Yale Guilty of Racial Discrimination

[Ana the Ist]

Against whites and asians....

Yale Discriminated by Race in Undergraduate Admissions, Justice Department Says

The Justice Department said Yale University has discriminated against Asian-American and white applicants, issuing its findings roughly two years after opening an investigation into the school’s admissions practices.

The department said Thursday that it found Yale discriminates based on race and national origin, violating federal civil-rights law, and that race was the “determinative factor” in hundreds of admissions decisions each year. It said for the majority of applicants, Asian-American and white students have one-tenth to one-fourth the likelihood of being admitted as African-American applicants with comparable academic credentials.

Geez....how about that black privilege?

What should be done here? Remove race from the application into Yale and any university with similar practices?

Or allow racial discrimination?

Thoughts?

 

[Michie]

Against whites and asians....

Yale Discriminated by Race in Undergraduate Admissions, Justice Department Says



Geez....how about that black privilege?

What should be done here? Remove race from the application into Yale and any university with similar practices?

Or allow racial discrimination?

Thoughts?

You know, honestly. Unless it’s a question for medical purposes I see no reason why these questions are asked at all on admission forms. Want to stop racism? Then stop asking questions about race and decide by their character and ability. Because people are still operating on race. That equals racism. Obviously.

 

[Michie]

Without the paywall.

Justice Department says Yale illegally discriminates against Asian and White students in admissions

 

[iluvatar5150]

I'm kind of torn on this one. Between academic recruiters and the Trump DOJ, I don't trust any of the parties to be acting in good faith.

You know, honestly. Unless it’s a question for medical purposes I see no reason why these questions are asked at all on admission forms. Want to stop racism? Then stop asking questions about race and decide by their character and ability. Because people are still operating on race. That equals racism. Obviously.

There are a couple problems with that (or at least with the current incarnation of the admissions process). The first is that the Common Application asks for birth country and mailing address, which is a big indicator of a person's race if they're not American. Colleges like foreign students because they pay full freight (and maybe a premium).

The second is that the admissions process isn't necessarily blind. Many top-tier universities including Stanford, Hopkins, and most or all of the Ivies offer optional alumni interviews to applicants. Ideally, these interviews give the applicant a chance to impress an alumni volunteer who would then write a favorable summary and pass it along to the admissions department. This is an obvious vector for bias to be introduced.

Third, names can be a pretty big giveaway.

Some of this could be dealt with by eliminating the interviews and anonymizing the applications, but then you'd have the problem of these admissions processes just reinforcing inequalities that occur upstream rather than trying to act as a corrective measure.

 

[Ana the Ist]

I'm kind of torn on this one. Between academic recruiters and the Trump DOJ, I don't trust any of the parties to be acting in good faith.

I get that....a lot of people don't believe Obama's DOJ investigations declaring police departments racist based upon largely anecdotal evidence.

There are a couple problems with that (or at least with the current incarnation of the admissions process). The first is that the Common Application asks for birth country and mailing address, which is a big indicator of a person's race if they're not American. Colleges like foreign students because they pay full freight (and maybe a premium).

The second is that the admissions process isn't necessarily blind. Many top-tier universities including Stanford, Hopkins, and most or all of the Ivies offer optional alumni interviews to applicants. Ideally, these interviews give the applicant a chance to impress an alumni volunteer who would then write a favorable summary and pass it along to the admissions department. This is an obvious vector for bias to be introduced.

Third, names can be a pretty big giveaway.

Some of this could be dealt with by eliminating the interviews and anonymizing the applications, but then you'd have the problem of these admissions processes just reinforcing inequalities that occur upstream rather than trying to act as a corrective measure.

Yeah....I agree that at the very least, admissions will have some idea of the race of applicants unless we take drastic action to hide it.

Why not just tell them to not consider race? It's an ivy league university.....is that somehow beyond their capabilities?

 

[Caliban]

I just found this on Reddit:

@reposado

An Asian student with a 25 MCAT and 3.3 GPA has a 6% chance of admittance into med school, white 9%, Latino 30%, and black 56%.

https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-...spanics-being-admitted-to-us-medical-schools/

On a lighter note, here is a story where an Indian kid faked being black in order to get in med school.

"He says he joined an organization for black students and applied to schools using his middle name, JoJo." Lol.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Why not just tell them to not consider race? It's an ivy league university.....is that somehow beyond their capabilities?

They’re human, so to some degree, probably, yes.

But beyond that, as I mentioned, going to a completely race-blind system fixes some problems but has the potential to reinforce others.

Pretend we have a perfectly meritocratic admissions system. “Merit” is going to be influenced by money more than anything, because “merit” can be enhanced by access to tutors, good primary and secondary schools, enriching extra-curricular activities, safe living environment, etc - all of which can be bought. So now our meritocratic admissions system at our selective universities gives an advantage to kids with money, exacerbating economic inequality.

Now, let’s say we spend a century or more forcing people of a certain skin color into poverty and robbing them of opportunity at every turn. Then, imagine we remove all the active oppression and we instantaneously revert back to a pure meritocracy. The folks from that oppressed community are going to be at a disadvantage in the meritocracy because they don’t have as many of the resources needed to compete on merit. The meritocracy may not exacerbate inequality as much as outright oppression does, but it probably isn’t going to help much, either.

A policy that is aware of inequalities has the potential to correct for some of them.

 

[Ana the Ist]

They’re human, so to some degree, probably, yes.

Ok.

But beyond that, as I mentioned, going to a completely race-blind system fixes some problems but has the potential to reinforce others.

Ok.

Pretend we have a perfectly meritocratic admissions system. “Merit” is going to be influenced by money more than anything, because “merit” can be enhanced by access to tutors, good primary and secondary schools, enriching extra-curricular activities, safe living environment, etc - all of which can be bought. So now our meritocratic admissions system at our selective universities gives an advantage to kids with money, exacerbating economic inequality.

Ok.

Now, let’s say we spend a century or more forcing people of a certain skin color into poverty and robbing them of opportunity at every turn. Then, imagine we remove all the active oppression and we instantaneously revert back to a pure meritocracy. The folks from that oppressed community are going to be at a disadvantage in the meritocracy because they don’t have as many of the resources needed to compete on merit. The meritocracy may not exacerbate inequality as much as outright oppression does, but it probably isn’t going to help much, either.

Sure...it's a different starting point.

A policy that is aware of inequalities has the potential to correct for some of them.

This is probably the only idea you're presenting that I'd have any objection with.

Going to Yale, in of itself, is an attempt at creating inequity. It provides a specific advantage in many ways over some who got an online degree from Devry, for example. It's an advantage which can be directly correlated with how much money one makes over their lifetime....and this will hold true whether we look at outcomes within a race or between them.

Given that we aren't actually going to remove "inequality"....why not attempt to create the most opportunity for each individual by asking that factors which should not matter like race be removed?

 

[iluvatar5150]

This is probably the only idea you're presenting that I'd have any objection with.

Going to Yale, in of itself, is an attempt at creating inequity. It provides a specific advantage in many ways over some who got an online degree from Devry, for example. It's an advantage which can be directly correlated with how much money one makes over their lifetime....and this will hold true whether we look at outcomes within a race or between them.

Given that we aren't actually going to remove "inequality"....why not attempt to create the most opportunity for each individual by asking that factors which should not matter like race be removed?

Because race has been such a big factor in this country in determining who gets what, I’m not sure that removing race from consideration necessarily would “create the most opportunity for each individual”. The advantages that would provide a leg up on a meritocratic admission system would also provide a leg up elsewhere in life, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the marginal benefit of an ivy league education was lower for a rich kid than it was for a poor or middle class kid. For example, are Jared Kushner and the Trump kids wealthy because they went to Harvard and Penn or are they wealthy because they were born wealthy? For a kid from middle-of-nowhere Kansas or some low-rent neighborhood of Detroit, Harvard could be the gateway to a whole new world; for them, it’s a nice plaque on the wall.

There’s also the question of how much race is overtly factored into these admissions vs how much it merely maps onto other parameters that are used. I don’t know the answer to this, but I can imagine a situation where race is ignored completely, bonus points are given solely on the basis of something like poverty, and you still wind up with the sort of racial disparities alleged in the OP. In the US, blacks tend to be poorer than whites and Asians, so in a poverty-based system, they would get the most points. OTOH, US immigration policy has selected for Asians (including east asians and indians) who tend to be better educated and more entrepreneurial, leading them to be more affluent than the average. They still wind up over-represented in universities, but don’t get the poverty points that blacks and some whites get, so their average test scores are higher, making it appear as if they’re being discriminated against.

 

[Tom 1]

They’re human, so to some degree, probably, yes.

But beyond that, as I mentioned, going to a completely race-blind system fixes some problems but has the potential to reinforce others.

Pretend we have a perfectly meritocratic admissions system. “Merit” is going to be influenced by money more than anything, because “merit” can be enhanced by access to tutors, good primary and secondary schools, enriching extra-curricular activities, safe living environment, etc - all of which can be bought. So now our meritocratic admissions system at our selective universities gives an advantage to kids with money, exacerbating economic inequality.

Now, let’s say we spend a century or more forcing people of a certain skin color into poverty and robbing them of opportunity at every turn. Then, imagine we remove all the active oppression and we instantaneously revert back to a pure meritocracy. The folks from that oppressed community are going to be at a disadvantage in the meritocracy because they don’t have as many of the resources needed to compete on merit. The meritocracy may not exacerbate inequality as much as outright oppression does, but it probably isn’t going to help much, either.

A policy that is aware of inequalities has the potential to correct for some of them.

From the outside it looks like a curve that's starting to reach a point where the current generation of students at top universities have parity - wealthy parents with good jobs etc. Seems like a good time to phase out the affirmative action in some contexts, as the next generation of wealthy black kids will need that level playing field too for any real integration and equality of peers to take place, and just to 'keep it real' and not have anyone thinking they deserve special favours. The reasons for those programs are obvious and right, but have outlived their usefulness in this kind of scenario where the reverse discrimination is so blatant.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Maybe we should wait for a trial before declaring them guilty.

Harvard won the first round of litigation on a similar accusation.

The issues are complex, but the fact is that affirmative action is legal, while certain forms of affirmative action are illegal.

 

[Albion]

Don't you just love it when footsoldiers of the "Woke" movement get hoisted by their own petards?

 

[Caliban]

Maybe we should wait for a trial before declaring them guilty.

Harvard won the first round of litigation on a similar accusation.

The issues are complex, but the fact is that affirmative action is legal, while certain forms of affirmative action are illegal.

Agreed. I have no problem with affirmative action. I think disadvantaged young people deserve societal help since negative societal harm has been the norm. I am concerned however, by harming one student to help another. A good policy would elevate all students without harming any. If Asian students are being denied entry to a university who would otherwise be an excellent admissions choice, that seems unfair. A problem is that school only have so much room. But...schools which university hasn't grown its student population in the last ten years by a huge margin? College admissions policies are doing a lot of heavy lifting that many people are unaware of. Admissions officers consider their role in terms of providing educational, as well as societal equity. Words like that become political and that is probably why this is news.

 

[iluvatar5150]

From the outside it looks like a curve that's starting to reach a point where the current generation of students at top universities have parity - wealthy parents with good jobs etc. Seems like a good time to phase out the affirmative action in some contexts, as the next generation of wealthy black kids will need that level playing field too for any real integration and equality of peers to take place, and just to 'keep it real' and not have anyone thinking they deserve special favours. The reasons for those programs are obvious and right, but have outlived their usefulness in this kind of scenario where the reverse discrimination is so blatant.

I don't necessarily agree that "reverse discrimination is so blatant", but I think I would like to see a shift towards an affirmative action based on finances/wealth and away from a system that can be so easily gamed by wealth. I'm generally of the opinion that really trying to tackle poverty can go a long way towards fixing racial disparities while also correcting other problems. Practically, aside from a couple examples (e.g. getting rid of legacy admissions and the reliance on foreign-paid tuition) I don't know how to do that without heavy investment in education and other social services upstream of the university.

 

[essentialsaltes]

I don't necessarily agree that "reverse discrimination is so blatant", but I think I would like to see a shift towards an affirmative action based on finances/wealth and away from a system that can be so easily gamed by wealth.

I like one of the measures the University of California has taken. If you graduate in the top 9% of your class in a California high school, you will get a spot at one of the campuses, if available. So students at schools in poor neighborhoods are on a more equal footing. The best students can still get in.

 

[iluvatar5150]

I like one of the measures the University of California has taken. If you graduate in the top 9% of your class in a California high school, you will get a spot at one of the campuses, if available. So students at schools in poor neighborhoods are on a more equal footing. The best students can still get in.

And despite its reputation as fancy and expensive, Harvard (and I imagine other ivies, too) has a very generous financial aid system so that students rarely pay full freight unless they can afford to. Real-world costs are likely to be more expensive at a mid-tier school than at an elite school. That doesn't fix all of the problems, but it does take some of the edge off.

 

[Ana the Ist]

First off...thanks for keeping this dialogue civil. I know you normally do, but these days it seems like this conversation is difficult to have without someone making snap moral judgements about your character no matter what side of the discussion you're on.

Secondly, my reply took so long because frankly, I've thought pretty extensively about the topic and could pretty easily fill 5 pages on CF here and still have more to write. I will try to stick to a couple of central points.

Because race has been such a big factor in this country in determining who gets what, I’m not sure that removing race from consideration necessarily would “create the most opportunity for each individual”.

How big of a factor is it? It's the central claim of the argument you're making and I honestly don't see how anyone can actually know such a thing. Claims about the size and scope of racial discrimination on outcomes appear to be....largely subjective. Anyone can pick a statistic and claim it supports their beliefs about the importance of racial discrimination in wealth outcomes.

For example, I could use the numbers from the DOJ in the OP and claim even though racial discrimination impacts asians 10 times as much as it does blacks (in regards to admissions) and whites 4 times as much as blacks. In spite of this clearly institutionalized racial discrimination against whites and asians....it doesn't appear to significantly impact their average wealth over their lifetimes. As a group, asians are doing the best...whites the second best...ergo, institutional racism doesn't necessarily have a huge impact on wealth that some seem to believe.

Likewise, I'm sure you can point to some numbers on redlining (for example) and claim that the institutionalized racism is a huge factor that impacts lifetime wealth.

My point here isn't that we should endlessly go back and forth arguing about the importance of such a factor. My point is that since the importance of the factor cannot be known our discussion should be the morality/ethics of racial discrimination...or perhaps more accurately, the morality of a principle based upon racial discrimination.

The principle in question here is whether or not one can be morally justified in knee-capping a racial group economically so that another race can benefit.

Like a Tonya Harding (blacks) asking a guy (the government) to hide in the bushes to whack Nancy Kerrigan (asians and whites)
in the knee to get a leg up on the competition.

I'm saying that fully understanding the argument for such behavior is that blacks were getting kneecapped in the past....but to me this is a strange argument because I'm sure we both agree that such racist discrimination was wrong in the past....and much like now, those who committed such injustices in the past believed they had perfectly good reasons as well.

The advantages that would provide a leg up on a meritocratic admission system would also provide a leg up elsewhere in life, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the marginal benefit of an ivy league education was lower for a rich kid than it was for a poor or middle class kid. For example, are Jared Kushner and the Trump kids wealthy because they went to Harvard and Penn or are they wealthy because they were born wealthy? For a kid from middle-of-nowhere Kansas or some low-rent neighborhood of Detroit, Harvard could be the gateway to a whole new world; for them, it’s a nice plaque on the wall.

It really depends on what opportunities they use the degree for. That poor kid going to Harvard for a degree in finance can open up a new world of opportunities. If however, the kid chooses to get a degree in pan-African religious studies or genderqueer dance theory isn't likely to get much more value out of it than a wall decoration.

Likewise, if the rich kid squandered opportunities of a higher education, he risks failing to maintain the wealth his family has worked so hard to bequeath him.

There’s also the question of how much race is overtly factored into these admissions vs how much it merely maps onto other parameters that are used. I don’t know the answer to this, but I can imagine a situation where race is ignored completely, bonus points are given solely on the basis of something like poverty, and you still wind up with the sort of racial disparities alleged in the OP. In the US, blacks tend to be poorer than whites and Asians, so in a poverty-based system, they would get the most points. OTOH, US immigration policy has selected for Asians (including east asians and indians) who tend to be better educated and more entrepreneurial, leading them to be more affluent than the average. They still wind up over-represented in universities, but don’t get the poverty points that blacks and some whites get, so their average test scores are higher, making it appear as if they’re being discriminated against.

I can't say I know....the article claims that the DOJ looked at identical merits....so if household wealth is a factor in admissions I'm inclined to think that it was the same (relatively speaking) for the applicants they looked at.

It's possible though, that factor isn't overtly considered but still considered subjectively. Obviously, there's no real "perfect merit system" since people aren't capable of valuing such various factors perfectly.

 

[Michie]

The universities are not doing this to be fair but to protect their image. They could really care less imo.

 

[IceJad]

This whole inequality of upbringing and race as factors for admission into university needs to be removed in totality. Reeks of racism and bigotry. Are there no poor but brilliant Asians/White people? Why should they be punished so some other less qualified individual can take his/her future potential away? Even if they are rich that shouldn't be a determining factor at all.

I know of wealthier peers who got scholarship into better universities than me when I was fresh out of secondary education. You know what? They deserved it. They were smarter and more capable than me. Do their family wealth played a role in their academic superiority? Maybe but more likely it's their determination, work ethics and hard work that got them the results they wanted. I didn't cry and moan about it. I pulled up my socks got into a private college and got a degree with distinction. While I'm not a high earner like my peers I'm not poor either. In fact I can be considered upper middle income.

In short I got where I'm now by my effort.

Everyone rich or poor should have equal opportunity to get the best in life and not be arbitrary restricted by their possessions or family wealth. The only determining factor is their academic potential. Stop this "robbing Paul to pay Peter" policy. Ludicrous!

 

[iluvatar5150]

The universities are not doing this to be fair but to protect their image. They could really care less imo.

You don't know anybody who's ever been involved in university admissions, do you?

In short I got where I'm now by my effort.

Everyone rich or poor should have equal opportunity to get the best in life and not be arbitrary restricted by their possessions or family wealth. The only determining factor is their academic potential. Stop this "robbing Paul to pay Peter" policy. Ludicrous!

You can't get around the impact that wealth has on opportunity without some deliberate action downstream of those impacts.