Colleges Discriminating Against Minority Applicants

The greatest irony in the current white privilege mania is that the people who are doing the best under the current rules are not white. They are Asian. At any university that practices truly color blind admissions, Asian children are more likely to be admitted because they are more likely to excel.

Lionel Shriver explains that Asians in America have often been persecuted. (via Maggie’s Farm) They have often faced discrimination. They have been disadvantaged. And yet, they continue to outperform by all measures of scholastic achievement? And how does it happen that they are increasingly doing better economically than many other ethnic groups?

Could it be something in their culture? 

Shriver opens her essay thusly:

Riddle: when is discrimination against a historically disadvantaged racial minority perfectly legal? Answer: when they do too well.

She continues to point out the rank injustice of the recent federal  court decision in Massachusetts. You know, the one that declared that Harvard had not been discriminating against Asian applicants:

The first ruling on the Students for Fair Admissions suit against Harvard University is in. A federal judge in Massachusetts concluded last month that for America’s be-all-and-end-all university to discriminate against Asian applicants in order to serve the all-hallowed goal of ‘diversity’ is constitutional. (Or strictly speaking, if you can follow this logic, the university did not discriminate against Asians by discriminating against them.) The reasoning: ‘Race conscious admissions will always penalize to some extent the groups that are not being advantaged by the process.’ The decision has already been appealed, and the case is likely to land in the Supreme Court.

You see, too many Asians are simply too good. American children cannot compete. Thus we must handicap the Asians to ensure that the Americans do not suffer from lower self-esteem:

What makes the Students for Fair Admissions case different is that it’s not white high school students with excellent records objecting to being shafted. Asian applicants to Harvard with dazzling grades and perfect test scores, who play the violin, speak four languages, volunteer for the Big Brothers program, captain the volleyball team, adopt rescue dogs and memorize the value of pi to 31.4 trillion digits have still received rejection letters in droves.

You already know how Harvard rationalizes its discriminatory practices:

… admissions staff have systematically downgraded inconveniently accomplished Asians on their ‘personal ratings’ — purely subjective assessments of character traits such as leadership. Although the federal judge allowed that these dismal personal ratings could have been the product of ‘unconscious bias’ (stereotypically, Asians are compliant and unimaginative), the truth is clearly more disagreeable. Depressed personal ratings are intended to skew the data and suppress Asian admissions.

Now, in a sane culture, non-Asians would look at these Asian applicants and would emulate their example. Not in today’s American academy. They prefer to punish excellence:

Asians are doing too well and have to be stopped. They work too hard. They are too disciplined. They are too willing to make short-term sacrifices to reach long-term goals. They are too inclined to obey their parents. They stay up too late studying and get up too early to resume studying. Obviously it’s not fair.

As has often been noted on this blog, one good reason why these Asian students are doing so well is that their culture demands it. They do not indulge the Spockean permissiveness that has infested American childrearing. They are not allowed to while away the hours playing video games. They do not go to school to find themselves. They do not believe that they ought to self-actualize. They learn to be industrious not indolent. Strange to say it, but they have adopted the Protestant work ethic and are working to achieve:

Some believe that the ‘Tiger mom’ phenomenon is likely to grow more dilute as these over-achievers bear children who are lazy and unambitious, like real Americans. Until then, I’m happy for Asian students to colonize elite universities to their hearts’ content. These are kids who have forgone TV, video games, drugs, booze, sex and skipping school to vape in the bathroom to get into the college of their choice. True, they may find on arrival that in America the overpriced top-tier university isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but they’ve earned the right to make that disappointing discovery for themselves.