Daily Princetonian Makes Fun of Stereotypical Asian Students

Poiuyt · January 26, 2007, 7:15am

Here’s one recent article, citing ironically, a Princeton study:

Perspectives: Asian Americans Aren

epiphany · January 26, 2007, 7:16am

Do your own research.
From early AA forward, the group taking the biggest brunt were Caucasians. With significant Asian immigration increases, Asian students are now sharing that burden.

UVA, UMich, the UC’s (until Prop 209), all the top privates, etc.

Poiuyt · January 26, 2007, 7:17am

Here’s one recent article, citing ironically, a Princeton study:

Perspectives: Asian Americans Aren

Poiuyt · January 26, 2007, 7:19am

Perspectives: Asian Americans Aren’t White Folks’ ‘Racial Mascots’
By Frank H. Wu and William Kidder
Oct 4, 2006, 16:56

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Asian Americans Aren’t White Folks’ ‘Racial Mascots’

By Frank H. Wu and William Kidder

…The key finding of the Princeton study is actually that Asian Americans suffer from what law professor Jerry Kang has called “negative action.” In truth, Asian Americans are being treated differently — that is, worse — than White applicants with similar qualifications. Asian Americans are held to a higher standard than Whites, without any rationale. Since three White students were admitted for every one African- American or Latino student, it follows that, for Asian Americans, the benefits of ending “negative action” exceeds the benefits of terminating affirmative action.

Another appropriate description of the situation is that Whites are enjoying a form of affirmative action vis-

Poiuyt · January 26, 2007, 7:20am

Wonder why my posts are truncated??? It seems it is impossible to cut-n-paste from the article, so go directly to the link in the next post. The contention here is that AAs are used as a scapegoat group to attack affirmative action, and are in fact disadvantaged vis-a-vis Whites for bearing the brunt of Affirmative Action.

Poiuyt · January 26, 2007, 7:22am

<a href=“http://www.diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_6480.shtml[/url]”>http://www.diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_6480.shtml</a>

Poiuyt · January 26, 2007, 7:40am

Here’s the Princeton Study:

Without Affirmative Action:

"The percentage of admitted students who are black would fall to 3.3 percent, from 9 percent. For Hispanics, the drop would be to 3.8 percent, from 7.9 percent.

Such dramatic changes in policy would have little impact, however, on white applicants. Their admission rate would rise slightly, to 24.3 percent, from 23.8 percent.

The big gains would be for Asian applicants. Their admission rate in a race-neutral system would go to 23.4 percent, from 17.6 percent. And their share of a class of admitted students would rise to 31.5 percent, from 23.7 percent."

Asian-Americans, not Whites, have been bearing the brunt of diversity!

<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/06/07/affirm[/url]”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/06/07/affirm</a>

Poiuyt · January 26, 2007, 8:11am

epiphany, bay, those who accuse Asian-Americans of demanding PREFERENTIAL treatment, etc…care to comment?

4 out of every 5 slots currently taken by Affirmative Action beneficiaries would go to Asian-Americans, which means 1 out of every 5 slots goes to Whites/Jewish-Americans. It means 4 Asians are made to sacrifice their places, whereas only 1 White is disadvantaged.

Think about it - Asians make up 5% of the population, but are made to take on 80% of the sacrifice.

I’m ALL for Affirmative Action, but what say you we make the sacrifice EVENLY and PROPORTIONATELY distributed among the other ethnic groups to accommodate more Hispanics and Blacks???

The SILENCE is deafening…

Poiuyt · January 26, 2007, 8:45am

Let’s do some Math, shall we? Based on an approximate census of the total population, 5% Asians & 70% Whites, PROPORTIONATELY, the % of sacrifice should be 5/75 x100 or approx. 7% for Asians and 70/75 x100 or 93% for Whites. Let’s be generous, and demand Asians take on 10% of the responsibility and ease the burden for the Whites by 3.4%. It means out of every 10 slots given to Affirmative Action beneficiaries, it should be at most 1 Asian who should be disadvantaged, not 8 as is the current case as meticulously documented by the trustworthy Princeton researchers.

IsleBoy · January 26, 2007, 10:15am

Just more fuel for everyone about Asians, myself included…since the topic has changed into another permutation of ethnicity, gender (less so), normative and positive values, What the Supreme Court ruled versus what some people think should be national political policy, having to do with Asian ethnicity as a group versus being seen as an individual)…

Colleges Regroup After Voters Ban Race Preferences
By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: January 26, 2007

With Michigan’s new ban on affirmative action going into effect, and similar ballot initiatives looming in other states, many public universities are scrambling to find race-blind ways to attract more blacks and Hispanics. 

At Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, a new admissions policy, without mentioning race, allows officials to consider factors like living on an Indian reservation or in mostly black Detroit, or overcoming discrimination or prejudice. 

Others are using many different approaches, like working with mostly minority high schools, using minority students as recruiters, and offering summer prep programs for promising students from struggling high schools. Ohio State University, for example, has started a magnet high school with a focus on math and science, to help prepare potential applicants, and sends educators into poor and low-performing middle and elementary schools to encourage children, and their parents, to start planning for college.

Officials across the country have a sense of urgency about the issue in part because Ward Connerly, the black California businessman behind such initiatives in California and Michigan, is planning a kind of Super Tuesday next fall, with ballot initiatives against racial preferences in several states. He is researching possible campaigns in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, and expects to announce next month which states he has chosen. 

Ann Korschgen, vice provost at the University of Missouri, said in a recent interview, “Just this morning, we had a conversation along the line of how we would continue to ensure diversity at our campus if we could not consider race.” 

The issue is already heating up in Colorado. This month, two Republican representatives in Colorado asked the state to examine the University of Colorado’s spending on diversity, after a libertarian group questioned the expenditures.

Mr. Connerly said that a decade ago, when California passed its ban, Proposition 209, he thought the state was ahead of its time, but that now, he believes “the country is poised to make a decision about race, about what its place in American life is going to be — and I really believe the popular vote may be the way to achieve that.” 

Both defenders and opponents of affirmative action say the lesson of last fall’s campaign in Michigan — where Proposition 2, banning race and gender preferences in public education, employment and contracting, passed by 58 percent to 42 percent despite strong opposition from government, business, labor, education and religious leaders — is that such initiatives can succeed almost anywhere. 

“Certain things become popular as state initiatives, like the ban on gay marriages, and restrictions on affirmative action could become one of those things,” said Terry Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education.

If so, he said, private universities, with their wide discretion in admissions and financial aid, could have a competitive advantage regarding diversity, reshaping the landscape of higher education. 

“Private universities can do whatever they want, consistent with federal law and the Supreme Court,” Mr. Hartle said. “Where minority students have a choice between selective public universities that cannot use affirmative action, and selective private universities with strong affirmative action programs, the private universities may seem like the more hospitable places, which would give them an advantage in drawing a diverse student body.” 

To many educators, that would be a troubling turnabout.

“You’d think public universities are charged with special responsibility for ensuring access, but it could come to be exactly the opposite, if there are a lot of these state initiatives,” said Evan Caminker, the dean of the University of Michigan Law School, adding, “in terms of public values, it’s a big step backward.”

Mr. Connerly is unbothered: If black and Hispanic students are rare at selective universities, the solution is better academic preparation, not special treatment in admissions. “Every individual should have the same opportunity to compete,” he said. “I don’t worry about the outcomes.”

Legally, affirmative action has been a moving target. In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled in cases involving the University of Michigan that race could be one of many factors in admissions, although admissions offices could not give extra points to minority candidates. Many colleges nationwide then moved to “holistic” review, considering applicants’ ethnicity, but not awarding a set number of points. In states that could face a ballot initiative campaign, though, that standard could fall. 

Nationwide, after 30 years of debate, and litigation, over affirmative action, universities have made strikingly little progress toward racially representative student bodies. And recently, with growing awareness that affluent students are vastly overrepresented at selective colleges, the longstanding focus on racial diversity has been joined by a growing concern about economic diversity. 

Currently, four states with highly ranked public universities — California, Florida, Michigan and Washington — forbid racial preferences, either because of ballot propositions or decisions by elected officials. 

Texas banned affirmative action for seven years. The University of Texas resumed consideration of race after the 2003 United States Supreme Court ruling. “We need every tool we can get,” concluded Dr. Bruce Walker, the university’s director of admissions.

In California and Texas, the first two states to ban racial preferences, underrepresented minorities at the flagship universities declined — even though both states, and Florida, adopted plans giving a percentage of top high school graduates guaranteed admission to state universities. 

In Texas, students admitted through the Top 10 percent plan swamped the flagship Austin campus. But the plan, now being rethought by the Legislature, never brought in many minority students. Last fall, with both race-conscious admissions and the Top 10 plan, blacks made up an all-time high of 5 percent of the freshman class, and Hispanics 19 percent.

A decade after the California ban, only 2 percent of this year’s freshmen at the University of California, Los Angeles, are black: a 30-year low. Hispanic representation at U.C.L.A. has dropped, too. At Berkeley, the number of blacks in the freshman class plunged by half the year after the ban, and the number of Hispanics nearly as much. 

Systemwide, blacks make up only 3 percent of U.C. freshmen, although about 7 percent of the state’s high school graduates are black. Most top black students choose private institutions over state campuses. Over all, of the top third of all students offered admission to the University of California class of 2005, most enrolled and only 19 percent went instead to selective private colleges. But among blacks in that group, 51 percent chose selective private colleges. Meanwhile, up the coast, Stanford University is enrolling more underrepresented minority students. Among this year’s freshmen, 11 percent are African-American, up from 8 percent in 1995; Hispanic enrollment has risen, too. 

“Folks look for a place that’s comfortable,” said Richard Shaw, Stanford’s admissions dean. “They want a sense that there’s kids like them at the institution.” 

The University of Michigan, with other state institutions, tried to win a delay of the ban so it would not hit in the middle of this year’s admissions cycle. But the courts rejected this effort, so officials have stopped considering race and gender as factors in admissions, and worry that next year’s entering class will be less diverse. Many officials worry that they will lose top minority candidates to selective private universities. 

“We know from colleagues in Texas and California that if we can’t take race into account, we’re at a competitive disadvantage,” said Julie Peterson, a spokeswoman for the University of Michigan, where two-thirds of the applicants are from out of state. 

Since most of Michigan is overwhelmingly white, said Mary Sue Coleman, the university’s president, a plan guaranteeing admission to a percentage of top high school graduates would have little impact, and nothing short of affirmative action will maintain the university’s racial diversity. 

“Of course, you want to look at family income, and being the first in the family to attend college and those kinds of factors, of course we do that, but it doesn’t get us to a racially diverse student body,” Dr. Coleman said. 

At the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, a program guaranteeing that low-income students can graduate debt-free helped to increase the percentage of blacks in the freshman class to 12 percent, and to increase both economic diversity and the enrollment of underrepresented minority students. Other states have started similar programs. 

In Detroit, Wayne State University Law School recently adopted a new admissions policy. Jonathan Weinberg, the professor assigned last year to draft a contingency policy, looked at other states with race-blind admissions and found that instead of race, they look to “a set of broader diversity concerns that go to socioeconomic status.” 

Last month, the faculty adopted his policy, eliminating any mention of race, but broadening the factors the admissions office may consider. Those include being the first in the family to go to college or graduate school; having overcome substantial obstacles, including prejudice and discrimination; being multilingual; and residence abroad, in Detroit or on an Indian reservation.

Frank Wu, the law school’s dean, said Wayne State’s effort to comply with the law could bring a legal challenge. 

“There’s a new fight building,” Mr. Wu said, “and that’s going to be whether the mere fact that you’re striving for diversity means you’re somehow trying to get around the ban and find proxies, or pretexts, for race, and that that’s impermissible. It’s ironic, but in some quarters our effort to adopt a new policy to comply with Prop 2 has been interpreted as an effort to circumvent it.”

Roger Clegg, president of the Council for Equal Opportunity, which opposes racial preferences, said policies like Wayne State’s do raise questions.

“I have a real problem when schools adopt what on their face are race-neutral criteria, if they are doing so to reach a predetermined racial and ethnic goal,” Mr. Clegg said. “Both in law and in common sense, the motivation matters.” 

At Ohio State University, where admissions are increasingly selective, officials are looking for a long-term answer. “When we saw what was coming down the road, we started looking to other models, but no other model results in as much diversity,” said Mabel Freeman, assistant vice president at Ohio State. “The only long-term solution is to do better in the pipeline and make sure all kids get the best education possible, K-12.”

<hr>

Let the debate go round-and-round…

Strengthen pre-college public schools…rather than try to change a holistic admissions policy to one that favors only certain factors, whether it is test scores, EC’s, gender, ethnicity, legacy status, socioeconomic class, geographic residency, etc… Wow, then the positive would be fairer, and the normative idea of equality would be supported.

Define and implement a better system before dismantling AA or advocating for admissions practices based only on stats without recognition of pre-college history so as not to cause inequity in the short term (a positive). Race-neutrality without dealing with the positivist effects (i.e. inequality of the marginalized), by focusing on the normative, seems a little short-sighted now…

I think the Supreme Court said it best.

Aloha!

epiphany · January 26, 2007, 10:46am

Poiyut,
The point about AA is not to make sure that students already advantaged by their family backgrounds & environment, become even more advantaged. (If Asians then increase their representation to 31+% vs. 20-something.)

Listen carefully: Asians as a whole, but certainly East Asians are considered extremely well represented in elite college admissions. The discussion is about elites, not publics (where, btw, in schools like Berkeley they are nearing 1/2 of the freshman class). Elites care about some kind of proportional (vaguely, and only within a qualified subset) representation of nationalities & races & ethnicities. If there were not enough qualified UNDER-represented minorities in the applicant pool, over-represented groups would increase their own presence there, by default. This is the way it works as Standard Operating Procedure, year after year.

It is a flexible and fluid situation, depending on who applies, from where they apply, and what needs and balances, on many planes, the University is seeking.

So you all trip out on your statistical hypotheticals, but University admissions just don’t operate this way. This is not formulaic.

Poiuyt · January 26, 2007, 11:17am

Ha, of course when the actual figures and statistics contradict your allegations, you dismiss them as “formulaic” and “hypothetical”, more allegations based on your “gut” feelings unsupported by any evidence. If the Princeton research are flawed and their staitistics skewed, please point us to a source that debunk that study.

You’d rather stick with your opinions about Asian-Americans, completely divorced from reality, than to make the effort to actually seek justice, fairness and balance.

The problem with the so-called “flexible approach” you favor is that the outcome, the result is plainly severe bias and discrimination against Asian students. But of course this is what you prefer in the first place, this result of little or no change in the number of whites admitted to the elite Universities. Otherwise, you would be alarmed by the fact that 5% of the population is made to take on the 80% of the Affirmative Action burden.

I am ALL FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION. No distortion of my stance is necessary here. I agree that Blacks and Hispanics should be given privileges and advantages, particularly those from certain socio-economic background.

Now my challenge is this - THE BURDEN OF SACRIFICE SHOULD BE SHARED PROPORTIONATELY AMONG ALL THE REMAINING ETHNIC GROUPS.

You claim Whites did more than Asians, the reserach and study shows the complete opposite. Asian-Americans are made to bear the ENTIRE burden of Affirmative Action. Whites have not been required to make more than a token sacrifice for Affirmative Action.

Is this fair? Is this what is mandated by the Supreme Court in their verdict about diversity? Is this what America is about? Pick the most vulnerable and least vocal minority and make them pay?

epiphany · January 26, 2007, 11:42am

“You’d rather stick with your opinions about Asian-Americans, completely divorced from reality, than to make the effort to actually seek justice, fairness and balance.”

You obviously haven’t followed the history of my posts on this, since the discussion began many weeks ago. I don’t have (negative) opinions about Asian-Americans. Stop scapegoating me just because I don’t agree with you, nor do I buy your manipulation of hypotheticals to advance your views.

“Asian-Americans are made to bear the ENTIRE burden of Affirmative Action.”

I don’t buy that statement for a nano-second. It’s not true now, nor has it been true historically.

Affirmative Action is not about “proportional sacrifice.” This is not what moves colleges to make the decisions they do. It’s about proportional representation. Any group that is quite over-represented will naturally be more affected than a group that had been less-represented in admissions (whether that second group is white or Asian). If the sacrifice (the adjustment) were “proportional,” an already highly over-represented group would remain highly over-represented, defeating the purpose of more balanced racial, ethnic, national representation.

But again, I’m not the author of these policies, and the complaints are misdirected. If you do not like the admissions policies, contact the colleges in question.

Poiuyt · January 26, 2007, 12:05pm

Correct me if I am wrong - is Affirmative Action about providing advantages to Blacks and Hispanic minorities or is it about penalizing Asian-Americans because they are by your own feelings, “over-represented”? A clear answer is needed.

Let’s assume there are 100 places in an elite college. Based on meritocracy alone, 10 of them went to Blacks and Hispanic, 30 of them went to Asians and 60 of them to Whites. Now it is decided that an extra 10 places be set aside for Blacks and Hispanic under affirmative Action. Is it fair to demand that Asians give up 8 places while whites give up 2, based not on proportionate sharing of the sacrifice, but solely on the feeling that Asians are “over-represented”? Isn’t this then Affirmative Action for Whites?

Poiuyt · January 26, 2007, 12:22pm

It isn’t up to you to “buy” the statement, the statement exists as a fact, until the researchers at Princeton are proven to be frauds. 4 out of every 5 slots given to Affirmative Action would have been filled by Asians, 1 by White/Others. With or without Affirmative Action, the enrollment numbers of Whites remain nearly the same, which means the AA places were shaved off from the Asian-Americans. Your “feelings”, of course, is another matter.

proletariat2 · January 26, 2007, 1:21pm

Now, you know I’m against affirmative action, but you and I both know that quotas aren’t used anywhere.

warblersrule · January 26, 2007, 1:22pm

Really? Last time I checked, hundreds of colleges willingly accept Asians as URMs. The same can’t be said for whites- except for a handful of HBCUs.

Of course, most posters narrow-mindedly focus on the “elite” universities.

epiphany · January 26, 2007, 1:31pm

The “researchers at Princeton” have been shown to have failed to comply with accurate scientific design, if you’re talking about the E&C “study.” They found statistics; they did not find causal connections between statistics & admissions. They did not examine confidential files. Their investigation was limited, and because of these limitations of data, the “conclusions” that they published were false. This has been discussed extensively on CC. Not rehashing it here. You need to do more reading.

Yes, it is up to me to buy the statement, and up to any thinking, educated individual trained in scientific discipline to examine research design, always, before buying or not buying conclusions. Research is universally & regularly subject to such examination by lay & professionals alike. Current research is always critiqued for its design, its hypotheses, premises, procedures, and conclusions – no matter what the field, no matter the country, the institution. Because something is published – whether on paper or on the internet, does not make it infallible.

My feelings are not at issue, nor did I discuss them or introduce them.

(“Non-responsive, Your Honor.”)

proletariat2 · January 26, 2007, 1:59pm

I know you’ve thought about if affirmative action is fair to African-Americans and other URMs. Now think about if it’s fair to everybody else.

Well, I’m not sure about most other people, but I really don’t care if I’m the only Asian around.

This is a very subjective statment. I, personally, prefer Canada.

If you ought not to have to, you shouldn’t. In this case, at least.

The Supremes aren’t the best source.

This statement doesn’t really mean anything. Care to expand?

You state that only african-americans know what it is like to be african-american. However, if this is true, then we can’t really take your word for it that it is any different, and it could really just be fabricated. By the way, only Asian-Americans know what it’s like to be Asian-American.

Central Asians (Mongolian, Kazakh, Uyghur, Tajik, etc.) are extremely underrepresented in America. It would be a broad and unfair statement to say that all Asians are overrepresented. Don’t you dare say that we need to keep them out to prevent them from defiling our national anthem at rodeos.

As fabrizio mentioned earlier, we’re trying to change this.

An organization is serparate from a workplace. If a person who is one-quarter each Jewish and Gypsy and half-Black and is severely physically disabled, a non-profit Neo-Nazi organization wouldn’t have to let him join, nor would the man want to join, which is another important factor when considering if lack of racial diversity would be helpful.

These statements are contradictory. This is a perfect example of a double standard.

I must say that one study isn’t much, when the probability of any study interpreting data wrongly, manipulating facts, mistaking correlation for causality, using an unfair sample, or using logical fallacies in the interpretation of the data is taken into account. This could, for example, just be an echo of the Civil Rights Movement, which allowed many more African-Americans to go to college, and increasing the amount in the workforce, which could very well have happened without AA. It could be showing signs of a gradual shift in the African-American culture itself. I’d have to see this study before I accept it as evidence.

Is being a nerd a virtue?

So, if quite a few, but not a ton, of Asians applied to an HBCU, they would have a higher acceptance rate due to holistic admissions and because they “are working hard to increase diversity”? Could I open a college only for white people if I wanted to? An HBCU does not allow for the discussion of all viewpoints, which you value so much.

But, you see, based on your scenario (equal qualifications) and for America to be closer to a true meritocracy, one would have to pick randomly.

Or we could try to change the policies of the government.

[/QUOTE]

proletariat2 · January 26, 2007, 2:02pm

When making statements like this, fit has to be taken into account. I agree that people shouldn’t be applying for prestige, but last I checked, Emory, Vanderbilt, Ole Miss, and WUSTL are not good fits for me.

Daily Princetonian Makes Fun of Stereotypical Asian Students

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