jsoc815

I know that some people here like to get hung up on literal interpretations and stated missions, but they really shouldn't. (Sorry, can't get into it here.)

For many reasons, there isn't a lot of good that would come from them making a big deal about this among the general public. Feel free to see my earlier post.[1]

Seriously, history, recent and otherwise, is littered w/the ghosts and carcasses of employees who were anything but rewarded for identifying problems great and small.

Oftentimes the safest thing to do is to pretend that one saw/heard/knows nothing while hoping that someone else has the steel to sound the alarm.

And for this sort of situation, there's too much at stake and are too many known and unknown stakeholders involved to blindly believe that this would be an exception to what I wrote above.

On a separate but related note, for those playing the "conspiracy theory" game: - On October 4th, Bloomberg releases The Big Hack story; and - On the same day, VP Pence gives a speech at the Hudson Institute about...? China being a bad actor which indulges in all sorts of behavior (that the United States would never ever engage in or condone).[1]

Factor in the "trade war" and long-ongoing attempts to 'encourage' companies to rethink their supply chains/ relocate production...

What if a candidate's race results in him/her being placed in a 'race' pool? At that point, one's race doesn't help or hurt.

Then once the pools are formed, one starts looking at the #s. I'd wager that lots of European(-Americans)/"Whites" apply. So that pool = competitive.

The Asian(American) pool, lower #s, but higher than the groups not yet mentioned, and thus = competitive.

Probably few "Black" applicants, same w/ "Hispanic", and since Senator Warren is a topic of conversation, absolutely the same w/ "Native Americans." (BTW, I hate using these race terms.)

Then start thinking about who did (didn't apply) and why (self-selecting). Anyway, if we assume that many of the "Asian" applicants are "model minorities" who have been driven by their parents to, well, be model, the Asian pool is going to be ultra-competitive academically. (Wish I knew how to play w/ formatting here, because I want to highlight 'academically'.) So all that happens there, is that they've gone all cut-throat on each other because they're still in the "Asian" pool. Anyway, the argument could then be made that it was simply the numbers and competitiveness of the applicants (which I believe is always stated in the ding letters) that results in getting rejects getting dinged, not their "race".

Anyway, the factors that make different candidates desirable are, as previously stated, 'complex'. But people who want to figure it out can with some digging and quite a bit of logic. These places are not bastions of altruism. They're businesses and extensions of "things". The schools admit the applicants who they think will best serve their purposes. Take a look at the range of characters who have attended their various programs.

As for Affirmative Action, again, people would be wise to do some research. Ira Katznelson has an interesting book on the development and implementation.[1] Admittedly, the title may seem inflammatory so some, but it isn't entirely wrong and was given to him by another "White" guy who's currently at a DC think tank founded by a 'Republican'. It should also be said that there are many "Black" people who would be happy to see AA done away with because it has essentially been used to benefit everyone but them, even though it was written (supposedly) exclusively to benefit African-Americans. But this would be an even longer conversation that then reaches back into how and why "Asians" came to be the "model minority", and whether or not the achievements that another poster mentioned here are actually solely their own, etc. All stuff I'm not really interested in doing here now, or have done a bit of in related past posts.

Anywho, thanks for following up, and all the best.