连犹太人都同情亚裔了，亚裔还不自己站出来保护自己 (转载)# Parenting - 为人父母
s*5
1 楼
有网友问其他媒体怎么讨论这个大学录取的“族裔考虑”的情况，这里有两篇文章供大
家参考。第二篇文章的作者好像是个反歧视的专家，在文章里把正向歧视和方向歧视分
析了一番。其实简单说来，提高亚裔的入学门槛就是对亚裔的反向歧视。
这次80-20请的就是有着丰富宪法/民权的犹太律师帮大家准备的“法律之友”，和我们
亚裔合作的犹太组织是Brandeis Center For Human Rights, a well-known Jewish
org., to co-file an amicus brief. Kenneth Marcus, Center's President, was
staff director of The federal Civil Rights Commission. Marcus said,"It wasn'
t right for the Ivies to limit Jewish students then, it's not right for
Ivies to limit Asian Ams students now."
http://brandeiscenter.com/
其实这次反高校族裔考量的做法恰恰是和民主党的一贯做法背道而驰的，这也是为什么
许多亚裔政治组织这次不愿意参与到这次活动的原因之一。
我只想说这个组织到底能多有效是靠大家一起努力来建成的。对80-20不满意的人请帮
我们找到比80-20能找到的更好的律师，更好的其他组织来帮我们一起共同给最高法院
递这个‘法律之友’。在这里说风凉话或大骂某几个ID真的无济于事。
《非诚勿扰》中的吴铮真有句话说得很好，“这世界上有些事没人做，有些人没事做，
[有些人]就去做[那些]没人做的事情，然后被那些没事做的人来质疑。但是没关系
。。。虽然我们不能增加生命的长度，但是我们已经增加了生命的宽度。不管别人怎么
说，做好自己。”
我也要用上面的话来勉励在80-20或华人社区真正做事的人。拆毁远比建造容易。在网
上把别人臭骂一通总比自己花出时间精力来做实事容易得多。
对这件事情真正感兴趣的人请去关注80-20教育基金会。这个组织是一个nonprofit的
501c3的组织。这次要反对歧视亚裔的高校录取‘族裔考虑’的主要发起组织之一。
http://www.80-20educationalfoundation.org/
马上大选要开始了，80-20教育基金会的姐妹组织80-20促进会（Political Action
Committee)马上也会开始讨论到底我们亚裔endorse谁最好，请大家去这里关注他们是
怎么决定去endorse谁的。谢谢。
http://www.80-20initiative.net/news/preselect2008.asp
【 以下文字转载自 SanFrancisco 讨论区 】
发信人: spectrum805 (spectrum805), 信区: SanFrancisco
标 题: 连犹太人都同情亚裔了，亚裔还不自己站出来保护自己
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Sat Jun 16 03:08:25 2012, 美东)
100多年前，藤校也是怕犹太人over represent了，所以用各种理由限制犹太人入学。
现在他们觉得亚裔的处境就和他们当年一样所以愿意过来帮亚裔支持反高校入学用‘族
裔’做理由提高亚裔入学门槛的做法。这里有两篇美国媒体的文章分析这件事， 大家
可以看看：
Subject: Weekly Standard- The New Jews They're Asian Americans. Ethan
Epstein June 11, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 37
______________________________________
The New Jews， They're Asian Americans.
Ethan Epstein
June 11, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 37
Like many colleges and universities, Princeton professes its devotion to “
institutional equity and diversity.” The university’s website claims that
the school “actively seek[s] students, faculty, and staff of exceptional
ability and promise who . . . will bring a
diversity of viewpoints and cultures,” before explaining that “examples of
personal characteristics that confer diversity of viewpoint and culture
include but are not limited to gender, sexual orientation, gender identity,
race, ethnicity, national origin,” etc.
The U.S. Department of Education may beg to differ. Since 2008, according to
a spokesman, its Office for Civil Rights has been investigating whether the
school “discriminates against Asians, on the basis of race or national
origin, in its admissions process”—that is, whether students of Asian
descent are being penalized for their background when applying to the school
. Princeton, for its part, said through a spokesman, “We treat each
application individually and we don’t discriminate on the basis of race or
national origin. . . . We evaluate applications in
a holistic manner, and no particular factor in the admission process is
assigned a fixed weight. There is no formula for weighing the various
aspects of the application.” One could be forgiven for wondering how the
claim that the school “does not discriminate on the basis of race or
national origin” does not contradict its mission to “actively seek
students” who “bring a diversity of viewpoints and cultures,” though.
After all, doesn’t trying to foster a diverse student body necessitate some
form of race-based decision making?
This isn’t to single out the Tigers. Indeed, Princeton is far from alone in
being accused of anti-Asian bias in admissions. In August of last year, an
Indian-American student filed a complaint with the Department of Education
against Harvard alleging anti-Asian discrimination in its admissions
department. (The student ultimately withdrew the complaint in February 2012.
) Michele Hernández, author of A Is for Admissions and former admissions
staffer at Dartmouth, recently said that “after 10 years of [counseling]
and 4 years in Dartmouth admissions, I don’t think it’s intentional, but I
think there is discrimination. If you look at the numbers, you can
basically see that [if you are applying to many selective colleges] you have
to have higher-than-average scores if you are an Asian.”
Asian Americans routinely outperform all other groups, including Caucasians,
in academic achievement, a pattern that has been observed since at least
the mid-1980s. By eighth grade, “the percentage of Asian American students
scoring in the upper echelons on math exams was 17 points higher than the
percentage of white students,” reports the Washington Post. When it’s time
to apply for college, the gap continues: In 2010, the last year for which
data were available, the average SAT score for Asian Americans was 1636,
versus 1580 for Caucasian students, 1369 for Mexicans and Mexican Americans,
and 1277 for African Americans.
But as Asian Americans have risen through the academic ranks, some claim
that they’ve become the “new Jews”—a group considered to be “
overrepresented” in elite academia.
Data bear this out. A Center for Equal Opportunity study, cited on the
Manhattan Institute’s website in the wake of the Harvard complaint, found
that Asian applicants to the University of Michigan in 2005 had a median SAT
score that was “50 points higher than the median score of white students
who were accepted, 140 points higher than that of Hispanics and 240 points
higher than that of blacks.” The center also found that “among applicants
with a 1240 SAT score and 3.2 grade point average in 2005, the university
admitted 10 percent of Asian Americans, 14 percent of whites, 88 percent of
Hispanics and 92 percent of blacks.” As further evidence, consider that “
after the state of California abolished racial preferences, the percentage
of Asian Americans accepted at Berkeley increased from 34.6 percent in 1997,
the last year of legal affirmative action, to 42 percent entering in fall
2006,” clear evidence that the group had been unfairly penalized under the
previous regime.
Ironically enough, one of the most revealing studies of this phenomenon was
conducted by one of Princeton’s own. In 2009, Thomas Espenshade, a
Princeton professor of sociology, co-authored a report that revealed
students of Asian descent did indeed face discrimination at colleges and
universities beyond the Ivy League. According to Espenshade’s analysis, an
Asian student needs to score 140 points higher than whites on the math and
reading portions of the SAT, 270 points higher than Hispanics, and 450
points higher than blacks to have the same chances of admission at the
nation’s top schools. “[A]ll other things equal,” Espenshade told Inside
Higher Ed, “Asian-American students are at a disadvantage relative to white
students, and at an even bigger disadvantage relative to black and Latino
students.”
To supporters of affirmative action, the practice has two major benefits—
one positive and one punitive. For one, they say that it’s a necessary
corrective to grave historical injustices. Two—and this they don’t often
say out loud—affirmative action punishes those who are perceived to have
benefited from (or even personally perpetrated) the politics of racial
supremacy.
But in both cases—even if one accepts those justifications—discriminating
against Asians is indefensible. Indeed, it can be reasonably argued that
Asian Americans have endured more discrimination than American Hispanics,
who benefit from affirmative action as it is currently executed. And Asian
Americans can hardly be accused of oppressing other racial groups en masse.
As S. B. Woo, former lieutenant governor of Delaware and current
director of the Asian-American advocacy organization the 80-20 Initiative,
says, “there is no historical rationale that justifies forcing Asian
Americans to bear the burden of preference, more than other Americans.”
Indeed, given the historical injustices suffered by Americans of Asian
descent—Japanese internment, the Chinese Exclusion Act—in an honest
affirmative action regime, they would stand to benefit.
The times may be a changin’, though. This fall, the Supreme Court will hear
a case brought by a white student who says she was denied admission to the
University of Texas on account of her Caucasian background. Consequently,
racial preferences in college admissions could be banned altogether—a real
possibility, given the Court’s relatively conservative bent.
But until then, Asian applicants may continue to have to leap a higher bar
than others. Unsurprisingly, the Associated Press reported late last year
that increasing numbers of Asian applicants are neglecting to identify
themselves as such—students of mixed descent, for example, fail to mention
their Asian heritage at all, checking the box for “Caucasian” and leaving
“Asian” blank.
Maybe they should check “Native American” instead.
Ethan Epstein is an editorial assistant at The Weekly Standard
----------------------------------
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2012/06/affirmative_a
June 7, 2012
Affirmative Action Starts to Unravel
By John S. Rosenberg
Listen closely and you can hear the sound of "diversity" crumbling, this
week mixed with laughter over the news that the City University of New York
has created two more official diversity groups--"white/Jewish" and "Italian-
Americans."
Critics of the new Jewish category claim that "the creation of a label for
Jewish professors could be used to limit their job opportunities." So, what
else is new? Creating labels for blacks, Hispanics, Italians, etc., also no
doubt limits job opportunities for Jews.
Actually, CUNY's newly-minted effort to include Jews (but not Muslims, Irish
, Pentecostal-Americans, etc.) has a close relationship with the issues
being presented to the Supreme Court in Fisher v. University of Texas at
Austin--and not simply because the CUNY policy reveals so glaringly the
incoherence at the core of the "diversity" justification for preferential
treatment.
Fifteen amicus briefs here support Abigail Fisher's claim that Texas's
racial preference policy is unconstitutional, and the two of them that have
generated the most attention in the past few days were filed on behalf of
Asian-American groups likening their treatment under affirmative action to
the early 20th Century Jewish quotas in the Ivy League.
Both of those briefs (this one and this one) cite Daniel Golden, who argued
in The Price of Admission (2007) that "Asian-Americans are the new Jews,
inheriting the mantle of the most disenfranchised group in college
admissions." As Peter Schmidtpointed out, the briefs filed by Asian-American
organizations opposing affirmative action represent "a marked departure
from the position most other Asian-American groups have taken on the issue."
Jews Standing with Goliath Against David?
Indeed, reflecting both the "new Jew" identity and the break from the
traditional Asian-American position, S.B. Woo, a retired physicist who heads
the 80-20 organization of Asian-Americans that signed on to one of the
briefs, has written in a fundraising appeal that "We are in an uphill battle
like David v. Goliath, only with a twist: Imagine some Jews block David's
path, arguing that Goliath may well be their best friend. Furthermore, they
contend they represent all Jews. Can David still win?" He could have
mentioned that two out of the three leading Jewish groups, all of whom filed
amicus briefs supporting Allan Bakke, have also joined forces with Goliath.
The two Asian briefs document the pervasive and profound extent of the
discrimination against Asian-Americans wrought by preferences for blacks and
Hispanics. Much of that evidence -- such as Princeton Professor Thomas
Espenshade's finding that nationwide blacks enjoy a 450-point "boost" on
their SAT scores compared to Asians, and that that if affirmative action
were eliminated across the nation "Asian students would fill nearly four out
of every five places in the admitted class not taken by African-American
and Hispanic students" -- is familiar to readers of Minding the Campus (I
discussed it here). "Because affirmative action is grounded (notwithstanding
all the transparent claptrap about 'diversity') in a desire to help
minorities," I noted, "evidence that it significantly harms an ethnic
minority makes its academic supporters as uncomfortable as a skunk at a
garden party."
It seems to me, however, that the obvious discrimination against Asians
should not (and probably does not) make supporters of affirmative action
uncomfortable. Why, after all, should they think that discrimination against
Asians is any worse or any more embarrassing than the discrimination
against all other non-preferred ethnic groups and whites -- including CUNY's
"White/Jewish" group -- that they happily accept with equanimity? But what
should make them very uncomfortable indeed is that the presence of Asian-
American groups complaining about discrimination will present the Court with
a powerful argument against the hoary "diversity" rationale for that
discrimination. As Abigail Fisher's brief stated,
UT's goal is not racial diversity to enhance the educational dialogue and
exchange of ideas by keeping minority students from feeling "isolated or
like spokespersons for their race." Instead, it is purely representational.
It is only by using Texas's racial demographics as the benchmark for
diversity that UT could consider Hispanics underrepresented and Asian-
Americans overrepresented when "the gross number of Hispanic students
attending UT exceeds the gross number of Asian-American students attending
UT."
If "underrepresented minorities" were underrepresented compared to those in
other groups who were accepted with similar qualifications -- as is in fact
the case with Asian-Americans -- that would be evidence of discrimination.
But if they are underrepresented only compared to their proportion of the
population, giving them preferential treatment becomes the very "outright
racial balancing" that even Justice O'Connor agreed in Grutter "is patently
unconstitutional," echoing Justice Powell's assertion inBakke that "[p]
referring members of any one group for no reason other than race or ethnic
origin is discrimination for its own sake. This the Constitution forbids."
An Ethnic Spoils System
Additional evidence that the University of Texas "has been running what
amounts to an ethnic spoils system" has been highlighted by the controversy
over Elizabeth Warren's claimed Cherokee identity, as David Bernstein
pointed out in a post on "Elizabeth Warren and Fisher v. University of Texas
." The UT law school, a long serving member of its hiring committee has
asserted, pays no attention whatsoever to Native American status, nor
apparently does the undergraduate admissions committee, which both would do
if they were really interested in "diversity" rather than representing
groups with a powerful demographic and hence political presence in the state.
The increasingly evident incoherence and perhaps even desperation of the "
diversity" justification for the discrimination inherent in racial
preference policies has also been nicely revealed by responses to the new
Asian criticism. For incoherence, it's hard to beat an affidavit in the
Fisher case from Kedra Ishop, Vice Provost and Director of Admissions at the
University of Texas, contesting the idea that Asian-Americans can't benefit
from affirmative action. In her statement, Inside Higher Ed reports,
Ishop outlines factors that could be considered in admissions, listing them
this way: "the socioeconomic status of the applicant's family and school,
whether the applicant is from a single-parent home, whether languages other
than English are spoken at the applicant's home, the applicant's family
responsibilities and (starting with the fall class of 2005) the applicant's
race." These criteria suggest that some Asian-American applicants could in
fact receive some assistance on the university's approach to admissions.
Well, yes, but do neither Dr. Ishop nor Scott Jaschik, editor of Inside
Higher Ed and author of the article quoting her, realize thatnone of the
possible "assistance" to Asian-Americans (or others) listed above would be
affected at all if Fisher wins her suit and preferential treatment on the
basis of race and ethnicity is prohibited? Similarly, in a video interview
with the Wall Street Journal'sJason Riley, Jaschik tried embarrassingly hard
to describe the overwhelming evidence of how affirmative action
discriminates against Asian-Americans as merely one theory.
Similarly confused is Richard Kahlenberg, who prefers class-based
preferences but always takes care not to be too critical of the race-based
variety. In an otherwise sensible recent essay on "Asians and Affirmative
Action" in the Chronicle of Higher Education, for example, he acknowledges
Espenshade's finding that Asians have to score 140 points higher than whites
to gain acceptance to selective institutions (but doesn't mention that they
have to score 450 points higher than blacks) and writes that affirmative
action's emphasis on "underrepresentation" raises the question "of what to
do about 'overrepresentation' of groups like Asian-Americans." He quickly
adds, however, that "[i]t is true, as supporters of affirmative action argue
, that one can draw a principled distinction between "floors" (ensuring
groups have minimal representation) and "ceilings" (capping the
representation of certain groups)." Since in the edifice of higher education
"floors" can't exist without "ceilings," I'm not sure what "principle" that
is.
Even more troubling than incoherence or confusion is what can be described
only as anti-white bias that afflicts much of the orthodox defense of
affirmative action by the Goliath-supporting Asians and their organizations.
In his Inside Higher Ed article, Scott Jaschik quoted "several experts on
Asian-Americans in higher education" who recognized that many Asian parents
are "hostile" to the college admissions process but who "questioned whether
affirmative action programs really are responsible." For example, Jaschik
quotes Mitchell J. Chang, professor of higher education, organizational
change and Asian-American studies at UCLA:
to the extent that Asian-American applicants are being held to a higher
standard, Chang said, that is, primarily compared to white students, who
aren't benefiting from affirmative action, "there is an issue we have to
deal with: Why aren't Asian-Americans with the same qualifications getting
into the institutions at the same rate as white students? That's the
question we have to address."
He said briefs like those filed Tuesday will reinforce the sense that it is
other minority students taking slots from Asian-Americans, something Chang
does not believe to be true.
In the same vein Robert Teranishi, associate professor of higher education
at NYU, asked "why those concerned about the admission of Asian-Americans to
elite colleges -- especially private institutions -- were not focused more
on preferences for alumni children." He is worried "by a narrative that
diversity efforts help only black and Latino students" and he fears, like
Texas's Dr. Ishop, programs to help poor Asian-American students would
disappear if Texas loses at the Supreme Court "based on narrow
interpretations of what affirmative action is."
Apparently Jaschik didn't ask Teranishi why ending race-based preferences
would end need-based assistance. Neither did he ask either expert why he
disagreed with Espenshade's and other data demonstrating the huge admissions
boost given to blacks and Hispanics over Asians. Why worry more about the
140-point SAT differential with whites and not the 450-point differential
with blacks?
Finally, an April 30 statement on the Fisher case by the Asian-American
Legal Defense and Education Fund contains such an extreme example of this
apparently common anti-white bias that it is almost humorous:
Some people claim that affirmative action hurts Asian American students.
Here's why that is false:
First, many opponents of affirmative action have conflated discrimination
against Asian American applicants, or negative action, with positive, or
affirmative action. Negative action occurs when a university denies
admittance to an Asian-American applicant who would have been admitted if he
/she was white. In the past, universities have used negative action against
minorities to preserve the traditional white character of colleges. Today,
negative action takes the form of legacy and donor admissions.
Got that? "Negative action," i.e., discrimination, occurs when a rejected
Asian-American applicant would have been accepted "if he/she was white." But
when that same rejected Asian-American applicant would have been accepted
if he or she were black or Hispanic, that's "positive or affirmative action."
According to conventional wisdom, the most likely outcome in Fisher is that
the Court will hold that, because of the success of its Top 10% admissions
policy, Texas's use of race preferences is unnecessary to achieve diversity
and hence prohibited, leaving the structure of Grutter intact. Conventional
wisdom, however, may not have seen or appreciated the degree to which the "
diversity" rationale for the discrimination at the core of affirmative
action has unraveled since 2003 -- both because of new evidence (see
thebrief by Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr.) and its increasingly
evident inconsistencies and even incoherence. The Asian briefs criticizing
affirmative action, and especially many of the responses to those briefs,
may well indicate that the days of the "diversity" defense of discrimination
are numbered.
----------------
John S. Rosenberg blogs at Discriminations.
----------------------------------------------------
这是80-20前一阵发的进展报告，其中具体讲到了他们希望达到的目的是什么：
全文请见：
http://www.8020politicalpower.blogspot.com/
Purpose? To reverse or substantially weaken the current
"race-conscious" college admission policy.
[A] In Our Nation's Highest Court, 80-20 has
(1) partnered with Brandeis Center For Human Rights, a well-known
Jewish org., to co-file an amicus brief. Kenneth Marcus, Center's
President, was staff director of The federal Civil Rights Commission.
Marcus said,"It wasn't right for the Ivies to limit Jewish students
then, it's not right for Ivies to limit Asian Ams students now."
http://brandeiscenter.com/ .
(2) engaged Alan Gura, a constitutional law specialist, who recently
won an unexpected and important case in the Supreme Court.
http://gurapossessky.com/wordpress/attorneys/alan-gura/ .
(3) An amicus brief shall be filed by us on May 29th.
[B] In the Court of Public Opinion, 80-20 has greatly
(1) publicized IRREFUTABLE evidence of shocking discrimination
against AsAms by "race-conscious" admission policy:
To receive equal consideration by elite colleges, Asian Americans
must outperform* Whites by 140 points, Hispanics by 280 points,
Blacks by 450 points in SAT (Total 1600).
(2) publicized RECENT newspaper articles focused on the connection
between the earlier Jewish experience in Ivies and the recent AsAm
experience. See for instance a 4/29/12 Chronicle of Higher
Ed article
http://chronicle.com/article/Asian-Americans-the-New-Jews/13172 .
[C] What Is 80-20 Trying To Achieve Thru. [A] & [B]?
Many Supreme Court justices are quite aware of how the Ivies
limited the number of Jewish students when they themselves were
attending colleges. A joint brief with the Brandeis Center may help
invoke their sense of injustice that Asian Am students face today.
We want to thank Mr. Marcus, Mr. Gura and others in the
legal & Jewish Am. community for helping to forge this strategy.
家参考。第二篇文章的作者好像是个反歧视的专家，在文章里把正向歧视和方向歧视分
析了一番。其实简单说来，提高亚裔的入学门槛就是对亚裔的反向歧视。
这次80-20请的就是有着丰富宪法/民权的犹太律师帮大家准备的“法律之友”，和我们
亚裔合作的犹太组织是Brandeis Center For Human Rights, a well-known Jewish
org., to co-file an amicus brief. Kenneth Marcus, Center's President, was
staff director of The federal Civil Rights Commission. Marcus said,"It wasn'
t right for the Ivies to limit Jewish students then, it's not right for
Ivies to limit Asian Ams students now."
http://brandeiscenter.com/
其实这次反高校族裔考量的做法恰恰是和民主党的一贯做法背道而驰的，这也是为什么
许多亚裔政治组织这次不愿意参与到这次活动的原因之一。
我只想说这个组织到底能多有效是靠大家一起努力来建成的。对80-20不满意的人请帮
我们找到比80-20能找到的更好的律师，更好的其他组织来帮我们一起共同给最高法院
递这个‘法律之友’。在这里说风凉话或大骂某几个ID真的无济于事。
《非诚勿扰》中的吴铮真有句话说得很好，“这世界上有些事没人做，有些人没事做，
[有些人]就去做[那些]没人做的事情，然后被那些没事做的人来质疑。但是没关系
。。。虽然我们不能增加生命的长度，但是我们已经增加了生命的宽度。不管别人怎么
说，做好自己。”
我也要用上面的话来勉励在80-20或华人社区真正做事的人。拆毁远比建造容易。在网
上把别人臭骂一通总比自己花出时间精力来做实事容易得多。
对这件事情真正感兴趣的人请去关注80-20教育基金会。这个组织是一个nonprofit的
501c3的组织。这次要反对歧视亚裔的高校录取‘族裔考虑’的主要发起组织之一。
http://www.80-20educationalfoundation.org/
马上大选要开始了，80-20教育基金会的姐妹组织80-20促进会（Political Action
Committee)马上也会开始讨论到底我们亚裔endorse谁最好，请大家去这里关注他们是
怎么决定去endorse谁的。谢谢。
http://www.80-20initiative.net/news/preselect2008.asp
【 以下文字转载自 SanFrancisco 讨论区 】
发信人: spectrum805 (spectrum805), 信区: SanFrancisco
标 题: 连犹太人都同情亚裔了，亚裔还不自己站出来保护自己
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Sat Jun 16 03:08:25 2012, 美东)
100多年前，藤校也是怕犹太人over represent了，所以用各种理由限制犹太人入学。
现在他们觉得亚裔的处境就和他们当年一样所以愿意过来帮亚裔支持反高校入学用‘族
裔’做理由提高亚裔入学门槛的做法。这里有两篇美国媒体的文章分析这件事， 大家
可以看看：
Subject: Weekly Standard- The New Jews They're Asian Americans. Ethan
Epstein June 11, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 37
______________________________________
The New Jews， They're Asian Americans.
Ethan Epstein
June 11, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 37
Like many colleges and universities, Princeton professes its devotion to “
institutional equity and diversity.” The university’s website claims that
the school “actively seek[s] students, faculty, and staff of exceptional
ability and promise who . . . will bring a
diversity of viewpoints and cultures,” before explaining that “examples of
personal characteristics that confer diversity of viewpoint and culture
include but are not limited to gender, sexual orientation, gender identity,
race, ethnicity, national origin,” etc.
The U.S. Department of Education may beg to differ. Since 2008, according to
a spokesman, its Office for Civil Rights has been investigating whether the
school “discriminates against Asians, on the basis of race or national
origin, in its admissions process”—that is, whether students of Asian
descent are being penalized for their background when applying to the school
. Princeton, for its part, said through a spokesman, “We treat each
application individually and we don’t discriminate on the basis of race or
national origin. . . . We evaluate applications in
a holistic manner, and no particular factor in the admission process is
assigned a fixed weight. There is no formula for weighing the various
aspects of the application.” One could be forgiven for wondering how the
claim that the school “does not discriminate on the basis of race or
national origin” does not contradict its mission to “actively seek
students” who “bring a diversity of viewpoints and cultures,” though.
After all, doesn’t trying to foster a diverse student body necessitate some
form of race-based decision making?
This isn’t to single out the Tigers. Indeed, Princeton is far from alone in
being accused of anti-Asian bias in admissions. In August of last year, an
Indian-American student filed a complaint with the Department of Education
against Harvard alleging anti-Asian discrimination in its admissions
department. (The student ultimately withdrew the complaint in February 2012.
) Michele Hernández, author of A Is for Admissions and former admissions
staffer at Dartmouth, recently said that “after 10 years of [counseling]
and 4 years in Dartmouth admissions, I don’t think it’s intentional, but I
think there is discrimination. If you look at the numbers, you can
basically see that [if you are applying to many selective colleges] you have
to have higher-than-average scores if you are an Asian.”
Asian Americans routinely outperform all other groups, including Caucasians,
in academic achievement, a pattern that has been observed since at least
the mid-1980s. By eighth grade, “the percentage of Asian American students
scoring in the upper echelons on math exams was 17 points higher than the
percentage of white students,” reports the Washington Post. When it’s time
to apply for college, the gap continues: In 2010, the last year for which
data were available, the average SAT score for Asian Americans was 1636,
versus 1580 for Caucasian students, 1369 for Mexicans and Mexican Americans,
and 1277 for African Americans.
But as Asian Americans have risen through the academic ranks, some claim
that they’ve become the “new Jews”—a group considered to be “
overrepresented” in elite academia.
Data bear this out. A Center for Equal Opportunity study, cited on the
Manhattan Institute’s website in the wake of the Harvard complaint, found
that Asian applicants to the University of Michigan in 2005 had a median SAT
score that was “50 points higher than the median score of white students
who were accepted, 140 points higher than that of Hispanics and 240 points
higher than that of blacks.” The center also found that “among applicants
with a 1240 SAT score and 3.2 grade point average in 2005, the university
admitted 10 percent of Asian Americans, 14 percent of whites, 88 percent of
Hispanics and 92 percent of blacks.” As further evidence, consider that “
after the state of California abolished racial preferences, the percentage
of Asian Americans accepted at Berkeley increased from 34.6 percent in 1997,
the last year of legal affirmative action, to 42 percent entering in fall
2006,” clear evidence that the group had been unfairly penalized under the
previous regime.
Ironically enough, one of the most revealing studies of this phenomenon was
conducted by one of Princeton’s own. In 2009, Thomas Espenshade, a
Princeton professor of sociology, co-authored a report that revealed
students of Asian descent did indeed face discrimination at colleges and
universities beyond the Ivy League. According to Espenshade’s analysis, an
Asian student needs to score 140 points higher than whites on the math and
reading portions of the SAT, 270 points higher than Hispanics, and 450
points higher than blacks to have the same chances of admission at the
nation’s top schools. “[A]ll other things equal,” Espenshade told Inside
Higher Ed, “Asian-American students are at a disadvantage relative to white
students, and at an even bigger disadvantage relative to black and Latino
students.”
To supporters of affirmative action, the practice has two major benefits—
one positive and one punitive. For one, they say that it’s a necessary
corrective to grave historical injustices. Two—and this they don’t often
say out loud—affirmative action punishes those who are perceived to have
benefited from (or even personally perpetrated) the politics of racial
supremacy.
But in both cases—even if one accepts those justifications—discriminating
against Asians is indefensible. Indeed, it can be reasonably argued that
Asian Americans have endured more discrimination than American Hispanics,
who benefit from affirmative action as it is currently executed. And Asian
Americans can hardly be accused of oppressing other racial groups en masse.
As S. B. Woo, former lieutenant governor of Delaware and current
director of the Asian-American advocacy organization the 80-20 Initiative,
says, “there is no historical rationale that justifies forcing Asian
Americans to bear the burden of preference, more than other Americans.”
Indeed, given the historical injustices suffered by Americans of Asian
descent—Japanese internment, the Chinese Exclusion Act—in an honest
affirmative action regime, they would stand to benefit.
The times may be a changin’, though. This fall, the Supreme Court will hear
a case brought by a white student who says she was denied admission to the
University of Texas on account of her Caucasian background. Consequently,
racial preferences in college admissions could be banned altogether—a real
possibility, given the Court’s relatively conservative bent.
But until then, Asian applicants may continue to have to leap a higher bar
than others. Unsurprisingly, the Associated Press reported late last year
that increasing numbers of Asian applicants are neglecting to identify
themselves as such—students of mixed descent, for example, fail to mention
their Asian heritage at all, checking the box for “Caucasian” and leaving
“Asian” blank.
Maybe they should check “Native American” instead.
Ethan Epstein is an editorial assistant at The Weekly Standard
----------------------------------
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2012/06/affirmative_a
June 7, 2012
Affirmative Action Starts to Unravel
By John S. Rosenberg
Listen closely and you can hear the sound of "diversity" crumbling, this
week mixed with laughter over the news that the City University of New York
has created two more official diversity groups--"white/Jewish" and "Italian-
Americans."
Critics of the new Jewish category claim that "the creation of a label for
Jewish professors could be used to limit their job opportunities." So, what
else is new? Creating labels for blacks, Hispanics, Italians, etc., also no
doubt limits job opportunities for Jews.
Actually, CUNY's newly-minted effort to include Jews (but not Muslims, Irish
, Pentecostal-Americans, etc.) has a close relationship with the issues
being presented to the Supreme Court in Fisher v. University of Texas at
Austin--and not simply because the CUNY policy reveals so glaringly the
incoherence at the core of the "diversity" justification for preferential
treatment.
Fifteen amicus briefs here support Abigail Fisher's claim that Texas's
racial preference policy is unconstitutional, and the two of them that have
generated the most attention in the past few days were filed on behalf of
Asian-American groups likening their treatment under affirmative action to
the early 20th Century Jewish quotas in the Ivy League.
Both of those briefs (this one and this one) cite Daniel Golden, who argued
in The Price of Admission (2007) that "Asian-Americans are the new Jews,
inheriting the mantle of the most disenfranchised group in college
admissions." As Peter Schmidtpointed out, the briefs filed by Asian-American
organizations opposing affirmative action represent "a marked departure
from the position most other Asian-American groups have taken on the issue."
Jews Standing with Goliath Against David?
Indeed, reflecting both the "new Jew" identity and the break from the
traditional Asian-American position, S.B. Woo, a retired physicist who heads
the 80-20 organization of Asian-Americans that signed on to one of the
briefs, has written in a fundraising appeal that "We are in an uphill battle
like David v. Goliath, only with a twist: Imagine some Jews block David's
path, arguing that Goliath may well be their best friend. Furthermore, they
contend they represent all Jews. Can David still win?" He could have
mentioned that two out of the three leading Jewish groups, all of whom filed
amicus briefs supporting Allan Bakke, have also joined forces with Goliath.
The two Asian briefs document the pervasive and profound extent of the
discrimination against Asian-Americans wrought by preferences for blacks and
Hispanics. Much of that evidence -- such as Princeton Professor Thomas
Espenshade's finding that nationwide blacks enjoy a 450-point "boost" on
their SAT scores compared to Asians, and that that if affirmative action
were eliminated across the nation "Asian students would fill nearly four out
of every five places in the admitted class not taken by African-American
and Hispanic students" -- is familiar to readers of Minding the Campus (I
discussed it here). "Because affirmative action is grounded (notwithstanding
all the transparent claptrap about 'diversity') in a desire to help
minorities," I noted, "evidence that it significantly harms an ethnic
minority makes its academic supporters as uncomfortable as a skunk at a
garden party."
It seems to me, however, that the obvious discrimination against Asians
should not (and probably does not) make supporters of affirmative action
uncomfortable. Why, after all, should they think that discrimination against
Asians is any worse or any more embarrassing than the discrimination
against all other non-preferred ethnic groups and whites -- including CUNY's
"White/Jewish" group -- that they happily accept with equanimity? But what
should make them very uncomfortable indeed is that the presence of Asian-
American groups complaining about discrimination will present the Court with
a powerful argument against the hoary "diversity" rationale for that
discrimination. As Abigail Fisher's brief stated,
UT's goal is not racial diversity to enhance the educational dialogue and
exchange of ideas by keeping minority students from feeling "isolated or
like spokespersons for their race." Instead, it is purely representational.
It is only by using Texas's racial demographics as the benchmark for
diversity that UT could consider Hispanics underrepresented and Asian-
Americans overrepresented when "the gross number of Hispanic students
attending UT exceeds the gross number of Asian-American students attending
UT."
If "underrepresented minorities" were underrepresented compared to those in
other groups who were accepted with similar qualifications -- as is in fact
the case with Asian-Americans -- that would be evidence of discrimination.
But if they are underrepresented only compared to their proportion of the
population, giving them preferential treatment becomes the very "outright
racial balancing" that even Justice O'Connor agreed in Grutter "is patently
unconstitutional," echoing Justice Powell's assertion inBakke that "[p]
referring members of any one group for no reason other than race or ethnic
origin is discrimination for its own sake. This the Constitution forbids."
An Ethnic Spoils System
Additional evidence that the University of Texas "has been running what
amounts to an ethnic spoils system" has been highlighted by the controversy
over Elizabeth Warren's claimed Cherokee identity, as David Bernstein
pointed out in a post on "Elizabeth Warren and Fisher v. University of Texas
." The UT law school, a long serving member of its hiring committee has
asserted, pays no attention whatsoever to Native American status, nor
apparently does the undergraduate admissions committee, which both would do
if they were really interested in "diversity" rather than representing
groups with a powerful demographic and hence political presence in the state.
The increasingly evident incoherence and perhaps even desperation of the "
diversity" justification for the discrimination inherent in racial
preference policies has also been nicely revealed by responses to the new
Asian criticism. For incoherence, it's hard to beat an affidavit in the
Fisher case from Kedra Ishop, Vice Provost and Director of Admissions at the
University of Texas, contesting the idea that Asian-Americans can't benefit
from affirmative action. In her statement, Inside Higher Ed reports,
Ishop outlines factors that could be considered in admissions, listing them
this way: "the socioeconomic status of the applicant's family and school,
whether the applicant is from a single-parent home, whether languages other
than English are spoken at the applicant's home, the applicant's family
responsibilities and (starting with the fall class of 2005) the applicant's
race." These criteria suggest that some Asian-American applicants could in
fact receive some assistance on the university's approach to admissions.
Well, yes, but do neither Dr. Ishop nor Scott Jaschik, editor of Inside
Higher Ed and author of the article quoting her, realize thatnone of the
possible "assistance" to Asian-Americans (or others) listed above would be
affected at all if Fisher wins her suit and preferential treatment on the
basis of race and ethnicity is prohibited? Similarly, in a video interview
with the Wall Street Journal'sJason Riley, Jaschik tried embarrassingly hard
to describe the overwhelming evidence of how affirmative action
discriminates against Asian-Americans as merely one theory.
Similarly confused is Richard Kahlenberg, who prefers class-based
preferences but always takes care not to be too critical of the race-based
variety. In an otherwise sensible recent essay on "Asians and Affirmative
Action" in the Chronicle of Higher Education, for example, he acknowledges
Espenshade's finding that Asians have to score 140 points higher than whites
to gain acceptance to selective institutions (but doesn't mention that they
have to score 450 points higher than blacks) and writes that affirmative
action's emphasis on "underrepresentation" raises the question "of what to
do about 'overrepresentation' of groups like Asian-Americans." He quickly
adds, however, that "[i]t is true, as supporters of affirmative action argue
, that one can draw a principled distinction between "floors" (ensuring
groups have minimal representation) and "ceilings" (capping the
representation of certain groups)." Since in the edifice of higher education
"floors" can't exist without "ceilings," I'm not sure what "principle" that
is.
Even more troubling than incoherence or confusion is what can be described
only as anti-white bias that afflicts much of the orthodox defense of
affirmative action by the Goliath-supporting Asians and their organizations.
In his Inside Higher Ed article, Scott Jaschik quoted "several experts on
Asian-Americans in higher education" who recognized that many Asian parents
are "hostile" to the college admissions process but who "questioned whether
affirmative action programs really are responsible." For example, Jaschik
quotes Mitchell J. Chang, professor of higher education, organizational
change and Asian-American studies at UCLA:
to the extent that Asian-American applicants are being held to a higher
standard, Chang said, that is, primarily compared to white students, who
aren't benefiting from affirmative action, "there is an issue we have to
deal with: Why aren't Asian-Americans with the same qualifications getting
into the institutions at the same rate as white students? That's the
question we have to address."
He said briefs like those filed Tuesday will reinforce the sense that it is
other minority students taking slots from Asian-Americans, something Chang
does not believe to be true.
In the same vein Robert Teranishi, associate professor of higher education
at NYU, asked "why those concerned about the admission of Asian-Americans to
elite colleges -- especially private institutions -- were not focused more
on preferences for alumni children." He is worried "by a narrative that
diversity efforts help only black and Latino students" and he fears, like
Texas's Dr. Ishop, programs to help poor Asian-American students would
disappear if Texas loses at the Supreme Court "based on narrow
interpretations of what affirmative action is."
Apparently Jaschik didn't ask Teranishi why ending race-based preferences
would end need-based assistance. Neither did he ask either expert why he
disagreed with Espenshade's and other data demonstrating the huge admissions
boost given to blacks and Hispanics over Asians. Why worry more about the
140-point SAT differential with whites and not the 450-point differential
with blacks?
Finally, an April 30 statement on the Fisher case by the Asian-American
Legal Defense and Education Fund contains such an extreme example of this
apparently common anti-white bias that it is almost humorous:
Some people claim that affirmative action hurts Asian American students.
Here's why that is false:
First, many opponents of affirmative action have conflated discrimination
against Asian American applicants, or negative action, with positive, or
affirmative action. Negative action occurs when a university denies
admittance to an Asian-American applicant who would have been admitted if he
/she was white. In the past, universities have used negative action against
minorities to preserve the traditional white character of colleges. Today,
negative action takes the form of legacy and donor admissions.
Got that? "Negative action," i.e., discrimination, occurs when a rejected
Asian-American applicant would have been accepted "if he/she was white." But
when that same rejected Asian-American applicant would have been accepted
if he or she were black or Hispanic, that's "positive or affirmative action."
According to conventional wisdom, the most likely outcome in Fisher is that
the Court will hold that, because of the success of its Top 10% admissions
policy, Texas's use of race preferences is unnecessary to achieve diversity
and hence prohibited, leaving the structure of Grutter intact. Conventional
wisdom, however, may not have seen or appreciated the degree to which the "
diversity" rationale for the discrimination at the core of affirmative
action has unraveled since 2003 -- both because of new evidence (see
thebrief by Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr.) and its increasingly
evident inconsistencies and even incoherence. The Asian briefs criticizing
affirmative action, and especially many of the responses to those briefs,
may well indicate that the days of the "diversity" defense of discrimination
are numbered.
----------------
John S. Rosenberg blogs at Discriminations.
----------------------------------------------------
这是80-20前一阵发的进展报告，其中具体讲到了他们希望达到的目的是什么：
全文请见：
http://www.8020politicalpower.blogspot.com/
Purpose? To reverse or substantially weaken the current
"race-conscious" college admission policy.
[A] In Our Nation's Highest Court, 80-20 has
(1) partnered with Brandeis Center For Human Rights, a well-known
Jewish org., to co-file an amicus brief. Kenneth Marcus, Center's
President, was staff director of The federal Civil Rights Commission.
Marcus said,"It wasn't right for the Ivies to limit Jewish students
then, it's not right for Ivies to limit Asian Ams students now."
http://brandeiscenter.com/ .
(2) engaged Alan Gura, a constitutional law specialist, who recently
won an unexpected and important case in the Supreme Court.
http://gurapossessky.com/wordpress/attorneys/alan-gura/ .
(3) An amicus brief shall be filed by us on May 29th.
[B] In the Court of Public Opinion, 80-20 has greatly
(1) publicized IRREFUTABLE evidence of shocking discrimination
against AsAms by "race-conscious" admission policy:
To receive equal consideration by elite colleges, Asian Americans
must outperform* Whites by 140 points, Hispanics by 280 points,
Blacks by 450 points in SAT (Total 1600).
(2) publicized RECENT newspaper articles focused on the connection
between the earlier Jewish experience in Ivies and the recent AsAm
experience. See for instance a 4/29/12 Chronicle of Higher
Ed article
http://chronicle.com/article/Asian-Americans-the-New-Jews/13172 .
[C] What Is 80-20 Trying To Achieve Thru. [A] & [B]?
Many Supreme Court justices are quite aware of how the Ivies
limited the number of Jewish students when they themselves were
attending colleges. A joint brief with the Brandeis Center may help
invoke their sense of injustice that Asian Am students face today.
We want to thank Mr. Marcus, Mr. Gura and others in the
legal & Jewish Am. community for helping to forge this strategy.