Fighting over Race

There is another election going on: one for the Harvard Overseers

I am bringing up the Harvard vote because I am seeing it up close and the theme of this blog is the insights I might get by seeing things up close.  The Harvard Overseer elections is another iteration of something big happening in America: struggle over race and ethnicity.

Diversity quotas hurt Asians, not Whites

When I was at Harvard 45 years ago there were very few Asian students, possibly 1% of the class.   There were some 9% black students and the rest were "white".   I have no memory whatever of fellow students from Latin America or the Near East/Middle East Muslim majority world.  

Now over 20% of the student body is Asian, something that is instantly noticeable when I visit the campus.   I coordinate the interviews for Southern Oregon applicants to Harvard and this year 3 of the 11 applicants were from China.  

The Harvard Board of Overseers is a group of 30 people elected by the graduates of the college and they are one of two governing boards of the university.   The board nominated a slate of nominees to fill the vacancies, as is routine.   Not routine, though, is that a dissident group of people nominated an alternative slate of nominees.   Their policy plank is their campaign slogan:  

                                             Free Harvard/Fair Harvard

They want Harvard to be tuition free.  Free Harvard is something Harvard can afford.   Harvard notes that a significant number of the people admitted--maybe 35%-- have parents who can afford the tuition and living expenses of some $65,000 a year, so they should pay, saving scholarships for poor and middle income and upper middle income families.   The theory is that by making the simple statement that Harvard is universally free then the college will seem accessible to students otherwise put off by the notion of it being financially inaccessible.  

Zero Sum Game

The dissident slate wants Harvard to be fair in its admissions.  It becomes Fair Harvard by eliminating the quota on students of Asian extraction.   The problem at Harvard, according to the dissident slate, is that Harvard has a goal of diversity and representation of extraordinary students from a variety of ethnicities and circumstances, which conflicts with a "merit based" admission policy.   If admissions were objectively merit based then there would be even more students of Asian origin or ethnicity.

Their accusation:   Harvard is advantaging white kids--discriminating in their favor--by letting in less qualified whites while excluding better qualified Asians with higher test scores.

Harvard's current policy is to assert that diversity is a ethical value on its own, that diversity improves the educational experience of the students, and that "exceptional ability" shows up in a variety of ways, exposed by the variety of life experiences.   The black or white kid who excels notwithstanding growing up in a bad neighborhood shows potential to overcome adversity, for example.   The net result is that there are quotas, both economic and ethnic, disguised and muddled through the exercise of looking for the variety of "specialness".  Otherwise the class might be overwhelmingly filled by extraordinary students who have the life experience of having strict and dominating Chinese physician or college professor parents who stressed academic perfection and ambition from the moment of birth, resulting in perfect grades and top 1/100th of 1% board scores, and major-symphony quality violin prodigy.

Harvard admissions is a long way from the Wisconsin Republican Primary election and the attitudes of blue collar rust belt white voters.   Right?    Well, actually they are related.   It is about ethnicity, affirmative action, and getting a fair share of the pie.

Getting into Harvard is a zero sum game.   There are only so many slots.  (In two years of coordinating the local Harvard interviews I have seen 20 applicants, all of them extraordinary students, every one a student who would thrive there if admitted, and exactly zero have been admitted.   This is not a surprise.  There is only room for about one admission out of every 19 who apply--a 5.2% admission rate, and Oregon has a 4% acceptance rate.  So much for geographic diversity.)    

In a zero-sum world the opportunities given someone else mean a loss of opportunity to you.   Ambitious and loving parents perceive Harvard as a ticket to the Career Express Lane, with doors opening up in front of them, and they want that for their child.

Harvard's own press release on its admissions focused on diversity and ethnicity, essentially ratifying these as important criteria:   

"For the class of 2020 admissions, economic diversity has increased, and records were set for both African-American and Asian-American students."  Then, "A record 14 percent of the admitted students are African-American and 22.1 percent are Asian-American, also a record.  Latinos are 12.7% after last year's record 13.3%."   Native Americans are 2.2% and Native Hawaiians 0.4%.   

This adds up to: a little over 50%.   America is changing.   Harvard is changing.

The slow growth of the economy has encouraged zero-sum thinking.  Yes, this includes the white voters who are presumed to be Trump's base, but also people in other ethnicities.   I saw lots of Hispanic--presumably people of Cuban ethnicity--at the Florida, supporting Trump.    Blue collar white voters watch the demographic changes and see the traditional tailwind of white privilege being eroded.  Trump voters resent public benefits given to people they consider less deserving of them than themselves.   Both Trump and Sanders voters look at the growing share of wealth held by billionaires.

Did people notice what Trump said about Affirmative Action?

Yet, to complicate things, when Trump heard Scalia's comments saying blacks should go to easier schools where they might the slower track more suitable to their abilities, Trump spoke out, to reject--not endorse--that opinion.  The liberal press which presents Trump as a champion of ethnic discord misses this point.   

There is widespread resentment of illegal immigration but at the Florida rally I heard complaints about too much legal immigration as well.  CNN interviewed this software developer who complained about immigrants from India coming here and replacing native born workers--him.  

Legal immigrants took my job.

Florida has lots of immigrants and they are a mixed blessing.   Trump is inconsistent in his views on immigration, saying he wants a wall and saying he wants a big door in it.  Still, Trump remains the leader in the support of people feeling resentment of a system rigged against qualified whites aren't getting their full share of the pie. because it is being siphoned off to less deservings other.

But that is not actually his message.   At no point in any of the 5 rallies I have attended, or the numerous others I have watched in full on TV, have I heard Trump mention affirmative action or diversity.   He condemns illegal immigration.   He appeals to terror-fear, primarily against Muslims.   But he has black spokespeople on stage.   His overt message isn't racist, but he gets the support of people with racial and ethnic resentments.

Trump speaks for a bigger pie, not just a bigger slice of the pie, when he says America will win, win, win.   Trump's focus is more a law-and-order focus more than an ethnic focus.   ("I love the Mexicans.")   But for many voters crime and ethnicity are conflated, so he gets their votes.

"Diversity" and "multi-culturalism" are threats to Trump voters because it implies "less" for them.    And "diversity" means unfairness at Harvard, unfairness for deserving-Asians.

The dissident slate of Harvard Oversees says the system is rigged, and "Fair Harvard" is unfair.