Top US college says diversity slumps after affirmative action ban

Beaver [she/her]@lemmy.ca to politics @lemmy.world – 104 points –
MIT: US university says diversity slumps after affirmative action ban
bbc.com
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Large university who is fully in control of the people they choose to admit or decline says "there's no doubt they left out many qualified and promising applicants who would have excelled". How could the government do this!? Large university, who is completely in control of their applications process, wonders out loud.

Obviously they aren't since it was a SCOTUS decision that forced them to change their admissions.

What changed in their admissions procedures as a result of the court ruling? Is it as simple as just not asking race on the application so they couldn't hold spots open to fill racial quotas? Or is it more complex than that?

FYI, places that already had affirmative action bans have partially got around this by at least pulling a percentage out of disadvantaged high schools (the kind with only one or two AP courses) since segregation still exists and it increases diversity. It's not quite as direct, though, even if it is easier to justify.

Another FYI on the history of affirmative action; the original argument that won over the court wasn't a social justice argument. It was a "diversity benefits everyone" argument --- in other words, white kids benefit from exposure to black and brown folks. Which is in fact true, but kind of a fuckery rational to begin with and one that doesn't seem to be winning over white folk the way it used to.

(Sorry for the fyis, just have to as the resident Education PhD on Lemmy)

Meh. Brilliant poor kids of all races exist. Where is the help for them? Dumb rich black kids exist. Affirmative action has no place in a society that wants to get past racism.

enslaves an entire race for centuries and then racially segregates them for another, stripping them of generational wealth, education opportunities, equal treatment under the law due to prejudice, and otherwise on average putting them far behind their white counterparts through zero fault of their own

"Teehee we gave you equal rights (kind of sort of) so now it's egalitarian and paying you back would be unfair to everyone else. You have to run the same-length track as everyone else, and don't go asking for special treatment just because we shot you in the leg before the race."

What's wild to me is that legal segregation was like, not that long ago at all. It always feels like it's taught as ancient history but it was only half a lifetime ago, really... and still ongoing. It's not like this happened a thousand years ago and "you should really be over it by now", this was the experience of some people's still living grandparents and parents.

The idea that an entire demographic of people should magically recover and be equals again after like 30 years of half-assed "equality" after literal generations of slavery is fucking wild.

Absolute goblin energy to not recognize the ongoing effects of such a recent thing.

I'm pretty young and my mom has told me stories about when the token black kid was bussed into her Oklahoma school because of legal requirements. She's not even retired yet. Passing a law doesn't magically fix things overnight. It takes time AND community effort to enact social changes

And what if the white people have all the money and all the best schools? How do you want to get past racism then?

We can only build an egalitarian society on the ashes of the old.

Equity is a necessary evil only so long as we keep the current underlying power structures of capitalism.

And what if the white people have all the money and all the best schools?

Certain german guy said the same, except he used "jews" instead of "white people".

Stop thinking like him.

And today's Godwin Award goes to "affirmative action is like what the man who oversaw the Holocaust said".

Racism against white people is still racism.

Pointing out the effects of systemic racism. Is not racism. But a strawman is a strawman.

White people have it good. Equality feels like oppression when you’re privileged.

You seem to misunderstand.

Prejudice exists throughout all people and cultures.

White Supremacy is a focused method of prejudice.

Racism is a tool of white supremacy.

Racism towards Jews, PoC, indigenous, etc. has created societal disparities.

White people are not victims of those societal disparities, and cannot be a target of racism, because again, racism is a specific tool of white supremacy.

You're thinking of prejudice, which will never go away.

But racism can go away.

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That’s a strawman as all the kids who are accepted into mit are smart. We shouldn’t be colour blind when it comes to resolving inequalities while past and current racism is still largely affecting the United States.

If you want to fix the percentage of minorities being underrepresented in post secondary education affirmative action is the quickest way to do it even if we’re assuming “racism ended years ago” as the trauma and lack of generational wealth would still linger.

America is not a meritocracy. It is big racist misogynist shithole with misogynist racists usually in charge of selection processes. "But we have legal protections against that!" you cry. Yeah, as long as you can prove it. If they don't say something or leave a paper trail, you can't prove shit. The system is still absolutely rigged against minorities and women and set up in a way that protections against any form of bigotry are so fucking vague as to be virtually unenforceable in all cases except the most extreme. Affirmative action is one of the ways to combat that. It, too, is not a perfect answer, but it is better than letting the bigots win. Indeed, the end game of Affirmative Action is to get enough women and minorities lifted up that the US can actually become a real meritocracy.

Racially agnostic support for exceptional achievers still exists, it's not an either-or proposition.

I think you could argue that affirmative action has no place in a society that has overcome the systemic issues caused by generation of racism. But that isn't the society in which we live. I hope to live in a world where one could abolish it and everyone can agree that the time has come. It isn't now.

Ok. Prove it.
Prove that affirmative action has no place.

So what I'm hearing here is that the federal government should be giving affirmative action to the Appalachia region because we allowed them to get fucked over by the coal industry. And of course that its state governments should be voted out in favor of policymakers who will be willing to help the common folk there achieve that equity.

Sounds good to me; glad we're on the same page.

That link mentions nothing about affirmative action...

Maybe because those people in need aren't getting free race based rides to college with no regards to merit.

You mean like in the sense of free college education for all, or more in the sense of like close our eyes and pretend generational wealth isn't the largest factor to success?

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