I am a proponent of equal rights no matter what your creed, culture, or race. Unfortunately, this is not the case anymore in America. You can have 2 educated and experienced candidates for a job, one european decent the other Asian decent, the European guy can have more experience and a degree from a better school, yet the Asian candidate gets the job due to quota regulations. This is not equal rights.
Contraman, with all due respect, I don't think Asians qualify under any type of affirmative action in any of the professions in colleges. I would be a huge proponent of dropping all affirmative action programs based on race,gender, ethnicity, but I do think doing so would lead to a dramatic increase in enrollment by asian students into engineering, mdicine, and other professions that are normally capped by quotas limiting our admissions.
As an asian, I can say that I had to work my ass off to get in an Ivy League school, more so than other peers of different ethnicity, just so I can stand out in a field of other asian applications applying to engineering. And i know some of my peers of different ethnicity had lower qualifications than me and nevertheless had less of an issue gaining admissions. Also, when I was a student, I had the opportunity to work in the admissions office, and reviewing some of the applicants, there were several cases in which asian students were turned away, simply because there was a "need" to diversify the student body, while students of other ethnicity were fast tracked, yet had lower qualifications (caucasians included). Call it diversity or quotas, but quotas don't benefit asians in general.
The long running joke is that if our society is going to have affirmative action programs, why not apply this uniformly to all aspects of our society that doesn't have equal representation. Let's start with sports. How many asians do we see plan in the NFL? Shouldn't there be an affirmative action program for under-represented asians in the NFL? I guess the same would be said about the NBA (though Yao Ming sort of shoots down that argument these days).
Anyway, you're right in that there isn't a level playing field, but you're wrong in who you think benefits from this playing field. The argument has been, that well only the best should play in sports. But shouldn't we demand only the best in other things as well, like in education too?
I should also add that in corporate america, statistically how many asians are really in upper management in non-tech related companies? Not many. You think people aren't qualified for that? Doubtful. There's often a misconception about asians in corporate america. We're sometimes perceived as timid and shy and lacking leadership skills. Perhaps it's a culture thing that when speak, we don't have an affinity and have not mastered the skill of the 1:100 ratio bullshit speak that is prevalent among corporate america, in which 1 task take 100 emails,memos, status reports,meetings,and reviews to discuss what was accomplished. Some would even say this is "short-selling" yourself. But it's typically not in the culture, which unfortunately is why a lot of times you have an utterly incompetent manager leading a group of asians workaholics. Of course, these cultural gaps are not wrapped in some "affirmative action" program that you think gives us better opportunities that your corresponding caucasian peer. It just doesn't happen that way.
I have a rule of thumb when it comes to working in corporate america that I try to teach asians that want to survive in corporate america. Traditionally, first generation asians will say 1 thing for 100 things they do. In corporate america, it's more often people who are successful are those that say 100 things for every 1 thing they do. To be a successful, you should at least say 1 thing for every 1 thing you do. This is a concept that so few asians in corporate america has thus far grasped. And by no means should you ever count on any "affirmative action" program to cover any cultural gaps you may have, because it won't.
