4 X more "unqualified" white students admitted to Harvard than black students

[Jokodo]

As a tangential, legacy admissions at US universities where institutionalized in the early 20th century precisely to preserve the Anglo and Protestant nature of the university ecosystem, at a time when (the children of) often Jewish or Catholic immigrants where pushing into the universities. They were not a thing before then, and they are not typically a thing in other countries. So, at least historically speaking, their effect of keeping the student population more similar to what it used to be in the face of changing demographics and applicant pools isn't a mere unintended side effect, it's the reason universities have legacy admission policies.

Today, they are mostly defended on the basis that they allegedly increase loyalty and cohesion among the alumni body. For all I know, most people defending them on those grounds are sincere in their intention, and either unaware of the other effect, or consider it a necessary evil, too insignificant to outweigh the benefits. But that doesn't make the effect, or it's history, go away.

 

[ruby sparks]

The issue raised in the OP, as I see it (and which has not itself been the central topic of debate since the start of the thread) is not mainly about whether AA is controversial or bad and/or whether other mechanisms (such as legacy admissions and the like) are also controversial or bad.

It's specifically, in the end, (and as stated in the conclusion to the OP) about some people only attacking or bemoaning one type of advantage mechanism and not another.

And...

1. Some of them, including here, if pressed, will then say 'ok both are bad', but how many of these either start threads on for example legacy admissions, or advantage mechanisms other than AA, or spend much time criticising them? Hardly at all. The focus is on AA. And usually only quotas to boot, as if that's all AA was.

And...

2. Quite possibly outside this forum there are some (perhaps Conservatives) that criticise AA but support legacy admissions (and the like).

So in both the above cases, the key issues are about (a) double standards, (b) a lack of principled commitment to actual fairness, and possibly in at least some cases (c) the having of an ulterior motive, albeit especially in the latter case, of some Conservatives (which is the group the OP is referring to, not necessarily members here).

 

[laughing dog]

No qualification ("favoring") or similar. He is pretending that it legacies are "de facto" white people, which is false.

Substantiate your claim.

He thinks that presently "vast majority" of Harvard students are white. That is demonstrably false.

"Vast majority" is a nebulous claim.

He also isn't writing that legacy admissions are "favoring" white people; he is claiming that they are a "form of affirmative action for white people". Another falsehood.

That is only true in the pedantic sense.

 

[Metaphor]

Wanna make a bet which of these is the largest fraction among those 43%? I'm pretty sure it's legacy. This source states that legacy admits make up 14% of the entire student bodies. For reasons I've explained and that should be obvious even to you, the proportion will necessarily be much higher among white students: "Today, according to Harvard, legacy students make up around 14 percent of the undergraduate population."

So...something more than 14% among white students are legacy admits. So....what? I haven't approved of legacy admits.

You did however claim that "legacy admissions are a small fraction of all admissions".

Which is what I responded to.

I know, vague adjectives and all. So your point is that 14% should count as "a small fraction", amirite?

Well, yes. Isn't it?

Or rather, isn't it relative?

 

[Metaphor]

Naw.

No qualification ("favoring") or similar. He is pretending that it legacies are "de facto" white people, which is false.

Come on. The long history of Harvard is an institution for WASPS up until the 1960s, so legacy admissions were most certainly a form of affirmative action for children of "legacies" (who were white). Even now, since the vast majority of Harvard attendees are white, legacy admissions are still a form of affirmative action for white people.

He thinks that presently "vast majority" of Harvard students are white. That is demonstrably false.
He also isn't writing that legacy admissions are "favoring" white people; he is claiming that they are a "form of affirmative action for white people". Another falsehood.

Exactly where is he writing that last bit? Is that supposed to be a direct quote? I searched the thread and the only mention I find of that phrase is Metaphor's straw man. When I challenged him to provide a quote, he evaded saying that he's seen it elsewhere on the internet often enough (which makes it still a straw man since this discussion isn't elsewhere on the internet but here).

Maybe you can do better than him?

Straw man? The entire OP is based on the alleged double standards of people who oppose affirmative action, isn't it?

 

[Metaphor]

"Vast majority" is a nebulous claim.

Really? I reckon the floor on the claim is 50% + 1.

The vast majority at Harvard is nonwhite.

 

[Jokodo]

Exactly where is he writing that last bit? Is that supposed to be a direct quote? I searched the thread and the only mention I find of that phrase is Metaphor's straw man. When I challenged him to provide a quote, he evaded saying that he's seen it elsewhere on the internet often enough (which makes it still a straw man since this discussion isn't elsewhere on the internet but here).

Maybe you can do better than him?

Straw man? The entire OP is based on the alleged double standards of people who oppose affirmative action, isn't it?

No.

It is based on a double standard of "conservatives who claim to only to care about fairness" and "focus almost exclusively on the non-whites admitted by affirmative action", and the "lack of principled commitment to actual fairness" is only attested of those conservatives that fit the latter part, the almost exclusive focus, quite unambiguously so when the post ends with "such conservatives", implying that the last sentence doesn't even apply to all conservatives.

It does not mention non-conservatives, or conservatives who openly admit there issue isn't about fairness but about too many brown people in traditionally white spaces.

Unless you think "conservatives" and "people" are freely interchangeable (because non-conservatives aren't fully human?), your paraphrase changes the meaning.

Reading comprehension really isn't your strongest skill, mate!

 

[Metaphor]

Exactly where is he writing that last bit? Is that supposed to be a direct quote? I searched the thread and the only mention I find of that phrase is Metaphor's straw man. When I challenged him to provide a quote, he evaded saying that he's seen it elsewhere on the internet often enough (which makes it still a straw man since this discussion isn't elsewhere on the internet but here).

Maybe you can do better than him?

Straw man? The entire OP is based on the alleged double standards of people who oppose affirmative action, isn't it?

No.

It is based on a double standard of "conservatives who claim to only to care about fairness" and "focus almost exclusively on the non-whites admitted by affirmative action", and the "lack of principled commitment to actual fairness" is only attested of those conservatives that fit the latter part, the almost exclusive focus, quite unambiguously so when the post ends with "such conservatives", implying that the last sentence doesn't even apply to all conservatives.

It does not mention non-conservatives, or conservatives who openly admit there issue isn't about fairness but about too many brown people in traditionally white spaces.

Unless you think "conservatives" and "people" are freely interchangeable (because non-conservatives aren't fully human?), your paraphrase changes the meaning.

Reading comprehension really isn't your strongest skill, mate!

So, who were the conservatives it was aimed at on this board?

 

[Jokodo]

Substantiate your claim.

"Vast majority" is a nebulous claim.

I'm not a native speaker of English, but the way I understand it, "majority" implies 50%. Whites are the single largest group when grouped by what passes for racial labels in the US, but the way I understand it that concept is expressed with a separate word, "plurality", in the English language.

My native language actually doesn't distinguish between those two concepts, so the same word is used for "plurality" and "majority", and a qualifying adjective added when the distinction is deemed important enough.

If we substitute the fairly arbitrary classification employed in the school's statistics for something else and, e.g., include those among the "non-resident aliens" who hail from Europe and the Mediterranean, or those among the "Hispanics" that have predominantly European ancestors, among the "white" group, they would quite possibly become a majority. But according to the official breakdown, they aren't.

 

[Jokodo]

You did however claim that "legacy admissions are a small fraction of all admissions".

Which is what I responded to.

I know, vague adjectives and all. So your point is that 14% should count as "a small fraction", amirite?

Well, yes. Isn't it?

Or rather, isn't it relative?

When only about 10% of the students are black - altogether, not just black students who were helped by AA - and you complain about how that's oh so many places taken away from more deserving white and Asian kids, you can't turn around and say 14% is "a small fraction", barely enough to warrant talking about.

Relative as such terms as "small fraction" are, 14% is absolutely larger than 10%, or 4%, or any other remotely plausible figure you might pull from where the sun never shines for black students who got in through AA.

 

[Jokodo]

No.

It is based on a double standard of "conservatives who claim to only to care about fairness" and "focus almost exclusively on the non-whites admitted by affirmative action", and the "lack of principled commitment to actual fairness" is only attested of those conservatives that fit the latter part, the almost exclusive focus, quite unambiguously so when the post ends with "such conservatives", implying that the last sentence doesn't even apply to all conservatives.

It does not mention non-conservatives, or conservatives who openly admit there issue isn't about fairness but about too many brown people in traditionally white spaces.

Unless you think "conservatives" and "people" are freely interchangeable (because non-conservatives aren't fully human?), your paraphrase changes the meaning.

Reading comprehension really isn't your strongest skill, mate!

So, who were the conservatives it was aimed at on this board?

Trausti might be a candidate, he is, as far as I can tell, the only person who explicitly offered defenses of legacy admissions in this thread, though I don't claim to read his mind. How is this relevant though? Where does the OP (or any other post by ronburgundy, Toni, myself, whoever else you want to classify as "our camp") attest that people on this board are examples of that?

Or is this another of your straw men?

 

[Metaphor]

When only about 10% of the students are black - altogether, not just black students who were helped by AA -

No, 14.3% are black:

https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics

and you complain about how that's oh so many places taken away from more deserving white and Asian kids, you can't turn around and say 14% is "a small fraction", barely enough to warrant talking about.

I didn't say it didn't warrant talking about. Only that I was called out for using the term 'small fraction of white students' to describe the legacy admits. Now, maybe other people wouldn't describe 14% as a 'small fraction'.

Relative as such terms as "small fraction" are, 14% is absolutely larger than 10%, or 4%, or any other remotely plausible figure you might pull from where the sun never shines for black students who got in through AA.

Well, yes, there are far more white people in the United States than black people.

Every black admit that would only have been admitted under AA by definition kept out another student who was not black.

Every legacy admit that would only have been admitted under legacy conditions would have kept out a student who could be of any race.

I think affirmative action, legacy, and athlete admissions are all bullshit.

 

[Metaphor]

No.

It is based on a double standard of "conservatives who claim to only to care about fairness" and "focus almost exclusively on the non-whites admitted by affirmative action", and the "lack of principled commitment to actual fairness" is only attested of those conservatives that fit the latter part, the almost exclusive focus, quite unambiguously so when the post ends with "such conservatives", implying that the last sentence doesn't even apply to all conservatives.

It does not mention non-conservatives, or conservatives who openly admit there issue isn't about fairness but about too many brown people in traditionally white spaces.

Unless you think "conservatives" and "people" are freely interchangeable (because non-conservatives aren't fully human?), your paraphrase changes the meaning.

Reading comprehension really isn't your strongest skill, mate!

So, who were the conservatives it was aimed at on this board?

Trausti might be a candidate, he is, as far as I can tell, the only person who explicitly offered defenses of legacy admissions in this thread, though I don't claim to read his mind. How is this relevant though? Where does the OP (or any other post by ronburgundy, Toni, myself, whoever else you want to classify as "our camp") attest that people on this board are examples of that?

Or is this another of your straw men?

Nobody attested it. I wanted to know who it was aimed at. If the answer is 'nobody in particular', that's fine.

 

[Jokodo]

No, 14.3% are black:

https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics

I was going by the figures in this graphic provided by Derec (year not stated) and this report (2007 to 2016 cumulative), which put the figure at 7%/10% respectively.

Even so, 14% is still higher than any plausible figure you can pull from where the sun never shines about black students admitted only due to AA - unless you want to go on record claiming that, in the absence of AA or any other non-merit-based systems, black students would constitute less than 0.3% of Harvard's students. Is that a claim you're willing to defend?

I didn't say it didn't warrant talking about. Only that I was called out for using the term 'small fraction of white students' to describe the legacy admits. Now, maybe other people wouldn't describe 14% as a 'small fraction'.

Yeah, because admitting that you thought the number is lower than it actually is hurts so bad...

Relative as such terms as "small fraction" are, 14% is absolutely larger than 10%, or 4%, or any other remotely plausible figure you might pull from where the sun never shines for black students who got in through AA.

Well, yes, there are far more white people in the United States than black people.

Every black admit that would only have been admitted under AA by definition kept out another student who was not black.

Every legacy admit that would only have been admitted under legacy conditions would have kept out a student who could be of any race.

To the student who wanted to study at Harvard and now can't, what difference does that make whether he lost his place to a black or white student? None at all.

The distinction is relevant if your issue is as much about keeping the university a white ghetto like it used to be in the good old days. It is not relevant when your issue is the unfairness suffered by a student who should have gotten admitted and wasn't.

Claiming that the issue is only the latter while (explicitly or implicitly, by choosing to remain silent about the bigger problem) making arguments that only make sense when it's the former is exactly the kind of hypocrisy the OP criticizes.

 

[laughing dog]

"Vast majority" is a nebulous claim.

Really? I reckon the floor on the claim is 50% + 1.

The vast majority at Harvard is nonwhite.

I know that is true for undergraduate students. But for some reason, I am unable to find the data for graduate students or the combination of undergraduate and graduate students.

 

[Jokodo]

Trausti might be a candidate, he is, as far as I can tell, the only person who explicitly offered defenses of legacy admissions in this thread, though I don't claim to read his mind. How is this relevant though? Where does the OP (or any other post by ronburgundy, Toni, myself, whoever else you want to classify as "our camp") attest that people on this board are examples of that?

Or is this another of your straw men?

Nobody attested it. I wanted to know who it was aimed at. If the answer is 'nobody in particular', that's fine.

Unlike you, I am under no impression that I can read other people's minds, so you'll have to ask everyone individually.

I can only attest for myself: I only joined the discussion yesterday to call out your straw men, which have reached an unhealthy level once again. As far as I can reconstruct, my first contribution was this: https://talkfreethought.org/showthr...black-students&p=811354&viewfull=1#post811354, responding to a post where you falsely insinuated that [MENTION=968]ronburgundy[/MENTION] 's position implies eliminating high school grades from consideration.

Within the next couple pages of discussion you insinuated that someone had claimed SAT score measures SES status, or insinuating that someone in this thread (presumably laughing dog) fails to understand that some legacy admissions are black.

You haven't defended any of those insinuations - the closest I've seen is something along the lines of "I may have read something similar elsewhere on the web" (my paraphrasis, from memory, which might be inaccurate).

Either one of those two things has to be true:

- you are arguing in good faith, but failing to actually read what people are saying, imagining they're saying things they didn't - in this case, you really, really should work on your reading comprehension skills, preferably before engaging in another online discussion, as it is, frankly, quite offensive at times and not conducive to a productive debate.

- you're deliberately using straw men to derail the discussion.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

View attachment 28599

Here we see why race is a social construct. Hispanic. Huh? Non-Resident Alien? Therefore, not white?!! Ethnicity Unknown. Oh, another "that can't be white!!!111!"

Unreasonable Minimum

It is unreasonable to assume away all categories of non-race into race just because of weird social constructs of race. 43.5% is unreasonable.
​

Unreasonable Maximum

It would also be unreasonable to say 100% of Hispanics are White, 100% of Non-Resident Aliens are White and 100% of Ethnicity Unknowns are White. This would lead to a total of 75.8% White.
​

Reasonable

We have to figure out the reasonable middle ground between 43.5% and 75.8%. We ought not just split the difference and claim 60%, though that might be in the right ballpark. So let's try to come up with reasonable estimates.

Hispanics - 75% of Hispanics are fully European or predominately European. 75% of 10.8% is 8.1%.

Non-Resident Aliens - we do not know the ethnic distribution. There could be many people who can afford it which would be mostly White people of the world. Or Who knows. Let's use a minimal value for this one, though, by looking at the population of the world which is something like 12% White. Let's use 10% White since we are excluding the US. So, 10% of 12.3% is 1.2%.

Ethnicity Unknown - Well, we could take the 52.8% so far from above and apply it to the 9.2%. We could also say that some conservative White people may not list their race because they fear discrimination. So maybe there are MANY conspiratorial white people. But let's just use the 43.5% figure and not argue back and forth. So 43.5% x 9.2% = 4%.

So we have 43.5% + 8.1% + 1.2% + 4% = 56.8%.

*I imagine that conservatives are going to start crying and screaming when they read this number about how reasonable estimates are unfair to white people and then in particular they will dramatize reverse racialism in each category and try to push 0% estimates. So for the first one, Hispanic, they may try to claim that even a drop Native American or African will make a White person non-White. Okay, I am willing to CONCEDE that point provided two things: (1) conservatives accept a different non-zero number such as 5% that they have documented justification for instead of 8.1% and then (2) they admit that all the frantic screaming about Elizabeth Warren honestly thinking she was Native American was all partisan politics and that she has to also be non-White by their same logic. ​

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If admitting the less qualified brings in enough money to pay for another position nobody is losing out.

That only holds true if the number of students accepted varies based upon the amount of donations received. If a school has room for 2,000 students before your parents donated enough to pay the tuition for another student, and still only has room for 2,000 students after the donation that got you in the door, then someone more qualified is losing out when your parents bought your seat with their donation.

No, it only needs to maintain an average. If you get enough for 2,500 students one year and 1,500 the next but admit 2,000 donor students each year you're ok.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If admitting the less qualified brings in enough money to pay for another position nobody is losing out.

I question whether the alumni admissions are of that much benefit, though.

Legacy admissions would actually harm donations. If you can get your kid in w/o donating, then less alumni will donate. Harvard has a separate system that puts donors on a list, and if you donate enough you get on a special Dean list that essentially guarantees admission. If they required donations to get any special preference, then you'd get more alumni donating rather than just counting on their being an alumni to be enough.

As I said, the economics on this needs to be checked. I suspect the alumni don't bring in enough.

It sounds like Harvard's list is doing it right.

 

[laughing dog]

If admitting the less qualified brings in enough money to pay for another position nobody is losing out.

That only holds true if the number of students accepted varies based upon the amount of donations received. If a school has room for 2,000 students before your parents donated enough to pay the tuition for another student, and still only has room for 2,000 students after the donation that got you in the door, then someone more qualified is losing out when your parents bought your seat with their donation.

No, it only needs to maintain an average. If you get enough for 2,500 students one year and 1,500 the next but admit 2,000 donor students each year you're ok.

Pay attention - if the school only has room for 2,000 students, it will not admit 2,500 students.