I did not attack you as a person. I criticized your point, saying that I believe that it comes from a White-centric perspective. I read back on my comment — at no point did I resort to ad hominem attacks. But that is neither here nor there.

However, I did write out of frustration because AT NO POINT in this post (or Part I) did I even insinuate that a school that has a majority of White students is somehow “more diverse” than a school with a majority of Asians. Or blacks. Or anything of the sort. It’s actually rather frustrating and insulting to have someone say: “The author assumes that a student body where 50% of the students are white is somehow more diverse and interesting than when 50% of the students are Asian. However, this is not a cogent argument.” Where is that argument made anywhere in my post?

” However, how would one define that a student body is diverse? Maybe one criterion is racial diversity…but then how does one define what is racially diverse? An equal distribution of every group? Why does 50% of a student body being Asian suggest a lack of racial diversity? ”

Because diversity, as a term, refers to having a student body of many different backgrounds — including racially. If you go to a school where 90% is White (as you say you do), your school lacks racial diversity, just as much as if you attended an HBCU — which, incidentally, is the purpose of an HBCU. I argue that schools need to have racial diversity, which includes decreasing representation of overrepresented racial groups by increasing that of underrepresented groups.

In other words, this post was predominantly focused at justifying to Asian Americans the benefit of encouraging increased admissions of Blacks, Latinos and Native American students. Not by transforming a school that is 50% Asian to 50% White — which is what is being advocated in the UC system.

You make the argument that Asians are, themselves, diverse. Yes, there are many *ethnicities* encompassed by the pan-ethnic term “Asian”. Yet, two points: 1) Schools that have an overrepresentation of Asian Americans (particularly UC) schools have an underrepresentation of most Asian ethnicities. That overrepresentation is encompassed almost exclusively by East Asians, such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean. So, the real life example of UC schools being “more diverse”, actually isn’t. And 2) The racial umbrella term White also includes people of multiple ethnicities. Yet intuitively, we know that a predominantly White school, which still has varying populations of Irish, French, English, American, Australian-descendent Whites still lack racial diversity. The same is true in the Asian American sense — ethnic diversity may be high, but racial diversity is overwhelming underserved.

The point about your background is fine: but it’s actually an argument against the pan-ethnic Asian umbrella term. If you want to argue that perhaps we need demographic information that doesn’t lump all Asian Americans into a single group, than I would agree with you. In fact, I make the point (albeit in a minor fashion) in the post that just because a UC school is 40 or 50% Asian American, there are still many ethnicities of Asian Americans that are underrepresented and could (and do) benefit from affirmative action. But despite that, you still have a student body that is 30% or more East Asian — and there’s no argument for racial diversity that allows for that extreme an overrepresentation of Chinese, Japanese and Korean students.

“50% of a student body being Asian can be incredibly diverse or it can be incredibly homogeneous…but by just knowing that 50% is Asian is it impossible to determine. ”

Fair enough, except that the UC school system does actually give out Asian ethnic information. And the vast majority of Asians are, in fact, the East Asian. Also, most are first or second generation, and of similar class backgrounds.

And, I would still argue that even if that weren’t the case, having a school 90% Asian would be like going to a school 90% White — diversity is still lacking because students are not exposed to the experiences of students of backgrounds extremely dissimilar to their own.

On to the meat of the discussion, I am not disagreeing with the point that diversity improves the intellectual experience at a school. In fact, I agree with the point 100%. However, how would one define that a student body is diverse? Maybe one criterion is racial diversity…but then how does one define what is racially diverse? An equal distribution of every group? Why does 50% of a student body being Asian suggest a lack of racial diversity? For instance, UW Madison (I am from Wisconsin) where 90% of the student body is White and most are from Wisconsin…UC Berkeley statistically is much more racially diverse…Even compared to my undergraduate institution Georgetown which was over 65% white, UC Berkeley is more diverse. In fact, UC Berkeley seems much more racially diverse than most schools in the US. It’s all about relative diversity and how schools are being compared. At this point in time, almost no school has an equitable distribution of different types of people. When I usually think of homogeneity, I think over 80 or 90 percent of a student body being from the same background. Therefore, I have a hard time believing this argument in relation to Berkeley.

Furthermore, without making an argument for relative diversity, the point about diversity of opinion just seems ironic. I think when people read that portion of the article, they think about the current reality in the US where most universities are over 50% White. They also think about how this argument never seems to be made when relating to the majority of schools and how even in this article that point was not made in relation to those schools, but it is made in relation to schools that are 50% Asian. This may not have been an explicit aim, but it becomes apparent to me when considering the context of the article and the reality of the situation in the US.

Second, I also disagree with the fact that having schools where over 50% of the population is Asian is actually reducing the diversity of those schools. The category “Asian” reflects a large diversity of heritage and experience. For instance, I am Asian–Indian American. My last name is Rodrigues and my family is avidly Catholic and speaks Konkani. I think you would have a difficult time finding someone like me. I am nothing like an Asian person from China, Burma, Vietnam or Iran. A Chinese American is not the same as a Burmese American or American from the Philippines. Even within India itself, I am nothing like a Punjabi or Gujarati person. I don’t think that I’m that unique. There is such a great diversity within Asia that it is even unfair to put all Asian Americans in one group or in one statistic. I think a lot of Asian Americans are like me and have very diverse backgrounds. When we did Asian American panels at Georgetown (where 17% of the pop is Asian), I found there was such a large diversity of experience. There were Indian Americans, Vietnamese Americans, Chinese Americans, Burmese Americans, and Half-Asian, Half-Every other racial group. Because of diversity of heritage and experience, there was also such a diversity of opinion. I find it hard to just put everyone into one category. So to really define diversity, one has to go deeper…50% of a student body being Asian can be incredibly diverse or it can be incredibly homogeneous…but by just knowing that 50% is Asian is it impossible to determine.

Going back to your point, it’s not really like saying that “America is a pretty big continent….”.The reason why it’s not that same as states in the US is that the US is a very young country. There has not been enough time for regions to diverge culturally like in Asia or Europe or Africa.

Stereotyping in college admissions in any sense is bad. I just hope that Admissions Officers look more deeply at individual candidates and their personal qualities and not at stereotypes based on race.

I think you clearly missed the point of this post: having an overrepresentation of ANY ethnic group (or any background), in essence where a student body is simply too homogenous, lowers the quality of discussion in the classroom.

At no point do I “assume that a student body where 50% of the students are white is somehow more diverse and interesting than when 50% of the students are Asian”. I don’t even know where you could even begin to interpret that in what I write, unless you somehow assume that reducing representation of APIAs on college campuses automatically means I advocate increasing the number of Whites. Uhm, no — that’s incredibly White-centric.

And secondly, while Asia is a pretty big continent, that doesn’t mean that admissions panels are actually taking that into account; if you look at most schools, even within the APIA community, Chinese, Korean and Japanese are overrepresented within the pan-Asian student community.

It really is like saying “America’s a pretty big continent, and there are lots of different states in there, so we should let more white American people in because we’ll get people from different states with completely different heritages and experiences.” We know, anecdotally, that that doesn’t happen.

“Anti-affirmative action fundamentalists and fervent Asian American nationalists might applaud that nearly half of UC students are Asian American, but I propose that this actually diminishes the quality of education that our Asian American students have access to. Academia is about developing a forum of discussion, argument and debate; where a free-flowing exchange of ideas can take place. This can only occur in a diverse populace where students are exposed to unique ideas originating from a multiplicity of different perspectives and backgrounds. When nearly half of all people that a student can meet in class come from a similar background, the student loses the opportunity to have his or her worldview challenge. ”

But how about in most schools where over 50% of the population is white, doesn’t this too lower the quality of discussion when all the students are from a similar white middle class background. This argument in itself shows the bias the article talks about. The author assumes that a student body where 50% of the students are white is somehow more diverse and interesting than when 50% of the students are Asian. However, this is not a cogent argument. In fact, having 50% of the student body being Asian might even be more interesting than having 50% of the student body being white since Asia is a huge continent with a large numbers of different peoples with completely different heritages and experiences.

In Part II, for the comparison specifically of whites to Asian Americans, it is established that neither group is underrepresented on college campuses, so the question is posed as to why Asian American admittance numbers would be lower than whites. Is it not a satisfactory answer to claim – using the population data and similar ideas to those expressed in Part I – that though both groups are overrepresented, Asian Americans are proportionally more overrepresented than whites?

That *was* my question, though I understand your point that it is not legal to set racial quotas, thereby making my scenario unlikely. If whites and Asian Americans are applying in nearly equal numbers, and neither should require assistance from affirmative action, then all else being equal the admittance rates should be closer to equal.

“My question is, can the discrepancy not be also explained by the fact that whites do make up a larger portion of the population demographic in the US than do Asian Americans? If the goal of Affirmative Action is to have demographics on college campuses more accurately representing demographics on our communities, then between the two non-benefiting groups is it incorrect to have a higher admission of whites as they are perhaps not as contextually over-represented as Asian Americans are.”

I’m not sure I follow — are you suggesting that perhaps Whites should have higher acceptances than APIAs because of the differences in national population demograhpics (such that Whites are by degree less overrepresented than APIAs)? Or that they shouldn’t?

Either way, this is where aff. action gets tricky, because specifically using national demographic numbers to achieve specific ratios of race/ethnic groups is an example of racial quotas, deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The goal of affirmative action is to aid underrepresented minorities, but in a fashion that does not specifically attempt to achieve a target population size.

“What is the reason for Asian-American’s relatively high academic success? You idenitfy factors common to those of the upper/upper-middle class having access to resources that others might not. However, are there other factors such as home enviornment, upbringing, access to other resources, cultural values/traditions, less prejudice, etc,.? What do people think?”

First of all, do we accept that APIAs have relatively high academic success, or is this a manifestation of the model minority myth? Indeed, many studies show APIAs have higher SAT scores, and higher undergraduate GPAs, but this is correlative, not necessarily causative.

I do think that people under-emphasize the contribution of class and income on academic success. APIAs are a relatively new population in America, and the majority of APIAs currently in the country can trace an immigrant history to only a generation or two back. Most APIA families immigrated within the last 20 years.

The process of immigration has a filtering effect, because mostly higher-income and/or educated folks are capable of making it through America’s immigration and naturalization process. Thus, the APIA community in this country is currently wealthy and highly educated, and we know that (regardless of race) highly educated parents tend to produce highly educated children, because they raise their kids to value education.

So, I think APIAs have “relative” academic success based on the demographics of the APIA community. I think it has less to do with cultural values or traditions than is common in the public perception.

I have a question that I am hoping someone can answer, with regards to the disproportionate acceptance rates between whites and Asians.

In part I, pie charts are given to demonstrate that Asians are arguably over-represented on college campuses in the context of national demographics (percent on college campuses – ~20%, percent of population in the US ~%4.) These data among others are used to justify Asian Americans not benefiting from Affirmative Action.

Part II begins with a comparison of Asian American and white acceptance rates and questions why this is, offering anti-Asian bias as one possible suggestion among others.

My question is, can the discrepancy not be also explained by the fact that whites do make up a larger portion of the population demographic in the US than do Asian Americans? If the goal of Affirmative Action is to have demographics on college campuses more accurately representing demographics on our communities, then between the two non-benefiting groups is it incorrect to have a higher admission of whites as they are perhaps not as contextually over-represented as Asian Americans are?

What is the reason for Asian-American’s relatively high academic success? You idenitfy factors common to those of the upper/upper-middle class having access to resources that others might not. However, are there other factors such as home enviornment, upbringing, access to other resources, cultural values/traditions, less prejudice, etc,.? What do people think?