I was excited to be in this group of eighty. More than anything, it was an affirmation, an external validation of sorts. My dissertation adviser, Harry Richardson, who was a veteran consultant to the Bank, was equally happy for me. For one, he had cautioned me early in the process that I would not even get to the final round. Not because he doubted my abilities--at least openly with me--but because there was one negative in me: I was from India.
"The Bank already has too many people from India" Harry said. He added that quite a few applicants too would be with Indian roots, which meant that I had to be exceptionally good to become one of the final forty hires. "It will be easier if you were from, say, even neighboring Nepal."
Well, I am no Nepali. And it turned out that exceptionally good I was not!
To have an accidental birth characteristic held against me was not entirely new to me, however. India had made that clear to me even before I got to high school. My sister's dreams of joining medical school were shattered, despite her academic achievements, because of quotas that limited the intake of Brahmin students in the state's colleges. I suppose it was one of the many early lessons on how the world isn't fair.
Being an Indian applicant at the World Bank was perhaps like being a global Brahmin, and there were quotas restricting their numbers.
Expand that to one more level and now it is "Asian."
The notion of overachieving Asians apparently triggers similar restrictive quotas. The only difference is in the nomenclature: instead of "Brahmins" it is "Jews":
The parallels between the Jewish and Asian experiences are striking. As with the Jews who applied to the nation’s top colleges with fake names, Asian-American students applying to many colleges are encouraged to stress “non-Asian” attributes like student government, not playing the violin. Those that are half-Asian, half-white are encouraged by college counselors to list themselves as white, while the Princeton Review Student Advantage Guide warns Asian-American not to check that race box at all or send a photo. “After 10 years of [college counseling] and 4 years in Dartmouth admissions, I don’t think it’s intentional, but I think there is discrimination,” admits former admissions officer Michele Hernandez.Why this strange discrimination? Because, you simply cannot have too many Asian students at the prestigious colleges, can you at ?
In every state where racial preferences in college admissions have been eliminated—California, Texas, Florida—Asian-American enrollment has increased. Caltech, which refuses to consider race, is one-third Asian, while the University of California-Berkeley, barred by law from considering race, is more than 40 percent Asian. There’s little doubt (and much worry) that if the informal quotas were dropped at the nation’s top private universities and colleges, Asian-American enrollment would swell there, too.Back in India, the argument was that the Brahmins had to, in a way, pay for the centuries of caste system that kept pushing the lowest castes and the untouchables lower and lower into the utter darkness. There is simply no denying that the caste system was atrocious (and it is depressing that it continues to be practiced even now.) But, through reverse discrimination, do two wrongs make a right?
At least, there was that caste-abuse explanation in India. Here, it is not even that Asian-Americans abused their power and privilege in order to gain at the expense of others. Nor did the Jews back then.
Oh well. Whoever said the world is far, eh!
Personally, I am thankful that I didn't get into the World Bank--I am sure I would have had a tough time marching to my own drumbeat that is almost always at rhythms very, very different from the Bank's. Maybe it was a good thing I was from India, and not Nepal!
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