<p>m–I’m thinking more of international students–not Asian American immigrants or children of immigrants. I believe most intl students are required to take an ESL course if English is not the main language at home. Correct?</p>
<p>This will show my ignorance, but what were the American institutional reactions to the Chinese immigrants? When were they viewed as equals by American institutions?</p>
<p>a lot of good schools reject really good students that they don’t have enough room to accept–like asian students–and they think that, since they had such high scores many other good colleges would accept them.</p>
<p>“I think most Americans would like to see a more color-blind approach to opportunity. Most would be very open to a program that helps disadvantaged kids, regardless of race. I know in the past, this program was open to rich minority kids who would have no difficulty succeeding at an elite college. That rubs people the wrong way. Opening it up to non-minorities is a godd thing, no?”
So-called socioeconomic affirmative action won’t happen, as poor whites score higher than affluent blacks (“Blacks from relatively affluent families earning more than $70,000 per year scored 849
on the SAT in 1995, while whites from very poor families earning less than $10,000 per
year scored twenty points higher (869)”, <a href=“http://www.nas.org/reports/river_change/affirm-act_soc-sci.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nas.org/reports/river_change/affirm-act_soc-sci.pdf</a> , p31).</p>
<p>As Jeffrey Rosen in The New Republic put it, “As the gap between the LSAT scores of white and black candidates at the University of Texas shows, the end of affirmative action would mean, in many cases, a return to lily-white universities.” (Nowadays, Asians are ‘honorary whites’) <a href=“http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1077-3711(199522)8<57%3AWSAAIC>2.0.CO%3B2-T&size=LARGE[/url]”>http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1077-3711(199522)8<57%3AWSAAIC>2.0.CO%3B2-T&size=LARGE</a></p>
<p>This whole notion of ‘diversity is good’ is rather novel. The initial impetus for affirmative action was to ‘redress grievances,’ but significant gaps between the races remained after AA’s reign. As these gaps continued to remain, AA was then abandoned, as ‘grievances’ aren’t being ‘redressed,’ so AA has little point if it fails. So another justification was embraced, that of ‘diversity is good.’ The gaps between groups, resilient or not, no longer matter, because, diversity is supposedly a good, and therefore we ought pursue it (by obtaining proportional representation). We need no longer worry about having to ‘redress grievances.’ That the beneficiaries of this neo-AA might struggle, as they are not up to par with their classmates, matters not. (After all, the beneficiary is only there to provide ‘diversity’ for everyone else, suffering to assuage the guilt of others I suppose.) The neo-AA also confers preference upon recent immigrants, particularly Hispanics, where the AA with the initial justification would not.</p>
<p>Cheers:</p>
<p>I did have to take a 3 week orientation program (then at BU) for Boston-area international students. It was not so much for ESL, though my English was lamentable (I had too many Latinate polysyllabic words and not enough idiomatic English ones, my college roommate later claimed). We were introduced to American-style classes, including discussion, but also were told about American customs, including this strange American custom called “dating” (my parents would have been horrified to learn of it, so I kept it quiet).</p>
<p>The Chinese Exclusion Act was lifted in 1964, I believe. The big influx of immigrants and the impact on college enrolments came later. I did have some Chinese-American fellow students whose families lived in Chinatown. There was one single Chinese restaurant–Joyce Chen-- in Cambridge, and rumor had it that all the waiters were MIT students. When I was in grad school, there was still a Chinese laundry in Harvard Square. It’s been gone a long time ago.</p>
<p>EGoldstein: thanks for the link. interesting study.</p>
<p>
Yeah. The Irish crews built it from the east to Utah, where the golden spike was driven in with the silver hammer amidst much celebration. They could have finished the job. Ever hear the expression “Let the Paddy do it?”</p>
<p>I’m not crazy about comparing degrees of victimization, either. But did any immigrant group other than African blacks come in chains as slaves? I think the legacy of slavery clearly has impacted blacks more powerfully than the discrimination that other groups faced impacted them.</p>
<p>Stickershock:</p>
<p>Agree wholeheartedly. I’m just pointing out that Asians have generally not have had such an easy row to hoe, either; more importantly, they do not see why <em>they</em> should be the ones paying for past sins commited against African-Americans. </p>
<p>However, I do not think that Asian-Americans are necessarily being discriminated against on account of their ethnicity. There are too many other factors involved in building a class.</p>
<p>
No, and that fact is the single most important fact of all. It is constantly overlooked by others because they simply cannot or will not bring themselves to identify with that level of degradation. You know, it is not even the chains that destroyed blacks. It is both the philosophy that America developed to justify those chains, and the fact that America deliberately denied blacks the right, a natural right, to maintain a sense of self. None of this happened to the Chinese or to any other Asian group. In many ways it would have presented an easier, nobler history had blacks largely been killed off instead of made into a slave race and then ridiculed, even officially, as a sub-human class. None of this sort of degradation happened to anyone but blacks. The Asians who came here of their own free will, and who come here today, aren’t being made to “pay” for anything. They are simply agreeing, as part of the right to own the country, to assume the debt that America owes. If they do not wish to assume this debt, they ought to count the cost and then stay in their own countries. Else, they ought to learn American history and realize that some serious mess went down that has really messed up a lot of Americans. As Americans the Asians, the whites, the Hispanics, the blacks, and everyone else, has an obligation to roll up their sleeves and help fix it. We may ignore the history, say it doesn’t matter, declare that we should just get over it, or even throw a few bucks at the problem over a mere thirty to forty year period, but I think until we are really willing to be honest about what has happened, we are all gonna be sitting around here a hundred years from now still wondering angrily about how to deal with it. If not AA, I suspect we are in for something much worse, unless we try to really see into this thing as if it had happened to us.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Is that what they said when the Jews claimed they were discriminated against in college admissions years ago?</p>
<p>Drosselmeier:</p>
<p>Should descendents of Chinese who came in the 19th century or even later “stay in their own countries?”</p>
<p>Re post #649. I don’t think so. I believe there were definite quotas at work. Later they were disguised, but I think now colleges genuinely embrace diversity. Heck, this was a major reason why we remained in the public school system and why S chose one college over another.</p>
<p>Droselmeir,
Many Chinese who came into this country did not come of their free will, if you think “duping” is a form of free will. As marite had pointed out the famous word being “shanghaied”. Many of them who arrived here had no freedom of movements but to work …until they paid for their passages…and of course that "amount " was never enough. Even though they were not in chains physically, they were in chains figuratively. In addition, no Chinese women were allowed to come, so while the blacks could at least have other diversions and have family around, the Chinese men had no one. And because they couldn’t afford to repay their passages here, how the heck could they have gone back to their own country?
And if things were so bad here for the blacks, after they are freed, why didn’t they all go back? I know some did.</p>
<p>Ok, that’s all I want to say. I don’t want to compare degrees of victimization either. I know you are obviously very concerned the history of blacks in this country and probably have little knowledge of the history of Chinese in America.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, I guess Mr. Li and many Asians disagree with you. While you think quotas were at work towards the Jews and later disguised, I don’t know why you are so insistent that the same old tricks aren’t at work here.</p>
<p>
I assume these Chinese are not Chinese but are American, and as such they ought to be willing to incur the responsibility America has to fix the problem it has caused. As an American, I am certainly willing to address the issues affecting others, issues that had absolutely nothing to do with me and that neither my ancestors nor I caused. I don’t think Asians or any other sort of person who comes here should think themselves beyond our history. It is our history, and we all must deal with it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, you see these Chinese did indeed come of their own free will. They listened to a sales pitch and decided to trust the salesman. They were participating in a market and simply made bad investments. It happens all the time in markets. They could have done precisely as many Chinese did and stayed out of it. Blacks did not have even this choice.</p>
<p>I am not saying bad stuff didn’t happen to the Chinese. I know the history here. But none of it was of the same deliberate destructiveness that was officially heaped on blacks until as recently as the 1970s.</p>
<p>
Well, those “diversions” you so cavalierly mention here was in reality just plain breeding much like one would have bred horses and cattle. Blacks could not form families, at least not legally because such a thing would have recognized blacks as something more than property. They had “family” only inasmuch as the slaveowner decided the male, female or children would not be sold away – and that is a far more devastating sort of thing than merely being unable to find a mate. There is just no comparison here at all.</p>
<p>
First of all, few ever went “back”. If you are talking about Liberia, that “nation” was carved out of whole cloth by whites. American blacks never originated from there, and to this very day that country suffers as a result of the history that went down. Secondly, most blacks did not go “back” to Africa because they never were from Africa. Like blacks today, they had some vague idea of having some ancestors from the continent, but they had no idea of exactly what country in Africa they belonged to. They had no history, no authentic African identity to return to. It was just this amazingly thorough destruction of identity that the Chinese simply never endured.</p>
<p>No they did not. shanghaied means kidnapped. Many were indeed kidnapped; others were duped. As were many Africans who ended up as slaves here.</p>
<p>Dross, I really enjoy reading your posts. Just as someone has a sad tale , you can always be counted to top them. Not that I agree with you on everything.</p>
<p>Have you thought of being a counselor? You really have a way with words.</p>
<p>To add to what Drosselmeier has eloquently said, one thing that happened to blacks in America for many generations was the systematic destruction of family connections–even in the history of slavery around the world up to then, the scale of that was unprecedented. It was not one or two generations of injustice and degradation, it was many–and America is more prosperous for it. So I agree, we all owe a debt.</p>
<p>
Indeed, but the people here who form the Chinese are not here because of being kidnapped. In other words, no new people were formed of ethnic Chinese based purely on being kidnapped. No new Chinese American identity exists based upon being kidnapped. Surely, bad things have happened to many people, but the sort of crafting of a slave race that took place in America simply did not happen to the Chinese or to anyone else except blacks.</p>
<p>
I dont mean to say that whites owe blacks anything. I dont mean to say Asians owe blacks. I am saying we as Americans have a problem that our country caused to a huge segment of its people. If we are really Americans, then we all have a duty to fix this problem. Blacks have a duty too. For the good of the country, we have a duty to work ourselves out of the problem. But it will not happen as long as people come here claiming they werent responsible and so they ought not be expected to make sacrifices to fix the problems. I am saying if they want to be American, then part of that should be a willingness to make sacrifices to fix the countrys problem. If they will not dedicate themselves to this, then they are by default gonna ultimately be stuck with a really nasty alternative. Just look around and see it happening already. It is pernicious, and eats us all alive over time. Hip hop culture, the developing meth epidemic, personal debt, the national debt, slavery, Jim Crow, sexism, racism, political and corporate corruption, war, the slow but sure increase of crimes of all sorts, all of it, is really interconnected and it is gonna keep growing and growing until we are eaten up.</p>