http://www.racialicious.com/2007/01/22/the-daily-princetons-rosie-carolla-defense-of-lian-ji-op-ed/

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=516680

Absent any of that, don’t we have to assume that they are acting in good faith?

OK, here’s a thought experiment: suppose there is a small ethnocentric country somewhere (say in the middle-east) that builds ethnically pure towns and roads on occupied territories and segregates seriously aggravated ethnically-undesirable local population behind walls and checkpoints, making their lives miserable. Obviously we would have ample reasons to view this as a case of blatant racial discrimination, right? And yet – I betcha – many of the same people who brand affirmative action as “flagrant racial discrimination against Asian-Americans” will tell you that this is the case of reasonable security measures with unfortunate side-effects. Flagrant hypocrisy, you see.

Now, I don’t think it’d be discrimination if someone looked at the Caltech population, said “We don’t want a freshman class with just one black student, that’s ridiculous and unhealthy,” and instituted affirmative action policies that increased black and Latino enrollments and decreased white and Asian enrollments proportionately. For the reasons Lemuel put forth in #27, I think affirmative action is justified. But in that case the motivation isn’t to put a de facto cap on Asian enrollments.

But you will probably claim and present some evidence indicating that “not being athletic” was only a pretext and they were actually trying to reduce the admission of some particular ethnic minority, because they despised it and felt it’s inherently less worthy than some other ethnicities.

And if your evidence is convincing enough, then we all will agree that it was indeed an instance of racial or ethnic discrimination. Fair enough?

Now, Cthomas, if you want to claim that today’s Princeton administration is involved in racial discrimination against the Asians, you have to go thru the same exercise: make the allegation that Princeton administration despises the Asians and present some evidence of it. Go ahead.

“…Ivy League admissions offices do not practice meritocracy. Instead, top-drawer schools reward donor-happy alums and the ‘legacy establishment,’ which Golden defines as ‘elites mastering the art of perpetuating themselves.’ Moreover, the ‘preference of privilege’ enables wealthy candidates to nose out more deserving working- and middle-class students, especially new immigrants and Asian-Americans.”

From another review further down that page, by Jerome Karabel in the Washington Post, says:

“The Price of Admission estimates that the end of affirmative action for the privileged would open up roughly 25 percent of the places in the freshman class at elite colleges and, in so doing, free up spaces for aspiring students of modest origins. Based on my own research, I would estimate a figure of 10 to 15 percent—still a considerable number.”

So your claim that
the boost that legacy admits get is nowhere near the boost black applicants get
even if true, isn’t on point to my argument, which is that abolishing legacy admits and athletic preferences would free up a lot more spaces for Asian-Americans (and other qualified candidates) than abolishing affirmative action. It’s not the size of the boost that matters, but the number of people admitted because of it.

That said, I agree with your first three paragraphs, and thanks for pointing to this interesting book.

Jews weren’t rejected for being Jews in the ‘50s, either. They were rejected for not being athletic enough, for being too studious (and not “well-rounded”), and because they all seemed the same on paper. (Yawn, another genius from Brooklyn.)

Those are pretty much the reasons Asians are being rejected now. (Yeah, yeah, they have off-the-charts grades and test scores, but, really, how many pianists and math geniuses do we need?)

The parallel seems painfully clear to me.

Some people in this thread haven’t really looked at the data, it seems. I’m against legacy admissions, for example, but the boost that legacy admits get is nowhere near the boost black applicants get.

The book “The Price of Admission,” by a Wall Street Journal reporter whose name escapes me, lays out in detail just how screwed Asians are by the present system. Suffice it to say that, on the SAT, for an Asian-American, anything less than a perfect score is viewed as an “Asian fail.” That’s because the students and their counselors both know that Asians have to hit a higher standard than any other group, to get admitted.

Every time there is a decision to cut the pie in a different way, statistically some group will lose and another win. Take political asylum for example: Cubans get it automatically and Haitians don’t; as a result I’m sure the Haitians (and others) get fewer visas. Is this anti-Haitian bigotry? No, not necessarily; more likely it’s just a side-effect of something else. Just like the Asian thing at Princeton.

From the ‘20s through the ‘50s, elite universities got many applications from extraordinarily bright Jewish students. If admission had been done on the basis of academic merit, they’d make up a very large chunk of the classes. So their numbers were capped.

Then the goal was keeping the campuses Waspy. (Those quotas have ended and the proportion of Jews at some elite schools is close to 30 percent. Suspiciously, Princeton’s figure is still quite low.)

Now come Asian Americans, also with extraordinary grades and test scores. They threaten to ruin the well-wrought plans of 1. affirmative action advocates, who want to be sure a decent-sized slice of the class goes to Latinos and African Americans and 2. the old-boy network, which wants to be sure the white alumni kids get in, and squash players, and crew guys, etc., and moguls’ kids from Silicon Valley and Manhattan. So again—or so it is claimed—there’s an implicit cap on their numbers.

No one is sympathetic to the Asian kids here? They’re all just a bunch of whiners?

Sorry—I misunderstood what those links were intended to prove. And after doing a little searching, I’m shocked to discover that legacy preferences in public institutions are in fact more common than I supposed. (Here’s an interesting article on the subject.) They’re clearly neither anywhere near as common nor anywhere near as extreme in their effect as racial preferences—hence, again, the milder level of outrage—but in addition to Texas A&M, the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia are apparently guilty of maintaining legacy preferences.

On the other hand, the end of racial preferences has also led directly to legislative action abolishing legacy preferences in public universities in both Georgia and California. So it appears that my claim that they’re simply two sides of the same coin, each reinforcing and justifying the existence of the other, has some empirical support.

So, Princeton managers included this ‘diversity’ criterion into their admission and – let’s suppose – Mr. Li didn’t make it because of the particular composition of the pool of applicants. Too bad, but how can you argue that it was an act of discrimination against the Asians? You know, water fluoridation is not a conspiracy against the dentists.

Nah, all it requires is noticing that, in a zero sum game, “granting preferences”, discriminating in favor of one group is, inevitably, the same thing as discriminating against one or more other groups. Two sides of the same coin.