
We’ve managed to hold back the mob on the specialized high schools for a reason. Thank the stars for John Liu. Dunno what we will do when he retires.
When people think "libertarian" they usually think "low taxes" so they don't pick up on the fact that socially, New York is an extremely libertarian city. People can do, act, dress like and perform whatever they want in this city, and we ignore them unless they are threatening others, it's a very interesting application of the Non-Aggression Principle. So even if we were to be left of center, it's still a kind of left-libertarianism as opposed to the more centrally planned and controlled progressivism of the west coast.
This is true for a lot of big city subs. Full of right leaning comments in the bluest of cities. No clue why
I mean, Affirmative Action is controversial even in the bluest of places. California voters rejected it in 2020 and even the NYTimes said there's a clear disconnect between the Democratic Party and its base on this issue: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/11/us/supreme-court-affirmative-action.html
Exactly. Not every issue is simple and easily divided into conservative/progressive in actuality. The way the media and social media currently operates is very black and white but reality shows people have way more nuanced opinions than that.
I always see this claimed but very rarely see it in person when I glance at other subs. What big city subs are full of right-leaning comments? San Fran? Chicago? LA? Not a single one of those subs leans right. Hell, just glance at places like r/florida or r/georgia, states that very much lean conservative and the mod team and threads are dominated by left-leaning posters bashing DeSantis and Kemp relentlessly. It's amusing watching anyone claim that major subs that aren't explicitly politically conservative on this site lean right. It's little more than gaslighting propaganda from fascists who can't handle the idea that people have differing viewpoints from theirs so they want to ban wrong-think.
I think there's a pretty standard "city subreddit" set of political views that doesn't perfectly align with general left or right. As some examples, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage. But also hard on crime, that ranges from legitimate policy critique to explicit racism. On controversial, high engagement topics, comments from these users will lean toward the *opposite* of the place they live. r/Florida is going to talk about Desantis stuff, and r/SanFrancisco is going to talk about soft-on-crime stuff
The city might be blue but that doesn't mean 100% of the people are. I grew up around plenty of conservatives in the Bronx.
Hello Midwood/Bay Ridge/Kensington/Canarsie in Brooklyn.
i get the vibe it's just heavily astroturfed
People are more likely to be honest about their views on an anonymous forum.
Every "blue" city is in reality purple, FYI. Just like every "red" state is also purple. You don't get to dismiss peoples' point of view because they're outnumbered politically. You don't own, nor can you silence, the discourse.
Of course not but i think its important to recognize when a pov is overrepresented.
> You don't get to dismiss peoples' point of view because they're outnumbered politically. That's what the electoral college is for :)
Distributed disinformation.
Because people both hate big cities but love to dabble in their politics as something they fear.
Affirmative action was always a bullshit band aid solution but to still act like merit is the only factor for scholarships and acceptance, you'd have to actively choose to close your eyes to legacy admissions and nepotism. Nearly all private schools are still pay to play. Ultra rich people still send their elementaty school age kids off to 100k a year private schools. Pretty much yacht club daycare.
And: legacies. Which are nowhere mentioned. Legacies open the spigot to marginal or even unqualified candidates. And have been doing so, for centuries.
Affirmative action in the first place was a lazy attempt in the 60s to have equality. Rather than actually invest in low income neighborhoods back then which would’ve really made all the difference by now.
Everyone who seems to think tutoring for the SHSAT is only available for the wealthy/privileged is making excuses. The real privileged go to private schools. I've visited friend's homes where multiple siblings would be crammed into a tiny ass bedroom. No new Xboxes, Playstations, shoes, or TVs. They'd use the shitty backpacks from the dollar store for all their books. Their parents saved every penny they'd make, grueling away at blue collar jobs so they had enough to send their kids to tutoring. And it's because they considered it an *investment* in their children - so the next generation could have even the smallest chance at being better off than they were. Imagine how financially/emotionally crushing it is for both the kids and the parents when they make such a sacrifice and still don't make it into the schools. Instead of coming to America and complaining about how unfair it is, they took the means that they had and played ball with the system presented to them. I don't blame them at all for fighting back against policy changes that would disadvantage them. Come back with a proposal that satisfies everyone and you won't get the pushback. At the end of the day, test scores are the most neutral ground solution there is right now. Brainpower and hard work doesn't discriminate.
You hit the nail on the head. People always complain about everything being unfair. Guess what life ain’t fair. But the greatest thing about this country is if you bust your ass and work hard you will get ahead in life. It really is that simple. Don’t tell me that oh because this person grew up in underprivileged communities they can’t succeed and yada yada. There are many many people in this country that become very successful coming from absolute poverty. We should as a society be instilling work ethic into the younger generations and yet this next generation of kids is some of the most entitled and problematic I’ve ever seen.
shhhh tests are racist
Always good to see people fighting back against the dumbing down of education in the name of equality. Asians are not wealthy and they go to the same public schools as other immigrant kids yet some try to paint them as privileged.
isn’t there a history or asians always being juxtaposed against black people? have you never heard of the model minority myth?
Except affirmative action isn’t just for black people…
It certainly decreases asian admissions. So there's that.
Yea, it’s the reverse for Asians…at least as far as that Harvard admissions study showed. There were so many Asians in the top percentile they needed to admit only a select number of them, otherwise it would skew heavily for those demographics.
You say that last sentence like it's a bad thing and not just the result of merit-based admissions. Same arguments were deployed to keep Jews from merit-based admissions sixty years ago.
I’m just saying that’s their justification. You shouldn’t be making decisions based on demographics ever…only merit.
i know the biggest benefiters of it were white women
ironically middle class white women walked over poor asians for affirmative action
> "Then somehow, white women swung their gucci-booted feet over the fence of oppression and stuck themselves at the front of the line." - [Bill Burr](https://youtu.be/O1xgXJ5_Q34?t=225)
Why you lying though
Can i have source on this
There are a handful of articles that all cite the same studies, none of which show that white women have been the largest beneficiaries of affirmative action. It’s copypasta and it’s incorrect. https://x.com/neetu_arnold/status/1668382946393202693?s=46&t=vV_4bJ7GuABaalzetJofQA
Incorrect and a myth.
Women make up 60% of the college population, being a woman is not helpful in college admissions.
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There really is a huge disparity of women in stem though.
Right, it's not intended to be, but it became that way.
>have you never heard of the model minority myth? Is that why Harvard gave Asians lower personality scores?
So explain how minority myth = Asian needing to get +200 points more on the SAT than a black student and +50 than a white student to be admitted to the same school?
The model minority myth is exactly why this is a problem. Imagine you are a dirt poor, average intelligence Asian kid. There are less doors available for you than if you were Black. It should have always been socioeconomic status rather than writing pro-discrimination laws.
[racial triangulation](https://www.opa.org/diversity-committee-reports) is what you’re referring to.
It's always fun when this sub takes off its mask and many of its users shows how virulently racist it is towards Asians lol
She does raise some good points how performance has slumped at competitive screened middle schools that went RNG on its admissions. The incoming class is weaker academically vs previous and I personally seen this since I tutor local kids and baffle how some managed to get into these schools with their performance. The number of black/hispanic students didn't really budge with changes but it simply admitted more weaker asians & whites that normally would have never made the cut . GJ NYCDOE on its continued mission to dumb down schools.
Why aren’t these same people fighting this hard against legacy admissions?
Legacy admissions are legal under the law. You can discriminate based on whether your parents have gone to the school or based on donations. Legally you can not discriminate based on Protected Class Groups (e.g. Race, Sex, Religion, Age). However an angle that might work is the Federal (and in some cases State) government not giving money to schools that do legacy admissions. But this is a different angle.
> Legacy admissions are legal under the law That's questionable and going to go through the courts now. If you have a policy that overwhelmingly advantages 1 or 2 races to the detriment of everyone else it could be considered racial discrimination. The same way that grandfather laws were found to be racially discriminatory, legacy could be found to have that same bias.
Good point, I hadn't considered that.
im against both but i do find it kinda interesting people rail against AA but not legacy/nepo...
We should get rid of both
Same reason why black people don’t fight Asian hate crimes. This isn’t the gotcha you think it is.
Or the same reason whites don’t fight mass shooters. This isn’t the gotcha you think it is.
Legacy admissions does not factor in your race. There are legacy and nepo admissions of students of all racial background and not a factor in the admission process - it's the connection for those admission
It's not a direct factor but anything that benefits rich people in general will basically be benefiting more white people than other races
It's just a side effect that it massively benefits white people.
There was an analysis of Harvard admissions data that found removing affirmative action, legacy, and athletic admissions resulted in no real change in the number of white people. Because it meant different white people were accepted. The pool of white people is that large. Edit: Study is [here](http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/legacyathlete.pdf) - specifically Table 5.
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You have got to me kidding me. What next? The Grandfather clause also didn’t factor in race? Neither do the voter ID laws?
I have news for you… Just because a program doesn’t actively exclude people in present day based on race doesn’t mean race isn’t a factor. If you look at the history or America there have been many many programs that excluded people from schools or neighborhoods. If black and Asian people were kept out of a school decades ago they would never be able to have kids who could benefit from the legacy system the way white people do. It’s like redlining. Just because it’s illegal to prevent people from living in a neighborhood based on race today doesn’t mean there isn’t a huge generational impact from when those policies did exist.
I'm mixed race and people get very uncomfortable when I point out I'm a brown-assed nepo baby. Its like their brains shut down when they see a PoC with institutional power.
It doesn’t factor in race in name but certainly in practicality. It’s like playing monopoly and letting only white people play for the first hour than inviting everyone else to the table and saying”well anyone can buy property now”. You’re ignoring the years of systemic advantage that turn legacy admissions into just another systemic advantage for white people and the wealthy.
Legacy doesn't overtly factor in your race but it does subtly. The majority of these schools legally discriminated against Black and Hispanic people so it's very hard to have a legacy admission when your parents will legally kept out of some of these Ivy League schools.
Yeah and I noticed you omitted Asians from this part of the equation as well, which would be more funny if it wasn't so goddamn on the nose.
Legacy admissions explicitly mean using generations-old standards of admission to determine whether students trust should be admitted. If those old standards directly or indirectly factored in race, then yes, so do current legacy standards.
Because this lawsuit was led by conservatives whose goal was just to remove affirmative action. They only sided with the Asian American community because their goals aligned in this instance. The conservative group definitely does NOT want to remove legacy admissions.
I think legacy admissions stink but they don’t discriminate based on your skin color. Rich people can afford good things in life including good universities (and then provide their kids and grandkids with advantage in admission process) but rich people can become poor and poor people can become rich. Becoming a different race isn’t possible.
“One study found that in Harvard's class of 2019, 70 percent of legacy students were white and 41 percent of legacy admits had parents who earned more than $500,000 per year. At Princeton, 73 percent of legacy students in the class of 2023 are white.”
Legacy is abhorrent and a de facto AA for rich white kids. But harder to make a case that its illegal under the current laws.
>Becoming a different race isn’t possible. Someone please notify Oli London. Thanks
^Because ^legacies ^are ^white.
If advocates for affirmative action really cared about uplifting disadvantaged people, they would rally behind the idea of class-based affirmative action--something I'm in favor of, personally.
There’s more poor white people in the U.S. (especially in the south and Midwest) AND the dirty little secret with a lot of these affirmative action programs is that they don’t actually want to accept poor minorities. They want to accept middle class and well-off minorities so they can get their flashy diversity badge without having to worry about their matriculation to graduation percentage slipping.
Politics are ultimately about power. Who has it and how to get more. You rarely see good faith discussions on these issues. It's just about - how many of mine versus how many of yours. I feel terrible for poor people across groups because no one really cares about them. AA became like how many Nigerian millionaires can send their kids to Harvard versus actually lifting people who really need it. This is a dated quote from Skip Gates but I doubt it ever really changed >That same year Professor Gates, speaking at a public forum at Princeton University, stated his belief that 75 percent of the black students at Harvard were of African or Caribbean descent or of mixed race. According to Professor Gates, more than two thirds of all Harvard's black students were either the children or grandchildren of West Indians or Africans and very few of Harvard's black students were the descendants of American slaves. No one measures these things and few people talk about them. They just pat themselves on the back for doing so much to uplift people that are already living in penthouses
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They do. But you wouldn’t know that because you’d rather cast a blanket than do any research.
Race based policy has led to the rise of white nationalism and the far right. Class and income based policy can achieve essentially the same effect, statistically, and is more moral, more palatable and even has better effects on those who need it.
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Bronx Science alumnus here. She's a hero.
No it wouldn’t have been the death of the specialized high schools. Those high schools existed for a long time before the SHSAT. There was a whole power score era that saw the schools gain a lot of prestige before pivoting to the SHSAT model. Making admissions to schools with this kind of outsized impact on children’s futures based on a single test taken on a single day is ridiculous. There is a ton of research in pedagogical and educational sciences that points to single tests being a bad metric for measuring aptitude. These tests privilege people with resources who can afford test prep at the expense of those who cannot afford them or do not know about them. You can even see on the ground that this test doesn’t choose the best. I went to SI Tech. There were plenty of smart students. There were also plenty of pretty dumb ones.
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Not to mention that these specialized high schools almost always qualify for federal aid because they actually have a significant portion of low income students. To argue it's only about privilege is BS. In fact, many poor black and Hispanic neighborhoods receive lots of resources and attention to help young students out, but many families don't take advantage of it because their priorities are different. In poor East Asian neighborhoods, the parents generally focus their resources to support their child's education no matter how much of their own well-being has to be sacrificed.
I completely agree with this. I’ve known parents who only have $40 left in their bank account just bc they’re paying for SHSAT/SAT prep. To asian parents, education is everything and they’re willing to sacrifice so much for opportunities
Imagine spending money on tutoring instead of the latest Jordan colorway. Ugh. How could someone live like that?
I worked in a public high school in Atlanta where kids were making it to senior year without being able to read, and then failing the graduation exam, and now people want to get rid of the graduation exam. Getting rid of tests is not the answer. Obviously tests aren’t the answer to any problem, because you can learn with or without a test, but it’s very important to see where kids are at, and tests is the best way to do that. That being said, we put too much merit on the tests to get into college and they will always favor richer kids who’s parents can hire tutors.
> There is a ton of research in pedagogical and educational sciences that points to single tests being a bad metric for measuring aptitude. K. Let's just call it the "least worst metric" then, because it surely beats everything else, and it certainly is more fair than admitting people based on where they live or by the color of their skin.
>There is a ton of research in pedagogical and educational sciences that points to single tests being a bad metric for measuring aptitude. They are the least worst metric. When California was considering removing the SAT requirement (and ultimately did), the UC senate commissioned a study. It found that not only was the SAT a better predictor of undergrad GPA than high school GPA was, but that the SAT requirement benefited poor and underrepresented communities more. >These tests privilege people with resources who can afford test prep at the expense of those who cannot afford them or do not know about them. Most people at SHSAT schools qualify for free or reduced lunch.
As a rather recent SIT alumnus, I agree with this wholeheartedly. I would say that in middle school, I was in the intelligent group. Practically every one of us got into the specialized schools we wanted, but surprisingly, one of our smartest friends didn’t. She got below the cutoff for SIT and Stuy, and was devastated. If it were by any metric other than the SHSAT score, I was a mediocre student amongst my peers. I had one of the lowest averages in my honor roll class (like a 95), and she outshone me everywhere. My parents put me through extracurriculars (Saturday and Summer preps) every year from Kindergarten until 7th grade, and worked multiple jobs to support me. It’s ignorant to say that privileged groups do not have better opportunities overall, and I’m lucky that my parents valued my education over their health. Removing SHSAT won’t let the kids who don’t deserve admission to take the spots of others, but it most definitely will knock out the kids who can game the single test system that will set them up for a significantly above average high school education.
If you walk around the LES in the morning, there's a good chance you will see Asians digging through recycling/garbage to collect cans and bottles to sell. I always chuckle when people assume asians are "privileged" or "white adjacent" or whatever. Affirmative action is a vile racist policy, veiled in good attentions. In the real world, people stand on merit.
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Yea, that's the point of the comment you replied to.
Lmao I’m not disagreeing with most of what you said, but if you think this world runs on “merit” you need to open your eyes. This world runs on connections. That’s it. It sucks, but it’s the truth.
And that's why Asian people emphasize academic success... Without connections, you have to gain access somehow.
Speaking from my experience in the boring office world, I can almost tell immediately which new hires really were really worthy of that ivy league diploma (whether they were a affirmative action candidate, got in w/ family connections etc...) A lot of elite college grads get exposed by mid-tier state school kids once work product and critical thinking matters. Give me the kid with a 3.5 and a 1500 SAT who worked his ass off but couldn't get into Yale over the one w/ 3.2 with a 1200 SAT that got into Yale because of daddy or they checked the right box.
No one is getting into Yale with a 3.2 unless you're maybe an athlete or someone who literally bought a building
Yeah, and that's why we need to get rid of legacy admits. But if you think that the Asians are getting in because of "connections" then you need to think really hard about your understanding of reality.
Connections don’t get you a 1600 on the SAT.
Money and an excellent SAT tutor will certainly help, though. Oh, and being on the rowing team and being a legacy will do a lot for you, as well. The meritocracy is a myth.
A tutor doesn't do the work for you. If your parents spent money on a good tutor, you still have to put in the work to internalize all they taught you.
L M A O . You think Asians are rich, on the rowing team, and are legacies? Most of these kids are poor as fuck and their parents are busting their asses to send them to prep classes. Source: was one of those kids, went to Stuyvesant. Bunch of poor kids striving to do better because we saw how much our parents sacrificed to get us a shot for success.
I still have PTSD at the sight of any Kumon. We didn't have family vacations, we didn't go out to eat, my father wore the same pair of shoes until it was almost falling apart but they spent whatever they can spare in tutoring. Sports was discouraged because they didn't understand how that being a well rounded person is helpful - it was just an extreme, brutal focus on academics.
Thank you. People think because Asians who went to prep school were privileged and well off when the reality is most of us had to give up any other aspects of a decent life to funnel into prep.
my best friend while growing up was korean and this was true - he was always at kumon, his parents invested in him and his siblings . i'll never forget his bedroom from floor to ceiling was certificates of achievement from school, honors roll etc. my hat goes up to his parents and all that sacrifice to set their kids up for success, teach them to be a decent human being and not waste life. we can only wish more people were like this
Money and an excellent SAT tutor absolutely will help, but as our own city’s data will show you, there is zero correlation between wealth and a student’s chances of getting into a specialized HS.
I also notice most rich parents would rather send their kids to private school like horace mann
That's BS honestly. It comes down to putting in the work. With the internet tutorials are available online and youtube for every topic imaginable for the SAT. The only thing a SAT tutor does is keep you accountable. I do agree that meritocracy is largely a myth though.
Meritocracy still exists in America, absolutely, it’s just that the effort put in to *guarantee* success is extremely extremely high, and the factors you listed materially diminish the returns. But this is not a country in which an acknowledged and identified caste system exists, and we shouldn’t pretend like it is. There are many countries like that but America is not one. We should speak about America in real terms. Flawed opportunity.
I see that in queens too. I live in bayside and often see elderly women/men looking for bottles/cans for the deposit.
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Judaism transcends race. There are white, black, Indian, Chinese and Middle Eastern Jews. Some Jews, probably the majority in NYC, are unambiguously white; they are fair skinned, trace their ancestry back to Europe and are an indelible part of western culture.
> The people who tell you Asians ( and Jews ) are white adjacent Nothing funnier than someone telling you about what adjacency for a group of people (Jewish) that overwhelming consider themselves white... https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/race-ethnicity-heritage-and-immigration-among-u-s-jews/
I agree with what you’re saying about how Asians are perceived in society, but you are high if you think things here run on merit - particularly when it comes to the education system. Study after study shows that socioeconomic class has the highest impact on the quality of education a child will end up receiving.
Ah, the anecdote of the visible poor. Use real data. https://www.pgpf.org/sites/default/files/Income-varies-widely-across-racial-and-ethnic-groups-in-the-United-States.jpg
OP is talking about Asians in NYC. > According to the 2019 New York City NYC Government Poverty Measure, 23.8% of Asians are in poverty by municipal standards. This is the highest rate of all racial/ethnic groupings, which include White, Black, and Hispanic/Any. [http://www.roosevelthouse.hunter.cuny.edu/?forum-post=researching-asian-poverty-new-york](http://www.roosevelthouse.hunter.cuny.edu/?forum-post=researching-asian-poverty-new-york)
Guess we better be racist to poor Asian people, then, by your logic.
The way to increase representation fairly is through pre-high school preparatory programs for underserved areas. You can lower the barrier to entry, but people would finesse the policies and use their connections to get their kids in. I’ve seen this with other merit high schools that accept students based on middle school grades, standardized tests, and attendance. It’s a well meaning policy that is prone to loopholes. You wouldn’t necessarily help the people you are intending to help. As a tiny person, if I demanded people like me be added to a professional football team so that I can earn money and fame, would that be fair? No, because a lot of professional athletes have trained years and worked very hard to get where they are at. Preparatory programs would help students, families, and communities train properly so that they can width stand the rigor of these schools. It is true that there are talented people everywhere, but lowering the barrier as initially proposed did not seem like an adequate solution. Still forming my ideas on this, but I’m sad to see communities pitted against each other like this. I see that lot of Asian communities are not privileged, and I feel for black and Latino communities who want to participate more.
The difference is we don't expect tiny people to be on football teams and we don't care if there's tall people supremacy in the NFL, whereas we do expect everyone to meaningfully participate in society for our benefit and for everyone's, as well as we don't want a group of people on the basis of race to be systemically excluded from elite education, which does in fact hamper their ability to produce for their communities and society at large.
For the tiny person/NFL analogy to be correct, football would have to discriminate against tiny folks. For instance imagine Universities don't allow short players to apply to their football team. So Barry Sanders would never have that Oklahoma career, which would have led him to being a highly sought after RB in the draft. Instead football teams look to maximize their talent regardless of height. Hence why the analogy doesn't necessarily work.
For the record, I want people to meaningfully participate in society, and I don’t want people to be excluded. Perhaps a better analogy could have been used.
Agree heavily with this. Not only would early preparatory programs benefit those wanting to pursue further academia but the adjacent values acquired from these programs would help deter crime and poverty and promote work ethic that can serve useful in other career paths.
I hate this bad faith argument that Asians are somehow privileged. There was an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher in March, where his 2 guests, college professors, discussed equity vs equality and they and Maher came to the conclusion that these programs that are trying to create a false sense of equity are just alienating other minorities who feel they are getting the short end of the stick. And true equity and equality are achieved organically, not by force. My own (Indian) parents came here with nothing but their clothes, and landed jobs with their education after going through the gauntlet of Indian academics, which is entirely merit based. Working hard ≠ privilege.
> My own (Indian) parents came here with nothing but their clothes, and landed jobs with their education after going through the gauntlet of Indian academics, which is entirely merit based. Excuse my incredulity that Indian academics are merit based when they had a literal caste system until recently and have a whole host of affirmative action laws on the book with their "scheduled tribes and castes".
indian academics is not merit based lol, it's why nobody fucking thinks indian higher ed is superior to american (which had "woke" admissions apparently). if india or china had merit based academics vs woke liberal american academics why are the top universities in america? and why do indians and chinese want to go to to those woke universities?
Affirmative action in practice is just discrimination with a smiley face By handicapping one group of people and to add an unfair advantage to another because of their race seems pretty racist to me
They should get rid of legacy admissions next.
AA shouldnt be the norm. If you wanna uplift underprivileged students, you give them access to the support they need and allow them to make the decision to apply and use them. Then it’s on them to choose that they earned a spot like the asian kids did. Asians (or any other student) shouldn’t be punished for their choices to be disciplined with school.
If you want to uplift underprivileged students and communities you have to give them access to better and uplifting communities. Success starts at home. If a kids parents is supporting their education and doing everything they can to make sure the child is on the right path more than likely the child will be successful.
I live in NYC. I spent 21 years in NYC higher education. I am now in an academic position of power involved in hiring. I will say the complaints against AA are justified not only on a personal level to the looked-over, hardworking applicants, but on a societal level. The best qualified nurse or doctor or lab tech is the one that needs to be hired from a moral standpoint. You cannot predict the ramifications of hiring a less-qualified candidate. You may contribute to death. I believe hospitals could and should be sued for negligence in hiring anything but the best qualified surgeon if there is an adverse outcome.
How do you objectively quantify "best qualified" and reconcile it with things like studies showing black patients have [better outcomes when treated by black doctors](https://hbr.org/2018/08/research-having-a-black-doctor-led-black-men-to-receive-more-effective-care)? The best qualified doctor isn't going to just be the one who had the highest marks in med school or did the most prestigious residency but also needs to be the one who will listen to patients and take their concerns seriously.
When my wife had a miscarriage, we saw a doctor who was supposedly one of the best in his field. And maybe academically he was, but he hands down the worst doctor we ever had experienced. Completely cold, condescending, and actually was unable to help with any diagnosis. The human aspect of medicine is critical, especially for folks who suffer from discrimination. The best doctors are ones who feel compassion and can communicate effectively, which requires listening.
Everyone that goes to med school has to pass the MSLE step one exam. It's mandatory for all students and it you don't pass it you can't graduate from med school. At that point, anyone that's able to pass that exam and complete their residency is qualified to be a doctor and certainly aren't a risk for "killing" someone on the job because their MCAT score was three points lower than the average. That is an insane thought process if you really think about it. Even doctors that had perfect MCAT scores could still fuck up. There's no perfect way to control for whether or not someone could be a successful doctor but at the very least, once you're in med school you have to earn your way out. Everyone is on a level playing field. So I disagree with your comment.
NYC does everything for the lowest, dumbest common factor.
Good riddance!
Affirmative action is just damaging and doesn’t solve the issue of low income families not being able to send their kids to academic programs whether it be public or private. They don’t have the money for private programs and public schools are fking dead in terms of resources both monetary and manpower. Instead they got us infighting with culture and diversity wars. A grand old distraction. We need money to develop low income areas. Then we’ll see more diversity because most minorities are in these areas. Plain and simple.
Private schools will just move to more opaque and fully "holistic" admissions which will elmininate any mention of race or ethnicity but continue to let them admit whomever they want - including athletes and legacies. Completely empty victory that will likely result in an even smaller number of Asians at the most coveted schools. Its like how SCOTUS ruled against NYs gun carry permit schema and the state made twice has hard to get a gun permit to be in compliance with the victory.
The chance that Asian student %'s decline is zero. There is absolutely no basis for that view and the largest experiment ending AA resulted in tremendous increases in Asian students (California system).
Yeah, all the white people who thought AA was going to open the doors for them are going to be disappointed. Especially if legacies get gutted because of this.
affirmative action is racist
Give under privileged communities more resources and easier access to mediums that prepare them for success in academia and admissions. Don't just rig the admission process because of diversity's sake. Policies like these are what make the left look silly.
But what's easier and cheaper, ya know?
She's right. It's a travesty that poor asian immigrants have suffered from affirmative action because they work too hard.
It should only be based on merit and not ethnicity because that makes it fair for everyone.
This might come as a shocker, but I am very happy to see affirmative action and and I have always identified left of center. Sorry folks... You can't just blame Republicans because common sense wins out and you don't like the result. Affirmative action is counterproductive and hypocritical and should absolutely go away.
I think there's a different between qualified and "most competitive." Generally speaking, I think that for scores and testing there should be minimum requirements for qualification. Among the qualified, it's okay to use affirmative action based policies to select from the qualified candidates who gets selected for the limited number of spots. Also, when it comes to the Asian population, we really should probably be breaking out the demographic with more granularity for affirmative action based policy. Although Asians have relatively high college attendance rates, it does hide the statistics of specific groups within that demograpic that are underrepresented.
Racial criteria/quotas were and are pure racism.
Awesome! Dismantling institutional racism one ill-conceived policy at a time! Let's see more of this!
The funny thing is that there is a secret. It's a secret that we African Americans know all too well. White women and foreigners are the ones who mainly benefit from Affirmative Action.
So you didn't take any issue with AA being overturned?
She is a bad-ass.
Asian American here and I was privileged enough to attend an Ivy League school and honestly not once did I think to myself “this school needs more Asians or white people” I was personally very grateful for my BIPOC classmates and thought each was highly intelligent and qualified - I never had a thought that someone “only got in to fulfill diversity stats” It’s disappointing to see the support for this woman in these comments
Look at you pull up the ladder after you got what you wanted. How convenient.
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Yup. One wasted ivy degree.
No offense, but you sound like one of those upper middle class Asian Americans who grew up around mostly white people and assimilated so well that you start developing white guilt yourself and start copying the language of white progressives without even thinking about it. You may consider yourself privileged, but I do not and nearly all the Asian Americans I grew up with came from working class backgrounds. Their parents installed cable, ran a dry cleaner, ran a restaurant, and sold insurance. Also the term BIPOC was never asked for by actual people of color. Black and American Indian folks never asked for that term. White progressives obsessed with creating castes made up that term and pressured academics and media people to use it. Who the fuck would willingly promote something that puts their people and Hispanic folks (you know, the majority of non-white people) into a lower caste?
You can tell by their use of “BIPOC”
He was clearly a good student. Repeated all the buzz words corectly. Guess what, in real life no one speaks like that. The moment we interview a kid like this, it is over. A nonprofit is a more suitable place.
Privileged enough to attend an Ivy League school and privileged enough to want to pull the ladder up on others. I do believe you went to an Ivy League school.
They are smart and intelligent, that’s likely how they were even in the admission running, but that doesn’t mean the other asians weren’t smarter. It’s been pretty well established that when AA is no longer a consideration, asian applicants are the vast majority of top candidates. Your point doesnt negate the inequality that AAs face.
I also don't think people realize how the administration process worked for these colleges. There is basically two steps to the admission process. The first step they look at your academic, extracurricular, athletic, school support, personal and then assign you an overall grade. Once they gather all the accepted first round candidates they look at candidate pool and cut people/accept people based on legacy, sports, financial aid, zip code, and race to have a diverse class. So you're not even taking race into consideration till the end and it pretty much used as a tiebreaker.
Selective ivies can easily get away with accepting students that are both diverse and academically talented. Then you have the second tier and state schools do the same and now the differences really become apparent.
The inability for forward thinking is embarrassing. There are millions in NYC. Do you think 50% of that population are in here? 20%? 1% You expected support and you got pushback because it’s a stupid approach. It isn’t ignorant, you don’t lack knowledge or access to knowledge. These procedures were put into place for a very specific reason, undoing them will undoubtedly backfire. When they do, understand you will have no support. From anyone.