Statistics Indicate an Ivy League Asian Quota Ron Unz is a software developer and publisher of The American Conservative, where he elaborated on these thoughts in a recent article . He is a graduate of Harvard University. UPDATED DECEMBER 3, 2013, 2:55 PM Just as their predecessors of the 1920s always denied the existence of “Jewish quotas,” top officials at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the other Ivy League schools today strongly deny the existence of “Asian quotas.” But there exists powerful statistical evidence to the contrary. Each year, American universities provide their racial enrollment data to theNational Center for Education Statistics, which makes this information available online. After the Justice Department closed an investigation in the early 1990s into charges that Harvard University discriminated against Asian-American applicants, Harvard’s reported enrollment of Asian-Americans began gradually declining, falling from 20.6 percent in 1993 to about 16.5 percent over most of the last decade. This decline might seem small. But these same years brought a huge increase in America’s college-age Asian population, which roughly doubled between 1992 and 2011, while non-Hispanic white numbers remained almost unchanged. Thus, according to official statistics, the percentage of Asian-Americans enrolled at Harvard fell by more than 50 percent over the last two decades, while the percentage of whites changed little. This decline in relative Asian-American enrollment was actually larger than the impact of Harvard’s 1925 Jewish quota, which reduced Jewish freshmen from 27.6 percent to 15 percent. The percentages of college-age Asian-Americans enrolled at most of the other Ivy League schools also fell during this same period, and over the last few years Asian enrollments across these different universities have converged to a very similar level and remained static over time. This raises suspicions of a joint Ivy League policy to restrict Asian-American numbers to a particular percentage. Meanwhile, the California Institute of Technology follows a highly selective but strictly raceneutral admissions policy, and its enrollment of Asian-Americans has grown almost exactly in line with the growth of the Asian-American population. The last 20 years have brought a huge rise in the number of Asians winning top academic awards in our high schools or being named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists. It seems quite suspicious that none of trends have been reflected in their increased enrollment at Harvard and other top Ivy League universities. Some individuals have suggested that Asian-Americans no longer apply to the Ivy League in large numbers and this explains their reduced presence. The prestigious University of California system routinely releases the racial totals for its college applicants, which allows the public to examine admission rates by race. During the 1980s, Ivy League colleges sometimes did so as well, but more recently have begun keeping these figures secret. If Harvard and the other Ivy League schools simply released their racial application totals for the last 20 years, we might easily resolve the disturbing suspicion that they have quietly implemented a system of “Asian-American quotas.” Join Room for Debate on Facebook and follow updates ontwitter.com/roomfordebate. Topics: Asian-Americans, affirmative action, college, standardized tests PREVIOUS When Wealth Trumps Merit JOHN C. BRITTAIN AND RICHARD D. KAHLENBERGNEXT Quotas Are Imaginary; Need for Diversity Is Real KHIN MAI AUNG 336 COMMENTS Share your thoughts Share your thoughts All 336 Readers’ Picks NYT Picks Newest 185 10 creativegirl Austin 19 July 2014 This is just really hard to believe - I just finished touring a bunch of top colleges (including Harvard) with my son and wow, pretty much everyone we saw walking around every college campus was Asian. It was so strange - at least 3-1 Asian vs other races. After the fourth college, we changed the song "Everything is awesome" (theme from the Lego movie) with the words "Everyone is Asian". I know, I know - tasteless. Sorry. All joking aside, the empirical evidence appears to contradict these stats that are being discussed. Reply Recommend superx308 NYC 21 July 2014 I like that you believe walking through college campuses counts as "empirical evidence". Reply 3Recommend A. B. Manhattan 30 April 2014 The current estimate for the number of Jewish students at Harvard is 25% (http://bit.ly/1mYZ6i5) and the number of Asian students is 19% (http://bit.ly/1pMjIP0). Jewish Americans make up about 2% of the U.S. population while Asians make up about 6%. While both are overrepresented in the ivies, there seems to be less of a restrictive quota on Jewish students' admittance to Harvard. Could we please extend this flexibility to Asian students and remove these quotas against Asian students? These quotas are racist, are not meritocratic and are un-American. Reply Recommend aahub Boston, MA 21 January 2014 The graph included here is misleading, as the two top curves follow a similar pattern but they use different axes. A more appropriate comparison would be the percentage of Asian students that finish high school in the US, compared with the percentage that enters Ivy League schools. What I found for year 2004 indicated that Asian students finishing high school were approximately 6% and that 13% were admitted at selective colleges. Hispanic and African American were underrepresented in this group (10% as total). Comparing numbers of 18-21 Asian students with entry percentages is not meaningful. In many CA universities the Asian students are in numbers equal to white students. Does the California system have a disproportionally high quota for Asian students if the entire US applicant population is considered? Is the author supporting the idea that the entire university system in the US should have racial percentages similar to those in CA? May be this is right for CA, where the fraction of the Asian student population is. This does not automatically means that the percentage accepted at Caltech (39%) should be identical somewhere else. If the argument instead is that Asian students have better scores than white students and therefore more of them should enter Ivy League schools, then the article needs to be more explicit and provide the appropriate data. Reply Recommend James Sun Houston 18 February 2014 I would think the most non-discrimination way to recruit students is to hide their racial, name and all identities, and give fair scores based on whatever material required by the University. The school then make decision based on scores without knowing the background of the candidate. The very first time when I was in USA, I am so confused. People keep talking about get rid of discrimination every day, and they keep talking about skin colors everyday too! My god, how could you get rid of discrimination if you treat people differently just because of their skin color???? Reply Recommend Kevin Boston 23 June 2014 I total agree with you and I'm currently a student at Harvard and I'm finding the university wants to mostly admit caucausian students into their univeristy because it's like a tradition for them I notice. As, for the black population at Harvard. We are un-noticed and seems like un-welcome here as well. I notice many of friends decided not to pursue Ivyleagues schools because of the mistreatment or unwanted views towards African Americans or Hispanics. I sometimes think I should have applied to average schools like Georgetown or NYU. Reply Recommend A. B. Manhattan 25 September 2013 Of course the ivies are reverse discriminating against Asian students. Otherwise, why would they need to conceal application and enrollment statistics? And why would the numbers look so strange (ie, more Asian national merit and Intel finalists but no increase in enrollment at top schools)? There are so many reasons why keeping Asian students out of the nation's best schools is wrong and even short-sighted. First of all, it's racist and exactly like what Jews had to endure during much of the 20th century. Second, this practice hurts Americans because unlike the Jewish population, there is a huge continent of people in Asia with a tremendous amount of competitive drive. Asia is poised to oust the West in economic, military, and intellectual strength by the end of this century. Admitting so few Asians is the equivalent of sticking your head in the sand. It's saying to American students that they can continue to perform at mediocre levels. The ugly reality rears its head when these same students can't get accepted to top graduate programs in STEM fields because they are unable to meet a school's minimum cut-off score on graduate standardized tests. With a more meritocratic admissions process American students learn early on that they are not achieving at the academic level of their Asian peers. For those that want to study math-intensive fields in grad school they will discover that they'll need to work much harder than this to succeed. Reply Recommend MikeH Jamesburg, NJ 12 April 2013 Academic ability and nothing else should determine who is accepted in Ivy league Universities, after all isn't getting ahead in the USA about hard work and merit and not how dark your skin is...??? Reply 1Recommend DavidS Southern California 17 May 2013 That is true. the problem is: How does one gauge "academic ability"? By GOP alone? By SAT score alone? A combination of the two? Or are the OTHER FACTORS that taken into account by GPA and SAT that a university might believe is important to represent in their student bodies? This is not meant as a defense of Affirmative Action. But seriously, guys. "Academic Ability" is not simply one's High School grades! Reply Recommend Rachel E Cambridge, MA 7 January 2013 As a half-Asian undergrad female at one of these top-tier universities (MIT), I can say with confidence that discrimination against Asians *is* happening.... and that's it's a good thing. When top universities look for that intangible "exceptional" quality, they're looking for someone who stands out from the crowd. Not just the crowd of high-schoolers vying for a spot, but from the crowd of people of similar background. An upper-middle class Asian with perfect grades who plays piano and violin, wants to study pre-medicine or computer science, and has parents who are dentists or engineers, too... simply does not stand out. From the crowd of other Asians. And for a school looking to maximize diversity, limiting the number of people with similar backgrounds and interests is the right thing to do. Because a fabulous part of the Ivy League/top school experience is meeting people with perspectives other than yours. And the Asian perspective on life is, for better or for worse, relatively homogenous. I think there are fewer differences between the aspirations of Chinese and Korean kids than there are between the aspirations of, say, Irish-Americans and Jewish-Americans. Saying all of these things is, of course, is validating stereotypes-- but we only rely on stereotypes because, at some level represented by less than 100% of the stereotyped population, they're true. And admissions officers are not free of them, either. Reply 1Recommend ZZ MD 9 April 2013 huh. half-asian... don't get people fooled. did you dare to claim yourself asian in your college application? Reply Recommend MikeH Jamesburg, NJ 12 April 2013 Rachel you must be joking, so you think an Asian who works hard and does well in high school should be denied admission to an Ivy League University because that student fails some diversity litmus test....But you may feel differently if you were not admitted because you look and act too Asian... Reply 2Recommend SEE ALL REPLIES TW NY 30 December 2012 If Affirm Act is right, we should use it on every area, not limit to college admission, but also NBA, Government Employment and etc. If Affirm Act is wrong, we should NOT use it anywhere, including college admission. Reply 3Recommend SR Illinois 27 December 2012 As an Ivy grad, when I was in college in the mid-1980s the Asian-American Students Association raised this very concern - complaining that the Asian-American admission rate was below the University average and that it should at least equal the University average. What my classmates either failed to understand or purposefully ignored was that if certain groups have admission rates above average, certain groups - whites and Asian Americans - must have admission rates below average. If you accept the premise that the Ivy League "should look like America," then you must accept limits on different ethnic groups (including Asian-Americans). Moreover, people should realize that admission to an Ivy League college is not a meritocratic or even a consistently rational process. There are tens of thousands of students each year who could easily thrive at places like Princeton or Yale, but don’t get in. My advice is to either advocate for a purely meritocratic system based on tests or get over what is, and will always be, a flawed system. Reply 4Recommend feixing USA 28 January 2013 No. Ivy League should look more like America's Olympic Team, where merits, and only merits, count. We have no complain when the majority of USA basketball team and track-and-field team are composed of black athletes, because they bring home the medals. Imagine what will happen if the American Team has to be based on racial representation, the so-called "diversity". If America is to maintain its lead in the quality of higher education, in the science/tech industries and innovation, in various fields of advanced research, in banking and finance.....America cannot afford to let mediocrity and racial discrimination rule the admissions process in our elite colleges! Reply 1Recommend AN Vietnam 27 December 2012 The truth today is that there are Asian Americans in the high teens at elite colleges. At the University of Pennsylvania it has been 20-23%+ since the mid 1990s or so. In actuality there are up to 7% more Asians from Asia itself from the international students pool. Many who do not report their race may be Asian or half Asian. Many elite institutions may already have 25-35% people of Asian decent. The numbers still represent underrepresentation. Better admissions practice will yield numbers similar to the UC system if the Supreme Court fixes admissions. The UC system will probably reduce the number of Asians in the future.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-phu-quoc-nguyen/asian-americanstud... Reply Recommend biaknabato Los Angeles 27 December 2012 read the Unz article again, it is about unfairness the way to end unfairness is to deprive the agency that practices unfainess. of tax money Of course we in California know that the UC has been trying to reduce the number of Asians by using a so called "holistic admissions " system in order to increase the number of blacks and Latinos. And Penn and the private universiiies are the last place in the world you would expect fairness . There is no money to be made being " fair : in the admissions process of the Ivies. Reply Recommend Trina Indiana 27 December 2012 Some white's argued, its reverse discrimination to select African-American students over white students based on race rather than academic achievement. Now some white's want to implement an affirmative action program limiting Asian students for the sake of "diversity" ? If you can't beat them use your institutional power to gain the advantage; the more things change in American, the more they stay the same. Reply 2Recommend Kevin Boston 23 June 2014 I think people should be selected based on their acedmic achievement and not ethnicity. As, a black male student at Harvard I notice that even with outstanding test scores doesn't guarantee you admission. I think this university selects more caucasian student as a first priotity then pre-selects others. I'm starting to notice that Harvard or MIT doesn't hire many people of color within their workplace as well. I believe Ivy league image schools believe in keeping a "Caucasian" image only. But the sad thing about being a student here is the false advertisement the school portrays. I personally think the university wants the world to see them as a instituion with diversity but going to class doesn't present me with that same view. Reply Recommend Mf Orange County 25 December 2012 Good article. All these schools should be compelled to show their applicants and acceptance by race age gender etc. the secrecy is what is wrong As for schools, we need to make more Harvard type schools. Not try to cram the so called "smart folks" into a few schools. Let's start by making teaching a worthwhile profession instead of a lower level profession. You can have all the Harvards you want with great teachers Reply 2Recommend Charles CA 24 December 2012 This sentence makes no sense: Thus, according to official statistics, the percentage of Asian-Americans enrolled at Harvard fell by more than 50 percent over the last two decades, while the percentage of whites changed little. Based on you data, the percentage of Asian enrolees dropped from ~20% to ~16.5%. Thus, the percentage of AsianAmericans enrolled at Harvard fell by roughly 25% when compared to Asians alone, and 4.5% when considered in light of the whole population. The fact that America's Asian population increased has no impact on these numbers. If you were talking about rejections, on the other hand, you might be right. But of course, you don't have the numbers. Reply 1Recommend WJ Philadelphia 24 December 2012 So a group that is already over-represented in top universities, already the most privileged members of american society want more over-representation and more privilege - and want to complain about being discriminated against? You didn't get into Princeton? Join the club. Reply 4Recommend rockvillemd rockville md 29 January 2013 Over-representation apparently is only a problem when it is an overachieving minority that is in question... Reply 3Recommend weldon999 new york 24 December 2012 When I was a NYC high school student it was known that Ivy League schools would take only one student from my graduating class of 1100. This was touted as a way of having geographic diversity.Most would have considered it a way of keeping high qualified Jewish kid out of these schools.They were said to be great as tests but... The ambitious and the determined ethnic culture will always rise to whatever test is put before them through hard work and determination. This doesn't make them better than anyone else just more determined as a cultural trait. They will be subverted by our culture like everyone else. Reply 3Recommend Bramha Jakarta 24 December 2012 Lots of great comments (and some stupid ones), but it seems that no one wants to touch one of the key issues Ron Unz gets into in his longer piece in the American Conservative - i.e., over-representation of Jewish students at the Ivies especially Harvard/Yale/Columbia (~25%). Or maybe there are many that want to comment on this issue, but their comments are not being posted because they are not "on-topic"? I'd be interested to see if my comment itself is published. Reply 1Recommend marc merritt claremont 24 December 2012 It would also be interesting to know if Asian applicants with stellar scores and grades are routinely rejected in favor of Asian applicants with highly desirable yet less tangible attributes whose scores are lower. It happens with every other group. Reply 7Recommend quilty ARC 24 December 2012 There is a way to solve this problem and make many people happy. There are thousands of PhD graduates who would gladly take a university professor position regardless of whether all of the students are Asian, Martian, whatever. The fact is that the American university system has not expanded its ranks of professors to match the growth in American population. Obviously this is much more of a problem in the public universities. But Harvard, Yale, all top universities churn out more PhD grads than there are university positions for. They know they are doing it, and they have known this for years. So Harvard won't hire its own PhD graduates to teach students who are qualified to attend Harvard for...? I'm having trouble coming up with reasons other than avoiding the implication that they are less selective if they admit larger classes, and the desire to maintain a massive endowment without shelling out financial aid. Why would they do this? University administrators, especially presidents, get paid more if they are in charge of highly selective schools. They also get paid more for the size of the endowment they manage. So we have unhappy graduate students, unhappy high school students, unhappy parents, even unhappy professors who feel the cognitive dissonance of taking on a grad student knowing there will be little hope for an academic position. But we have happy administrators. Look at the stats and see where schools have increased funding most. It ain't faculty. Reply 6Recommend njnewsource.COM nj 24 December 2012 Since Asians are 5.6% of the u.s. population, the question should be not why are Asians doing so well, but why are the rest of our children doing so much more poorly? After all, our DNA is almost identical. We waste so much talent in this country with inferior education and teaching to the lowest denominator. It should be no surprise that cultures that enshrine education as a core value are more highly represented in higher education. Full disclosure - i am jewish and female and i was made to feel by my mother that i was wasting my time if i was not studying or learning something. Reply 4Recommend Will Blake ME 21 May 2014 You know what the rest of the children are doing? They're being children. My children have many Asian classmates, but they have no Asian friends. Why? They can't socialize with them. They're forced to study until they fall asleep. They repeat this until they graduate from college. Then after landing that high-paying job, their parents, who never even held hands in front of them, throw them to the wolves. The women grow up and marry men of other races b/c they don't want to end up with demanding men like their fathers and their rich 40 yr old sons are afraid to approach the ladies. And now, although they never allowed their sons to date and will disown them if they marry a different race, they pressure them for grandchildren. With whom will they procreate? No, our kids are not less intelligent, we just don't treat them like robots. Would you want a bunch of emotionless robots, who only associate with each other because they weren't allowed to interact with other races, dominating your college? Tiger parents fail to understand that the college experience isn't only about academics. Will Asians attend athletic and social events in high numbers? Probably not b/c they'll be too busy studying. Glee club? Nope! Likely to seek help for depression? Doubt it. Suicides = suicide lawsuits b/c tiger parents will deny that they pushed too hard, even if it's clearly stated in the suicide note. Yes, the schools are making their decisions based on race, but can you blame them? Reply Recommend sg new jersey 30 June 2014 ... Will Blake, that has to be the most racist comment I have ever seen. As an Indian American about to apply to college, I'll have you know that my friends are white, black, asian, and hispanic, and yes, i do have friends. My brother's a football and rugby player and I've been to almost every game in the past four years. I don't spend twenty-four hours studying, nor do I limit my social opportunities by only focusing on academics. Someone has had a bad relationship with an asian. ....And yes. I would LOVE to join a glee club! Reply 1Recommend WB Nor-Cal 24 December 2012 This is happening in public elementary school with my daughter who is half Chinese. She is precocious and achieving while being interested in everything a normal 10 year old kid would be. Still, there are parents who have commented that she achieves too much. Too much energy. Too much focus. Too much trying. Too busy. Too "perfect". I fear what's coming down the line here in California which doesn't exactly have the best history towards Asians. I don't share my thoughts on this with her instead only positiveness. It's very scary. Reply 2Recommend NYT Pick CB1985 New York, NY 24 December 2012 I am Filipino-American and grew up in California, and I take a keen interest in articles such as these. I think they bring up an important issue facing Asian-Americans today. But I applied to none of the colleges mentioned. I graduated from UC Irvine, where the student population was over 50% Asian. In retrospect, none of this has made an ounce of difference in my successes or failures. Determination and grit take you to the top and keep you there (along with luck!), not an Ivy League admission achieved at the age of 18. If I had gone to Harvard or UC Irvine, I don't think it would have made the slightest difference. Kids succeed based on what their parents put into raising them. I knew I was going to be successful not matter what school I "came from." Reply 6Recommend lrichins nj 21 December 2012 I think there also is a misconception with the Asian students we are talking about and I think that plays a big role in the debate over admissions. Yes, there are recent Asian immigrant families where the family is not from stellar economic background, lower end of the working class spectrum, and their kids often do well, there is no doubt. What that leaves out, though, is that a lot of the kids we are talking about are not from poor families, their families are often upper middle class already, and they are coming from affluent backgrounds, living in areas with great schools and so forth. Towns like Livingston, NJ, Basking Ridege, NJ, Scarsdale and Hartsdale, NY have large populations of the kind of Asian achieving students we are talking about, and these are very, very well off areas, and this model is true all over the country. Among other things, it is unlikely that a student coming in playing the piano or violin, with 10 different EC's, playing tennis, comes from a family where the parents work in low wage industries, those take significant resources. Socio-economically this is probably closer to comparing the white kid whose parents sent him to Andover then it is to the typical immigrant experience, and that is a valid assessment. Yes, the kids have worked hard, but they also come from a background that also has given them a big boost, too.....Scarsdale High is not De Witt Clinton HS, either. Reply 2Recommend Alia Texas 24 December 2012 Irichins, this is exactly what I have been saying. So if Asians feel discriminated against, they have to narrow the field so they're comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. You would have to take kids from the same socio-economic background, and then compare those students. You cannot compare someone from an affluent suburb to a kid from rural Wyoming or something like that, I'm sorry but that is just not fair. The former has many many more resources in life provided to them specifically for the purpose of making them look good on college applications. I'm not saying they shouldn't be commended for working hard because many still work hard, but sometimes it's easy to study more and volunteer more when that's the only substantial thing you have to worry about. There is a big difference. I think that more data would be needed to be put out by the university before anyone can come to any conclusions, and I don't think that will be happening. Reply 1Recommend JimmyZ Iowa 2 April 2014 You have a good point, and I agree that it's not fair to treat people from poor families the same as people from more affluent ones. However, the same argument applies to Jewish students. Do you think it's ok to have a Jewish quota again? I have no problem with affirmative action based on economical status, but I think affirmative action based on race is wrong and un-American. Quota for any racial group is racial discrimination, and we can't have double standard. Reply 1Recommend Flora Boston, MA 21 December 2012 Reply to sipa111 NY You maybe an ex-South African or you may/may not be a person of color; but if you are not a Chinese South African that lived there during Apartheid you should check your facts before making blanket statements. These are the Facts that during the Apartheid Era: 1) As with other non-White South Africans, the Chinese suffered discrimination during apartheid, and were often classified as Coloureds but sometimes Asians, a category that was generally reserved for Indian South Africans. 2) During Apartheid the Population Registration Act of 1950, Chinese South Africans were first deemed Asiatic, then Coloured 3) In 1962, a Japanese company purchased 5,000,000 tons of South African pig iron. Chinese South Africans were treated as Coloureds, second-class citizens – forced to live in segregated facilities, prevented from going into white-only swimming pools, etc. This posed a problem to South African officials. To encourage Japanese investment, they carved out the “honorary white” rule. Japanese were treated, for all purposes and intents, as white. When South Korea and Taiwan began investing in South Africa, this honorary status was extended them. It was however, never applied to Chinese South Africans. Thus under Apartheid Korean/Japanese/Taiwanese South Africans were white; Chinese South Africans were not. If you were Taiwanese, you could marry a white person but marrying a Chinese person was against the law, since interracial marriage was against the law. Reply 3Recommend Veetri Phoenix, AZ 21 December 2012 As an Asian family, we lived the American dream and also are in the midst of current economic stress. We live in a 2500 sq ft home, have a car and both me and my spouse have lost our jobs about three years ago. We have been managing with oddball consulting projects. We had steady jobs, we managed to pay off our mortgage. In other words, led a fairly responsible life. Right now our older child is ready to apply to colleges. We can't afford much, but the kid has stellar record- both in school, SAT tests, local and international community service, state level science fair projects, national awards in music, etc. Also regarded as a fantastic kid by all peers of all races at school, and of course, the faculty as well. Not sure if we are just another Asian family who doesn't fit into the Ivy leage admissions criteria. But by all measurable standards, the kid excels. Since one of these admissions officers put it "we can't quantify it but we know when we see an exceptional candidate..,", I beg to ask..what might that be? A family history of living on the edge? Past history of drug abuse? Reply 5Recommend Mercy Los Angeles, CA 25 December 2012 Because the admissions officers don't know how to handle this avalanche of excellent students. They can't admit all, because .. (allow me to omit it); they can't reject all, so they set a bar you don't know. They have to give you a reason. "Exceptional" is the right word to use. When they see one exceptional candidate among other not so exceptional candidate, they will know. It's easy. But when they see all candidates are exceptional, in a more absolute standard, they will use "relative" standard, to solve their information overload and decision numbing effect. And they have time pressure. Basically, they simply give up. As long as you're confident to submit your application, you're already exceptional. Reply Recommend James Wah Kong Chan Philadelphia 21 December 2012 The Asians are not any smarter than other ethnic groups. They get too much pressure from parents and peers to score well on exams. Two thousand years of cultural programming makes the average Asian feel that by scoring high on examinations, they are therefore qualified to be "rulers" of the "commoners" -- a key Confucian ethos. In America, education is very important. But, when one starts to make a living, one begins to realize that there are many other factors than a good education that will determine success and self-esteem. You can't teach what only experience can convince. Blaming the American society for being "racist" is not a solution. It may even become a life-long psychological barrier. Reply 8Recommend John Canada 25 December 2012 I have always admired the Confucian ethos. Much better than the conception ethos imho. There is a reason why China was the most advanced civilization for so many centuries (and seems likely to become so again). Meritocracy usually trumps aristocracy. The only question is: why did China drop the ball in the fifteenth century? Reply 1Recommend H. California Yesterday Because the Manchurians conquered China and destroyed the education. There was once a British who sent a steam engine to the emperor of Qing dynasty, but it was later found in a utility room with dust covered. Reply Recommend comfysofa aoteroa 21 December 2012 In his essay ''The Myth of American Meritocracy'' Ron Unz makes the case that Asians are being discriminated against in order to increase the number of Jewish students who he says now take far more places at Harvard than can be justified by either merit or fairness. From memory about half or even more of the white students are Jewish. Because of this the cost of affirmative action for Hispanics and blacks falls on Asian AND non Jewish white kids. It is unfair and dishonest to leave it open for naive readers to infer from these articles that non Jewish white kids are benefiting at the expense Asian kids when in fact they are as much victims of the system as Asians kids.