Too Asian? - An Article on Universities - Page 16

On May 04 2011 07:24 hmmm... wrote:
There's not too much Asians can do with regards to the discriminatory admissions policies of Ivy League and other private schools (incl. publics too but anyways). No amount of bs-ing and raising awareness will change that.

I think the key is to understand that although in Asia, social upclassing through merit is possible, that is not always the case here.

In some American sectors, it's an all-out White male's club; if you don't fit into their WASP culture, they just won't hire you. In other American sectors, they look for teamwork and they will likely pick Whites who are more culturally identifiable; Asians are not incapable of working as a team. But the widespread stereotypes will inevitably influence the perceptions of recruiters. And obviously, there's going to be racism at all levels; some hospitals won't hire nurses with bad english accents, law firms will hire asian associates and burn them out, but not make them partner, etc.

It's not really surprising that White Americans are racist against Asians. Throughout history, there's always been this sense of cultural inferiority; if it was more pronounced in the past, today it still exists but only behind the mask of political-correctness. Asians have to battle against their increasing odds and although unfair, you live with whatever you've been given. It's better to win against the odds and increase Asian's cultural capital now, so that in future generations, discrimination in the US can be diminished.

On May 04 2011 07:50 moltenlead wrote:
I wouldn't go so far as what you said but I would not disagree that with a completely even match, some companies may give preference to a white person over an asian. I would not generalize on that point too far though.

However, the article went too far in portraying a complete blackout scenario. I remember the countless articles that were brought up against it when the article just came out.

Also, each private school has it's own idiots as students. Unfortunately, they picked some of the most biased students of the pool.

Chill: If you really think that there is no discrimination against foreign executives in American companies, look at the CEOs/Execs of the Forbes companies. Asians may not be discriminated against for hiring, but it has been proven several times over that they have a glass ceiling.

On May 04 2011 07:30 Chill wrote:

Do you have any sources for that whatsoever?

On May 04 2011 08:16 Keone wrote:
As an Canadian Asian at a "top ivy league" US university...

I'm completely 100% against affirmative action. Instead, universities should change what they're looking for. Instead of basing everything off of grades and SATs, make sure they're well rounded students. Don't just check the APs, don't just check math competitions, but see their extracurricular results as well.

Affirmative action, in my opinion, is a sad and unfortunate reasoning that ultimately has no base in reason. No student in the world should be turned away just because of their race, if their credentials are over what's necessary.

However, the obvious solution is to change the credentials, and I see this as a totally acceptable method. Although academics are important, there are so many more external factors that make a person successful (however you define that) later in life. Interpersonal relationships, teamwork, speaking ability, leadership ability, motivation, personal drive, etc. A lot of US schools, and Canadian universities too, place too much emphasis on pure academics. If I can offer a crappy analogy, you don't become a great basketball player just because you can shoot the ball in the net perfectly from anywhere. You've gotta move, understand teamwork, understand strategy, flow, defense, offense, etc... just like in life, you can't expect to rely on one aspect to pull you through in everything.

Having said all that, it's very possible that even with these credentials changed, asians still could be proportionally high. That's pretty much what happened at my high school. My school was split down the middle, as if a racist deity drew an invisible line down the center of each class. In order to distinguish themselves from the "fobs", white highschool kids would only keep to themselves, talk down on the asian students, and pretty much became the bums, crackheads, and potheads of my school. It's not that they were stupid, but they literally made themselves do badly in school. On the other hand, asians like myself studied our asses off, and actually competed amongst each other, while also engaging in a ton of extracurricular activities because, essentially, other asian students were doing those activities. At the end of the day, (in my school), you've got an asian student who's done well academically and in extracurriculars, and you've got a white student who's failed both and is smoking pot every weekend with his friends. No credentials are going to save that.

Pretty much, what I'm babbling about is that racism is a ridiculous cycle. Racism in our schools causes divisions within students, and those divisions to some extent are why Asians perform better in schools. Of course, some schools have the exact opposite trend, where Asians gang together and become idiots who drive around rice rockets smoking on sidewalks, and the white kids do well and go to good schools. Nothing is strictly polarized in one way, but they are polarized, in one way or another. It just so happens that Asian parents generally really drill their kids to do well academically, (not trying to start a tiger mom argument here), and they end up doing well in high school. College is a different story altogether, not going to go into that.

As for short term, colleges really have to get rid of this affirmative action nonsense. That is blatant racism to the highest degree, no matter how you try and dress that up with excuses. Saying you want a balanced and diverse campus is essentially saying you don't want too much of any one race, which is by its very nature, racist.

Complains Waterloo student Simon Wang, a Chinese national who is frustrated by the segregation at Waterloo: “Why bother to come to Canada and pay five times as much to speak Chinese?”

On May 04 2011 09:32 LostDevil wrote:
I don't understand the article saying that Princeton and other Ivy League schools were discriminating against Asians to keep it WASP. My friend applied to an Ivy along with an Asian kid in his AP classes. My friend was 2nd in his class, all state in sports, captain of his team, and just as high SAT scores as the Asian kid but they took the Asian kid who was ~10th in the class and sat the bench on the sports teams just for "participation". Does not make any sense to me. They were also from the same town even though there may have been some variance income wise.

Maybe the Asian kid played the piano since that seems to make admission people cum all over themselves repeatedly. It is a mystery to me...