Extra Credit: Hassan Minhaj

In Hasan Minhaj’s Affirmative action episode in his new comedy series Patriot Act, he breaks down the idea of affirmative action as experienced in the United States. He brought up the specific case of a group of Asian Americans who sued Harvard University for their admissions policies, accusing the University of unfairly giving admissions preference to other minority groups. As a comedian, Minhaj easily incorporates humor into this social debate, and by doing so he makes the issue more relatable for those who may not know a lot about the issue at hand. A specific example of something he said that I found very relatable was "We are straight dunking on every other minority group, but in classic Asian-parent fashion we're like, 'Twenty-two percent? Why not 100 percent?” This something that I have definitely gotten from my parents growing up, and hearing these types of statements makes me want to continue watching to learn more about how that idea plays in affirmative action. The humor makes the issue seem less separate from a lot of individuals and shows that its something that can affect all of us by putting it a context that is applicable to the average person. The salient social identity that is at play in this segment rather clear, it center around race and ethnicity. Race is quite literally the basis of Affirmative Action, but Minhaj in this episode is essentially criticizes the group of Asian American for taking advantage of this idea in the worst way. Minhaj expose the racist biases within the Asian American communities that propagate anti-black and anti-brown rhetoric so they can put themselves ahead. Being an Asian American myself, I found it really easy to carry along with the discussion and the references because I have experienced a lot of them myself. Although there is no real technology being discussed, it got me thinking about if there is any application scanning algorithm that top universities such as Harvard use. I know that when applying to jobs a lot of them out resumes through a program that scans for keywords, and I was wondering if universities have a similar process. If so, a question that arises is what type of biases these algorithms might hold?