Represent.
Update, 11/28/06: More here. And check out the (racist) quote from Mr. Harvard:
“In the narrow view, some Asians are beneficiaries, and Latinos and blacks are losers; but really, everyone’s a loser,” said Gary Orfield, an education and social policy professor at Harvard. “There may be enough minorities to have one or two kids in a classroom, but not enough to have a rich relationship.”
Note his view of non-Asian minorities--they're there so that others can have the benefit of a "rich relationship" with them. They're there for someone else's benefit. Sound like anything you know of, maybe something that ended in the US in 1865?
Update #2, 11/28/06 9:11 pm: Here are some more thoughts on related issues.
5 comments:
Have you ever gotten a laptop that had a spasm on the first day?
Then you call the customer service peoples and you get someone that speaks with a very thick, unique, different, ok wierd accent. I'm sure people get pissed at that.
In addition, certain Americans dislike (note how I avoided the "H-word") Asians for being "better" than them in technology and knowledge. Ever herd of an Asian Nerd or Overachieving Indian (myself excluded).
Basically, admissions people have problems with making their schools too smart AND they also have personal problems against the race.
Which comes back to your point of racism.
But wait!!!!!
Didn't America discriminate against blacks in the past centry and a half? Now, African-Americans are "victims" of affirmative action.
So, Darren, in about thirty years, you will see colleges filled with Asians, affirmative action will be re-invigorated.
Hey... if they qualify, and there's room, I see no reason why not to let them in.
I think one of the reasons that universities are worried about becoming "too asian" is that the stereotypical Asian-American graduate makes a lousy alumnist. I bet that most universities now have data that shows that Asian-American graduates donate less and take a less active role in promoting the school. Would a Korean-American Stanford graduate be more likely to hire other STanford graduates or other Korean-Americans. I suspect that many people believe that the Asian-American would be ethnicity well before alumni connections
I think what Clinton was trying to say in that quote you linked to is that the point of having a diverse student body is to see lots of cultural differences among the people you live with, and the more visible those differences are -- hence the less one race dominates the enrollment statistics -- the more each person can learn from the diverse setting.
I, on the other hand, think that it's totally stupid to conflate the *benefits* of having a diverse student body with a policy that attempts to create such a student body at the possible expense of enrolling the most highly qualified applicants.
I've got one (soon to be two) adopted daughters from China, so they are Asian-American although I am not. If they get into college for any other reason than the quality of their academic work -- or are barred from the college of their choice for any other reason -- I'm going to be supremely pissed. Because if they turn out to be really good students, it's certainly not going to be because of some Asian academic mystique but rather the result of good old fashioned work (which I will ruthlessly insist upon!).
"I think one of the reasons that universities are worried about becoming "too asian" is that the stereotypical Asian-American graduate makes a lousy alumnist."
Is this true, I wonder?
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