From: ajh@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Alan Hu)
Subject: Re: Experiencing racism...
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University.
Distribution: usa,soc
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 01:25:50 GMT

In article <1993Jan26.123240.17029@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> q2tj@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes:
>In article <1993Jan26.115631.17027@vax5.cit.cornell.edu>,
>q2tj@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes: 
>> timlee@netcom.com (Timothy J. Lee) writes: 
>>> 
>>> Most racial prejudice and discrimination these days is covert,
>>> which is much harder to detect in individual cases [much deleted]
>> 
>> This racism thing (excuse the George Bushism ;-) has a lot
>> of currency these days, especially on college campuses.
>> 
>> If we take an analytic approach to the current discourse, the
>> subject becomes murky very fast.  This might be a shortcoming
>> of the analytic approach, but more likely has to do with the
>> political contexts of the discourse.  Here's some quick impressions.
>> Maybe others will be able to correct what I say, or add to it
>> for further discussion.
>>
>Oooops. stupid vmsnews posted this thing while I was still in
>the middle.
>
>Now that lots of people say that racism in the classical sense
>seems on the wane we hear more talk moving away from the
>individual racism (where there are clearcut legal sanctions against
>these forms of deliberate and intentional discrimination/racism)
>to talk about collective racisms.  These are much more complex,
>and sometimes I wonder if *anyone* has analytical thought this
>through (besides the neo-Marxist theoreticians, who imho are
>a big pain in the ass).  So here are the new buzzwords to discuss:
>
>institutional racism, subtle racism, covert racism, 
>endemide, cultural imperialism, racism-as-demonstrated-by-statistics,
>non-intentional racism, unconscious racism, systemic racism.
>
>comments?  (I do not mean to make fun of these, rather to clear the air)
>genocide, cu
>> 

I disagree.  That allegations of institutional racism fail to withstand
analytical thought is a common misconception; it simply requires better
and more carefully designed studies.  Let's take some simple examples.
Suppose someone yells at me "I lost my job because of you fucking Japs"
and proceeds to bash my head in with a fine hardwood Louisville Slugger.
I think a case like this falls neatly within the clearcut notions of
"classical" racism.  On the other hand, let's suppose we notice that
at many exclusive private colleges, the percentage of Asian Americans
is much higher than in the general US population.  Does this imply bias
in favor of Asian Americans?  Possibly, but without further information,
that'd be an unwarranted conclusion.  The pool of Asian-America high
school students might be particularly well-qualified, for whatever reason.
Still, the null hypothesis in these sorts of situations (for both mathematical
and cultural reasons) tends to be that all groups are the same, so we have
a mild suggestion that Asian Americans are favored in the admissions process
and a strong suggestion for further research.  Further research, however,
turns up that at several comparable state schools, the percentage of Asian
Americans is even higher, much much higher, than at these exclusive private
colleges.  Hmm, maybe this suggests that maybe the discrimination is going
the other way, too.  Perhaps there is discrimination against Asian Americans
in the admissions process.  Again, we can't make any sort of reasonable
statistical inference, but we know we need to look further.  So the next
thing people did was to look at admissions rates.  Here are the figures for
Harvard:	1981	1982	1983	1984	1985	1986	1987
Asian Americans	50.4%	60.3%	66.8%	45.0%	44.4%	28.4%	27.7%
Whites		54.3%	64.5%	70.5%	56.4%	52.3%	32.7%	31.4%
Similar figures exist for many other schools.  OK, so this more strongly
suggests bias against Asian Americans, but perhaps Asian Americans are just
less qualified than white people (except they are represented at higher than
in the general population, suggesting that they're more qualified).  Another
common explanation is that the lower admissions rates results from the
fact that Asian Americans are more likely to apply to pre-med and engineering,
where the admissions rates are lower.  Further analysis, however, discounts
that assertion in most cases.

OK, so what's really needed is a well-designed study.  Stanford did one in
the early 80s (which is unfortunately not published.  My info is from news
reports at the time).  The Stanford study took all applicants and pooled
them based on grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities.  In this
way, admissions rate comparisons would only compare equally qualified
applicants.  The study also looked at the admissions process to find evidence
of quotas.  Upon completion, the study found:
	1.  There was no evidence of any quota, overt or otherwise,
		capping the number of Asian-American admittees.
	2.  On the other hand, an Asian American student had only 60%
		of the chance of an EQUALLY QUALIFIED white student of
		being offered admissions, providing strong evidence of
		institutional bias somewhere in the system.
Proposed explanations included:  preference for alumni legacies, unconscous
bias on the part of the readers (name and photo are prominently displayed on
page 1 of the application), or unconscious bias on the part of the recommenders.

In any case, this is the kind of analysis that needs to be done to establish
institutional racism.  Yes, it's not as simple as witnessing someone calling
someone else a Chink, but not everything life is simple...
						--Alan Hu
----------
I am not Arthur Hu.  I am NOT Arthur Hu.  I AM NOT ARTHUR HU.

I am not a neo-conservative writer for AsianWeek.  I did not go
to MIT.  I do not conduct phone surveys.  I am not married.
I do not believe in Dan Quayle's family values.

Arthur Hu is a fine person.  So am I.  We are not, however, the same person.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american