I was incorrect about the 65% of Berkeley as Asian. It's 30.6%. Note this is double the percentage as the Ivy League schools - and it's based on a framework that was specifically developed as a way to get around the 1996 ban on affirmative action.
I still believe the only explanation for eliminating clear, measurable and quantifiable metrics for university admissions is because universities are looking for discrete ways to continue discriminatory tactics against Asians and to a lesser extent, whites. This is not about legacy admissions practices.
"Berkeley diversity statistics show that the enrolled student population at the University of California, Berkeley is composed of individuals who identify as Asian (30.6%), White (25.4%), Hispanic or Latino (16.3%), Two or More Races (5.5%), Black or African American (2.42%), American Indian or Alaska Native (0.139%), Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders (0.132%), and Other Pacific Islanders (0.132%)."
I still don’t see how it’s discrimination against White students. This actually looks more like discrimination against Asians, with Whites being the biggest beneficiary of the discrimination based on the numbers. Blacks get the biggest bump, but it is Whites who “steal” the most spots.
It does make me wonder about the marketing of anti-affirmative action. For example you see on social media the kids who posts about their great grades and scores and not getting into the Ivies. The common refrain is that some black kid got their spot due to affirmative action. Although it’s actually more likely, if the applicant is Asian, that it is a white kind who got that spot due to affirmative action. I wonder how public perception changes if they knew that reality?
> I still don’t see how it’s discrimination against White students. This actually looks more like discrimination against Asians, with Whites being the biggest beneficiary of the discrimination based on the numbers.
Because you are looking at it through the lens of total student makeup of certain top universities.
If Whites need 100 points higher on SAT than some others, then Whites are being discriminated against. That is, if you remove only the discrimination against Whites then they do better in the current system. If Asians need 200 points higher on SAT and you remove all discrimination then Whites do worse at some top universities than currently. So Whites would be both being discriminated against and for at those certain universities.
If you look at the overall college system, there's something like 35% of undergrads that are Black/Hispanic and 5% for Asian so in the overall system Whites net benefit more from no discrimination than Asians do.
So you've picked a particular point of view between principled and subjective, global and local, to conclude Whites aren't being discriminated against. Maybe it's worth exploring why.
> If you look at the overall college system, there's something like 35% of undergrads that are Black/Hispanic and 5% for Asian so in the overall system Whites net benefit more from no discrimination than Asians do.
I don't understand this. The vast majority of colleges are uncompetitive. If you apply and can afford it, you get in. Affirmative action is only relevant at competitive colleges. For example, at the totality of the UC system, it's only 4.5% Black, 22.5% Hispanic, 22.2% White, and 32.2% Asian. It's in these schools Asians get the benefit. Whites and Blacks were the two groups hardest hit by the elimination of AA in the UC system.
And I'm OK with this personally. I just think the AA narrative that it is Blacks that took that Asian kid/s seat is misplaced -- it was more likely the White kid who took their seat.
> I just think the AA narrative that it is Blacks that took that Asian kid/s seat is misplaced -- it was more likely the White kid who took their seat.
And at the schools that are very good the Asians that couldn't get into the best ones are taking those spots from others. But you've excluded those colleges from your calculus for some reason.
People generally apply to several schools and may not get accepted to all of them, majors have limited number of spots, scholarship are limited, and so on. If the College Board subtracts 100 from every White person's score they'll apply to or get accepted to lower choice colleges, and this is effectively what race-based affirmative action is doing.
When you have systemic discrimination like affirmative action the whole system is affected. It seems like you don't believe race-based affirmative action causing White kids to get accepted to their 3rd choice instead of their 2nd is fine since you're pretending it doesn't happen.
I'm not following your logic at all. If our logic is that merit evenly falls between every racial group and the enrolment of schools should match demographics, then Asians are still over-represented and both blacks and whites are under-represented. So Blacks and whites took both era spots.
If the idea is that current test scores without affirmative action represent true ability, then nobody took eachothers spot, what you describe is true fairness, only 22.2% of whites and 4.5% of blacks deserve to be in school.
Is the idea that blacks deserve affirmative action, and Asians do, and Hispanics do, but whites don't, so any instance of them benefiting from AA is whites stealing from blacks? I just don't quite follow.
Asians are 43%-53% depending on how many who identify as 'International' are Asian. Whites are 19.7% and Blacks are 3.4%
You are right, however, about why schools want to eliminate the SAT. SAT optional admissions is a way for schools to admit students whom would have previously been considered unqualified. By increasing the pool of eligible applicants, the school is discriminating against the previous population of qualified, top tier students, which has been historically an Asian majority. Additionally, Asian students with low or no SAT scores will not benefit from these changes because the best Asian students will continue to submit high SAT scores. How many Asian students are going to be accepted without an SAT score when they're being compared to other Asian students with 1500+ SAT scores?
Note, colleges should not discriminate based on race. But they are under no obligation about their acceptance criteria. They could just use SAT tests if they wanted. Or just grades, or it could be a lottery. Or it could be the best dressed, or who could pay the most. Just because you don't use a mechanism that favors a specific group, doesn't mean that you are discriminating against them (necessarily). For example, most don't use height in admissions, but it doesn't mean we're discriminating against people from the Balkans.
I agree that certain people are racist / jealous towards Asians because we are smart and can get ahead in a generation even when we start far behind some other people, but UCB is a state school located in a area that has a lot of Asian population.
I still believe the only explanation for eliminating clear, measurable and quantifiable metrics for university admissions is because universities are looking for discrete ways to continue discriminatory tactics against Asians and to a lesser extent, whites. This is not about legacy admissions practices.
"Berkeley diversity statistics show that the enrolled student population at the University of California, Berkeley is composed of individuals who identify as Asian (30.6%), White (25.4%), Hispanic or Latino (16.3%), Two or More Races (5.5%), Black or African American (2.42%), American Indian or Alaska Native (0.139%), Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders (0.132%), and Other Pacific Islanders (0.132%)."