“Harvard Admissions Process Does Not Discriminate Against Asian-Americans, Judge Rules” (nytimes) describes how an Obama-appointed judge approved of Harvard’s system of admitting students based on race. (The NYT headline is interesting; it would be more accurate to say that the judge ruled that she didn’t care whether Harvard discriminated against Asians or that the judge ruled that Harvard did discriminate against Asians, but that they did so with her blessing.)
Here’s my comment:
A Whirlpool factory service guy showed up today to fix the refrigerator (failed in early September after three weeks; soonest service appointment was today, Oct 1). He turned out to be an immigrant from South Korea whose job now is cleaning up after all of the appliance failures experienced by American McMansion-dwellers.
I would love to see the judge explain to his children why they will need to work harder and score higher than children of other races in order to get into a college that is at least partially funded with taxes paid by their appliance repairman dad.
Assuming that other factors are equal, the child of an investment banker with the correct skin color will be admitted by Harvard ahead of the Korean-American child of an appliance technician.
Readers: What do you think? Would judges be less likely to approve of racial discrimination if they had to explain to the young targets of the discrimination how it was going to work?
[Separately, why is it okay for the judge to imply that a group of Asians is lacking in diversity? “In her decision, Judge Burroughs defended the benefits of diversity … ‘The rich diversity at Harvard and other colleges and universities and the benefits that flow from that diversity,’ she added, ‘will foster the tolerance, acceptance and understanding that will ultimately make race conscious admissions obsolete.'” Isn’t the implication that if we assemble white and black Americans we have “rich diversity,” but if we assemble a group of Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian, Burmese, and Indian students we have a boring monoculture?]
Related:
- https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2019/09/18/why-is-it-difficult-to-make-a-reliable-refrigerator/ (background on the refrigerator saga; the $2,600 Kitchenaid failed after three weeks; the tech today said that it was an example of “Monday morning or Friday afternoon assembly,” with a thermometer that is supposed to control the coil defrost cycle in the wrong place and some blue tape left improperly in the fridge evaporator section. He thought that it would have been easy to see at the factory that the unit had been assembled improperly, so there was at least a deficiency in inspection)
- “Legacy and Athlete Preferences at Harvard,” a paper by economists at Duke, University of Georgia, and University of Oklahoma; Harvard is not seeking out “students of color” because they grew up poor: “disadvantaged African Americans receive virtually no tip for being disadvantaged” (the (Harvard grad) friend who sent me this article concluded “being black confers the same advantage as giving the school over $1 million”)
- Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the Supreme Court held that University of Michigan could discriminate on the basis of race (against a white woman), but Sandra Day O’Connor wrote “race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time … [the] Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.”
Why would anyone want to go to a silly school like Harvard when they could go to a California prison guard academy??
Well, the defining feature of leftism is collectivism: seeing people primarily as members of groups (“classes” in Marxist lingo) defined by simplistic and easily observable traits. Racism is fundamentally collectivist (the class being defined by skin color). Thus it is not surprising at all that the only actual racists are all on the left. (And, yes, KKK were Democrats). They simply moved on from lynching negros to efdectively declaring them sub-human and incapable of competing whith whiteys and asians on a level playing field.
“Thus it is not surprising at all that the only actual racists are all on the left.”
Touching up your submission for The Onion?
Nope. I have never met a racist right-winger. They will talk shit (mostly to spite the leftists and demonstrate that they’re not afraid of being un-PC) but every single one is looking at individuals as individuals. The most astonishingly friendly group of people you can find is at a redneck-favored shooting range (and I am an immigrant). That, or at a rave where everyone’s on ecstasy.
Now, the very declaration that race matters to the point of the need to have racial discriminatory laws or policies is purely leftist. Here’s simple truth: the only actual racists are people obsessed with race. That means the entire leadership of Democrat party. The rest of us just doesn’t give shit about someone’s skin color. (Gangsta affectations and broken English are a different matter… but they’re not race-specific; plenty of white trash around, too.)
That’s ok, but you’ll need to include less ludicrous claims. It’s meant to be be satire, not science fiction.
What EXACTLY here is fiction?
The fact that Left is collectivist? Or the fact that racism is a form of collectivism? Or the fact that people who are individualist do not tend to judge other people by their group identity?
I guess you’re watching too much propaganda. Which short-circuited the common sense parts of your brain. You want to spot a racist? Look for someone who makes race the centerpiece of his or her ideology. Yes, the likes of Warren and AOC. That is real racism – unlike the manufactured outrages over blackface or using one of the proscribed words (from the ever-growing list).
People on the right (aka “the deplorables”) are unhappy about loss of freedoms, loss of income due to competition from outsourcing of production and use of “undocumented” (aka “not paying taxes”) labor and ever-increasing regulation strangling the small business, growing inequality due to “socialism for bankers” aka QE aka money printing, blatant disregard of the laws by the elites, and insulting attitudes of the holier-than-thou “protectors” of everyone other than the actual taxpayers. None of that is racist – except as portrayed in the smears pushed by the Left. Because apparently daring to disagree with leftist dogma makes one a racist, automatically.
This will become a moot point in a couple of decades when, with policies like this in schools, in government and other parts of society, the United States and our schools will no longer be amongst the best in the world, and the Asians start returning to Asia…
While we’re at at, why don’t we explain to the children why debt is a good thing?
Smart observation, that it is primarily poor, smart, diligent Asians who are the victims of race preferences in college admissions — just as Harvards discriminated against the poor, smart diligent Jews in the first half of the 20th century. As an aside, it is hard to see how the Constitution supports favoring one race at the expense of another — the 14th amendment seems to say precisely the opposite — and it is even harder to see how discriminating in favor of one race at the expense of another (i.e., “rich diversity”) will support tolerance and acceptance. Isn’t the obvious inference from race preferences in admissions that favored groups are less capable and can’t compete? That inference will support tolerance and acceptance? In 1978, 41 years ago, the US Supreme Court seemed to hold in Bakke that race preferences in college admissions were unconstitutional. And now 41 years later one Judge Burroughs is justifying race discrimination by blabbering about “rich diversity”? Wow.
Why aren’t Asians founding their own universities? Half the pseudo-ivies in America are Jesuit or Augustinian. 70 years ago if you were Catholic you had to get a dispensation from the bishop to even attend a protestant university like Harvard or Penn. It was strongly discouraged.
> Would judges be less likely to approve of racial discrimination
> if they had to explain…?
It’s a religious-ideological issue, so probably not. The unfortunate children would just have to sit through a tedious sermon.
A commandment of the religion is that thou shalt not recognize any significant differences among human races (and don’t forget that whites are uniquely “problematic”). Math classes with consistently “too many” north-east Asians might cause some people to draw wrongful conclusions.
However, it seems we can be trusted when observing the contenders in Olympic sprinting events, which is odd because they’re a lot more public than the composition of university classes. But religions aren’t constructed from predicate logic.
1) Phil’s comment was very highly rated by the readers – in the top 10 – impressive since there were almost 900 comments).
2) The top picks for comments by the NYT’s editors overwhelmingly favoured those who supported the Judge’s decision that it is fine to discriminate against asians. The picks by the readers was the reverse – virtually all, like Phil’s comment, opposed the decision.
This is telling in terms of what the “elites” want and believe vis a vis the common folk.