Affirmative Action - Blog Posts

The Model Minority Myth Today -- Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard

Asian-Americans being discriminated against in college admissions, specifically towards Harvard.

The rat race of college admissions tends to be an uphill battle for Asian-Americans, as the Model Minority Myth (which stems from the creation of H1-B and EB-3 visas prioritizing skilled workers, causing Americans' perceptions of Asian-Americans as ALL highly skilled, which is untrue) contributes to the sky-high expectations of achievement by Asian-American high schoolers.

"To illustrate just how strong the Asian-American pool is, in the baseline dataset Asian-American applicants have academic indexes that are over 0.2 standard deviations higher than whites, almost one standard deviation higher than Hispanics, and over 1.5 standard deviations higher than African Americans. Indeed, Asian-American rejects have academic indexes that are higher than African American admits."

While yes, academically Asian-Americans excel, it turns out that in other areas of college admission they slump.

"Using data over ten years, they found that Harvard’s admissions officers assigned substantially lower personal ratings to Asian-American applicants versus white applicants, especially when compared to the ratings assigned by teachers, counselors, and alumni interviewers."

"Asian-American applicants suffer a statistically significant penalty relative to white applicants in two of the ratings Harvard’s admissions officers assign to each file (the personal and overall rating)."

So not only are the personal and overall ratings one of the contributing factors, but it is likely due to racial biases within school counselor and admissions officers systems.

White people having the most legacy as usual.

Within each of the other three groups (3, 3+, all 2’s), African-American applicants have the highest admit rates followed by Hispanics, then whites, and finally Asian Americans.

In fact, the scoring for African-American applicants on Harvard’s overall rating exhibits the opposite phenomenon exhibited by Asian-American applicants, as African-American applicants are disproportionately concentrated at the high and low ends of the rating scale.

African-American applicants are either overperforming or underperforming, never averaging out, showing how also due to societal norms and racist ideologies, have to fit the mold of being extraordinary or what society tells them they are. Or entirely be seen as a diversity student to lower (or raise) the GPA to seem more welcoming or exclusive.

Asian-American applicants are less likely to be admitted if they are in the middle of the road. They have to be exceptional or above average, otherwise they get completely ignored.

Despite being more academically qualified than the other three major racial/ethnic groups (whites, African Americans, and Hispanics), Asian-American applicants have the lowest admissions rates. In fact, data produced by Harvard show that this has been true for every admissions cycle for the classes of 2000 to 2019. A closer examination of the six years for which Harvard produced applicant-level admissions data shows that even removing those who receive some other form of preferences (such as legacy, athletic, or early action) still results in Asian Americans having the lowest admit rates over this period.

Asian-Americans are disadvantaged in a space where everyone else thinks they are not.

The Nightly Show, December 10, 2015

The Inconsistencies of Race and Class

   NO. 1

  Class is primarily an economic measure, of course, based on wealth and income. This is explained more in Karl Marx’s and Max Weber’s ‘The Communist Manifesto, where Marx touches on Capitalism, an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit rather than the state's need to expand throughout Markets. The three main groups in class society are 1) The Aristocracy, 2) the bourgeoisie, which owns most of society’s wealth and production. And 3) the proletariats, or the working-class people. These terms are even more present today than during the Industrial Revolution. The bourgeoisie thrives off alienation and false consciousness, which is the way of thinking that prevents a person from understanding the true nature of their social or economic status.

NO. 2

Patricia Hill-Collins writes in Toward a New Vision, ‘’Each group identifies the type of oppression with which it feels most comfortable as being fundamental and classifies all other types as lesser importance. Oppression is full of such contradictions. Errors in political judgment that we make concerning how we teach our courses, what we tell our children, and which organizations are worthy.’’ (Collins, 1993).  Oppression of education and fundamental voting rights happened exclusively to minorities, especially black people. During the ’50s and the ’60s, Brown vs. The Board of Education was one of the most iconic moments in history when the U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled that the segregation of public schools between blacks and whites was unconstitutional.

NO. 3

Basically, proving that separate is not equal. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, and of course, the Civil Rights Movement that led up to it, was a landmark civil rights and U.S. labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Now, with the Civil Rights Movement passed, it makes it seem that all people have rights, but it’s not true. Minorities alike do not have the same rights, no matter the changed laws and how much we think we’ve changed. White privilege is the societal belief that benefits white people over non-white people. It makes it almost impossible for all minorities to overcome the system. White privilege is the belief that there’s nothing wrong with being a white nationalist and that the removal of our nation’s past physical examples of racism, ex. The erasure of Confederate statues, affirmative action, and other such policies is an attack on white heritage.

NO. 4

Whether they want to admit it or not, the overlap between race and class has a great impact on society, and it intersects in complex ways, and simply focusing on one aspect alone may not lead to comprehensive solutions. Affirmative action was used to bridge the gap between racial and class disparities, and now that it is being threatened and taken away, we must carefully consider the impact that it has had and continues to have on marginalized communities. Carol Anderson, the author of White Rage, talks about the definition of white rage, which is how their anger fuels hatred, and that hatred fuels violence which has caused the deaths of black people, men, and women alike, ever since the first boat brought the slaves. It touches on white privilege and the indifference white people feel for black people, sort of like colorblind racism, a ‘toilet assumption’, the naivety that all people are created equal, when that’s far from the case.