Name: Harvard's Alleged Anti-Asian Discrimination
Uploaded: 2021-05-12T20:37:07.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Harvard's Alleged Anti-Asian Discrimination' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-05-12. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Harvard's Alleged Anti-Asian Discrimination' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-05-12. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- I was watching that documentary
on one of my flights recently about the,
the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Have you seen that documentary?
- What's that?
- There was this whole act in the,
they were showing about like the first Chinese guy
that came to America.
And I think it was in the 1700s he came over.
And then he proved to be a good worker.
And eventually by the 1800s,
there was like 60,000 Chinese people.
And then for some reason America had a problem with them.
And they had this Exclusion Act too.
They'd even allowed black people to be free
and black people to vote,
but the Chinese were considered less than human.
- What?
What year was it?
- This was in the 1800s.
- So this went?
- 1882, yeah.
- Is this when they were working on the railroads a lot?
- Then they let them come in and work on the railroad,
but they wouldn't allow them to become citizens.
- Bro, you ever see photos of Chinese people
working on the railroads?
They're some of the bleakest photos.
- And they all had their hair back,
like their foreheads were huge for some of the way.
They would pull their hair back.
- They probably didn't want their hair
to get stuck on the fucking tracks.
- Yeah, that sounds about right.
- Yeah, imagine a train comes by and catches you by the hair.
- Oh yeah, they used them pretty badly.
- It's a horrific story.
But the photos, I was watching that Hulu docuseries, Sasquatch,
and it was talking a lot about the people that they used to make the railroads
and to mine and the people that used to chop, to cut down the trees up in the
Pacific Northwest and up in Northern California.
- Yeah, there's these photos that they showed of these Chinese folks that were
working on those railroads and it's so depressing, man.
- Yeah, they were treated like shit.
- And there's just no hope.
You're not getting out of that.
There's no upward mobility.
- Nothing.
- There's no future.
- Yeah, there's a--
- No promise.
- Yeah.
- And then they weren't allowing them to become U.S. citizens, even if they
were born here.
- You know what's crazy?
Even today, like in Harvard, it's more difficult for Asian people to get in
than anybody else.
- Really?
- Yeah, there's a lawsuit about it right now.
Yeah, apparently they have so many Asian folks that were getting into Harvard
that they decided to specifically tailor their tests to make it more difficult,
or their requirements, or what they, what they're, what, see, I don't want to
fuck this up because Andrew Yang's people were the ones who were talking to me
about it, one of the guys who came last time when Andrew Yang was here.
- Nice guy, that Andrew Yang.
- He's a great guy.
- Yeah.
- He's a great guy.
- I hope he runs again.
- Well, he's gonna run for mayor.
- Of?
- Of New York City.
He's running right now.
- That's good.
- And Tim and this other gentleman who was, I forget what he did, but this
other guy carries
a fucking gun, and he's talking about like ramping up police presence, and he's
a black guy, and a lot of people are behind him, and they think like, this is
what we need to turn the city around, like they need to respect law and order.
- Right.
- And they need to do something about the fucking crime.
And there's a shooting spree in Times Square the other day where a four-year-old
got shot.
- Yeah, yeah.
- A woman and her daughter.
- It's crazy.
- Yeah, man.
- So here it is.
- The court rules Harvard doesn't discriminate against Asian American
applicants.
Oh, okay.
So this is a federal appeals court in Boston has ruled.
Harvard doesn't intentionally discriminate against Asian American applicants.
So what was the argument?
Because there was a lot of Asian people that were insisting that that was the
case.
It said the statistical evidence did not show that Harvard intentionally
discriminated against Asian Americans.
Students for Fair Admissions, an advocacy group, first filed its lawsuit in
2014, saying it's Harvard, that Harvard's race-based considerations for
applicants discriminated against Asian American students in process.
Today's decision, once again, finds that Harvard's admission policies were
consistent with Supreme Court precedent and lawfully and appropriately pursue
Harvard's efforts to create a diverse campus that promotes learning and
encourages mutual respect and understanding in our community.
It's like, what is the argument though?
- I think-
- Proponents for ending race-based considerations at US universities were unfazed
by Thursday's
decision to plan to bring the case to the Supreme Court.
So what does it say?
What is the question?
Okay.
The question of how much race should be a factor in college applications is a
hotly contested
one.
President Trump's administration has challenged college on using race in
admission policies,
claiming such practices violate federal law.
Last month, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Yale University,
saying its policies violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Yale has said the lawsuit is baseless.
What is school's admissions rules though?
That's what I'm confused with.
- Well, so does that mean external Chinese people or Chinese Americans?
- I think, I just think it's just Asian period.
Well, when they do race, they don't say we only want African Americans.
I mean, I'm Asian.
- Right.
- You know what I mean?
- Right.
- So, I mean, it's vague.
- Right.
- But I mean, I can understand-
- But you're Canadian.
You're Canadian.
It cancels everything out.
- It's true.
- It's true.
There's a policy though that makes them say that they discriminated.
Does it say?
See if you can find-
Oh, look, they've tried to pop up ad, you motherfuckers.
See if you can find what the argument is that Harvard does discriminate against
Asians.
But these guys that were with Andrew Yang, they believed pretty strongly that
that's what Harvard was doing.
- I mean, you know, there's a lot of those admissions tests that are racially
biased according to how you grew up and what you know.
- Right.
- So, I think what they tried to do is make it, the person who wrote the test
or whatever, wrote it from their perspective.
- We need to fix society so that you never have to think about that shit at all,
you know?
Oh, here it goes.
In the lawsuit, plaintiffs claim that Harvard imposes a soft racial quota which
keeps the number of Asian Americans artificially low.
The low percentage of Asians admitted to Harvard, plaintiffs maintain, was
suspiciously similar year after year despite dramatic increases in the number
of Asian American applicants and the size of the Asian American population.
During the lawsuit, the plaintiffs gained access to Harvard's individualized
admission files from 2014 to 2019 and aggregate data from 2000 to 2019.
The plaintiffs also interviewed and deposed numerous Harvard officials.
From those sources, the plaintiffs revealed that Harvard admissions officers
consistently rated Asian American applicants as a group lower than others on
traits like positive personality, likeability, courage.
Kindness, and being widely respected.
What the fuck?
Just think about what that says.
They rate you on positive personality, likeability, courage, kindness, and
being widely respected.
Those are so vague.
Well, I mean, you know, different nationalities have different personalities,
you know, different races have different ways of dealing with things.
And what may be considered offensive to one is not to the other, you know, or
likable to me is not likable to you.
For sure.
But look at what it says here.
Asian Americans scored higher than applicants of any other racial or ethnic
group on other admissions measures like test scores, grades, and extracurricular
activities.
But the student's personal rating significantly dragged down their admissions
chances.
Wow.
That's weird, man.
That's, I mean, I guess you would have to talk to someone from Harvard and get
them drunk and say, what's really going on?
Why do you have this likability, courage, kindness, and being wildly respective?
And what is a positive personality?
You have to be positive.
What if you're like, God damn it, I suck, but you work really hard.
Like, that's a negative personality.
But, you know, like you're, maybe you have a negative opinion of yourself, but
you work really hard.
Maybe that's why you work hard, because you don't think of yourself very...
It's weird, man.
Harvard's admissions staff testified they did not believe that different racial
groups have better personal qualities than others, but nevertheless, Asian
applicants as a racial group receive consistently weaker personal scores over
the period surveyed and Harvard admissions officers rated Asian Americans with
the worst personal qualities of any racial group.
Wow.
African Americans, on the other hand, consistently scored the lowest on
academic rating, but the highest on the personal rating.
But you know what, personal rating, that like makes me think about like that
whole, the Chinese social score system.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I don't like that.
I don't like that.
That's a very weird thing.
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