“I haven’t seen Gaelic language or history taught in the local schools. Why aren’t the Irish kids taking it on the weekends?”

I don’t get it - you wouldn’t be saying that it’s wrong for us to maintain our heritage, would you? Maybe the same ‘culture’ that makes us value education makes us value our customs as well - Confucius said a lot of things.

Or perhaps it’s genetic.

(In case y’all haven’t figured it out by now, I’m Asian. Korean by birth.)

“A degree in business (especially an MBA) can give you pretty good job security as well.”

An MBA is standard accessory for the average Korean satellite kid, speaking from experience. But part of the fixation with math and science has to do with language. Immigrant kids who have had to learn the English language about the same time as puberty are not going to excel in the humanities department in America. Also, the math and science programs in North America are especially weak by international students, such that any reasonably competent student from most any other country can come here and be a whiz kid.

“I didn’t say anything about well-roundedness. Someone who stresses development of their athletic abilities but neglects developing knowledge and skills regarding the fine or performing arts is no more well-rounded than someone who is opposite.”

The difference is that that someone who ’stressed’ the development of their athletic abilities is far more likely to end up working the counter at some porn video store than the latter, though that’s bit of different issue.

“If they are in a sport, it’s usually either tennis or golf, as opposed to a team sport; but even that’s rare.”

Um… not to pick at everything here, but is that to imply that tennis or golf aren’t ‘real’ sports? Personally, I’m an equal opportunity sportsphobe. The only sports that I find to be of any use are what we’d just call ‘exercise’ and ‘working out’, plus some martial arts and combat sports. Living in Canada, I sometimes make an exception for hockey, eh? (Sabres, stop slumping…. now!) I hate badminton and tennis as much as football and baseball, but why are some sports better than others?

Just in general, any analysis on race that limits itself to (East) Asian, white, and black - because hispanics, south asians, native americans, jews, etc. are all inconveient that way - can safely be regarded as a crisp, day-old turd. It’s the same: one ass-brained stereotype here, its polar opposite there, with a nice, creamy middle.

Because UC adopted ‘race-blind’ policies in the late 80’s that let Asians get into college based purely on merit. Asians aren’t overrepresented in the UC system; we’re underrepresented everywhere else. Standards are higher for Asians than they are for whites, and while I don’t see anything too too wrong with that - I don’t have a problem with affirmative action in general, and if a few of us have to work harder for campus diversity overall, then so be it - I have a few caveats:

1. I’m not asking anyone to stick their political necks out and say ‘there’s too many Asians’, but at least don’t make half-assed justifications that only end up insulting us more. There’s the whole extracurricular activity criteria, which is almost purely subjective, which is emphasized especially in the elite schools. It’s one thing when struggling comedians and anal pustule mass culture pins this image of Asian youth as having no lives and all, but it really grates my nerves when it become ingrained as part of basic admissions procedure. (It helps to remember that Ivy League schools adopted their famously holistic, ‘getting-to-know-the-whole-person’ type applications nearly a century ago as an excuse to keep out those high-scoring Jews. Even if it would be something of a bureaucratic nightmare, a part of me wishes that the extracurricular activity component of college applications could be centralized to give a quantative grade that can be reported from a single source, just like an SAT or ACT score.)

There’s a girl in San Diego, I believe, whose counselor put on her recommendation that she ‘had many friends, despite being Asian’. (I’m sorry I don’t have the link.) The counselor was only trying to help her, because that is the hill she has to climb in order to get into an Ivy League school. (Say what you will about her at least having that opportunity and all, but you can’t tell me you can’t catch a whiff of stink about the whole thing.)

And then there’s the whole idea that colleges are reluctant to admit as many Asians because they don’t give as much money back as alumni. Which may well be true, given the many satellite Asians who take their degrees and go back to their home country, but that still doesn’t make it ethical. You know how else colleges could increase their endowments? Accept the richest students they can get their hands on. Is that acceptable policy? Even if it is a private institution? (Many actually have done so over the past decade, most infamously Duke. And the public reaction to the revelation proves my point.) The fact that they can blithely offer this as an excuse when they wouldn’t say it in other contexts is, of course, just plain racism.

2. And then, it’s a little different to ask a minority to sacrifice for the majority than it is to ask for the majority to sacrifice for the minority. If we want the proportion of Asians in university to go down to smaller levels to make room for whites, blacks, and others, we’re asking an already hypercompetitive group of overachievers to score 50 points higher on the SAT, earn even more glowing recommendations, play another sport, etc. Whereas if we want the proportion of whites to go down to make room for blacks, hispanics, and others, we’re talking about 6 or 7 SAT points and a couple more baskets at a regional game. (I know SAT scores are scaled by tens, I’m talking averages.) So I definitely think it would be wrong to ask anything more of Asian kids than is already being asked in terms of admissions.

Especially when talking race, comparing a majority with a minority always encounters a problem similar to the one above. It is roughly similar to those who equate battered wives with battered husbands; blindness to the imbalance in basic power dynamics always comes up at a completely self-serving basis. I’m segueing, of course, into AA. We can’t get moral absolutist with racial discrimination, as any good conservative knows, what with the need to give Muhammed and Tariq extra attention at customs and Jose and Maria an extra quick once over at the voting booths. (You can extend the analogy further; basically, if you can justify racial profiling, you can justify AA. But I don’t want to write it all out again.) Racial discrimination is justifiable if the ends are justifiable. To claim that the ends are only about individuals is horseshit. People naturally identify with the groups they associate themselves with, which is why small towns rightly celebrate any of their own who hit it big, why Raiders fans go batshit crazy over their singularly atrocious team, and why having a chain smoking, unemployed lowlife for a dad is so much teh sux. If enough people of a certain minority, who clearly identify with each other in the group, can succeed, it will help everyone in that group. The moral and practical benefits to not having a visibly ‘other’ underclass outweight any of the admitted costs.

100% of US Presidents have been white males
95% of Fortune 500 CEOS are white males, corporate boards are mostly white males
83% of Congress is white males
78% of the Supreme Court is white males, state supreme courts are mostly white males

http://www.currentargus.com/ci_4945569

100% of US Presidents have been white males
95% of Fortune 500 CEOS are white males, corporate boards are mostly white males
75% of Congress is white males
78% of the Supreme Court is white males, state supreme courts are mostly white males

I was reading this as applying to high-school age kids, since those are the ages of the kids I was talking about. The kids finish Chinese school up before going off to college, so there’s no similarity between it and women’s studies and history. Are there women’s studies courses that grade school and high school age kids take outside of school, then?

I’m still not quite understanding that reference.

Asian parents know sciences and engineering are a better guarantee of job security and they’re mostly right. Less politics and possible racial bias.

You know, that sounds good on the face of it. And given that I’m in those fields, I’d like to agree. But when you think about it, it’s hard to say that you can presume that this is a fact or show any hard evidence that this is so. I can tell you that there’s definitely a lot of politics in the corporate world even in the IT department, and failure to play them well (and IT people are infamous for not playing politics well) can doom your career. A degree in business (especially an MBA) can give you pretty good job security as well.

Without affirmative action in California, Latinos make up only 16.3% of UC freshmen even though they’re 26.5% of California’s high school graduates. Whout affirmative action, whites (32.2%), Latinos (16.3%) and blacks (3%) are grossly underrepresented. At UCSD, 53 percent of this year’s freshman class is Asian-American. Whites make up about 28 percent and Latinos 12 percent.

So then the question is, why is that so? Since whites are underrepresented you can’t argue that it’s solely due to racial disrimination or economic status. You would also think that whites get grade school and high school educations that are of no higher quality than those of Asian heritage. There’s plenty of white kids who have (or at least see) parents that are lawyers, physicians, IT professionals, business professionals, etc. Why do the Asian kids dominate all out of proportion to their numbers to the point that whites are underrepresented?

Asian parents know sciences and engineering are a better guarantee of job security and they’re mostly right. Less politics and possible racial bias.

Chinese school may be more for the cultural and community aspect than language skills. You have to remember whites are the norm so Irish, German and Greek people don’t have to stick together as much for a sense of community.

Women’s studies is not taught in high schools. Women may come to it on their own in college or after college.

Are you asserting that Asians have a specific interest in science and math that is greater than those of people with different heritage? What do you think is the source of that? Is it racially based? Cultural?

I haven’t seen Gaelic language or history taught in the local schools. Why aren’t the Irish kids taking it on the weekends? Instruction is actually available in the Chicago area. Same for the German kids. Heck, they could take German in the high school, but they don’t, at least not in proportion to the number of kids who have German heritage. No, they’re out there on the football and lacrosse fields on the weekends.

Women’s studies and [women's] history

Are these subjects that are taught in California high schools? They’re not around the Chicago area, so that doesn’t apply here.

About well-roundedness, similar things were said about Jewish Americans before they were assimilated.

I didn’t say anything about well-roundedness. Someone who stresses development of their athletic abilities but neglects developing knowledge and skills regarding the fine or performing arts is no more well-rounded than someone who is opposite.

Let’s think about this a bit, then. In that case, legacy admissions policies should be gender neutral; it’s not the sex of the alumnus/alumna that matters, it’s the sex of their progeny. So in the case of gender, legacy admissions shouldn’t have an effect on the gender balance of the incoming classes. The question then becomes, what is happening with the percentage of various minorities? Up or down?

My own personal experience as both a student and an alumnus are that the institution I’m affiliated with would tend to greatly over-favor Americans of Asian heritage (if it used legacy as part of it’s admission policies, which it doesn’t). However, others here are saying that they have an experience that such folks are discriminated against in the admissions process in schools they know about. So what’s the actual proportions of the various minorities in colleges vs. their presence in the American population? And what is the trend over the last, oh, 20 years or so? If those proportions increase, will legacy admissions tend to favor at least the retention of the increase? What would the effect be?