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UPenn student op-ed: Ivy League admissions designed to ‘perpetuate white domination’

There may be no better example of the inherent contradictions espoused by progressive racial bean counters than Lucy Hu’s Tuesday op-ed in the University of Pennsylvania’s Daily Pennsylvanian.

A sophomore from New Zealand studying political science, Hu believes there’s a “serious issue” in elite college admissions which “flies under the radar”: machinations to maintain “white domination.”

Really? The most progressive institutions in America want to preserve white hegemony? Hmm …

Hu glosses over the efforts of the Asian American Coalition for Education — supported by (predominantly white) conservatives — which is endeavoring to halt admissions discrimination against Asians and Asian-Americans; in fact, she says (some of) its measures are “misguided and out of touch.”

And it gets “better”:

It is perfectly justifiable that these Asian American students are discriminated against in order to promote the ideals of affirmative action, such as for diversity and leveling the playing field for disadvantaged minorities. However, what is not justifiable — and in fact unconstitutional — is that they are held to a higher standard than white students, which achieves none of the goals of affirmative action.

So, as long as Asians are held to a higher standard than every other racial demographic sans Caucasians, everything is cool. Check.

From the piece:

When it comes to the Asian-American issue, Ivy League institutions actively work to keep Asians as a minority out of fear of losing a white majority. There is no dearth of evidence that an “Asian quota” exists inside the admissions chambers of schools like Penn.

Firstly, while America’s college-age Asian population doubled between 1992 and 2011, Harvard University’s Asian-American enrollment actually halved. Asian Americans make up over 27 percent of applicants at the three most selective Ivy League colleges from 2008 to 2012, but only consist of 17 to 20 percent of admits. …

[…]  class profiles of the Ivy League show that racial groups gravitate around the same percentage points among these schools. White students always make up the majority, with around 20 percent Asian students, and 10 percent Black and Latino each. The case of California shows that we should expect Asian students to be admitted at the same rate as their population growth. Yet this clearly is not the case in the Ivy League as the percentage of Asians per class has mysteriously stagnated in spite of Asian-American population growth.

Hu cites a 2015 Princeton study as supposed proof of Ivies’ efforts to keep a white majority student population. Except that … the study says Asians’ “admissions disadvantage” is caused by colleges’ efforts to racially diversify — discrimination for which Hu already has said is justifiable.

Not to mention, progressive bean counters always clamor about racial “proportionate representation”; with this in mind, the 20% figure noted by Hu already is way out proportion to US Census figures: Asians make up only 5.7% of the US population.

But even if college figures aren’t proportionate — say, with a greater number of Asians and a lower number of whites compared to the general population — Hu argues this is insufficient because … diversity:

“Replacing Asian students with white does not increase diversity — 50 percent white plus 20 percent Asian is not in fact more diverse than 35 percent each.”

 

She concludes:

“It’s perfectly admirable to have mechanisms that improve diversity and counteract disadvantage, like holding back white and Asian students (equally), but it’s completely unjust to hold back Asian students to allow for the perpetuation of a white majority.”

What a miasma of discrepancy.

MORE: Asian-American groups blast Democrats for ‘bigoted intervention’ in Harvard admission inquiry

MORE: Using its Harvard playbook, anti-affirmative action group targets UT for Asian discrimination

IMAGE: pathdoc/Shutterstock.com

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About the Author
Associate Editor
Dave has been writing about education, politics, and entertainment for over 20 years, including a stint at the popular media bias site Newsbusters. He is a retired educator with over 25 years of service and is a member of the National Association of Scholars. Dave holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Delaware.