by liberal japonicus
A continuation of discussion in the previous post. Nous suggested that
While I believe nous is talking about larger problems of college affordability and college debt, in case anyone thinks that the cancellation of affirmative action will cause problems for educated suburban women, this article suggests that it might not be true:
If white women benefit from affirmative action, why do they oppose it?
Half of Americans do not approve of colleges and universities considering race in admissions, according to a recent Pew Research Center report. A majority of white adults disapprove of it, too. About 70% of non-Hispanic white women somewhat or strongly oppose affirmative action, according to a 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study.
White women have also challenged affirmative action policies. In 2016, the Supreme Court ruled against Abigail Fisher, a white student who said the University of Texas denied her admission because of her race.
There is an interesting discussion related to feminism and intersectionality here, which I hope we might take up in the comments.
Half of this particular go-around revolved around Asian representation at Harvard, and this Vox article is good on explaining why it is a load of crap. The whole 'OMG Asians can't get into Harvard' is pretty amazing to me, given that a few decades ago, there were complaints about Asians 'killing the curve'.
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, large numbers of Asian Americans began enrolling at elite universities,180 just as these universities started to emphasize diversity in the wake of the Bakke decision. Asian Americans were seen as foreigners on campuses, and there was a backlash to their growing presence. Professor Dana Takagi discusses how resentful White students labeled various campuses having significant Asian American student populations with xenophobic epithets. 181 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (“MIT”) was dubbed “Made in Taiwan” and the University of California, Los Angeles (“UCLA”), was called “University of Caucasians Living Among Asians.” Elevators in buildings with large numbers of Asian American students were called “[t]he Orient Express.” 183 The peril of the mind trope was also readily apparent: White students viewed Asian Americans as “‘hordes’ of ‘unfair competition’” and advised each other not to take classes that had large numbers of Asian American students.
The link that is from is quite good and has this revealing aspect of the SFFA's case.
SFFA’s legal documents revealed other embarrassing information for Harvard. One particularly troubling example illustrated how Harvard’s Administration appeared to underplay one of its alum’s overtly racist remarks against Asian Americans:
"[I]n 2012, [President Drew] Faust received a letter from an alumnus making racist statements about Asian-American applicants. Specifically, the alumnus urged Harvard to adopt “informal quotas.” Such quotas “would include foreign students and the country of their origin. For example, I would limit the number of Japanese students to a certain percentage or number. . . . None of this, of course, has to go beyond the confines of the dean’s office. The last time I was in Cambridge it seemed to me that there were a large number of oriental students, for example. I think they probably should be limited to 5%. . . . I would appreciate hearing what you might think of my comments."
SFFA reported that, rather than rebuking these remarks, Harvard Admissions Director Marlyn McGrath responded to the alum as follows (copying President Faust):
"President Faust has asked me to respond to your April 4 letter, in which you offer many thoughtful observations about Harvard College students and the results of the admissions process. . . . All of us at Harvard appreciate your thoughtful letter, as well as your loyalty over the years." SFFA highlighted that Harvard’s response did not take issue with the alumnus’s comments about limiting the number of “oriental students” at Harvard or establishing informal quotas. While President Faust acknowledged that the alum’s letter was “preposterous,”she did not think it was necessary to rebuke him because he was “a 90-year-old alum who’s given some kind of support to scholarships. He graduated with the class of 1942. He probably went off and fought in World War II.”
Harvard did not dispute that these incidents occurred as stated in SFFA’s motion. It merely (though correctly) stated that the incident had no bearing on the legality of its race-conscious admissions policy. 375 But SFFA’s argument exploited the incident and Harvard’s response in order to pit people of color against each other. SFFA specifically contended that incidents of explicit bias against Asian Americans are not taken as seriously as those against other racial minority groups:
At her deposition, Faust refused to answer whether a letter saying the same thing about African Americans would have deserved a similar “polite and respectful” response. Nor would she speculate how Asian-American students might react to the letter, because they “have not seen these letters . . . . [T]hese are matters of personal correspondence that are not matters of public scrutiny.”
Harvard wasn't woke enough to slap down a (possible) WWII vet and this is evidence that Harvard in discriminating. The irony, it burns...
The Grauniad has this article with some observations about the case
But in order to win at court, SFFA deployed some stage trickery – disappearing Asian Americans at just the right moment. From the district court to the supreme court, SFFA produced exactly zero students and Asian Americans to testify. Even after forcing Harvard to turn over nearly 100,000 pages of documents, they could not produce a single individual case of discrimination.
Harvard introduced four students, two of whom were Asian American. Sally Chen, a low-income, first-generation Chinese immigrant student accepted in 2015, testified that she was accepted amid a vast pool of valedictorians with perfect SATs and 4.5 GPAs only because of the school’s holistic admissions process. She was able to tell her story, be seen, and valued. Judge Sotomayor noted this in her dissent, writing: “At bottom, race-conscious admissions benefit all students, including racial minorities. That includes the Asian American community.”
SFFA stacked its legal team with former clerks of Judge Clarence Thomas. Then it gave its case gravitas with a blinkered history of anti-Asian discrimination that ignored everything after the 1940s. Thomas later included this version of events in his concurring opinion.
He added: “Given the history of discrimination against Asian Americans, especially their history with segregated schools, it seems particularly incongruous to suggest that a past history of segregationist policies toward blacks should be remedied at the expense of Asian American college applicants.”
This article points to the splits in the "Asian-American" community, which I put in quotes, because the concept has a lot of problems.
This Voxexplainer is very interesting and points out the following:
The history of affirmative action starts not in the university system, but in labor policy. According to historian Hugh Davis Graham, the term first appeared in the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, a key piece of New Deal legislation that gave employees the right to form unions and required employers to bargain collectively with them. In that context, affirmative action was used as a term to compel employers who had engaged in unfair labor practices to compensate victims.
My own take on AA for higher ed is that it is a useful way of drawing attention away from the problem. By concentrating on admission rather than on matriculation, it focusses on a point that does not have the institutions of higher education reflect on how they teach and support students. While I don't believe that the Democrats are analyzing it the same way I am, this Politico piece discusses that and also points out that some Democrats want to take aim at legacy admissions.
Democrats are now looking for other legislative options to boost minority admissions at colleges, like ending legacy admissions that benefit children of alumni. Even that bill, introduced by progressive Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), has a slim chance at passage, but it’s a message that resonates with other Democrats who see the proposal as another way to help level the playing field.
This would be very interesting because, much more than defending admission diversity, this would really impact the business model of elite higher education. Anyway, have at it.
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