We Can Promote Justice Without Being Henry Ford-Level Racist Against Asian Americans
There's a better way
On Tuesday, New York columnist Jonathan Chait made waves by stating a blindingly obvious fact: Harvard is discriminating against Asian Americans. Some excerpts:
“The facts, as presented by the plaintiffs, are crystal clear. Asian Americans admitted to Harvard have higher standardized-test scores than any other group including whites.”
“Whatever the legal merits, the political case for Harvard’s system, and the similar systems used by its fellow elite institutions, has been formed by a stream of insultingly dishonest propaganda.”
“[Harvard’s defenders] will suggest Harvard does not hold Asian American applicants to a higher standard and then change the subject to something more congenial to their preferred conclusion. Their arguments tend to employ a jargon-heavy, elliptical style George Orwell derided in “Politics and the English Language”: obfuscatory rhetoric that avoids directly engaging with facts that discomfit the party line.”
“Reality is complicated. But one identifiable aspect of this complex reality is systemic discrimination against Asian Americans.”
I had intended, at some point, to write a column about how Harvard’s argument is so clownish that it makes Benny Hill seem like King Lear. But Chait basically covers it — I encourage you to read his article. Harvard has hidden its de facto quota system with all the effectiveness of a seventh grader hiding his erection behind a math book; their patent-worthy discrimination machine is an evaluation category called “personality”. “Personality” is a completely subjective nonsense category; they could have just as reasonably called it “essence” or “zazzle”. Harvard regularly gives Asian American students shockingly low “personality” scores, and this appears to be the main reason why the school’s Asian population is less than half of what it would be if students were admitted based solely on academic merit. The most charitable interpretation of what’s happening — what Harvard says is happening — is that Asian applicants are overwhelmingly Spock-like automatons whose feelings and behaviors are a pale facsimile of actual human experience, which is an argument so incredibly racist that I think it would spark a dive in subscriptions if it appeared in The Daily Stormer.
