"Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade and researcher Alexandria Walton Radford examined data on students applying to college in 1997 and found what looks like different standards for different racial groups. They calculated that Asian-Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores of 1550 to have the same chance of being accepted at a top private university as whites who scored 1410 and African-Americans who got 1100. Whites were three times, Hispanics six times, and blacks more than 15 times as likely to be accepted at a US university as Asian-Americans."
In Russia a minority like Jews are asked special questions in admission tests to make it harder for them to get in, while in America a minority like Asians are hit with a penalty of 450 points in SAT to make it harder (15 times harder) for them to get in. There's no difference.
If elite American universities didn't penalize Asians, they would almost literally have no non-Asian students. This is because Asian-Americans optimize the entire lives of their youth around maximizing their admissions chances to elite universities. There's racism here, but there's also just Goodhart's Law, normal old American anti-intellectualism, and the proper acknowledgement that standardized exam scores show very little about a university applicant's real life prospects.
Part of turning 18 in the USA is making the transition from subservient child to independent adult, over a period of years (usually by 26 you're considered definitely adult or way behind). Part of the problem with Asian-Americans is, they don't make the transition. Striver-immigrant culture and extreme focus on family (at one time a part of Jewish-American immigrant culture too, often more an immigrant thing than a particular culture's thing) cause people to overoptimize their kids' upbringing on being good little subservient worker-bee children, often leaving them semi-crippled when required to function as independent adults.
And then let's not even get into the cultural differences in areas of authority, ego and freedom between East Asia and America, which put Asians at a severe disadvantage due to their inclination, ground in by "Chinese mothers" over periods of years, to expect being ordered around all the time.
Before anyone calls me a vicious racist, a Chinese student in a class at university once referred to me as "more Asian than the Asians". I like to look back on how completely wrong he was :-).
Or you could take a look at the long history of anti-Asian racism in America (Chinese massacre of 1871, imported Asian slave labors for building the transcontinental railroads, Chinese Exclusion Act, Asiatic Barred Zone Act, etc). Just because you want to claim they are not comparable doesn't mean they are not.
I think what he was trying to say is that this is affirmative action for gentiles. In other words, Russia made it easier for non-Jews by virtue of giving them easier entrance exams.
I still think "affirmative action" is a clumsy and not entirely correct way of describing what he's trying to articulate. But he's not trying to be as provocative as he comes across. At least I don't think (?) he is?
Just because you have a name for non-Jews doesn't make it a cohesive group and most importantly nowhere near a minority.
It's insane to say discriminating against a minority is like affirmative action for everyone else. So if I don't like Bob I could phrase it that it's not that I don't like him--I do!-- it's just that I like everyone else better (including other people I dislike). And for someone to fall for that would be ridiculous.
It sounds less like a serious attempt to understand this episode in history, and more like a way to score a quick point about 21st-century American politics.
Say you have a minority that's 1% of the population, and unhindered it would also make up 1% of enrollments.
If you don't allow that minority to enroll, you're increasing the acceptance chance of a majority group member by just over 1%, while decreasing the acceptance chance of the minority member by 100%.
The correct way to describe this is then most definitely discrimination against the minority, and not affirmative action for the majority.
Actually Jews were about 1% of Soviet Union population and 5%-10% of University students. If Jews were only 1% of student population it would not be an issue. I went to mathematical magnet school (best math school in 5M+ city) and easily 30%-50% of students had Jewish roots.
Essentially it was more difficult for Jews to get into university, neutral for Russians, easier for Tatars and some other minorities and extremely easy for what's called Northern Minorities (they had - and still have special quotas, no exams necessary)
Speaking as 1/4 Russian-Jewish, 1/4 Chuvash, 1/8 Latvian and 1/rest Russian.
The term "affirmative action" is so easy to manipulate that it could be used to cover any form of discrimination. I guess Soviets would describe their discriminatory policy as an affirmative action to increase the social and ethnic diversity of the class of intellectuals, or something between those lines.
Comments
Affirmative action? Are you mad?
Perhaps you're unaware of these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Jewish_pogroms_in_the_Russ...
Affirmative action is not the same thing as making it artificially harder for a discriminated minority!
It is exactly like affirmative action:
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2011/04...
"Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade and researcher Alexandria Walton Radford examined data on students applying to college in 1997 and found what looks like different standards for different racial groups. They calculated that Asian-Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores of 1550 to have the same chance of being accepted at a top private university as whites who scored 1410 and African-Americans who got 1100. Whites were three times, Hispanics six times, and blacks more than 15 times as likely to be accepted at a US university as Asian-Americans."
In Russia a minority like Jews are asked special questions in admission tests to make it harder for them to get in, while in America a minority like Asians are hit with a penalty of 450 points in SAT to make it harder (15 times harder) for them to get in. There's no difference.
There is a slight difference.
If elite American universities didn't penalize Asians, they would almost literally have no non-Asian students. This is because Asian-Americans optimize the entire lives of their youth around maximizing their admissions chances to elite universities. There's racism here, but there's also just Goodhart's Law, normal old American anti-intellectualism, and the proper acknowledgement that standardized exam scores show very little about a university applicant's real life prospects.
Part of turning 18 in the USA is making the transition from subservient child to independent adult, over a period of years (usually by 26 you're considered definitely adult or way behind). Part of the problem with Asian-Americans is, they don't make the transition. Striver-immigrant culture and extreme focus on family (at one time a part of Jewish-American immigrant culture too, often more an immigrant thing than a particular culture's thing) cause people to overoptimize their kids' upbringing on being good little subservient worker-bee children, often leaving them semi-crippled when required to function as independent adults.
And then let's not even get into the cultural differences in areas of authority, ego and freedom between East Asia and America, which put Asians at a severe disadvantage due to their inclination, ground in by "Chinese mothers" over periods of years, to expect being ordered around all the time.
Before anyone calls me a vicious racist, a Chinese student in a class at university once referred to me as "more Asian than the Asians". I like to look back on how completely wrong he was :-).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
please have a look at the history of antisemitism in europe. you cannot compare things which are not comparable at all.
Or you could take a look at the long history of anti-Asian racism in America (Chinese massacre of 1871, imported Asian slave labors for building the transcontinental railroads, Chinese Exclusion Act, Asiatic Barred Zone Act, etc). Just because you want to claim they are not comparable doesn't mean they are not.
I think what he was trying to say is that this is affirmative action for gentiles. In other words, Russia made it easier for non-Jews by virtue of giving them easier entrance exams.
I still think "affirmative action" is a clumsy and not entirely correct way of describing what he's trying to articulate. But he's not trying to be as provocative as he comes across. At least I don't think (?) he is?
Just because you have a name for non-Jews doesn't make it a cohesive group and most importantly nowhere near a minority.
It's insane to say discriminating against a minority is like affirmative action for everyone else. So if I don't like Bob I could phrase it that it's not that I don't like him--I do!-- it's just that I like everyone else better (including other people I dislike). And for someone to fall for that would be ridiculous.
> most importantly nowhere near a minority.
Affirmative action is not just for minorities... in some (many?) places, the historically excluded group form a majority.
And yet, Russians have never been the historically excluded group in Russia. Jews were.
It sounds less like a serious attempt to understand this episode in history, and more like a way to score a quick point about 21st-century American politics.
> Affirmative action is not the same thing as making it artificially harder for a discriminated minority!
It is practically the same. When it comes to limited entrance, you can't make it easier for a certain group without making it harder for the rest.
Principally yes, but I'd disagree on essence.
Say you have a minority that's 1% of the population, and unhindered it would also make up 1% of enrollments.
If you don't allow that minority to enroll, you're increasing the acceptance chance of a majority group member by just over 1%, while decreasing the acceptance chance of the minority member by 100%.
The correct way to describe this is then most definitely discrimination against the minority, and not affirmative action for the majority.
Actually Jews were about 1% of Soviet Union population and 5%-10% of University students. If Jews were only 1% of student population it would not be an issue. I went to mathematical magnet school (best math school in 5M+ city) and easily 30%-50% of students had Jewish roots.
Essentially it was more difficult for Jews to get into university, neutral for Russians, easier for Tatars and some other minorities and extremely easy for what's called Northern Minorities (they had - and still have special quotas, no exams necessary)
Speaking as 1/4 Russian-Jewish, 1/4 Chuvash, 1/8 Latvian and 1/rest Russian.
Thanks. I assumed that Jews would be overrepresented amongst students, but opted for making a more general point.
The term "affirmative action" is so easy to manipulate that it could be used to cover any form of discrimination. I guess Soviets would describe their discriminatory policy as an affirmative action to increase the social and ethnic diversity of the class of intellectuals, or something between those lines.