• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

We are past due for a conversation about societal privilege of Asian-Americans

Lovebug said:
I don't think that is what he is trying to say. My interpretation is the impact of low or high expectations in today's society.
Click to expand...

Well that is certainly a generous interpretation of what he is saying. But he is not merely talking about "Look at how negative stereotyping affects African American's students academic achievement." That is certainly a debatable point. But instead he appears to feel the need to attack Asian Americans as some kind of privileged class of oppressors. That Asian Americans' academic achievements have come about as the result not of their individually-cultivated talents and abilities, but because somehow society has handed them the medals as a result of their being part of a higher, more privileged caste.
 
The problem with affirmative action is that, even if the minority person "made it" on his own, he's still looked on as having been handed success based on his ethnicity. It's inherently unfair, both to the targeted minority and to the rest of society.

What needs to be done, and it needs to start much sooner than college, is for the minorities that stereotypically do poorly to begin to believe that they can succeed. If you think you can, or if you think you can't, either way, you're probably right.
 
Dittohead not! said:
The problem with affirmative action is that, even if the minority person "made it" on his own, he's still looked on as having been handed success based on his ethnicity. It's inherently unfair, both to the targeted minority and to the rest of society.

What needs to be done, and it needs to start much sooner than college, is for the minorities that stereotypically do poorly to begin to believe that they can succeed. If you think you can, or if you think you can't, either way, you're probably right.
Click to expand...

Inculcating that belief begins with parents.
 
AtlantaAdonis said:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/06/politics/harvard-admissions-lawsuit/index.html

Stereotypes are self-fulfilling prophecies. If we as a society believe women aren't as good at math and computer program making then they won't be. If we believe African-Americans can't do as well on the SAT then they won't. Asian-Americans get the benefit of being stereotypes as smarter than whites and African-Americans and thus they do better as well.

Liberals and progressives must be more aggressive in defending restorative justice programs like Affirmative Action and not be afraid to do so from non-white ethnic groups.
Click to expand...

I'm debating as to whether this article is maybe even too silly to read.
In the United States, people with BRITISH ACCENTS are automatically assumed to be smarter.
That's why almost EVERY SINGLE luxury item advertised, from cars to watches to premium hotels and food, almost always features a voiceover announcer with a British accent.
 
veritas1 said:
Gotta love it. Let's punish Asians for being well educated and successful. Liberalism distilled to its essence.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't call it liberalism. You go ahead if you want to, because you know you want to.
 
trixare4kids said:
So let's cut to the chase. You're OK with Harvard discriminating against Asians, holding them to a higher academic standard than other groups. Do I have that about right?
Click to expand...

Affirmative action isn't discrimination. It's corrective justice that promotes diversity. It's punching up and not down.

Felis Leo said:
Oh, I am well aware. I am simply approaching it by AtlantaAdonis's own apparent standards and goals. He apparently puts the award of college entry ahead of individual academic achievement, chalking the achievement (or lack thereof) as meaningless because of societal privilege or oppression. If that is the case, my point still stands: Why is AtlantaAdonis not advocating automatically awarding all the members of an disadvantaged group degrees from the country's most prestigious academic institutions?
Click to expand...

They wouldn't benefit from just getting degrees. They wouldn't learn anything and wouldn't make the Ivy League connections that makes finding jobs as an Ivy League graduate so easy. Non-Asian people of color don't have friends of daddy to help them land big internships and jobs.
 
Last edited:
AtlantaAdonis said:
Affirmative action isn't discrimination. It's corrective justice that promotes diversity. It's punching up and not down.
Click to expand...

Tell that to the group of Asian-Americans who insist that they are victims of discrimination.
Asian-Americans Suing Harvard Say Admissions Files Show Discrimination

A group that is suing Harvard University is demanding that it publicly release admissions data on hundreds of thousands of applicants, saying the records show a pattern of discrimination against Asian-Americans going back decades.

The group was able to view the documents through its lawsuit, which was filed in 2014 and challenges Harvard’s admissions policies. The plaintiffs said in a letter to the court last week that the documents were so compelling that there was no need for a trial, and that they would ask the judge to rule summarily in their favor based on the documents alone.

The plaintiffs also say that the public — which provides more than half a billion dollars a year in federal funding to Harvard — has a right to see the evidence that the judge will consider in her decision.
Click to expand...
 
AtlantaAdonis said:
Affirmative action isn't discrimination. It's corrective justice that promotes diversity. It's punching up and not down.
Click to expand...


In practice, A-A has often been problematic in its application.
No matter how noble the idea may be, if it winds up discriminating against other classes, it's not an effective solution.
If you HIRE people using an A-A template and they cannot perform adequate to keep the job, they have to be let go just like anyone else would be.
If they cannot do the academic work, you cannot grade on a curve just to justify the A-A template being used.

Affirmative Action has to include testing for ability to benefit, otherwise it's just applying discrimination in reverse order.
If a college applicant can't score high enough, fix the primary education system instead of altering the college criteria to qualify.
 
AtlantaAdonis said:
Affirmative action isn't discrimination. It's corrective justice that promotes diversity. It's punching up and not down.
Click to expand...

Why is "promoting diversity" a good thing in itself? I understand helping uplift the downtrodden. I understand wanting to eliminate racism. Those are both laudable goals that I believe should be promoted. But how does simply allowing in students on the basis of their ethnicity and skin color but who did not come close to rising to the same level of academic achievement of their peers help society?

And again, what specifically did Asian-Americans do to non-Asian people of color (and when did they do this) that aroused your ire and merit their punishment by being forced to score higher than their non-Asian peers of color in order to get into the same schools? Other than doing better academically and professionally, what have they stolen away from non-Asian people of color that demands such "restorative justice"?

AtlantaAdonis said:
They wouldn't benefit from just getting degrees. They wouldn't learn anything and wouldn't make the Ivy League connections that makes finding jobs as an Ivy League graduate so easy. Non-Asian people of color don't have friends of daddy to help them land big internships and jobs.
Click to expand...

Exactly. And that is part of the problem. You seem to approach groups not as collections of individuals but classes to whom one can make broad generalizations about. It appears (and I could be wrong) that you do not care about an individuals characteristics, goals or achievements, but what race they belong to and make your decision about what they deserve or do not deserve on that basis.

Even if I were to grant that non-Asian American people of color as a class were oppressed and Asian-Americans as a class were acting as their oppressors, giving seats to students whose academic performance lags behind their peers appears like you are promoting playing a cruel joke on non-Asian students of color. If you demand lowering the bar for a particular class of students based specifically on their skin color in order for them to get into some of the most prestigious, competitive, and academically rigorous universities in the world the likelihood of their failure is only going to increase. And it seems like the best way to crush a non-Asian student of color's self-esteem is to make everyone around him or her (and perhaps even make the student him or herself) believe that their seat was not granted on the basis of their hard work or individual achievement; they just had the right skin color when they applied.

Of course, I am open to the possibility that I am wrong. Perhaps you yourself are the beneficiary of affirmative action, and you were accepted into a university despite having poorer grades than many of your peers, but you blossomed and found not only academic success but professional success after you were given the chance? Or perhaps you know a good number of people who have?
 
Last edited:
Sorry Atlanta Adonis but I can't help seeing all of this wind up being a real life version of Harrison Bergeron.

"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut at the Internet Archive

https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Bergeron_djvu.txt

Liberalism isn't about being Diana Moon Glampers, it's about making sure that everyone has an equal chance.
Humanity being what it is, there will always be winners and losers, and a whole lot of people in between.
 
AtlantaAdonis said:
They wouldn't benefit from just getting degrees. They wouldn't learn anything and wouldn't make the Ivy League connections that makes finding jobs as an Ivy League graduate so easy. Non-Asian people of color don't have friends of daddy to help them land big internships and jobs.
Click to expand...

I don't think you understand very much about academia or about internships either. And you're also assuming that students of color don't have daddies with helpful contacts. And that in many, many circumstances, they have an extra card to play. The last recommendation letter I wrote was for a wonderful student and person who wanted an internship at the U.N. that she has now completed. Smart, very hard-working, and charming, a great fit wherever she goes.

Oh, and her daddy is career military while her mom heads a federal agency.

And she is also African-American.
 
AtlantaAdonis said:
When that academic success isn't earned but is the result of societal privilege, then yes.

How sure are you that you would be where you are if you lived under constant stereotype and if your very existence was criminalized by police? Not as far.

images
Click to expand...

The only privilege is coming from a stable family, that pushes academic success and solid work ethic.
 
veritas1 said:
Yet only liberals favor reparations and other punitive actions against people who have done nothing wrong.
Click to expand...

Oh come on, just go ahead and tell us what you really think, that ALL LIBERALS favor reparations.
I don't favor reparations and no one I know does either.
The reason I don't think reparations is a good idea is because it is impossible to calculate, first off, and secondly reparations will not accomplish a damn thing in terms of fixing the racial harmony issue. It won't make anything better for either side.

That said, Native Americans are getting what constitutes a type of reparations right now, business tax cuts, gaming rights, etc.
Of course, the current government is then turning around and selling off their land right under their feet, and I suspect that is how black reparations would also play out, because the Right can't seem to help themselves whenever their revanchist urge strikes them, as we're witnessing right now against women, against the working class, against people who respect the environment, against unions, against public schools, against alternative and renewable energy, against every single public good in the entire country, VA, Medicare, Social Security, all entitlements universally.

Revanchism, especially the white nationalist type, would destroy reparations, which is why I already have known for a long time that it isn't a workable idea. The only place reparations are workable is as a trope used to fire up the outrage of people on the Right.
 
AtlantaAdonis said:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/06/politics/harvard-admissions-lawsuit/index.html

Stereotypes are self-fulfilling prophecies. If we as a society believe women aren't as good at math and computer program making then they won't be. If we believe African-Americans can't do as well on the SAT then they won't. Asian-Americans get the benefit of being stereotypes as smarter than whites and African-Americans and thus they do better as well.

Liberals and progressives must be more aggressive in defending restorative justice programs like Affirmative Action and not be afraid to do so from non-white ethnic groups.
Click to expand...

This sounds a lot like "the soft bigotry of low expectations" as described by George W. Bush. I wouldn't have taken you as a supporter of GWB.
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
Oh come on, just go ahead and tell us what you really think, that ALL LIBERALS favor reparations.
I don't favor reparations and no one I know does either.
The reason I don't think reparations is a good idea is because it is impossible to calculate, first off, and secondly reparations will not accomplish a damn thing in terms of fixing the racial harmony issue. It won't make anything better for either side.

That said, Native Americans are getting what constitutes a type of reparations right now, business tax cuts, gaming rights, etc.
Of course, the current government is then turning around and selling off their land right under their feet, and I suspect that is how black reparations would also play out, because the Right can't seem to help themselves whenever their revanchist urge strikes them, as we're witnessing right now against women, against the working class, against people who respect the environment, against unions, against public schools, against alternative and renewable energy, against every single public good in the entire country, VA, Medicare, Social Security, all entitlements universally.

Revanchism, especially the white nationalist type, would destroy reparations, which is why I already have known for a long time that it isn't a workable idea. The only place reparations are workable is as a trope used to fire up the outrage of people on the Right.
Click to expand...

I never said that all liberals support reparations. I said that the people who do support them are liberals. That is an accurate statement. Secondly, the revanchist diatribe is just the same stuff we here all the time from the left. Yea, we righties are out to pollute the world and throw Grandma into the street. You guys need new material.

What's especially amusing is that the working class is doing better and will do better under Trump's policies than they ever did in eight years under Obama. Attacks on women? Any specifics? Did abortion become illegal and someone forgot to mention it? The VA? It can certainly be made more efficient and serve veterans better than in the past. What's your beef with that other than that Trump is attempting it? Like I said, you've repeated mostly cliches unsupported by what's actually happening.
 
AtlantaAdonis said:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/06/politics/harvard-admissions-lawsuit/index.html

Stereotypes are self-fulfilling prophecies. If we as a society believe women aren't as good at math and computer program making then they won't be. If we believe African-Americans can't do as well on the SAT then they won't. Asian-Americans get the benefit of being stereotypes as smarter than whites and African-Americans and thus they do better as well.

Liberals and progressives must be more aggressive in defending restorative justice programs like Affirmative Action and not be afraid to do so from non-white ethnic groups.
Click to expand...

This is straight up horse ****. The SATs are a test, belief has nothing to do with how any individual will do. There may be some other influences from culture as to why we see some differences. It's not that oh people think Asian people are smarter so....magically they are smarter. Culturally, they emphasis education more than others, they study more often and harder, and that increased effort results in better results. Instead of "Affirmative Action" blah blah blah, ask yourself why do Asian people perform better on SATs, and then if you want folk to do better on the SATs, emulate that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom