Things You Can and Can’t Do
21 Feb 2012 / PE
Things You Can Do
Discriminate against Asians in college admissions.
Things You Can’t Do
Use “Chink in the Armor” as the headline for an article on the New York Knicks.
EppsNet
Notes from the Golden Orange
Underrepresented Minorities in the UC
22 Jan 2012 / PEThe University of California is prohibited by law from considering race in the admissions process, but they are allowed to identify certain ethnic groups as “underrepresented minorities.”
Here are some freshman enrollment numbers at UC Berkeley for Fall 2011. The first four groups on the list are considered underrepresented; the others aren’t.
| Ethnicity | 2011 Fall |
|---|---|
| African American/Black | 130 |
| Mexican American/Chicano | 325 |
| Other Hispanic/Latino | 150 |
| Native American/Alaskan Native | 33 |
| Pacific Islander | 11 |
| Chinese | 936 |
| Filipino | 108 |
| Japanese | 68 |
| Korean | 250 |
| Other Asian | 45 |
| South Asian | 324 |
| Vietnamese | 142 |
You may also like ...
Chinese Parents vs Western Parents
22 Jan 2012 / PE
Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best.
Chinese parents can say, “You’re lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you.” By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they’re not disappointed about how their kids turned out.
You may also like ...
Don’t Check Asian
22 Jan 2012 / PEAsian kids are putting a different race on their college applications to boost their chances of getting into the top schools.
Lanya Olmstead was born in Florida to a mother who immigrated from Taiwan and an American father of Norwegian ancestry. Ethnically, she considers herself half Taiwanese and half Norwegian. But when applying to Harvard, Olmstead checked only one box for her race: white.
That’s a rather modest strategy. Identifying yourself as white does give you a little bit of a boost but to really improve the odds, I’d advise everyone to go ahead and check the Black or Hispanic box. Or Eskimo. Eskimos are kind of Asian-looking.
Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade examined applicants to top colleges from 1997, when the maximum SAT score was 1600 (today it’s 2400). Espenshade found that Asian-Americans needed a 1550 SAT to have an equal chance of getting into an elite college as white students with a 1410 or black students with an 1100.
Here in California, state colleges and universities are prohibited by Proposition 209 from considering race in the admissions process. As a result, the student body at UC Berkeley is more than 40 percent Asian, up from about 20 percent before Prop 209 was passed in 1996. (The California population is 13 percent Asian.)
Other top schools that don’t consider race in admissions also have a high percentage of Asian students. Cal Tech is about one-third Asian. (As a private school, Cal Tech is not subject to Prop 209, but chooses not to consider race.)
Yale, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania declined to make admissions officers available for interviews for this story.
Draw your own conclusions. We are being overrun by the yellow horde!
You may also like ...
Engineering is Serious Business, Says Engineering Major
6 Dec 2011 / PEImage via Wikipedia
The dean of UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering expressed support today for a recommendation from a student group that the college create a recruitment and retention plan for women and underrepresented minority students.
It sounds like the dean might be up for lowering the engineering standards to meet diversity metrics. Bad idea. Engineering is serious business.
Also: Preferential treatment by a public institution based on race, sex or ethnicity is prohibited by California law.
I’ve got a better and more legal idea: How about if the women and “underrepresented” minority students suck it up and meet the same academic standards as everyone else?
Or apply to a different school? If they can’t meet the standards at Berkeley, they might do fine at a less demanding institution like Stanford or UCLA.
I’ve attended engineering school myself. We had diversity admits. After one semester, maybe two, they weren’t there anymore. Who was helped?
You may also like ...
Amy Chua > Dr. Spock
5 Nov 2011 / PEHere’s a photo of some of the students who scored 800 on sections or subject tests of the SAT at Wilson High School in Hacienda Heights.
What do they have in common? Does anything jump out at you?
Either Asian kids are just genetically superior with regard to intelligence, or Amy Chua should replace Dr. Spock on the parenting bookshelf . . .
You may also like ...
Brown Vetoes SB 185
8 Oct 2011 / PE
Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a controversial, affirmative action-like bill Saturday that would have allowed public colleges and universities in California to consider demographic factors in admissions processes.
Like!
I hate to sound selfish but whatever “demographic factors” they were planning to consider, I’m 110 percent sure they’d serve to penalize my kid, nieces, nephews, grandkids — everyone in my family now and forever — and for what? Racial inequities of the past that they had nothing to do with?
Not interested in taking the hit for that, sorry.
We’re good people. We stopped inviting the slaveholders to the family reunions because they’ve all been dead for about 100 years . . .
You may also like ...
Diversity Bake Sale Sparks Controversy
27 Sep 2011 / PE
Despite massive outcries of protest from campus organizations, the Berkeley College Republicans are adamant in going ahead with their controversial bake sale.
The sale — intended as a satirical response to the affirmative action-like SB 185 currently awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature — will involve baked goods that are priced by race and sex. Under the pricing structure, white students would have to pay $2.00 for a pastry, for example, while Latinos would pay $1.00 and Native Americans would pay $0.25. Women would receive a blanket 25 cent discount.
I love it! “Massive outcries of protest”! “Controversial bake sale”!
The lack of perspective is staggering. It’s okay to favor kids of one race over another in college admissions, just don’t try it with something truly important like the price of a cupcake . . .
You may also like ...
Japanese and Korean Are the Same Thing
12 Aug 2011 / PEMy son and I are driving through the neighborhood . . . an Asian kid about 12 years old rides by on a scooter. He lives across the street from us but I almost didn’t recognize him because he’s got his hair lightened and highlighted.
“Typical Japanese,” my son says.
“Japanese kids like to highlight their hair?”
“Yeah,” he says, like it’s an obvious question.
“That kid is Korean, isn’t he?”
“Same thing.”
You may also like ...
Tiger Mothers
2 Jul 2011 / PEIn one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mothers said either that “stressing academic success is not good for children” or that “parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun.” By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be “the best” students, that “academic achievement reflects successful parenting,” and that if children did not excel at school then there was “a problem” and parents “were not doing their job.” Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.
You may also like ...
Why is Obama a Bad Politician?
14 Apr 2011 / PEThe answer is distressingly obvious: Obama’s the biggest affirmative action baby in history. When other pols are trying, failing, learning, while climbing up the middle rungs of the ladder, he got a pass.
You may also like ...
It’s All White Kids
10 Apr 2011 / PEThis screenshot is from the Yale University home page.
It’s refreshing that, unlike most schools, they don’t even pretend to care about diversity.
You may also like ...
A Couple of Schillers
9 Mar 2011 / PE
A couple of Schillers resigned from NPR after one of them said (among other things):
Tea Party people aren’t just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.
Well really . . . I haven’t been this shocked since Claude Rains discovered gambling at Rick’s Cafe.
It shakes my belief system to the core to think that someone who works at NPR believes that Tea Party members are scary white gun-toting racists.
Although come to think of it, everyone I know who listens to NPR believes that Tea Party members are scary white gun-toting racists.
These guys really need to give up the federal funding. They could go full bore in promoting their mission and stop pretending to respect the common folk, who in turn would be relieved of the burden of paying for it.
P.S. If it’s real bigotry you’re looking for, film a liberal when he thinks no one but other liberals can hear him.
P.P.S. We had a bus driver in grade school named Mr. Schiller. Real angry German guy. Probably no relation.
You may also like ...
Anne Frank
3 Mar 2011 / Hostile Witness
As I’ve said before, it continues to amaze me how many people around the world have been touched by the life of this one girl . . .
I have seen the movie about Anne Frank and I was very emotional and hurt it was very hard to watch this movie
the things they had to go through it makes you think twice as hard what if it was my family we take things for grantedAnne Frank didn’t have a chance to have a family of her own go to the movies stay up late getting married every aspect of life
what she had she cherished with all the love for everything she hadthis situation with race needs to stop we all bleed the same colour unless we have aliens or robot blood among us or those who choose to judge all races
To me Anne Frank was a very brave outstanding young lady that had to grow up so fast before her time
To Otto Frank,Edith Frank,Margot Frank,Anne Frank you are all together now in gods arms holding you all ever so gentle his angels are cmforting you all from all the hard ache you all went through god bless you all
R.I.P. Anne Frank
You may also like ...
Fixing the Automotive Analogy
31 Oct 2010 / PEYou have a car stuck in a ditch, so you call the mechanic, but the only tool he brings with him is a sledgehammer. And then he smashes your car to pieces and charges you $100,000 for his service. Finally, he calls you racist for complaining.
You may also like ...
Here Come the Brides
30 Aug 2010 / PEWe went to a wedding over the weekend, although it won’t be recognized as such by the state of California because both people involved were women.
One of the women is Asian, the other Mexican. Both are in their late 20s, both pretty, and they seem to be very happy together.
The reception was held at The Reef restaurant, affording a beautiful view of Long Beach harbor and the downtown lights beyond.
The bride wore white. The other bride also wore white.
We couldn’t find a “bride and bride” wedding card at the Hallmark store.
We asked an employee about it, an older woman. “You want what?” she said.
“A bride and bride card. All the wedding cards are bride and groom, a man holding a woman’s hand. What we want is a bride and bride card.”
“We don’t have anything like that,” she said.
“You should get some.”
Silence.
The gentleman who performed the wedding told us that we were not just attending a wedding, we were striking a blow against ignorance and bigotry.
Actually, I wasn’t there to strike a blow for anything; I was there because I was invited.
If you’re going to position yourself as a champion of tolerance and broad-mindedness, you should go ahead and drop the name-calling.
The Mexican bride’s family is, I assume, Catholic and opposed to this kind of thing — women marrying women.
“I was a little taken aback when I first heard about it,” her dad said.
But she’s still their daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece, etc., and the family turned out in large numbers to support her.
The Asian bride’s family was a different story. Other than a couple of cousins, they were in absentia.
Her mom didn’t attend because she opposed the wedding. Her dad didn’t attend because he didn’t even know it was happening. Mom didn’t tell him because she’s afraid it would kill him.
More People I’m Sick Unto Death Of: Guys who wear porkpie hats to formal affairs.
Other than to call attention to yourself at an event that’s not about you, what possible reason could you have for wearing that hat? To protect your head? From what?
Lose the hats, hipsters.
You may also like ...
Twitter: 2010-08-24
24 Aug 2010 / PE
- RT @Jesus_M_Christ: How do I know Adam and Eve were white? When’s the last time you seen a black man give up a rib? #
- RT @eddiepepitone: Tweets of Nietzche’s wife- God isn’t as dead as our sex life! #
- RT @pattonoswalt: In the future, everyone will be obscure for fifteen minutes. #
You may also like ...
Twitter: 2010-08-03
3 Aug 2010 / PE- RT @robdelaney: Draw a picture of a house. Congratulations; you're an architect. I don't know what the fuss is about those assholes. #
- RT @eddiepepitone: signs of Alzheimer's disease- you brush your teeth with the mail. #
- RT @DamienFahey: Oh My God! It just hit me. I will never dunk. #
- RT @OnSluts: Monday Affirmation: I will get through this day without hitting a pedestrian because I'm thoughtful. #
- RT @daeganf: Lady Gaga afraid of having creativity stolen through her vagina. Possible concept for Inception sequel? #
- RT @thesulk: Chariots of Fire could also be called "Thank God, No Black Guys". #
You may also like ...
Northwood High School, Irvine, CA
23 Jun 2010 / PE
– I see you’ve got a real international student body here.
– Um, not really. It’s 49.6 percent Asian, 49.6 percent white and 0.8 percent everything else. Try finding a black kid.
– I’ve seen a couple of black kids. They play football.
– Try finding one in a classroom. Try finding a Mexican kid. If a Mexican kid walks on campus, the whole school goes into soft lockdown.
You may also like ...
Bowing for Cash
14 Feb 2010 / PE
My son’s half-Asian — his mom is Thai — and he feels like he’s missing out on an important Asian tradition.
“On Chinese New Year,” he says, “Chinese kids get wads of cash. Koreans have a holiday where kids go to relatives’ houses, bow to people and get wads of cash.”
He mentions a Korean friend of his who raked in 180 bucks the last time this holiday rolled around.
“Why isn’t there a Thai holiday where kids bow to people and get wads of cash?” he asks.
“Isn’t that how pretty much every day goes for you?” I ask. “Without the bowing, I mean. Handing you wads of cash though — that part is in full effect.”
