New Report: Asians, Not Whites, Gain When AA Ends

This morning the Chronicle of Higher Education reports on yet another study that confirms Asians benefit much more than whites when racial preference policies are eliminated. In fact, the proportion of whites admitted often decreases when race preferences are curtailed.

An earlier study, discussed here, found that

when one group loses ground, another has to gain — in this case it would be Asian applicants. Asian students would fill nearly four out of every five places in the admitted class not taken by African-American and Hispanic students, with an acceptance rate rising from nearly 18 percent to more than 23 percent.

Similarly, a Dan Golden article in the Wall Street Journal, which I discussed here, also found that

Asian-American enrollment at Berkeley has increased since California voters banned affirmative action in college admissions. Berkeley accepted 4,122 Asian-American applicants for this fall’s freshman class — nearly 42% of the total admitted. That is up from 2,925 in 1997, or 34.6%, the last year before the ban took effect. Similarly, Asian-American undergraduate enrollment at the University of Washington rose to 25.4% in 2004 from 22.1% in 1998, when voters in that state prohibited affirmative action in college admissions.

The University of Michigan may be poised for a similar leap in Asian-American enrollment, now that voters in that state have banned affirmative action. The Center for Equal Opportunity study found that, among applicants with a 1240 SAT score and 3.2 grade point average in 2005, the university admitted 10% of Asian-Americans, 14% of whites, 88% of Hispanics and 92% of blacks. Asian applicants to the university’s medical school also faced a higher admissions bar than any other group.

The new study, which will be published next week in InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, also finds, according to one of its authors, that

Asian Americans’ share of enrollment has shot upward at selective public universities that have been forced to abandon affirmative-action preferences, he said, and the Asian-American population has not increased nearly enough to explain the trend.

Meanwhile, a report on the study’s findings says, white enrollments, as a share of the student body, actually declined slightly at the universities examined…..

It sounds as though this new study largely confirms the findings of earlier ones, but, based on the Chronicle’s summary, it also sounds as though the authors are uncomfortable with their findings. Whether for that reason or simply in an attempt to convince readers they are not racist, right-wing Republican meanies (sorry for the redundancy here), they engage in some wholly gratuitous and unsupported insults to critics of race preferences.

The report says, for example, that its findings that Asians, not whites, benefit from the demise of race preferences “‘can hardly be satisfying’ to ‘those who campaigned for the elimination of affirmative action in the belief that it would advantage the admission of white students.’”

And who, exactly, are “those who campaigned for the elimination of affirmative action in the belief that it would advantage the admission of white students”? Do the authors assume that all those who oppose race preferences do so because they believe whites will benefit? It would be nice to have some names of who the authors have in mind, or perhaps they are afraid of libel suits.

Not only did those who “campaigned” against race preferences do so in a mistaken effort to benefit whites. In the future, now that the facts are known, those who continue to campaign against preferences will no doubt do so in order to deprive Asians of the benefits they receive when they are nt longer victims of double-standard discrimination.

The report predicts that white people might begin actively opposing race-neutral admissions policies if Asian Americans continue to make gains. “Whites are still too influential in politics and in the private sector to sit quietly while this trend continues,” it says.

Such comments are not only dumb — where is the evidence? — but offensive.

I was just about to post the above comments when I saw Roger Clegg’s comments on the same study. If I’d only read his first, I could have saved myself some trouble and posted what I usually feel like saying after reading something Roger has written: “What he said.” Anyway, here’s a part of what he said:

I’m prepared to believe that Asians may be discriminated against more than whites by PC admissions policies, but the evidence is overwhelming — in, among other places, the dozens of studies done by the Center for Equal Opportunity — that both groups are discriminated against (and sometimes Latinos as well). I have a sneaking suspicion that this is just another desperate effort by the proponents of such discrimination to stem the tide that is running against them, this time by trying to persuade whites that they shouldn’t care about colorblind principles, since it is only those darn Asian kids who benefit from them. It’s an ugly tactic, and it won’t work. Those of us “who campaigned” against racial preferences did so not because we care about white kids and not Asian kids — we’re doing so because we don’t like discrimination against anyone. I think the overwhelming majority of those supporting these initiatives feel this way.

Say What? (35)

  1. Ari January 30, 2008 at 3:37 pm | | Reply

    “The report predicts that white people might begin actively opposing race-neutral admissions policies if Asian Americans continue to make gains. “Whites are still too influential in politics and in the private sector to sit quietly while this trend continues,” it says.”

    This is indeed startlingly offensive. The authors simply assume and implicitly state that everyone who opposes affirmative action is racist, which is far from the case.

  2. Dom January 30, 2008 at 4:49 pm | | Reply

    “[I]ts findings that Asians, not whites, benefit from the demise of race preferences “‘can hardly be satisfying’ to ‘those who campaigned for the elimination of affirmative action in the belief that it would advantage the admission of white students.’”

    I’m sure that’s a misprint. What the author meant to write was: “Its findings that Asians, not whites, benefit from the demise of race preferences can hardly be satisfying to those who promoted AA as a way of increasing diversity at top Universities.”

  3. ACF January 31, 2008 at 12:08 am | | Reply

    Many (most? all?) whites would be perfectly happy to use race-neutral policies, thereby dramatically increasing the numbers of Asians who are admitted to Universities based on merit.

    This is because many (most? all?) whites don’t see admissions (or job offers, or promotions) as quota slots to be handed out based on skin pigmentation, genital shape, or any other non-merit based criterion.

    The reason many (most? all?) whites know this is because they know that they rose from their severely impoverished ancestors who came here (after slavery) to become the successes they are today through hard work and merit. Doing it any other way doesn’t add anything to the country (or University) or to the apparent recipient of preferences.

  4. MJ January 31, 2008 at 11:29 am | | Reply

    Interestingly, the report (wrongly) assumes whites are racist – for having the same attitudes many minorities do.

    Should this fact not be considered evidence opponents of race preferences are not racist since the beneficiaries of elimination are not their own race? Of course not! The new theory is that RP critics intend to be racist but are just too ignorant to do so effectively.

  5. Cobra January 31, 2008 at 7:48 pm | | Reply

    John writes:

    >>>”And who, exactly, are “those who campaigned for the elimination of affirmative action in the belief that it would advantage the admission of white students”?”

    >>>”Ms. GRATZ: I remember the day like–like it was yesterday. I came home from practice, cheerleading practice, and grabbed the mail. And it was a thin envelope. And then I opened it and I–I–I read probably the first three lines at that point and started crying. I was mad and I didn’t understand why and I didn’t want to tell anyone. But right away, I definitely knew that there was something wrong.

    BRADLEY: Why?

    Ms. GRATZ: Well, it–it–common knowledge. They make it know that they use race and that there is a double standard.”

    –Anchor: Ed Bradley.

    60 Minutes (CBS News Broadcast, October 29, 2000).

    http://www.cir-usa.org/cases/michigan_60minutes.html

    >>>”BRADLEY: (Voiceover) Professor Cohen showed us the form which he says clearly shows that whites were being discriminated against.

    Prof. COHEN: There’s a little line up at the top of the form. It says, ‘Use the top line for majority students; use the middle and bottom line for minority students.’ I mean, it was shocking.

    BRADLEY: What the university was doing was ranking the more than 20,000 applicants who apply each year by their high school grades and SAT scores. Those whose combined scores were above a certain level were admitted. Those below were rejected.

    Prof. COHEN: For the white students who get the top line, it’s reject. And for the black students or the Hispanic students who get the bottom line, it’s admit. So in cell after cell, it’s reject and admit, reject and admit, reject and admit. Cell after cell after cell.”

    http://www.cir-usa.org/cases/michigan_60minutes.html

    That’s two for you, John. Jennifer Gratz and Carl Cohen CLEARLY advocating the elimination of affirmative action for the benefit of white college student admissions. NO SPIN required on my part whatsoever.

    Now, let’s look at this “hide behind Asian Americans” tactic used yet again by anti-affirmative action types. From Frank H. Wu and William Kidder on the “Diverse: Issues in Higher Education:”

    >>>”Like many racial stereotypes, the so-called “model minority” status of Asian Americans contains a germ of truth. Unfortunately, it is exaggerated, distorted and often presented without causes and contexts.

    The key finding of the Princeton study is actually that Asian Americans suffer from what law professor Jerry Kang has called “negative action.” In truth, Asian Americans are being treated differently — that is, worse — than White applicants with similar qualifications. Asian Americans are held to a higher standard than Whites, without any rationale. Since three White students were admitted for every one African- American or Latino student, it follows that, for Asian Americans, the benefits of ending “negative action” exceeds the benefits of terminating affirmative action.

    Another appropriate description of the situation is that Whites are enjoying a form of affirmative action vis-à-vis Asian Americans. So the problem isn’t the existence of efforts to achieve a “critical mass” of historically excluded and under-represented minorities. Rather, the problem is long-standing practices that work to the advantage of Whites and harm Asian Americans. The former is constitutional; the latter, illegal.”

    The piece continues….

    >>>”A recently published study examines the numbers of Asian Americans in law schools before and after affirmative action bans took effect in California, Texas and Washinton. Contrary to predictions, there turned out to be fewer Asian Americans at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Washington without affirmative action. And there were significant drops for some Asian groups, like Filipinos.”

    http://www.diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_6480.shtml

    What?!? That stands in stark contrast to the mythology being peddled by the anti-affirmative action factions.

    And it gets WORSE…

    >>>” In the early 1990s, there was concern about Asian Americans hitting a plateau in higher education admissions. At that time, Dr. Michael S. Greve, a co-founder of the Center for Individual Rights, wrote that it was “an opportunity to call, on behalf of a racial minority (i.e., the Asian applicants), for an end to discrimination.” It was an appeal that, when made on behalf of Whites, is politically hopeless and, perhaps, no longer entirely respectable.

    His candid admission reveals how Asian Americans are being used and abused, to their own detriment as well as that of African-Americans and Latinos. Real discrimination against Asian Americans is whitewashed, and they are used for strategic purposes to attack other people of color.

    Ironically, groups that proclaim their belief in color-blindness show themselves readily able to be color-conscious in the most divisive manner. They have no problem pointing at Asian Americans if it suits their cause.

    It is this cynicism that has led many Asian Americans who have studied affirmative action to become advocates for it. Law professor Sumi Cho observes that demagogues are trying to turn Asian Americans into “racial mascots” to camouflage an agenda that, if presented by Whites on their own behalf, would look too much like naked self-interest. Law professor Mari Matsuda proclaimed in a famous speech given to the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco, “We will not be used.”

    http://www.diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_6480.shtml

    I raise a toast in honor of Professor Cho and Professor Matsuda. Keep up the good fight, my sisters. The scheme of using “racial mascots” must be exposed for all to see in 2008 America, and I agree with those esteemed faculty members that our Asian-American brothers and sisters deserve far better.

    –Cobra

  6. Shouting Thomas January 31, 2008 at 11:32 pm | | Reply

    Cobra, your unbearably heartless, cold response to the suffering of Ms. Gratz… sometimes even ridicule aimed at her… your bitter denunciation of her for wanting her own dreams and apirations met… We’ve got the point. You don’t give a damn about the sufferings or disappointments of any white person.

    Well, there is no way to respond to that but in kind.

    Asians comprise half the populace of this earth. If you want to find leftist Asians, you’ll find plenty. If you want to find conservative, family oriented Asians, you’ll find a whole lot more.

    Asians, by and large, navigate to the concrete technical, scientific, medical and practical fields. Blacks barely exist in these fields because they can’t or won’t do the work. There’s easier pickings in hustling whites in the liberal arts, anyway. Some whites will work hard in practical fields, but not many. You’ve presented us with completely phony categories. The liberal arts have become a dumping ground for lazy, worthless victimology creeps. Yes, they do agree with you. Studies that demand concrete knowledge are of no interest to the victimology creeps because they are too lazy to work.

    The hatred and venom that you constantly express toward Mr. Gratz is ugly and remorseless. Once again, it’s all con and hustle with you. Yes, we know that you admire the lazy victimology hustlers. That goes without saying.

  7. E February 1, 2008 at 5:43 am | | Reply

    Cobra,

    Kidder’s conclusions about the Espenshade and Chung Princeton study have been repudiated. Kidder was not comparing apples to apples, but apples to oranges. Espenshade’s study still stands, after peer review. Espenshade, by the way, is a pro race based AA advocate. This study found that “when one group loses ground, another has to gain — in this case it would be Asian applicants. Asian students would fill nearly four out of every five places in the admitted class not taken by African-American and Hispanic students, with an acceptance rate rising from nearly 18 percent to more than 23 percent.”

    Peter Schmidt said,

    “Mr. Kidder’s study was based on an analysis of enrollment data from five

    law schools in California, Texas, and Washington. He argued that

    Asian-American students had made only minor gains at such institutions

    after the schools were barred from considering applicants’ race or

    ethnicity. But, although Mr. Kidder’s study did not mention it, four of

    the five law schools he examined—those at the University of

    California’s Berkeley, Davis, and Los Angeles campuses and the University

    of Washington—had had affirmative-action policies that were somewhat

    exceptional in that they actually favored at least some Asian Americans.”

    Read Peter Schmidt’s entire article.

    http://chronicle.com/subscribe/login?url=http%3A%2F%2Fchronicle.com%2Fdaily%2F2008%2F01%2F1424n.htm

    Wednesday, January 30, 2008

    Bans on Affirmative Action Help Asian Americans, Not Whites, Report Says

    ========================================================================

    By PETER SCHMIDT

    Although opposition to colleges’ affirmative-action policies runs highest

    in the white population, a new study suggests that it is Asian

    Americans—not whites—whose chances of gaining admission to a

    selective university surges after an institution is precluded from

    considering applicants’ ethnicity or race.

    One of the study’s authors, David R. Colburn, a professor of history and

    former provost at the University of Florida, said in an interview on

    Tuesday that the study shows “Asian Americans were discriminated against

    under an affirmative-action system.” Asian Americans’ share of enrollment

    has shot upward at selective public universities that have been forced to

    abandon affirmative-action preferences, he said, and the Asian-American

    population has not increased nearly enough to explain the trend.

    Meanwhile, a report on the study’s findings says, white enrollments, as a

    share of the student body, actually declined slightly at the universities

    examined. That trend, it says, though partly attributable to the growing

    diversity of the states served by the institutions, “can hardly be

    satisfying” to “those who campaigned for the elimination of affirmative

    action in the belief that it would advantage the admission of white

    students.”

    Black students’ share of enrollment at such institutions generally

    dropped “sometimes substantially” while the picture for Hispanic students

    was mixed, the researchers found.

    The study, the results of which are to be published next week in

    InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies

    , was based on an

    analysis of enrollment data from selective universities in three states:

    California, where voters passed a 1996 referendum barring such

    institutions from considering applicants’ race or ethnicity; Florida,

    where Gov. Jeb Bush persuaded the state university system to abandon

    race-conscious admissions in 2000; and Texas, where race-conscious

    admissions were prohibited under a 1996 federal court decision that

    remained in effect until the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality

    of such policies in 2003.

    The specific institutions examined in the study, which tracked freshman

    enrollment patterns from 1990 through the fall of 2005, were the

    University of Florida, the University of Texas at Austin, and the

    University of California’s campuses at Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San

    Diego.

    One of the study’s three co-authors, Charles E. Young Jr., was chancellor

    of UCLA when California’s ban on affirmative-action preferences was

    passed and later served as president of the University of Florida at the

    time when public universities there were barred from considering

    applicants’ ethnicity or race. The third co-author is Victor M. Yellen, a

    former director of institutional research at Florida.

    To help pinpoint which of the trends they observed were clearly due to

    changes in affirmative-action policy, the researchers also studied five

    universities that had never been affected by affirmative-action bans:

    Cornell University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and the

    Universities of Arizona, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Maryland at

    College Park.

    Debating the Asian Impact

    In looking at how Asian Americans were affected by affirmative-action

    policies, the researchers have waded into an area of considerable

    controversy.

    A similar conclusion to the latest one was reached in a 2005 study by

    Thomas J. Espenshade, a professor of sociology at Princeton University,

    and Chang Y. Chung, a statistical programmer at Princeton’s Office of

    Population Research. Based on their analysis of the profiles of 124,000

    applicants to elite colleges, they concluded that the elimination of

    affirmative action would result in a significant increase in

    Asian-American enrollments at such institutions, as Asian Americans

    filled nearly four out of five of the seats left vacant by declines in

    the share of black and Hispanic applicants admitted.

    Those findings were challenged in a 2006 study by William C. Kidder, then

    a senior policy analyst at the University of California at Davis, who

    accused the Princeton researchers of falling prey to the “yellow peril

    causation fallacy” by confounding the effects of affirmative action and

    “negative action,” or outright admissions bias against Asian-American

    students. Mr. Espenshade, who characterizes himself as a supporter of

    affirmative action, later said in an e-mail message that he and Mr. Chung

    had “inadvertently blurred the conceptual distinction between eliminating

    affirmative action and moving to a race-neutral admissions system,” and

    that their paper had focused on the latter.

    Mr. Kidder’s study was based on an analysis of enrollment data from five

    law schools in California, Texas, and Washington. He argued that

    Asian-American students had made only minor gains at such institutions

    after the schools were barred from considering applicants’ race or

    ethnicity. But, although Mr. Kidder’s study did not mention it, four of

    the five law schools he examined—those at the University of

    California’s Berkeley, Davis, and Los Angeles campuses and the University

    of Washington—had had affirmative-action policies that were somewhat

    exceptional in that they actually favored at least some Asian Americans.

    The report being published in Interactions next week notes that

    prohibitions against race-conscious admissions had put the colleges

    examined under pressure to curtail other admissions preferences given to

    applicants with some sort of connection, and that those other preferences

    may also have played a role in limiting Asian-American enrollments.

    “Clearly in an open admissions process where affirmative action does not

    enter into enrollment decisions and where legacy and donor issues are

    discouraged, Asian-American students compete very well,” it says.

    In California, it says, Asian Americans “filled the gap as black and

    Hispanic enrollment fell following the elimination of affirmative

    action.” The share of UC-Berkeley freshmen who were Asian American rose

    from 37.30 percent in 1995 to 43.57 percent in 2000 and to 46.59 percent

    in 2005, and Asian-American enrollments experienced similarly large jumps

    at the university’s Los Angeles and San Diego campuses.

    The share of University of Florida freshmen who were Asian American rose

    from 7.5 percent in 1995 to 8.65 percent in 2005, while Asian Americans’

    share of freshman enrollment at the University of Texas at Austin rose

    from 14.26 percent to 17.33 percent during that time frame.

    Black Declines

    The forthcoming report says the changes in black enrollments in the

    states examined varied greatly, depending on how aggressively state and

    university officials worked to mitigate the effects of affirmative-action

    bans.

    In California, it says, black enrollment declines were “devastating,”

    with the numbers for black men falling especially far.

    At the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses, black students’ share of

    enrollment dropped by more than half, about as much as the universities’

    leaders had feared it would. Berkeley’s entering freshman class of 1995

    had 149 black students, accounting for 6.51 percent of first-year

    students; of those who entered in 2005, 109, or 2.97 percent, were black.

    At UCLA, black enrollment dropped from 7.31 percent to 2.67 percent.

    The decline was not as steep at San Diego, but the campus’s black

    enrollment had been fairly negligible to begin with, accounting for 1.31

    percent of the entering class of 1995 and 1.16 percent of the entering

    class of 2005.

    Few of the university’s efforts to offset such declines had much effect,

    the report says. The university adopted a policy guaranteeing admission

    to students in the top 4 percent of their high-school class, but most

    black students who got in under the 4-percent rule also had been eligible

    under the old admissions criteria, the report notes.

    The situation was different in Florida and Texas.

    Black students’ share of the University of Florida’s entering class

    declined from 11.33 in 2000—just before the end of race-conscious

    admissions—to 9.41 percent in 2005, not nearly as sharp a decline as

    that experienced by the California institutions.

    The report says it helped that Florida adopted a policy of guaranteeing

    students in the top 20 percent of their high school a seat at one of the

    state’s public universities. Florida, unlike the universities in

    California and Texas, was allowed to continue to consider race and

    ethnicity in recruiting and awarding financial aid. And even though black

    students’ share of its entering classes declined, it was able to increase

    the raw numbers of black students on campus by substantially increasing

    its overall enrollment.

    In Texas, Gov. George W. Bush helped reverse black enrollment declines by

    persuading lawmakers to adopt the “Texas 10 Percent Plan,” guaranteeing

    students who graduated in the top 10th of their class at one of the

    state’s high schools admission to the public university of their choice.

    Black students’ share of enrollment at the University of Texas at Austin

    initially dropped from 4.89 percent in 1995 to 3.38 percent in 2002, but

    has since rebounded to 5.05 percent, which is above 1995 levels.

    Hispanic enrollments dropped substantially at Berkeley and UCLA, but rose

    substantially at UC-San Diego and at Florida and Texas.

    The increases were driven partly by population growth. The University of

    Florida, Mr. Colburn said, did not have to take big steps to maintain

    Hispanic enrollments because Hispanic students “were consistently

    competitive” with many coming from middle- or upper-middle-class

    backgrounds.

    The report notes that all five of the universities studied mitigated

    actual and potential declines in their black and Hispanic enrollments by

    increasing their five and six-year graduation rates, so that higher

    percentages of their black and Hispanic students graduated in 2000 than

    had 10 years before. Mr. Colburn said the information analyzed for his

    study did not shed light on whether graduation rates were bolstered by

    the better academic preparation of students admitted without the benefit

    of affirmative-action preferences. “My observation would be the jury is

    out on it,” he said.

    The report predicts that white people might begin actively opposing

    race-neutral admissions policies if Asian Americans continue to make

    gains. “Whites are still too influential in politics and in the private

    sector to sit quietly while this trend continues,” it says.

    Mr. Young said he expects a continued decline in the amount of racial and

    ethnic diversity on such campuses as the competition for admission

    intensifies. Already, he says, limits on affirmative action have “clearly

    negatively affected their ability to provide diversity in education,”

    hurting the education of their students.

    ————————————————————————

    Copyright © 2008 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

  8. MJ February 1, 2008 at 9:18 am | | Reply

    In Re Cobra’s comments:

    See how easy it is to find discriminatory intent when you just assume it?

  9. E February 1, 2008 at 9:41 am | | Reply

    Hey Cobra,

    This statement by Roger Clegg presents a view quite contrary to your self-serving racist myopic view on race preferences, especially on how your warped race based AA policy and race preferences affect INNOCENT individuals, of ALL, yes ALL, races.

    [Those of us “who campaigned” against racial preferences did so not because we care about white kids and not Asian kids — we’re doing so because we don’t like discrimination against anyone. I think the overwhelming majority of those supporting these initiatives feel this way.]

    Open letter to Roger Clegg,

    MANY THANKS FOR POSTING YOUR THOUGHTS, AS USUAL, YOU HAVE HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD AND I CONCUR WITH YOUR POST. I HAVE BEEN SAYING WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN SAYING TO *DEAF EARS*, ESPECIALLY TO THE POLITICALLY CORRECT FLAMING LIBERAL *WHITE WASHED ASIAN AMERICANS, INCLUDING THOSE WHO ARE STUDENTS AND FACULTY IN THE IVIES/ ELITES.* I URGE *EVERYONE* TO SUPPORT ROGER IN HIS ENDEAVOR AND HIS CAUSE FOR RESEARCH AT THE CEO.

    Needless to say, Roger, please keep up the good fight against race preferences and racial and ethnic quotas.

    Yours truly,

    E

    ======================

    http://phibetacons.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjQxMDNhOGJmZTVhMGUzOTUwODdmOGQ4NWRkYzFmNmM=

    Roger Clegg posted,

    “Wednesday, January 30, 2008

    The Effect of Nondiscrimination on White Admissions [Roger Clegg]

    The Chronicle of Higher Education has a story today (subscription required) on a new study that purports to find that it is Asian students, not white students, who gain most when schools end racially preferential admission policies. And this “‘can hardly be satisfying’ to ‘those who campaigned for the elimination of affirmative action in the belief that it would advantage the admission of white students.'” Moreover, “The report predicts that white people might begin actively opposing race-neutral admissions policies if Asian Americans continue to make gains. ‘Whites are still too influential in politics and in the private sector to sit quietly while this trend continues,’ it says.”

    I’m prepared to believe that Asians may be discriminated against more than whites by PC admissions policies, but the evidence is overwhelming — in, among other places, the dozens of studies done by the Center for Equal Opportunity — that both groups are discriminated against (and sometimes Latinos as well). I have a sneaking suspicion that this is just another desperate effort by the proponents of such discrimination to stem the tide that is running against them, this time by trying to persuade whites that they shouldn’t care about colorblind principles, since it is only those darn Asian kids who benefit from them. It’s an ugly tactic, and it won’t work. Those of us “who campaigned” against racial preferences did so not because we care about white kids and not Asian kids — we’re doing so because we don’t like discrimination against anyone. I think the overwhelming majority of those supporting these initiatives feel this way.”

    01/30 10:34 AM

    =======================

    Anonymous comments on Clegg’s post:

    I’d like to pose a question:

    If someone kicks your butt, and then stops kicking your butt, is that person “helping” or “benefitting” you because your butt doesn’t hurt anymore?

    I would argue that Asian Americans experience no benefit from the absence of discrimination. They are merely not being harmed. Conversely, no one who actually or could “benefit” from racial preference is actually or could be harmed by the absence of discrimination. They are merely not being preferred and/or given an unfair advantage based on immutable physical characteristics like race and gender

    Response from another reader:

    Exactly. Standing up for one’s right not to be classified by race/gender cannot infringe other persons’ right to so classify one, because they have no such right. And, the protection is very narrow. As universities and institutions are free to use just about any other criteria they like (other than race and gender), they have little cause for complaint.

  10. Dom February 1, 2008 at 11:58 am | | Reply

    I have to say, I’m very confused by this: “That’s two for you, John. Jennifer Gratz and Carl Cohen CLEARLY advocating the elimination of affirmative action for the benefit of white college student admissions. NO SPIN required on my part whatsoever.”

    This is said in response to Cohen’s statement: “For the white students who get the top line, it’s reject. And for the black students or the Hispanic students who get the bottom line, it’s admit. So in cell after cell, it’s reject and admit, reject and admit, reject and admit. Cell after cell after cell.”

    This is a policy you want to support?

    And then there is this: “A recently published study examines the numbers of Asian Americans in law schools before and after affirmative action bans took effect in California, Texas and Washinton. Contrary to predictions, there turned out to be fewer Asian Americans at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Washington without affirmative action.”

    What point is being made here? Why is it wrong for Gratz to support a policy that (presumably) benefits her, but acceptable for Asians to support a policy that (presumably) benfits them? I just don’t like the tone of this at all.

    And this: “In the early 1990s, there was concern about Asian Americans hitting a plateau in higher education admissions. At that time, Dr. Michael S. Greve, a co-founder of the Center for Individual Rights, wrote that it was “an opportunity to call, on behalf of a racial minority (i.e., the Asian applicants), for an end to discrimination.” It was an appeal that, when made on behalf of Whites, is politically hopeless and, perhaps, no longer entirely respectable.” Well, count me as one white person who finds it very, very acceptable.

    It continues: “His candid admission reveals how Asian Americans are being used and abused, to their own detriment as well as that of African-Americans and Latinos.” What candid admission? Really, who writes this nonsense?

  11. E February 1, 2008 at 1:09 pm | | Reply

    Dom asked,

    “Really, who writes this nonsense? ”

    Answer: Cobra

  12. Cobra February 1, 2008 at 8:17 pm | | Reply

    Dom writes:

    >>>”I have to say, I’m very confused by this: “That’s two for you, John. Jennifer Gratz and Carl Cohen CLEARLY advocating the elimination of affirmative action for the benefit of white college student admissions. NO SPIN required on my part whatsoever.”

    This is said in response to Cohen’s statement: “For the white students who get the top line, it’s reject. And for the black students or the Hispanic students who get the bottom line, it’s admit. So in cell after cell, it’s reject and admit, reject and admit, reject and admit. Cell after cell after cell.”

    This is a policy you want to support?”

    Dom, the entire passage was in response to John’s question here:

    >>>”And who, exactly, are “those who campaigned for the elimination of affirmative action in the belief that it would advantage the admission of white students”?

    I provided explicit examples that you concur with in YOUR post:

    >>>”What point is being made here? Why is it wrong for Gratz to support a policy that (presumably) benefits her, but acceptable for Asians to support a policy that (presumably) benfits them? I just don’t like the tone of this at all.”

    Of COURSE the Jennifer Gratz soap opera, Carl Cohen’s manifesto and the MCRI movement is all about benefitting White people, particularly White Males.

    You even acknowlege it in YOUR post.

    Why, oh why can’t the anti-affirmative action types be HONEST about it?

    Perhaps you won’t find a more passionately ardent opponent of these “turn back the clock” anti-minority progress schemes on this blog than myself. However, you’ll never hear me claim that you don’t have the right to agree with or join these schemes.

    Dom writes:

    >>>”Well, count me as one white person who finds it very, very acceptable.”

    This is America, and people have the constitutional right to join any pro-white male faction, association, movement or junta they wish.

    I also have the constitutional right to criticize them and their activities.

    E writes:

    >>>”Dom asked,

    “Really, who writes this nonsense? ”

    Answer: Cobra”

    That’s incorrect. The people who wrote the piece, entitled: Perspectives: “Asian Americans Aren’t White Folks’ ‘Racial Mascots’”—

    Frank H. Wu is dean of Wayne State University Law School, and William Kidder (whom we discussed here WAY back: http://www.discriminations.us/2004/11/conflicting_responses_to_law_s.html) is a senior policy analyst at the University of California, Davis.

    http://www.diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_6480.shtml

    >>>”Wu became the ninth dean of the WSU Law School in 2004 and previously served as a member of the law faculty of Howard University, including two years as clinical director. During his tenure at Howard he testified in the U-M Law School affirmative action case, Grutter v. Bollinger.

    He has been an adjunct professor at Columbia University and a visiting professor at U-M. He is coauthor of another book, “Race, Rights and Reparation: Law and the Japanese American Internment,” and his writing has appeared in such periodicals as the Washington Post, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Chronicle of Higher Education, Legal Times and Asian Week.

    “Frank Wu brings a unique perspective on diversity as he shares personally and professionally the impact of often subtle forms of racial and ethnic discrimination,” says Lester Monts, senior vice provost for academic affairs. “His testimony in the lawsuit challenging affirmative action in the University of Michigan Law School was most critical in creating understanding of the importance of diversity as an issue of inclusiveness for all groups.”

    http://www.umich.edu/~urecord/0506/Apr03_06/04.shtml

    Now E, this is America. You can go right ahead and keep quoting neo-confederate Antebellum South nostalgists like Roger Clegg.

    Have a ball, E.

    Me? As far as Asian-American studies on Affirmative Action and its ramifications, I’m going to pay a little more attention to the words of learned individuals like Dean Frank Wu.

    Stephen writes:

    >>>”Cobra, your unbearably heartless, cold response to the suffering of Ms. Gratz… sometimes even ridicule aimed at her… your bitter denunciation of her for wanting her own dreams and apirations met… We’ve got the point. You don’t give a damn about the sufferings or disappointments of any white person.”

    LOL! C’mon Stephen, you’re the guy who calls ME melodramatic.

    If you want to deal in fairy tales, let’s do it.

    When Goldilocks came up on the Three Bears’ house, she had no special privileges or access. She felt she could just walk right in.

    It wasn’t enough for her to taste each of the three bowls of porridge on the table, but Goldilocks passed judgement on them. One was “too hot”, one “too cold”…etc. She selfishly gobbled up the Baby Bear’s porridge because to Goldilocks, it was “JUST RIGHT.”

    She went on to wreck the Baby Bear’s chair because to her, it wasn’t “too big.” It was “JUST RIGHT.”

    She slept in the Baby Bear’s bed because to her, it wasn’t “too hard” or “too soft”. It was “JUST RIGHT.”

    When the Three Bears came home and dropped a dose of reality on Goldilocks and her elevated sense of entitlement, she cried, ran and screamed for help, oblivious to the fact that she was in the complete wrong, and the true victim in the story was the Baby Bear, who lost food and had property damaged during this home invasion.

    Jennifer Gratz?

    >>>”After initially not being offered a place at the University, Jennifer Gratz in 1995 did not return a form to the University that would have placed her on a waiting list for admission. Had she completed and mailed that form, she would have been admitted, because the University decided to admit every Michigan resident on the waiting list that year.”

    http://www.umich.edu/~urecord/9899/May10_99/3.htm

    Gratz could’ve walked right into Ann Arbor in 1995–the ONLY SCHOOL SHE APPLIED TO.

    Except….

    I guess the letter she received from the University of Michigan was “too thin.”

    I presume the alternate admissions process would’ve had her waiting “too long.”

    I suppose getting in to Michigan from the waiting list instead of directly was “too humiliating.”

    I guess that’s just not acceptable for Jennifer Gratz, and her sense of entitlement.

    Oh, no. Gratz’ entrance into the University of Michigan had to be, “JUST RIGHT”, or somebody’s gonna get hurt.

    >>>”Gratz was so confident that she’d make the cut at Michigan that she applied to no other colleges. The wait-list letter was the first bad sign.

    Then in April of her senior year, after weeks of running home from school to check the mail, came the thin letter of rejection. Through her tears, Gratz uttered her now-famous rejoinder: “Dad, can we sue?”

    It was an odd reaction for a 17-year-old. But Gratz said she suspected something amiss, if not precisely that she’d been passed over because she was white. “Everyone knew bits and pieces,” she says, about the premium Michigan placed on diversity. Gratz was in a state of shock. She was so embarrassed by the rejection that she told no one, not even her boyfriend of three years. She hurriedly applied to the University of Notre Dame but didn’t get in. She was accepted into the honors program at the University of Michigan’s campus in Dearborn.”

    http://aad.english.ucsb.edu/docs/dream7.html

    Apparently, to both Gratz and Goldilocks, society is duty-bound to accommodate THEM on their own terms, tastes and time-tables– no matter who gets hurt in the process. But I believe there is a

    distinction between the two:

    >>>”Just then, Goldilocks woke up and saw the three bears. She screamed, “Help!” And she jumped up and ran out of the room. Goldilocks ran down the stairs, opened the door, and ran away into the forest. And she never returned to the home of the three bears.

    THE END”

    http://www.dltk-teach.com/rhymes/goldilocks_story.htm

    At least Goldilocks knew when to stop. Gratz has alligned herself with some high powered “guns”. I guess she wants to make sure that no “bear” real or perceived EVER gets in her way again.

    There won’t be a happily ever after ending on this one.

    –Cobra

  13. E February 1, 2008 at 9:17 pm | | Reply

    Hey Cobra,

    PLEASE ANSWER THE QUESTION.

    A reader’s comments on Clegg’s post:

    I’d like to pose a question:

    If someone kicks your butt, and then stops kicking your butt, is that person “helping” or “benefitting” you because your butt doesn’t hurt anymore?

    I would argue that Asian Americans experience no benefit from the absence of discrimination. They are merely not being harmed. Conversely, no one who actually or could “benefit” from racial preference is actually or could be harmed by the absence of discrimination. They are merely not being preferred and/or given an unfair advantage based on immutable physical characteristics like race and gender

    Response from another reader:

    Exactly. Standing up for one’s right not to be classified by race/gender cannot infringe other persons’ right to so classify one, because they have no such right. And, the protection is very narrow. As universities and institutions are free to use just about any other criteria they like (other than race and gender), they have little cause for complaint.

    ========================

    Dom asked,

    “Really, who writes this nonsense? ”

    Answer: Cobra who posts and believes in this NONSENSE written by THE POLITICALLY CORRECT FLAMING LIBERAL *WHITE WASHED ASIAN AMERICANS, INCLUDING THOSE WHO ARE STUDENTS AND FACULTY IN THE IVIES/ ELITES.*

  14. Shouting Thomas February 2, 2008 at 9:02 am | | Reply

    “When Goldilocks came up on the Three Bears’ house, she had no special privileges or access. She felt she could just walk right in.”

    Now, Cobra, you’ve descended to ridiculing Ms. Gratz for her physical characterists. This is not the first time. You’ve ridiculed her before as a “cheerleader,” among other things.

    Who’s the racist here?

  15. E February 2, 2008 at 10:16 am | | Reply

    Wu and Kidder’s rationalization for their support of race based AA is based on their definition and use of “negative action” against Asian Americans in admissions to the elite schools, which is hogwash (nonsense). Kidder’s study did nothing to disprove the Espenshade study, which concluded,

    “when one group loses ground, another has to gain — in this case it would be Asian applicants. Asian students would fill nearly four out of every five places in the admitted class not taken by African-American and Hispanic students, with an acceptance rate rising from nearly 18 percent to more than 23 percent.”

    Espenshade studied a cohort of over 145,000 high school applicants to elite undergraduate colleges, whereas Kidder studied college applicants to just five law schools, including the one at UC Davis, which had programs that favored some Asian applicants. Even with this, or the use of race preferences for some sub-classifications of Asians, Asian applicants still gained spaces when race preferences were made illegal. Kidder was not comparing apples to apples, but apples to oranges with his study.

    Peter Schmidt said,

    “Mr. Kidder’s study was based on an analysis of enrollment data from five

    law schools in California, Texas, and Washington. He argued that

    Asian-American students had made only minor gains at such institutions

    after the schools were barred from considering applicants’ race or

    ethnicity. But, although Mr. Kidder’s study did not mention it, four of

    the five law schools he examined—those at the University of

    California’s Berkeley, Davis, and Los Angeles campuses and the University

    of Washington—had had affirmative-action policies that were somewhat

    exceptional in that they actually favored at least some Asian Americans.”

    The bottom line of Kidder’s argument that “negative action” is not discrimination against Asian applicants is just NONSENSE.

    “Negative action” against Asian Americans applicants EQUALS discrimination

    against Asian American applicants.PERIOD.

    DISCRIMINATION IS DISCRIMINATION and it cannot be justified by “negative action”, whether it is “alot of discrimination” or “just a little discrimination.” Espenshade’s study presents overwhelming evidence of the effects of race based AA against Asian American applicants and no one has been able to disprove this. Kidder, and Wu, both flaming liberal race based AA advocates, have not disproved the Espensahade study.

    There is overwhelming and compelling evidence that concurs with Espenshade and how this race based AA affects the races and ethnic groups in admissions. The evidence is CLEAR AND CONVINCING that Asians applicants are the ones who lose the most.

    You must remember that Espenshade is also a pro race based advocate and he used his findings for continuing race preferences for blacks, simply because WITHOUT these preferences, the black numbers will be decreased tremendously, even though Asians stand to lose the most.

    Hey, Cobra DISCRIMINATION IS DISCRIMINATION, no matter which group it is directed against, no matter how small or politically insignificant this group may appear to be in the zero sum game of elite school admissions. This group is the Asian Americans. This type of discrimination affects ALL of us, as Americans, and in the big picture, if this persists, our country will diminish. Cobra, this will eventually bite you in the butt, and it will hurt you more than you could have ever imagined.

    Clegg said,

    “I’m prepared to believe that Asians may be discriminated against more than whites by PC admissions policies, but the evidence is overwhelming — in, among other places, the dozens of studies done by the Center for Equal Opportunity — that both groups are discriminated against (and sometimes Latinos as well).”

    [Those of us “who campaigned” against racial preferences did so not because we care about white kids and not Asian kids — we’re doing so because we don’t like discrimination against anyone. I think the overwhelming majority of those supporting these initiatives feel this way.]

  16. Cobra February 2, 2008 at 3:05 pm | | Reply

    E writes:

    >>>”Cobra who posts and believes in this NONSENSE written by THE POLITICALLY CORRECT FLAMING LIBERAL *WHITE WASHED ASIAN AMERICANS, INCLUDING THOSE WHO ARE STUDENTS AND FACULTY IN THE IVIES/ ELITES.*”

    So you’re going on record as stating that Wayne State University Dean Frank Wu and law professors Sumi Cho and Mari Matsuda are “politically correct flaming liberal white washed Asian Americans?”

    I find it interesting you would use the term–

    “white washed”

    E, what does the term “white washed” mean to you?

    –Cobra

  17. E February 3, 2008 at 6:11 pm | | Reply

    Hey Cobra,

    A reminder for you.

    THE ONLY THING YOU ARE “SETTING STRAIGHT” IS THAT YOU ARE A RACIST AND A LIAR!

    You are the racist, since you, Cobra, are asking for race preferences and preferential treatment for blacks by playing the race card, which will be the cause of your quick demise. Jews and Asian Americans are NOT ASKING for preferential treatment based on race, religion and ethnicity, even though they faced prejudice and hatred from you and your ilk. That’s the difference.

    Cobra, you have COMPLETE DISREGARD for the truth.

    http://www.discriminations.us/2006/11/preferences_as_a_zerosum_game.html

    Preferences As A Zero-Sum Game

    It really shouldn’t surprise anyone (though it still does) that giving preferences to some applicants based on their race places a burden on other applicants because of their race. Nor at this late date should it surprise anyone (though it still does) that the primary beneficiaries of eliminating preferences to minorities are not whites but another minority group, Asian-Americans.

    Asian-American enrollment at Berkeley has increased since California voters banned affirmative action in college admissions. Berkeley accepted 4,122 Asian-American applicants for this fall’s freshman class — nearly 42% of the total admitted. That is up from 2,925 in 1997, or 34.6%, the last year before the ban took effect. Similarly, Asian-American undergraduate enrollment at the University of Washington rose to 25.4% in 2004 from 22.1% in 1998, when voters in that state prohibited affirmative action in college admissions.

    The University of Michigan may be poised for a similar leap in Asian-American enrollment, now that voters in that state have banned affirmative action. The Center for Equal Opportunity study found that, among applicants with a 1240 SAT score and 3.2 grade point average in 2005, the university admitted 10% of Asian-Americans, 14% of whites, 88% of Hispanics and 92% of blacks. Asian applicants to the university’s medical school also faced a higher admissions bar than any other group.

    Here is the link to the Princeton study. This is the complete paper from Princeton U., “The Opportunities Cost of Admission Preferences at Elite Universities”, by Espenshade (Chair of Sociology at Princeton) and Chung,

    http://opr.princeton.edu/faculty/tje/espenshadessqptii.pdf

    Asian American applicants are the ones who lose with the use of race preferences in admissions. Whites don’t forfeit spaces for race based AA favoring blacks and Latinos. Asian Americans are being punished and discriminated against in this process. This is independent of the use of the legacy and athletic preference for whites because this study corrected for this. Asian Americans have much lower admit rates based on their race because they are the only non-preferred group in admissions and are discriminated against based on their race alone.

    Now, as Dan Golden reports in front-page article in the Wall Street Journal, discrimination against Asians is coming under increased scrutiny. A Chinese-American student has filed a complaint against Princeton, and the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education has agreed to investigate.

    Click on the following link to listen to Golden’s interview on his book, The Price of Admission.

    http://podcast.mktw.net/wsj/audio/20060906/pod-wsjgolden/pod-wsjgolden.mp3

    He talks about legacy, sports, and rich and famous VIP preferences in admissions to the Ivies.

    Dan Golden has a chapter about the discrimination against Asian Americans, who have to meet a higher standard of admissions (SAT scores as much as 125 points higher) and a higher holistic criteria (motivations, creativity, ECs). He states that Asian American faced the same discrimination Jews did. Asians faced a higher bar. He talks about the stereotypes of Asians , which he states “that if they are not held to a quota, there is certainly an effort to keep their numbers down” by the Ivies and elites. He calls the issue a “scandal” and a “shame”.

    Sports help rich affluent whites, not URMs, and not poor whites in elite college admissions in sports such as crew, squash, fencing, etc., in preps such as Groton and Andover.

    From Daniel Golden’s The Price of Admission, Chapter 7, “The New Jews, Asian

    Americans Need Not Apply”:

    ………

    “In 1990, federal investigators concluded that UCLA’s graduate department in mathematics

    had discriminated against Asian applicants.”

    ………

    “ most elite universities have maintained a triple standard in college admissions,

    setting the bar highest for Asians, next for whites, and lowest for blacks and Hispanics.

    According to a 2004 study by three Princeton researchers, an Asian American applicant

    needs to score 50 points higher on the SAT than other applicants just to have the same chance

    of admission to an elite university. (Being an alumni child, by contrast, confers a 160-point

    advantage.) Yale records show that entering Asian American freshmen averaged a 1493

    SAT score in 1999-2000, 1496 in 2000-2001, and 1482 in 2001-2. For the same three years,

    the average for white freshmen was about 40 points lower. Black and Hispanic freshmen

    lagged another 100-125 points below whites. A Yale spokesman attributed the Asian-white

    gap to more whites being recruited athletes, and said Asians and whites are held to the same

    academic standards.”

    . . . . . . . . . .

    “Federal investigators also turned up stereotyping by Harvard admissions evaluators. Possibly

    reflecting a lack of cultural understanding, Harvard evaluators ranked Asian American candidates

    on average below whites in “personal qualities.” In comments written in applicants’ files, Harvard

    admissions staff repeatedly described Asian Americans as “being quiet/shy, science/math oriented,

    and hard workers,” the report found. One reader summed up an Asian applicant this way: “He’s

    quiet and, of course, wants to be a doctor.”

    . . . . . . . . . .

    “He [ Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt] added that the stereotype of the quiet Asian student

    is “really a strange notion. My Asian American students are very lively. They take leadership

    positions. They’re not at all shy or reticent.”

    . . . . . . . . . .

    “Now as then, a lack of preferences can be a convenient guise for racism. Much as college

    administrators justified anti-Jewish policies with ethnic stereotypes — one Yale dean in 1918 termed

    the typical Jewish student a “greasy grind” — so Asians are typecast in college admissions offices

    as quasi-robots programmed by their parents to ace math and science tests. Asked why Vanderbilt

    poured resources into recruiting Jews instead of Asians, a former administrator told me, “Asians are very good students, but they don’t provide the kind of intellectual environment that Jewish students provide.”

    . . . . . . . . . .

    From chapter 10, “Ending the Preferences of Privilege”:

    “Provide equal access for Asian American students and for international students who need

    financial aid. If elite colleges were truly committed to socioeconomic diversity, they would regard

    the proliferation of outstanding Asian American applicants as an opportunity, not a problem. They would rush to propel into the higher ranks of American society a group of students who not only

    boast outstanding test scores and grades but also are immigrants or immigrants’ children from low or middle-income families that sacrificed in hope of a better life for the next generation. Asian

    American students also bring a variety of cultures, languages, and religions to stir the campus melting pot. Colleges should counter anti-Asian bias through sensitivity training sessions and hiring more Asian American admissions deans, directors, and staff.”

    . . . . . . . . . .

    Golden states “that if Asian Americans, are not held to a quota, there is certainly an effort to keep their numbers down” by the Ivies and elites. He calls the issue a “scandal” and a “shame”.

  18. John Furedy February 4, 2008 at 2:19 am | | Reply

    The white/asian distinction may be of interest to sociologists, but to those who believe that the academic community (faculty and students) should be evaluated solely in terms of academic performance, the case against race preferences can be made on the basis of Martin Luther King’s please for a “color blind society”, as in http://www.safs.ca/april2003/ignorantversus.html.

    Note that this piece contains no reference to the Asian/white difference, and that it offers a simple rule against discrimination: do not discriminate.

    All the best, John

  19. E February 5, 2008 at 7:44 am | | Reply

    Watch the piece by Martin Bashir of ABC’s Nightline on WSJ’s Dan Golden and his book, The Price of Admission. Jian Li, the Yale student, who filed a complaint against Princeton for discrimination against Asian Americans in admissions with the US Education Dept., Office for Civil Rights is also interviewed.

    PLEASE CLICK ON:

    http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2625731

    Students can file discrimination complaints with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP)

    Office for Civil Rights

    U.S. Department of Education

    400 Maryland Avenue, S.W.

    Washington, D.C. 20202-1100

    1-800-421-3481

    FAX: (202) 245-6840; TDD: (877) 521-2172

    Online complaint form: http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/complaintintro.html

    E-mail: email hidden; JavaScript is required

    Web: http://www.ed.gov/ocr

    OFCCP complaint form (complete and file at OFCCP regional office nearest you).

    You must file your complaint within 180 days after receiving the rejection letter or other form of discrimination.

    If the government takes no action, you will need to hire an attorney to sue.

    =============================

    Please read this article:

    http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB116321461412620634-lMyQjAxMDE2NjEzMTIxMTE0Wj.html

    November 11, 2006

    PAGE ONE

    Is Admissions Bar

    Higher for Asians

    At Elite Schools?

    School Standards Are Probed

    Even as Enrollment Increases;

    A Bias Claim at Princeton

    By DANIEL GOLDEN

    November 11, 2006; Page A1

    Though Asian-Americans constitute only about 4.5% of the U.S. population, they typically account for anywhere from 10% to 30% of students at many of the nation’s elite colleges.

    Even so, based on their outstanding grades and test scores, Asian-Americans increasingly say their enrollment should be much higher — a contention backed by a growing body of evidence.

    Whether elite colleges give Asian-American students a fair shake is becoming a big concern in college-admissions offices. Federal civil-rights officials are investigating charges by a top Chinese-American student that he was rejected by Princeton University last spring because of his race and national origin.

    Meanwhile, voter attacks on admissions preferences for other minority groups — as well as research indicating colleges give less weight to high test scores of Asian-American applicants — may push schools to boost Asian enrollment. Tuesday, Michigan voters approved a ballot measure striking down admissions preferences for African-Americans and Hispanics. The move is expected to benefit Asian applicants to state universities there — as similar initiatives have done in California and Washington.

    If the same measure is passed in coming years in Illinois, Missouri and Oregon — where opponents of such preferences say they plan to introduce it — Asian-American enrollment likely would climb at selective public universities in those states as well.

    During the Michigan campaign, a group that opposes affirmative action released a study bolstering claims that Asian students are held to a higher standard. The study, by the Center for Equal Opportunity, in Virginia, found that Asian applicants admitted to the University of Michigan in 2005 had a median SAT score of 1400 on the 400-1600 scale then in use. That was 50 points higher than the median score of white students who were accepted, 140 points higher than that of Hispanics and 240 points higher than that of blacks.

    Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, said universities are “legally vulnerable” to challenges from rejected Asian-American applicants.

    Princeton, where Asian-Americans constitute about 13% of the student body, faces such a challenge. A spokesman for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights said it is investigating a complaint filed by Jian Li, now a 17-year-old freshman at Yale University. Despite racking up the maximum 2400 score on the SAT and 2390 — 10 points below the ceiling — on SAT2 subject tests in physics, chemistry and calculus, Mr. Li was spurned by three Ivy League universities, Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

    The Office for Civil Rights initially rejected Mr. Li’s complaint due to “insufficient” evidence. Mr. Li appealed, citing a white high-school classmate admitted to Princeton despite lower test scores and grades. The office notified him late last month that it would look into the case.

    His complaint seeks to suspend federal financial assistance to Princeton until the university “discontinues discrimination against Asian-Americans in all forms by eliminating race preferences, legacy preferences, and athlete preferences.” Legacy preference is the edge most elite colleges, including Princeton, give to alumni children. The Office for Civil Rights has the power to terminate such financial aid but usually works with colleges to resolve cases rather than taking enforcement action.

    Mr. Li, who emigrated to the U.S. from China as a 4-year-old and graduated from a public high school in Livingston, N.J., said he hopes his action will set a precedent for other Asian-American students. He wants to “send a message to the admissions committee to be more cognizant of possible bias, and that the way they’re conducting admissions is not really equitable,” he said.

    Princeton spokeswoman Cass Cliatt said the university is aware of the complaint and will provide the Office for Civil Rights with information it has requested. Princeton has said in the past that it considers applicants as individuals and doesn’t discriminate against Asian-Americans.

    When elite colleges began practicing affirmative action in the late 1960s and 1970s, they gave an admissions boost to Asian-American applicants as well as blacks and Hispanics. As the percentage of Asian-Americans in elite schools quickly overtook their slice of the U.S. population, many colleges stopped giving them preference — and in some cases may have leaned the other way.

    In 1990, a federal investigation concluded that Harvard University admitted Asian-American applicants at a lower rate than white students despite the Asians’ slightly stronger test scores and grades. Federal investigators also found that Harvard admissions staff had stereotyped Asian-American candidates as quiet, shy and oriented toward math and science. The government didn’t bring charges because it concluded it was Harvard’s preferences for athletes and alumni children — few of whom were Asian — that accounted for the admissions gap.

    The University of California came under similar scrutiny at about the same time. In 1989, as the federal government was investigating alleged Asian-American quotas at UC’s Berkeley campus, Berkeley’s chancellor apologized for a drop in Asian enrollment. The next year, federal investigators found that the mathematics department at UCLA had discriminated against Asian-American graduate school applicants. In 1992, Berkeley’s law school agreed under federal pressure to drop a policy that limited Asian enrollment by comparing Asian applicants against each other rather than the entire applicant pool.

    Asian-American enrollment at Berkeley has increased since California voters banned affirmative action in college admissions. Berkeley accepted 4,122 Asian-American applicants for this fall’s freshman class — nearly 42% of the total admitted. That is up from 2,925 in 1997, or 34.6%, the last year before the ban took effect. Similarly, Asian-American undergraduate enrollment at the University of Washington rose to 25.4% in 2004 from 22.1% in 1998, when voters in that state prohibited affirmative action in college admissions.

    The University of Michigan may be poised for a similar leap in Asian-American enrollment, now that voters in that state have banned affirmative action. The Center for Equal Opportunity study found that, among applicants with a 1240 SAT score and 3.2 grade point average in 2005, the university admitted 10% of Asian-Americans, 14% of whites, 88% of Hispanics and 92% of blacks. Asian applicants to the university’s medical school also faced a higher admissions bar than any other group.

    Julie Peterson, spokeswoman for the University of Michigan, said the study was flawed because many applicants take the ACT test instead of the SAT, and standardized test scores are only one of various tools used to evaluate candidates. “I utterly reject the conclusion” that the university discriminates against Asian-Americans, she said. Asian-Americans constitute 12.6% of the university’s undergraduates.

    Jonathan Reider, director of college counseling at San Francisco University High School, said most elite colleges’ handling of Asian applicants has become fairer in recent years. Mr. Reider, a former Stanford admissions official, said Stanford staffers were dismayed 20 years ago when an internal study showed they were less likely to admit Asian applicants than comparable whites. As a result, he said, Stanford strived to eliminate unconscious bias and repeated the study every year until Asians no longer faced a disadvantage.

    Last month, Mr. Reider participated in a panel discussion at a college-admissions conference. It was titled, “Too Asian?” and explored whether colleges treat Asian applicants differently.

    Precise figures of Asian-American representation at the nation’s top schools are hard to come by. Don Joe, an attorney and activist who runs Asian-American Politics, an Internet site that tracks enrollment, puts the average proportion of Asian-Americans at 25 top colleges at 15.9% in 2005, up from 10% in 1992.

    Still, he said, he is hearing more complaints “from Asian-American parents about how their children have excellent grades and scores but are being rejected by the most selective colleges. It appears to be an open secret.”

    Mr. Li, who said he was in the top 1% of his high-school class and took five advanced placement courses in his senior year, left blank the questions on college applications about his ethnicity and place of birth. “It seemed very irrelevant to me, if not offensive,” he said. Mr. Li, who has permanent resident status in the U.S., did note that his citizenship, first language and language spoken at home were Chinese.

    Along with Yale, he won admission to the California Institute of Technology, Rutgers University and the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. He said four schools — Princeton, Harvard, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania — placed him on their waiting lists before rejecting him. “I was very close to being accepted at these schools,” he said. “I was thinking, had my ethnicity been different, it would have put me over the top. Even if race had just a marginal effect, it may have disadvantaged me.”

    He ultimately focused his complaint against Princeton after reading a 2004 study by three Princeton researchers concluding that an Asian-American applicant needed to score 50 points higher on the SAT than other applicants to have the same change of admission to an elite university.

    “As an Asian-American and a native of China, my chances of admission were drastically reduced,” Mr. Li claims in his complaint.

    Write to Daniel Golden at email hidden; JavaScript is required

    URL for this article:

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116321461412620634.html

    Hyperlinks in this Article:

    (1) mailto:[email protected]

  20. Cobra February 8, 2008 at 5:52 pm | | Reply

    E writes:

    >>>”THE ONLY THING YOU ARE “SETTING STRAIGHT” IS THAT YOU ARE A RACIST AND A LIAR!

    You are the racist, since you, Cobra, are asking for race preferences and preferential treatment for blacks by playing the race card, which will be the cause of your quick demise. Jews and Asian Americans are NOT ASKING for preferential treatment based on race, religion and ethnicity, even though they faced prejudice and hatred from you and your ilk. That’s the difference.

    Cobra, you have COMPLETE DISREGARD for the truth.”

    And then E goes on to pull quote some literature…but never addresses my questions:

    “So you’re going on record as stating that Wayne State University Dean Frank Wu and law professors Sumi Cho and Mari Matsuda are “politically correct flaming liberal white washed Asian Americans?”

    I find it interesting you would use the term–

    “white washed”

    E, what does the term “white washed” mean to you?

    Since you didn’t answer my question, which I believe is a PROFOUND one here on a blog called “Discriminations”, I took the liberty, for the benefit of the readers, to do some research on this “white-washing” pheonomenum.

    >>>”When I entered high school, I was not really friends with a lot of Asian students. This really upset some of the Asian students in my school. To them, I was “betraying” my “own people” by only having white friends. But it was not like I was purposely going out of my way to make just white friends. It just happened that I clicked with these people who happened to be non-Asian. To these Asian people I was not Asian. I was on a different level of “Asian-ness” than them. But since when are there requirements on how I should act to be Asian. Isn’t my ethnicity enough? Why do I have to hang out with Asians or know how to speak the language to be Asian?

    I am not trying to say that Asian Americans are being treated horribly by society and there is a lot of injustice. This has all been said and done. I’m always hearing how the American culture is becoming a “melting pot,” and that old racial stereotypes are becoming taboo. I know that no matter what is said or done to educate society, there will always be racial stereotypes. That is a fact of life. But why is it that when an Asian American individual does not fit the common Asian stereotypes, he or she is all of a sudden labeled as “white-washed.”

    What is the term “white-washed”? It is an individual who does not act “Asian,” and acts “white” instead. Simple, right? Since when is there a set definition of how an Asian American individual should act? Personally, I do not speak much Chinese nor act “Chinese” at all according to most of my peers. I am very often labeled as that “white-washed” Chinese girl. But the last time I checked I am an Asian American. I am an American who happens to have an Asian background. Yet when I do the same exact things as them I am considered “white-washed.” Confused? I know for sure I am. Apparently, Asians should act a certain way now even though stereotypes should be avoided.”

    Britney Lai, UMass student

    http://www.dailycollegian.com/news/2005/11/30/Opinion/Breaking.asian.Barriers-1561250.shtml

    >>>”Inner-city bred Asians who have the brains and ambition to get out of their ghettos pull out all the stops to get themselves into ivy leagues or notable institutions of higher education, even if it means exploiting affirmative action. Once there, they bend over backwards to climb the social ladder. To present a case study, I cite the archetypal fellow who grows up in the back alleys of Chinatown, goes to M.I.T. by taking out exorbitant private loans, then tries desperately to appear “white-washed,” like the suburbanite Asians he met in college, because that in his mind somehow correlates with upper middle class status. Such a fellow becomes fixated on the way he speaks–taking pains to enunciate the way a blue-blooded American would, and lose that inner-city slang or even accent he spoke with in his youth. He is obsessed with “sounding white,” “appearing white,” and if you ever casually tell him he in fact “sounds Asian,” he will begin to hyperventilate with paranoia. If they can, they will move to white suburbia where they may live out the rest of their lives denying their humble beginnings. If they could, they would dissociate from the Asian community altogether.”

    http://www.8asians.com/2007/10/14/the-great-divide-class-distinctions-denial-and-the-asian-american-experience/

    >>>”Banana—A slang term for someone who is considered “white washed”: white on the inside and yellow on the outside.”

    “Coconut— A slang term for someone who is considered “white washed”: white on the inside and brown on the outside.”

    http://www.uic.edu/depts/oaa/AARCC/documents/AATerms.doc.

    Fascinating, isn’t it, readers? I’d love to hear John Rosenberg’s and Roger Clegg’s take on the “white-washing” aspect of the model minority mythology they so love to employ.

    –Cobra

  21. E February 8, 2008 at 7:46 pm | | Reply

    Hey Cobra,

    A reminder for you.

    THE ONLY THING YOU ARE “SETTING STRAIGHT” IS THAT YOU ARE A RACIST AND A LIAR!

    You are the racist, since you, Cobra, are asking for race preferences and preferential treatment for blacks by playing the race card, which will be the cause of your quick demise. Jews and Asian Americans are NOT ASKING for preferential treatment based on race, religion and ethnicity, even though they faced prejudice and hatred from you and your ilk. That’s the difference.

  22. E February 8, 2008 at 7:49 pm | | Reply

    http://www.asianamericanlegal.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=15&Itemid=36

    Key Equal Protection Cases

    (click on title to read full decision)

    United States v. Wong Kim Ark

    United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898) – United States Supreme Court ruled that a Chinese American person, born in San Francisco, could not be prevented from returning to San Francisco (and America) after a trip abroad. Significantly, in reaching its ruling, the Court found that, notwithstanding acts of Congress and treaties with China, the Fourteenth Amendment must be applied strictly to confer citizenship on a child born on American soil. 169 U.S. at 705.

    Yick Wo v. Hopkins

    Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886) — In this landmark decision, the United States Supreme Court declared that Chinese-Americans were “persons” under the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause, and could not be singled out for unequal burden by San Francisco’s laundry licensing law. Yick Wo was the first case where the Supreme Court ruled that a facially-neutral law violated equal protection rights when it was enacted and used to target members of a particular race.

    Ho Ah Kow v. Nunan

    Ho Ah Kow v. Nunan, 12 F. Cas. 252 (C.C.D. Cal. 1879) — San Francisco’s infamous “Queue Ordinance” was invalidated on equal protection grounds.

    Tape v. Hurley

    Tape v. Hurley, 66 Cal. 473, 6 P. 12 (1885) — California Supreme Court finds that San Francisco’s public school system must admit a girl of Chinese descent.

    Plessy v. Ferguson

    Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) — Landmark case in which the Supreme Court allowed railroads to segregate cars by race. This case established the “separate-but-equal” doctrine later applied to schools.

    Gong Lum v. Rice

    Gong Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78 (1927) — The Supreme Court affirmed that the separate-but-equal doctrine articulated in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), applied to schools, finding that a nine-year-old Chinese American girl could be denied entry to a “white” school because she was a member of the “yellow” race.

    Brown v. Board of Education

    Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) — Landmark schools case in which the United States Supreme Court overturned the separate-but-equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson, finding that public schools could not assign students to schools based on their race.

  23. E February 8, 2008 at 7:52 pm | | Reply

    Hey Cobra,

    ANSWER THE QUESTION.

    If someone kicks your butt, and then stops kicking your butt, is that person “helping” or “benefitting” you because your butt doesn’t hurt anymore?

    I would argue that Asian Americans experience no benefit from the absence of discrimination. They are merely not being harmed. Conversely, no one who actually or could “benefit” from racial preference is actually or could be harmed by the absence of discrimination. They are merely not being preferred and/or given an unfair advantage based on immutable physical characteristics like race and gender

    Response from another reader:

    Exactly. Standing up for one’s right not to be classified by race/gender cannot infringe other persons’ right to so classify one, because they have no such right. And, the protection is very narrow. As universities and institutions are free to use just about any other criteria they like (other than race and gender), they have little cause for complaint.

  24. Cobra February 8, 2008 at 9:15 pm | | Reply

    You see, Readers?

    E REFUSES to answer my simple questions, and has yet AGAIN resorted to repetition, ad-hominem attacks, volume-posting, and rhetoric so wildly out of context you’d swear he just randomly cuts and pastes anything to try to make himself looks like he makes sense.

    E, face it…

    You got caught.

    Show some guts, and explain the term YOU brought to this discussion:

    “White Washing.”

    –Cobra

  25. E February 8, 2008 at 11:51 pm | | Reply

    Cobra,

    You have yet to post a reputable response to any of my postings, and you have been PWNED many times over. I am tired of you. Whom do you think you are kidding?

    READ THE FACTS!

    You can’t handle the truth.

    Please read the entire Espenshade study:

    http://opr.princeton.edu/faculty/tje/espenshadessqptii.pdf

    Pages 303 and 304

    Conclusions

    [Critics of affirmative action in American higher education often overlook

    the fact that elite universities give added weight in the admissions process to

    many different types of student characteristics. In this article, we use microsimulation

    analysis to investigate the effect on the profile of admitted students

    of eliminating preferences for one or more categories of students. Data

    for the 1997 entering class indicate that eliminating affirmative action would

    reduce acceptance rates for African-American and Hispanic applicants by as

    much as one-half to two-thirds and have an equivalent impact on the proportion

    of underrepresented minority students in the admitted class. White

    applicants would benefit very little by removing racial and ethnic preferences;

    the white acceptance rate would increase by roughly 0.5 percentage

    points. Asian applicants would gain the most. They would occupy four out

    of every five seats created by accepting fewer African-American and Hispanic

    students. The acceptance rate for Asian applicants would rise by one-third

    from nearly 18 percent to more than 23 percent. We also show that, even

    though athlete and legacy applicants are disproportionately white and despite

    the fact that athlete and alumni children admission bonuses are substantial,

    preferences for athletes and legacies do little to displace minority

    applicants, largely because athletes and legacies make up a small share of all

    applicants to highly selective universities.]

  26. E February 9, 2008 at 6:34 am | | Reply

    Hey Cobra,

    The following is a LANDMARK case to ensure that students are never again classified by race for admissions.

    http://www.asianamericanlegal.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=22&Itemid=34

    The San Francisco Ho Case

    Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District, a class action filed in 1994, forced the San Francisco school district to stop its practice of classifying students by race for assignment to the city’s K-12 schools. San Francisco’s unconstitutional practice prevented many Chinese American children from attending their own neighborhood schools. The case was ultimately a success, bringing a halt to the school district’s use of race.

    Under the challenged admissions program, nine ethnic groups were arbitrarily defined, including “Chinese.” Members of at least four of the groups were required to be present at each school; and no one group could represent more than 45 percent of the student body at any regular school or 40 percent at any alternative school. The promotion of racial diversity, and not the remediation of past racial discrimination, was the only real purpose. By the time of the Ho challenge, the school district had enlarged the original nine arbitrary racial categories to thirteen equally arbitrary categories to take into account the growing prominence of additional racial groups in the district.

    The burden of San Francisco’s racial balancing program fell heaviest on students identified as “Chinese.” With a long history in San Francisco, over the years, Chinese Americans had come to constitute the city’s largest identifiable ethnic group. Accordingly, in the San Francisco school district’s student assignment process, a child identified as Chinese was most likely to be “capped out”—that is, barred because the child’s racial quota was exceeded—at desired schools and forced to attend a non-chosen school, often far from his or her neighborhood.

    The named plaintiffs’ situations amply illustrate the discrimination meted out to Chinese American schoolchildren by school officials:

    • Brian Ho was five years old at the time the suit started. In 1994, he was turned away from his two neighborhood kindergartens because the schools had accepted the maximum allowed percentage of “Chinese” schoolchildren. He was assigned to a school in another neighborhood.

    • Patrick Wong, then fourteen years old, applied for admission to Lowell High School in 1994. He was rejected because his index score was below the minimum required for Chinese American applicants. However, his score was high enough that he would have been admitted to Lowell had he been a member of any other racial or ethnic group recognized in the consent decree. He was rejected at two other high schools because such schools had also accepted the maximum number of schoolchildren of Chinese descent. When he tried to apply to a fourth high school, a newly established academic high school, his mother was told that all spaces for Chinese Americans were “filled” even though spaces for applicants of other racial or ethnic groups were still available.

    • The family of Hillary Chen, then eight years old, moved from north of Golden Gate Park to a neighbor-hood south of the park in December 1993. Hilary was not allowed to transfer into any of three elementary schools near her new home because all three schools had accepted the maximum number of Chinese Ameri-can schoolchildren.

    Filed in 1994 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, the case was bitterly fought through the courts for five years, including an interlocutory appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals which established that the school district’s racial assignment plan would have to be examined under strict scrutiny—a test both the district court and the Ninth Circuit indicated it would almost certainly fail. See Ho v. San Francisco Unified Sch. Dist., 147 F.3d 854 (9th Cir. 1998). Finally, the defendants capitulated and agreed to a settlement by which they stopped their use of race. See Ho v. San Francisco Unified Sch. Dist., 59 F. Supp. 2d 1021 (N.D. Cal. 1999).

    Since that time, members of the Asian American Legal Foundation have carefully monitored the student assignment plans used by the San Francisco Unified School District, to ensure that students are never again classified by race for admission to the city’s schools.

  27. E February 9, 2008 at 10:35 am | | Reply

    Yes Cobra,

    We all still live in America, and we are AMERICANS, hopefully, including you, although I am not so sure.

    BTW, I have communicated with Roger Clegg and John Rosenberg many times and what I had posted here, I have related to them in kind. They are in full agreement with my stance on this matter, especially the TOPIC of this thread, “New Report: Asians, Not Whites, Gain When AA Ends”.

    Cobra, you have been PWNED and you are in a lost for reasonable and logical response to my arguments against race preferences in America.

    ==========================

    . . . No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. . . .

    — Fourteenth Amendment, United States Constitution

    ==========================

    The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

    — Art. I, Sec. 31,

    California Constitution

  28. Cobra February 10, 2008 at 8:48 pm | | Reply

    E writes:

    >>>”BTW, I have communicated with Roger Clegg and John Rosenberg many times and what I had posted here, I have related to them in kind. They are in full agreement with my stance on this matter, especially the TOPIC of this thread, “New Report: Asians, Not Whites, Gain When AA Ends”.

    You’ve “communicated with them?” And they’re both in “full agreement with” your stance on this matter?

    Really?

    Well, since you don’t seem to have the COURAGE to define the terms and phrases you yourself POST in here, perhaps Mr. Clegg or Mr. Rosenberg would like to give me THEIR definition of–

    “WHITE-WASHING”

    –as it pertains to Asian-Americans.

    –Cobra

  29. E February 11, 2008 at 6:28 am | | Reply

    Hey Cobra,

    You are the racist, since you, Cobra, are asking for race preferences and preferential treatment for blacks by playing the race card, which will be the cause of your quick demise. Jews and Asian Americans are NOT ASKING for preferential treatment based on race, religion and ethnicity, even though they faced prejudice and hatred from you and your ilk. That’s the difference.

    You have yet to post a reputable response to any of my postings, and you have been PWNED many times over. I am tired of you. Whom do you think you are kidding?

    ANSWER THE QUESTION.

    If someone kicks your butt, and then stops kicking your butt, is that person “helping” or “benefitting” you because your butt doesn’t hurt anymore?

    I would argue that Asian Americans experience no benefit from the absence of discrimination. They are merely not being harmed. Conversely, no one who actually or could “benefit” from racial preference is actually or could be harmed by the absence of discrimination. They are merely not being preferred and/or given an unfair advantage based on immutable physical characteristics like race and gender.

    Response from another reader:

    Exactly. Standing up for one’s right not to be classified by race/gender cannot infringe other persons’ right to so classify one, because they have no such right. And, the protection is very narrow. As universities and institutions are free to use just about any other criteria they like (other than race and gender), they have little cause for complaint.

    COMPRENDE?

  30. E February 13, 2008 at 5:37 am | | Reply

    FROM THE HARVARD CRIMSON TODAY:

    *Roger B. Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, believes in a merit-based system of college admission that does not consider race.*

    *In a system where one group is deemed “overrepresented,” such as Asian Americans under current admissions schemes, it is inevitable that other “underrepresented” groups will gain ground, Clegg said.*

    http://www.thecrimson.com/printerfriendly.aspx?ref=521858

    News

    Tough Odds for Asian Americans

    Published On 2/13/2008 3:53:16 AM

    By LINGBO LI

    Crimson Staff Writer

    For Asian American applicants to Harvard, checking off the “particular ethnic group” box on the Common Application just became more nerve-wracking.

    According to a study published Friday in the UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, affirmative action policies disadvantage Asian American applicants more than they do white ones.

    Charles V. Willie, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and an expert in school desegregation, attributes this finding to Asian Americans having the most integrated educational experiences and attending college at very high rates relative to other groups.

    Still, he said, the College strives to maintain its standard of diversity.

    “Harvard has not disproportionately excluded Asian Americans,” Willie said, adding that Asian Americans make up the highest proportion of ethnic minorities at Harvard. “The issue has been whether the white people will take all the goodies. Harvard has decided no.”

    But others disagree with Harvard’s use of affirmative action.

    Roger B. Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, believes in a merit-based system of college admission that does not consider race.

    In a system where one group is deemed “overrepresented,” such as Asian Americans under current admissions schemes, it is inevitable that other “underrepresented” groups will gain ground, Clegg said.

    Harvard’s Asian American enrollment has slightly increased over the years. According to Harvard College Admissions Office statistics in the Harvard Gazette, 19.6% of students admitted for the class of 2011 were Asian Americans, up from 16.4% for the class of 2000.

    This is not the first time top schools have come under scrutiny for their admissions policies regarding Asian Americans.

    In 1990, the federal government investigated Harvard for discriminating against Asian applicants. The investigation found that lower admission rates for Asians—despite somewhat stronger academic credentials—could be attributed to legacy and athlete preferences, which primarily benefited white applicants.

    Yi Chen ’09, co-president of the Asian American Association, said that she didn’t think too much about her ethnicity when applying to college.

    “Harvard is hard to get into, period,” Chen said. “You just appreciate racial diversity here.”

    The study was conducted by David R. Colburn, a history professor at the University of Florida; Victor M. Yellen, a former director of institutional research at Florida; and Charles E. Young, professor and former chancellor of UCLA. The trio looked at enrollment data from the University of California’s Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego campuses, as well as the University of Florida and the University of Texas at Austin.

    All three schools ended affirmative action during the period under examination, after state-wide laws banned the policy, the study says.

    According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Asian American enrollment increased at each of the aforementioned schools after the policy change.

    —Staff writer Lingbo Li can be reached at email hidden; JavaScript is required.

    http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=521858

  31. E February 13, 2008 at 6:15 am | | Reply

    Regarding Harvard’s diversity excuse for discrimination against Asians

    http://www.thecrimson.com/printerfriendly.aspx?ref=521858

    2/13/08 Harvard Crimson- Tough Odds for Asian Americans

    Here are Harvard’s racial admit rates for the Class of 2009:

    Asian American applicants, for the Class of 2009, were 23% of Harvard’s SCEA (Single Choice Early Action) total applicant pool, but only 18% of Harvard’s admitted students from SCEA. were Asian Americans. Asian Americans are accepted to Harvard at a lower rate than whites and at 1/2 the acceptance rate of blacks.

    The Asian American percentage of the matriculated students is 18%. The Asian American percentage of Harvard’s applicant pool is over 23%.Asian Americans should be at least 23% of Harvard and more, if it were not for the anti-Asian quota.

    Harvard is 25% to 30% Jewish for their 2% of the American population.

    Asian Americans have the least chance or odds of admission to Harvard due to race preferences in its admissions process. This represents a de facto quota against Asian Americans. Asian Americans represent the only non-preferred racial or ethnic group in Harvard admission. They are today’s Jews in the admissions process with caps on their numbers. There are no more quotas against Jews today. Read the book, “The Chosen”, by Karabel regarding discriminating and limiting quotas previously used against Jews in the Ivies, especially Harvard.

    The following data proves that Asian Americans have the LOWEST admit rate to Harvard.

    Please click on:

    http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2005/11.17/03-apps.html

    From the Harvard Gazette, 11/17/05

    http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/12.16/03-admit.html

    From the Harvard Gazette, 12/16/04

    For the Class of 2009;

    [Nearly 18 percent of the admitted students are Asian American (20.7 percent last year), 8.7 percent are African American (6.9 percent last year), 3.4 percent are Hispanic (2.3 percent last year), 2 percent Mexican American (2.9 percent last year), 0.7 percent Native American (0.8 percent last year), and 0.9 percent Puerto Rican (1.7 percent last year).]

    These are the actual racial numbers/percentages for Harvard’s admitted early action applicants from the Harvard Gazzette, 12/16/04. For the Class of 2009, 23% of the early applicants were Asian Americans (from the Harvard Gazette, 11/17/05), but only 18% of the admitted early applicants were Asian Americans, where as 5.2% of the early applicants were African American (from the Harvard Gazette, 11/17/05), but 8.7% of the admitted early applicants were African Americans.

    Asian Americans are admitted at the lowest rate of any racial or ethnic group, including whites, because of racial preferences.

    Blacks are admitted at the highest rates. The black admit rate is 2 times higher, and the white admit rate is also higher than the Asian American admit rate, because of racial preferences, and a de facto anti-Asian quota.

    By lowering the admissions standards for URMs (underrepresented minorities, blacks, Latinos, etc.), these schools raise the admissions standards for Asians. Whites are also admitted with lower standards than Asians, on the average, but higher than that of URMs.

    Asians, with their overall higher standards for admissions, as an applicant group, on the average relative to the other groups, including whites, are used to compensate for the lowered standards for the admission of the other groups.

  32. E February 13, 2008 at 7:00 am | | Reply

    *Though the results of the affirmative action ban varied from state to state because of differences in policies intended to mitigate the effects, general trends emerged to confirm that Asian-American students are disadvantaged in a race-conscious admissions system*

    *Affirmative action opponents had mixed reactions to the study. Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, an organization that lobbies against affirmative action, said since Asian Americans are “disproportionately well qualified,” he was not surprised that “a color-blind admissions process favors them.”*

    *Some of the report’s findings were less believable for Clegg.*

    *”I’m skeptical of the finding that white students would not also be helped by a policy that gets rid of discrimination,” Clegg said. “Our studies have shown that white students are hindered by politically correct admissions policies.”*

    http://www.browndailyherald.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticlePrinterFriendly&uStory_id=aaa53757-01ed-48a2-89b8-dc98560f72c7

  33. Cobra February 18, 2008 at 8:46 pm | | Reply

    E,

    (sigh)

    “W-h-i-t-e W-a-s-h-i-n-g”

    Can’t deal with your own words, huh?

    –Cobra

  34. E February 19, 2008 at 12:00 am | | Reply

    Words?

    Hey Cobra,

    The TRUTH.

    YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!

    READ THE THREAD!

  35. E February 19, 2008 at 12:04 am | | Reply

    Hey Cobra.

    THE TRUTH

    Asian Americans are admitted at the lowest rate of any racial or ethnic group, including whites, because of racial preferences.

    Blacks are admitted at the highest rates. The black admit rate is 2 times higher, and the white admit rate is also higher than the Asian American admit rate, because of racial preferences, and a de facto anti-Asian quota.

    By lowering the admissions standards for URMs (underrepresented minorities, blacks, Latinos, etc.), these schools raise the admissions standards for Asians. Whites are also admitted with lower standards than Asians, on the average, but higher than that of URMs.

    Asians, with their overall higher standards for admissions, as an applicant group, on the average relative to the other groups, including whites, are used to compensate for the lowered standards for the admission of the other groups.

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