Asking prospective students for their skin color when they apply to your school should be unthinkable.
"I want to attend your school just like my grandfather" = This is fine
"I want to attend your school because my grandfather wasn't allowed to" = This is not
Think about that for a second.
Legacy admissions shouldn't be a thing either, imo. It should be 100% about merit.
Absolutely.
And until that's the case, there's a clear double standard that benefits white people.
A pure merit-based approach also overwhelming benefits white people though, because they have a lot more generational income to help their kids get ahead in life.
Hook me up with that generational wealth. The ATM doesn’t accept race as a condition for providing money.
Neither is ok. But only one likely violates the constitution. Congress could make legacy admissions illegal if they wanted to.
Congress could've made affirmative action illegal if they wanted to?
But only one side works as the majority's dog whistle.
Yes. Even noted red state California (/s) voted in a referendum to make the practice illegal.
I really appreciate this take, because it reminded me that I can always call my congressman (or at least their office) and voice my opinion to ears that might be able to do something about it.
Honestly, asking anyone for race on any application for anything shouldn't be a thing. With the exception of medical things specific to race, it's completely unnecessary. Unless I'm missing something glaring, other than perpetuating systematic disenfranchisement.
It's a way for the college admissions to combat the systemic racism already present in USA society. It treats a symptom of a larger issue. A college cannot help with all the disadvantages minority students face throughout thier primary education but they can account for that in admissions.
While I agree that requiring people to reveal their ethnicity should be a no-no for anything other than medical, asking for people to volunteer this information makes sense.
In UK in many places giving ethnicity is optional and the results are used to monitor how different groups aka "races" are doing. This then can be used for research.
This is honestly great to hear. I have heard calls for this for years, and have repeatedly seen stats that show how Affirmative Action can end up hurting lots of people's chances at acceptance to universities. See: https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/med1.jpg?x91208
I just wish that, based on their recent track record, I knew that the Supreme Court had passed this ruling with good intentions.
Exactly, can't solve discrimination with more discrimination.
Questionable. In Northern Ireland, the police used to be something like 7% Catholic, policing a population that was over 40% Catholic. It was controversial at the time, but a 50:50 recruitment policy was put in place in the mid to late 90s, until the balance of the police force matched the wider community.
This is now very broadly accepted as a necessary and beneficial move. The current police force is generally seen as impartial (in terms of this one issue) while the old one was generally not trusted by the minority, to put it mildly.
That's a good example
I think it’s important to look at the broader scope of affirmative action policies on a case by case basis. One the one hand sometimes it’s just random chance. In theory any given workplace should represent the local demographics, but if you get too granular(workplace, department, specific job title, etc.) then it can become impossible to represent everybody, or just one or two employees can skew the whole demographic.
Where they are a good idea is when you have a group that’s been marginalized over generations that often leads to standards with inherent bias. We could say that college admissions based solely on grades are fair, but that assumes that the process of achieving those grades was fair. In reality, you get situations where people of generational wealth have better access to educational resources, and people from communities that aren’t marginalized find it easier to get higher paying jobs which lets them live in higher income areas with more well funded schools.
That said, there are some inherent biases that are more difficult to overcome. Women are generally less physically capable than men, native English speakers will always have an advantage in some fields over people who have English as a second language. There’s a fine line between unreasonably lowering standards to support minority groups, and taking steps to overcome unfair biases present in those standards.
It's a bit more nuanced than that. Affirmative action was never meant to "solve discrimination", it was meant as a step towards correcting systematic bias. Even if discrimination disappeared today, the socioeconomic situation certain minority groups face makes it impossible for them as a collective to get out of the hole they're in without additional opportunity.
Problem with affirmative action is that it treats people's livelihoods as data points in a metric. These groups should get more opportunities, but in this case they're directly taking opportunities away from others and, like you said, that's discrimination. Can selective racial discrimination solve for systematic bias? Maybe. Should it? Probably not.
Problem with affirmative action is that it treats people’s livelihoods as data points in a metric. These groups should get more opportunities, but in this case they’re directly taking opportunities away from others and, like you said, that’s discrimination.
Agreed, seems like the intentions were good but the desired effects were not realised.
You can't correct discrimination with discrimination since that just maintains the whole foundation of categorising people and seeing them as inherently different from others, purelly because they were worn born with differences in a handful of genes with highly visible expression and which are totally irrelevant for who they are as persons.
In this I always go back to what I learned when it came to the treatment of homosexuals in The Netherlands: when people treat something as normal there is no descrimination - when homosexuality is "just another sexuality", homophobia is as senseless as discriminating against people for having blue eyes or thicker eyebrows.
It's such a small weight in the overall judgement (according to the selection metrics published by universities) that I'm doubtful much will change. And another dog whistle becomes obsolete for the right wing.
If it was so irrelevant, the colleges would not have fought tooth and nail to maintain it. Anyway, the prior experience of individual states that have banned affirmative action indicates that the effects are not negligible -- it's responsible for double digit shifts in racial compositions of student bodies.
Things will depend on how the universities respond; one can imagine Harvard doubling down on ever-subtler ways to tag Asians as personality-free robots undeserving of consideration.
This is really great to hear. College admissions should be a fair process.
You know how many people on a certain other social media site have issues with the idea of equality? How is equality bad? Isn't the ultimate goal of a society not to discriminate based on things such as race? So if an admission process is blind to race, how is that bad?
Equal doesn't mean equitable. For example, I hear people say everyone should pay a flat tax. Everyone pays 10% so that is equal. Yes. it is an equal percentage, and yes, the billionaires will pay vastly more than the poor. Suppose you make $1000 a month and you pay $100. That leaves you $900 to pay your bills and eat. Now a billionaire, let's say he makes $10,000,000 a month. He pays out $1 mil but he still have $9 million to pay his bills...for that month. That is not equitable. Equitable would be to leave everyone with an equal burden on their income. Even if you taxed the billionaire 90%, he would still be able to live in luxury.
I do not feel there would be a need for racial quotas if there was instead a quota for xx% students from this income bracket must be accepted. Each applicant would be measured by both their skill and their ability to meet and overcome obstacles. There should be two piles: those that meet the standards, and those who do not. Out of all the potentials, shuffle the names and select at random.
People in favor of affirmative action in college admissions see things very specifically.
They see that an identifiable group is under represented and they want to ‘fix’ it. Without any idea what the ramifications of their ‘fix’ is.
All they care about is the demographics of whatever it is they are looking at. All they think about is race.
The idea that racism is the way out of racism is simply crazy.
Of course, you have to realize that the definition of racism can change from an outlook of superiority to power + privilege on a whim too
The whole progressive mindset is just fucking evil
Of course, you have to realize that the definition of racism can change from an outlook of superiority to power + privilege on a whim too
I'm in my 50s, I don't recall the definition of racism changing at all, much less "on a whim". What are some of the other definitions you have seen arbitrarily assigned to the term racism?
When you were taught the definition of racism, or when it’s spoken about today (sometimes) it’s a hateful word and a hateful way of thinking about a group of people.
: a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
Progressives have since changed that definition to sometimes mean power + privilege = racism. Which is a wildly different thing and is not based on hate at all, but on socio-issues
Prejudice plus power, also known as R = P + P, is a stipulative definition of racism used in the United States, often by white anti-racism activists.
The problems in discussing these things or calling someone ‘racist’ is that these definitions (amongst others) can be used interchangeably, because they are both wildly different definitions of the same word
The idea that racism is the way out of racism is simply crazy.
See, I find this statement to perfectly summarize the situation, and I do plan on using it myself. I could totally agree with you on your entire post actually except for that last statement which is woefully out of line.
I guess considering the last part out of line depends on what your (or my) understanding of the progressive way of thinking and what it’s based on and what it’s goals are.
They’ve done a great job marketing it as ‘just be a nice person’ but that’s not at all what it really is.
I’m sure there are hundreds of millions of well-meaning progressives who believe that. And I’m not trying to insult them.
But people get sold on one thing and end up getting something entirely different all of the time. It’s sad, but that’s the way things are, unfortunately.
I’m not saying the opposite of progressivism is the answer here either, what I would advocate is common sense.
If you need a PhD and peer reviewed sociology papers to try to convince someone that something as egregious as race-based college admissions is a good thing, you’re pretty obviously the baddie and common sense should tell us that you’re trying to convince us of something for a different reason.
A lot of things that US courts have recently done(this included) is making making me wonder about how judicial review should work. Because what I keep seeing is that US courts will strike down shitty band aid solutions(which AA was, it was an attempt at a quick and easy solution for a very long list of social issues) without offering better alternatives. I do think that affirmative action should not have to exist, but the better choice is full scale education reform, addressing systemic racism, an understanding of how privilege affects educational outcomes, and greater availability and lower cost of the highest quality tertiary education. As it is today I am observing courts not choosing perfect over good, but rather destroying half baked solutions because they oppose the intended outcomes of those solutions.
the better choice is full scale education reform, addressing systemic racism, an understanding of how privilege affects educational outcomes,
This would likely help, which is why if I'm not mistaken conservatives in the U.S. are opposed to it by lambasting it as "woke Critical Race Theory". A significant part of the wealthy, and career political class views systemic racism and privilege as foundational, protected rights for which the nation was established to maintain.
That is, of course, contrary to the fact that those elements were only preserved as a result of compromise so that the nation could exist at all, and not because they necessarily wanted to preserve them, give or take those founding politicians involved.
Rule 10
Wouldn't this impact admissions for international students too?
oops
How about the likes of Harvard bitching and moaning about this, replaced "affirmative action" with measures to make it easier for students from poorer backgrounds to attend it, which would probably help way more people of latin and afro-american ancestry (who in the most tend to be poorer than average) than this system of "quotas for people who went to nice schools and can afford Harvard student fees" that mainly helps the scions of high-middle and richer parents whose only thing in common with the vast majority of people in the minorities supposedly being helped is a handful of genes?
You can measure the dripping hypocrisy and sense of entitlement of the people defending certain (maybe most) "afirmative action" measures by just well-off compared to the vast majority of the population those "helped" by it are (a particularly obvious one is "quotas for CxO positions for women" - it's not going to be women from poor backgrounds who work as cleaning-ladies that will benefit from such quotas, but rather a handful of women from much better off backgrounds than 99% of people)
Not to mention that you may actually be hurting minorities by allowing them to go to schools they aren't quite prepared for. A lot of people end up leaving science because of this. They may not quite be up for a Stanford or MIT, but they might be extremely well qualified for a university just one or two rungs lower.
Instead they flunk out when, okay, maybe they wouldn't have won a Nobel prize, but they could have actually had a very good career in STEM.
There is a huge problem out there with the inequality in access and quality of even primary Education, especially in the US.
Make it so that inner city schools are as good as posh private schools and I guarantee you that there will be a ton of kids from poor minorities well prepared to atten the likes of Stanford and MIT.
Affirmative Action has been used as a massive distraction from the huge discrimination along income lines in Education in the US whilst doing almost nothing to actually correct the worst discrimination, as it's not the well-off kids who attended expensive private and are "prepared for MIT" and happen to be black or latino who need help.
Held: Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
Almost like anti-Caucasian and anti-Asian racism is still racism.
Not sure what you're trying to say here. Historically minority groups (specifically black and Hispanic) have been underrepresented in higher education. Affirmative action was supposed to help make higher education racially represent the population at large. Many minority groups are disadvantaged from a young age in terms of education in the USA so collecting data on race of applicants was supposed to help normalize people's racial background. If I grew up in a predominantly well funded schools my exam scores will likely be higher than a student who grew up in a poor school district. The effects of segregation, racism, and xenophobia in the USA have led to a racial divide between many local school districts in the USA. The whites who have historocally had more money have better funded schools. Without knowing where someone came from it is harder to judge how good their respective scores are. Odviously there are still ways to do this but the supreme court removed a legally required one.
So racism now should be okay because racism in the past was okay? Racism is still racism, and racism is still bad.
I think we can all agree racism is bad. The point of affirmative action was to help those who are victims of past racism. As I said, minority groups tend to live in localized areas and have historocally had less financial resources and because of this suffer from worse education and less connections to people who have gone to college before. Collecting racial data was a way to normalize test results and make up for lack of college prep knowledge for disadvantaged students. Collecting this data also forces schools to be aware of thier unconscious bias. AA was introduced to combat racism in college selections, I don't think we will slip back to as bad as it was, but i think a new program should have been implemented before rejecting this one.
And now it's time to get rid of it, because racism shouldn't justify racism. Racism in the past shouldn't justify racism today. Racism towards one group shouldn't justify racism towards a different group. "Reverse" or "positive" racism doesn't exist, it is just plain old racism you try to justify to yourself.
I'm not sure how affirmative action is racist.
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
Prejudice - why do people of certain color need more handholding? Are you saying they are not as capable because of their race?
Discrimination - if you prop up one group over others, you are discriminating others. If you do it solely based on their skin color, that is racist.
Prejudice - (preconceived opinions not based on reason or actual experience) students with better SAT scores will perform better in college. There's no evidence to support this and it is still a major deciding factor in college admissions.
Discrimination - (unjust treatment of different categories of people) the argument over what is "just" treatment will likely never end. I believe it is unjust that primary school districts in the USA can vary wildly in quality.
There’s no evidence to support this and it is still a major deciding factor in college admissions.
Okay, so lets come up with something different than SAT since we are unable to keep the same goal for everyone... based on their race
I believe it is unjust that primary school districts in the USA can vary wildly in quality.
Thank you for recognizing that poor caucasians and asians also exist, and that rich black people exist.
What "anti-Caucasian" racism?
I think he means anti-white? Racism is any kind of prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by a group, individual, or institution against a person or group on the basis of their race or ethnicity. The group being discriminated against does not necessarily have to be the minority group.
Racism is any kind of prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by a group, individual, or institution against a person or group on the basis of their race or ethnicity.
Absolutely not. Racism is inherent to the pseudo-science of scientific racism invented by European "intellectuals" to justify the brutality of colonialist exploitation - which, of course, is still ongoing. It is a fundamental classification of "race" as defined by scientific racists - ie, white supremacists. White goes on top, black at the bottom, some other people go in between. There is no other kind of "racism" - if it doesn't work according to that specific race hierarchy, it's not racism.
This is the reason why it's not technically true that black people cannot be racist - they can, but they can only be racist insofar as the tenets of white supremacism allows. White supremacism never allows black people to discriminate against white people - which is why you don't see black cops murdering white folk once a week in front of cameras and getting away with it (they would if they could - cops are cops).
Han supremacism (for instance) is not racism - it is not based on the same race classification system that forms the core tenet of white supremacist ideology. It simply does not view the world through the lens of race that westerners (ie, white people) do. It is an entirely different form of institutionalized bigotry and discrimination.
The elite are at it again. Got to keep them colored folks down.
Treating people equally regardless of their skin color is hardly 'keeping the colored folks down'.
People of color have never been treated equally in America. That is the reason they need priority in education to allow them to start to balance out some of that inequality.
The issue comes when you are applying skin color adjustments to people who aren't at a disadvantage. A rich black person has significantly more opportunity than a poor asian person. However, Harvard was saying the rich black person should get extra preference over the poor asian student, purely because of their skin colors. Why should the asian student from a poor family with hardly any opportunity be held down?
Were they held down though? In California when they eliminated AA at their public universities there wasn’t much change in the economic outcomes for asian and white students. Sure, before maybe they didn’t get to go to the ‘best’ school but on average still had similar outcomes.
This isn’t true for black/Hispanic/native American students whose economic outcome depreciated. These students benefited from being able to break into the social networks provided by elite universities. Something that white/Asian students might already have access to.
So if all that matters is going to elite schools then sure, but there are externalities that are important and not everyone benefits equally from the top echelon of schools. It’s not a perfect system but it’s better than not having it.
Harvard specifically suppressed asian applicants based on their race, not via some secondary effect, but as a core aspect of their race-based admissions. In the court case, this was demonstrably proven and is why the race-based admissions were struck down under the Equal Protections clause.
"The First Circuit found that Harvard’s consideration of race has resulted in fewer admissions of Asian-American students. Respondents’ assertion that race is never a negative factor in their admissions programs cannot withstand scrutiny."
Yes, if all that matters in your life is where you go to school then yes they were held back from achieving that.
For a lot of people higher education is seen as the mantle to climb the socioeconomic ladder and on average the Asian or white kid who was competitive but didn’t get to go to harvard will achieve similar outcomes regardless.
This is gross. Why are these people allowed to be in charge of anything?
Why? Colleges can still give preference to students who live in poor neighborhoods or bad school districts. What's the problem with that approach?
my understanding was that affirmative action is about creating a diverse student body
I see it as compensating for disadvantages people have. So, if one student has lower test scores, but achieved them despite going to an underfunded school and having a part-time job, then that student scores are actually more impressive than someone else who scored better, but had private tutors throughout high school. Once you account for people's disadvantages, you should naturally get more diverse student body.
And of course minority students have disadvantages that should be accounted for. But they don't affect everyone the same, and racial quotas is a very lazy way to do this. Instead, admissions should look at the individual circumstances of each student.
It's also worth pointing out, high flying students will do fine wherever they go. Cream rises to the top. They'll be fine no matter where they go.
Diversity of opinion, background, and perspective is important. Diversity of skin color is meaningless on it's own.
Well with the supreme court it isn't because we elect them. They are appointed so I'd say it's to protect the interests of the elite like banning abortions etc.
They are there to interpret laws, not go along with what's socially acceptable at any given time
They are not the group of people you should look to for social progress and it's by design
Not at all. Why should wealthy black students get consideration denied to a poor white student? Why should Asian students be straight up discriminated against?
Use economic status, not skin color.
The unfortunate reality is that left unattended these organizations revert to extreme bias for white and rich. Getting rid of AA in favor of something better is fine - but getting rid of any guideline full stop is a much, much worse answer to the problem.
California eliminated Affirmative Action. Are they some racist hellscape now?
And by all means, legislate against advantages to the rich. Make legacy admissions illegal. Make admissions tied to donations illegal. But the 2 wrongs make a right idea can’t be a basis for policy.
This is gross.
Treating people equally, regardless of their skin color, is gross?
The problem is that people were NOT being treated equally and so we had to try to force institutions to accept people they'd otherwise discriminate against. This isn't going to bring any equality, we're going to go back to marginalized groups and historically discriminated groups being left out again and rich white people will be back "on top."
I say this as a white guy with all the advantages society gives me so I'm not some rando asking for a leg up on anyone. It's not about me.
Two wrongs don't make a right. If it was wrong to exclude people based on race before, it's still wrong now.
Agreed. But if in this context, the harmful impacts of race aren't addressed, only the beneficial impacts, then it's just engaging in further harm.
Say Population A is constantly having their things stolen from Population B. The government steps in and says, "Ok, we will give Population A a certain amount of money to make up for what is constantly stolen." While it isn't enough to make up for their loss, it helps Population A mitigate the impact of the theft. Population B then says, "That's not fair. They shouldn't get anything just because they're Population A. That's populationist." Meanwhile, Population A is still getting their things stolen by the same population that are claiming the policy is unfair, and now the policy that was implace to help mitigate that is being removed. The real immediate solution would be for Population B to stop stealing from Population A, and ultimately stop dividing the entire population into A & B. However, the latter isn't going to happen until the former stops.
But if in this context, the harmful impacts of race aren’t addressed, only the beneficial impacts, then it’s just engaging in further harm.
Affirmative action actively and deliberately keeps asians down purely due to the race of the asian individual applying. It isn't some secondary effect, but a primary facet of Harvard's race-based admissions. Why are you defending a system that keeps a minority down by specifically targeting their race? How is that not active harm?
Disadvantaging certain groups now doesn't fix what happened in the past. Arguably it makes it even worse
The most egregious example of institutional racism is finally undone.
In a country built by slave labor this is the most egregious example of institutionalize racism? Not the slavery? Or the time we took Japanese people and put them in camps?
Those were rightfully outlawed. And now AA goes with them.
Man you moved the goalposts fast.
Yeah man, black people going to college is right up there with chattel slavery and putting people in concentration camps. The great injustice of our times.
Slavery was codified into the Constitution. It was never outlawed. You should take 5 minutes to actually read on the subject.
So racism is still okay but only when it is against certain groups? That sounds pretty racist
You must be joking. Have you ever looked at history in your lifetime?
I'd argue the whole "you can't enslave black people unless you accuse them of a crime first" is much more eggregious but go off I guess.
"But this one affected 'Asians'! Oh, and white people, but that's totally not what we're focusing on." - these people
Asking prospective students for their skin color when they apply to your school should be unthinkable.
"I want to attend your school just like my grandfather" = This is fine
"I want to attend your school because my grandfather wasn't allowed to" = This is not
Think about that for a second.
Legacy admissions shouldn't be a thing either, imo. It should be 100% about merit.
Absolutely.
And until that's the case, there's a clear double standard that benefits white people.
A pure merit-based approach also overwhelming benefits white people though, because they have a lot more generational income to help their kids get ahead in life.
Hook me up with that generational wealth. The ATM doesn’t accept race as a condition for providing money.
Wait is this actually a thing?
Legacy is a much more weighted merit than affirmative action was.
But asking them who their father is is fine?
If people gave a shit about fairness they'd care about legacy admission more than affirmative action.
No, that's not fine either and should also be outlawed due to a history of systemic racism giving some people an advantage over others.
It should be 100% merit based, plain and simple. It's the only fair way.
Funny how we addressed the tool that helped black kids first, rather than the one that hurt them.
Maybe it's because this is being pushed by bad people, that you seem to agree with under some fantasy of "100% merit based" reality.
Systemic biases exist, AA compensated for them banking AA is basically pretending this nation isn't racist AF.
That's not how it's going to play out in reality, unfortunately. I truly wish it were.
Neither is ok. But only one likely violates the constitution. Congress could make legacy admissions illegal if they wanted to.
Congress could've made affirmative action illegal if they wanted to?
But only one side works as the majority's dog whistle.
Yes. Even noted red state California (/s) voted in a referendum to make the practice illegal.
I really appreciate this take, because it reminded me that I can always call my congressman (or at least their office) and voice my opinion to ears that might be able to do something about it.
Honestly, asking anyone for race on any application for anything shouldn't be a thing. With the exception of medical things specific to race, it's completely unnecessary. Unless I'm missing something glaring, other than perpetuating systematic disenfranchisement.
It's a way for the college admissions to combat the systemic racism already present in USA society. It treats a symptom of a larger issue. A college cannot help with all the disadvantages minority students face throughout thier primary education but they can account for that in admissions.
While I agree that requiring people to reveal their ethnicity should be a no-no for anything other than medical, asking for people to volunteer this information makes sense.
In UK in many places giving ethnicity is optional and the results are used to monitor how different groups aka "races" are doing. This then can be used for research.
This is honestly great to hear. I have heard calls for this for years, and have repeatedly seen stats that show how Affirmative Action can end up hurting lots of people's chances at acceptance to universities. See: https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/med1.jpg?x91208
I just wish that, based on their recent track record, I knew that the Supreme Court had passed this ruling with good intentions.
Exactly, can't solve discrimination with more discrimination.
Questionable. In Northern Ireland, the police used to be something like 7% Catholic, policing a population that was over 40% Catholic. It was controversial at the time, but a 50:50 recruitment policy was put in place in the mid to late 90s, until the balance of the police force matched the wider community.
This is now very broadly accepted as a necessary and beneficial move. The current police force is generally seen as impartial (in terms of this one issue) while the old one was generally not trusted by the minority, to put it mildly.
That's a good example
I think it’s important to look at the broader scope of affirmative action policies on a case by case basis. One the one hand sometimes it’s just random chance. In theory any given workplace should represent the local demographics, but if you get too granular(workplace, department, specific job title, etc.) then it can become impossible to represent everybody, or just one or two employees can skew the whole demographic.
Where they are a good idea is when you have a group that’s been marginalized over generations that often leads to standards with inherent bias. We could say that college admissions based solely on grades are fair, but that assumes that the process of achieving those grades was fair. In reality, you get situations where people of generational wealth have better access to educational resources, and people from communities that aren’t marginalized find it easier to get higher paying jobs which lets them live in higher income areas with more well funded schools.
That said, there are some inherent biases that are more difficult to overcome. Women are generally less physically capable than men, native English speakers will always have an advantage in some fields over people who have English as a second language. There’s a fine line between unreasonably lowering standards to support minority groups, and taking steps to overcome unfair biases present in those standards.
It's a bit more nuanced than that. Affirmative action was never meant to "solve discrimination", it was meant as a step towards correcting systematic bias. Even if discrimination disappeared today, the socioeconomic situation certain minority groups face makes it impossible for them as a collective to get out of the hole they're in without additional opportunity.
Problem with affirmative action is that it treats people's livelihoods as data points in a metric. These groups should get more opportunities, but in this case they're directly taking opportunities away from others and, like you said, that's discrimination. Can selective racial discrimination solve for systematic bias? Maybe. Should it? Probably not.
Agreed, seems like the intentions were good but the desired effects were not realised.
You can't correct discrimination with discrimination since that just maintains the whole foundation of categorising people and seeing them as inherently different from others, purelly because they were worn born with differences in a handful of genes with highly visible expression and which are totally irrelevant for who they are as persons.
In this I always go back to what I learned when it came to the treatment of homosexuals in The Netherlands: when people treat something as normal there is no descrimination - when homosexuality is "just another sexuality", homophobia is as senseless as discriminating against people for having blue eyes or thicker eyebrows.
It's such a small weight in the overall judgement (according to the selection metrics published by universities) that I'm doubtful much will change. And another dog whistle becomes obsolete for the right wing.
If it was so irrelevant, the colleges would not have fought tooth and nail to maintain it. Anyway, the prior experience of individual states that have banned affirmative action indicates that the effects are not negligible -- it's responsible for double digit shifts in racial compositions of student bodies.
Things will depend on how the universities respond; one can imagine Harvard doubling down on ever-subtler ways to tag Asians as personality-free robots undeserving of consideration.
This is really great to hear. College admissions should be a fair process.
You know how many people on a certain other social media site have issues with the idea of equality? How is equality bad? Isn't the ultimate goal of a society not to discriminate based on things such as race? So if an admission process is blind to race, how is that bad?
Equal doesn't mean equitable. For example, I hear people say everyone should pay a flat tax. Everyone pays 10% so that is equal. Yes. it is an equal percentage, and yes, the billionaires will pay vastly more than the poor. Suppose you make $1000 a month and you pay $100. That leaves you $900 to pay your bills and eat. Now a billionaire, let's say he makes $10,000,000 a month. He pays out $1 mil but he still have $9 million to pay his bills...for that month. That is not equitable. Equitable would be to leave everyone with an equal burden on their income. Even if you taxed the billionaire 90%, he would still be able to live in luxury.
I do not feel there would be a need for racial quotas if there was instead a quota for xx% students from this income bracket must be accepted. Each applicant would be measured by both their skill and their ability to meet and overcome obstacles. There should be two piles: those that meet the standards, and those who do not. Out of all the potentials, shuffle the names and select at random.
People in favor of affirmative action in college admissions see things very specifically.
They see that an identifiable group is under represented and they want to ‘fix’ it. Without any idea what the ramifications of their ‘fix’ is.
All they care about is the demographics of whatever it is they are looking at. All they think about is race.
The idea that racism is the way out of racism is simply crazy.
Of course, you have to realize that the definition of racism can change from an outlook of superiority to power + privilege on a whim too
The whole progressive mindset is just fucking evil
I'm in my 50s, I don't recall the definition of racism changing at all, much less "on a whim". What are some of the other definitions you have seen arbitrarily assigned to the term racism?
When you were taught the definition of racism, or when it’s spoken about today (sometimes) it’s a hateful word and a hateful way of thinking about a group of people.
Progressives have since changed that definition to sometimes mean power + privilege = racism. Which is a wildly different thing and is not based on hate at all, but on socio-issues
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice_plus_power
The problems in discussing these things or calling someone ‘racist’ is that these definitions (amongst others) can be used interchangeably, because they are both wildly different definitions of the same word
See, I find this statement to perfectly summarize the situation, and I do plan on using it myself. I could totally agree with you on your entire post actually except for that last statement which is woefully out of line.
I guess considering the last part out of line depends on what your (or my) understanding of the progressive way of thinking and what it’s based on and what it’s goals are.
They’ve done a great job marketing it as ‘just be a nice person’ but that’s not at all what it really is.
I’m sure there are hundreds of millions of well-meaning progressives who believe that. And I’m not trying to insult them.
But people get sold on one thing and end up getting something entirely different all of the time. It’s sad, but that’s the way things are, unfortunately.
I’m not saying the opposite of progressivism is the answer here either, what I would advocate is common sense.
If you need a PhD and peer reviewed sociology papers to try to convince someone that something as egregious as race-based college admissions is a good thing, you’re pretty obviously the baddie and common sense should tell us that you’re trying to convince us of something for a different reason.
A lot of things that US courts have recently done(this included) is making making me wonder about how judicial review should work. Because what I keep seeing is that US courts will strike down shitty band aid solutions(which AA was, it was an attempt at a quick and easy solution for a very long list of social issues) without offering better alternatives. I do think that affirmative action should not have to exist, but the better choice is full scale education reform, addressing systemic racism, an understanding of how privilege affects educational outcomes, and greater availability and lower cost of the highest quality tertiary education. As it is today I am observing courts not choosing perfect over good, but rather destroying half baked solutions because they oppose the intended outcomes of those solutions.
This would likely help, which is why if I'm not mistaken conservatives in the U.S. are opposed to it by lambasting it as "woke Critical Race Theory". A significant part of the wealthy, and career political class views systemic racism and privilege as foundational, protected rights for which the nation was established to maintain.
That is, of course, contrary to the fact that those elements were only preserved as a result of compromise so that the nation could exist at all, and not because they necessarily wanted to preserve them, give or take those founding politicians involved.
Rule 10
Wouldn't this impact admissions for international students too?
oops
How about the likes of Harvard bitching and moaning about this, replaced "affirmative action" with measures to make it easier for students from poorer backgrounds to attend it, which would probably help way more people of latin and afro-american ancestry (who in the most tend to be poorer than average) than this system of "quotas for people who went to nice schools and can afford Harvard student fees" that mainly helps the scions of high-middle and richer parents whose only thing in common with the vast majority of people in the minorities supposedly being helped is a handful of genes?
You can measure the dripping hypocrisy and sense of entitlement of the people defending certain (maybe most) "afirmative action" measures by just well-off compared to the vast majority of the population those "helped" by it are (a particularly obvious one is "quotas for CxO positions for women" - it's not going to be women from poor backgrounds who work as cleaning-ladies that will benefit from such quotas, but rather a handful of women from much better off backgrounds than 99% of people)
Not to mention that you may actually be hurting minorities by allowing them to go to schools they aren't quite prepared for. A lot of people end up leaving science because of this. They may not quite be up for a Stanford or MIT, but they might be extremely well qualified for a university just one or two rungs lower.
Instead they flunk out when, okay, maybe they wouldn't have won a Nobel prize, but they could have actually had a very good career in STEM.
There is a huge problem out there with the inequality in access and quality of even primary Education, especially in the US.
Make it so that inner city schools are as good as posh private schools and I guarantee you that there will be a ton of kids from poor minorities well prepared to atten the likes of Stanford and MIT.
Affirmative Action has been used as a massive distraction from the huge discrimination along income lines in Education in the US whilst doing almost nothing to actually correct the worst discrimination, as it's not the well-off kids who attended expensive private and are "prepared for MIT" and happen to be black or latino who need help.
The decision: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf
Core finding from the document:
Almost like anti-Caucasian and anti-Asian racism is still racism.
Not sure what you're trying to say here. Historically minority groups (specifically black and Hispanic) have been underrepresented in higher education. Affirmative action was supposed to help make higher education racially represent the population at large. Many minority groups are disadvantaged from a young age in terms of education in the USA so collecting data on race of applicants was supposed to help normalize people's racial background. If I grew up in a predominantly well funded schools my exam scores will likely be higher than a student who grew up in a poor school district. The effects of segregation, racism, and xenophobia in the USA have led to a racial divide between many local school districts in the USA. The whites who have historocally had more money have better funded schools. Without knowing where someone came from it is harder to judge how good their respective scores are. Odviously there are still ways to do this but the supreme court removed a legally required one.
So racism now should be okay because racism in the past was okay? Racism is still racism, and racism is still bad.
I think we can all agree racism is bad. The point of affirmative action was to help those who are victims of past racism. As I said, minority groups tend to live in localized areas and have historocally had less financial resources and because of this suffer from worse education and less connections to people who have gone to college before. Collecting racial data was a way to normalize test results and make up for lack of college prep knowledge for disadvantaged students. Collecting this data also forces schools to be aware of thier unconscious bias. AA was introduced to combat racism in college selections, I don't think we will slip back to as bad as it was, but i think a new program should have been implemented before rejecting this one.
And now it's time to get rid of it, because racism shouldn't justify racism. Racism in the past shouldn't justify racism today. Racism towards one group shouldn't justify racism towards a different group. "Reverse" or "positive" racism doesn't exist, it is just plain old racism you try to justify to yourself.
I'm not sure how affirmative action is racist.
Prejudice - why do people of certain color need more handholding? Are you saying they are not as capable because of their race?
Discrimination - if you prop up one group over others, you are discriminating others. If you do it solely based on their skin color, that is racist.
Prejudice - (preconceived opinions not based on reason or actual experience) students with better SAT scores will perform better in college. There's no evidence to support this and it is still a major deciding factor in college admissions.
Discrimination - (unjust treatment of different categories of people) the argument over what is "just" treatment will likely never end. I believe it is unjust that primary school districts in the USA can vary wildly in quality.
Okay, so lets come up with something different than SAT since we are unable to keep the same goal for everyone... based on their race
Thank you for recognizing that poor caucasians and asians also exist, and that rich black people exist.
What "anti-Caucasian" racism?
I think he means anti-white? Racism is any kind of prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by a group, individual, or institution against a person or group on the basis of their race or ethnicity. The group being discriminated against does not necessarily have to be the minority group.
Absolutely not. Racism is inherent to the pseudo-science of scientific racism invented by European "intellectuals" to justify the brutality of colonialist exploitation - which, of course, is still ongoing. It is a fundamental classification of "race" as defined by scientific racists - ie, white supremacists. White goes on top, black at the bottom, some other people go in between. There is no other kind of "racism" - if it doesn't work according to that specific race hierarchy, it's not racism.
This is the reason why it's not technically true that black people cannot be racist - they can, but they can only be racist insofar as the tenets of white supremacism allows. White supremacism never allows black people to discriminate against white people - which is why you don't see black cops murdering white folk once a week in front of cameras and getting away with it (they would if they could - cops are cops).
Han supremacism (for instance) is not racism - it is not based on the same race classification system that forms the core tenet of white supremacist ideology. It simply does not view the world through the lens of race that westerners (ie, white people) do. It is an entirely different form of institutionalized bigotry and discrimination.
The elite are at it again. Got to keep them colored folks down.
Treating people equally regardless of their skin color is hardly 'keeping the colored folks down'.
People of color have never been treated equally in America. That is the reason they need priority in education to allow them to start to balance out some of that inequality.
The issue comes when you are applying skin color adjustments to people who aren't at a disadvantage. A rich black person has significantly more opportunity than a poor asian person. However, Harvard was saying the rich black person should get extra preference over the poor asian student, purely because of their skin colors. Why should the asian student from a poor family with hardly any opportunity be held down?
Were they held down though? In California when they eliminated AA at their public universities there wasn’t much change in the economic outcomes for asian and white students. Sure, before maybe they didn’t get to go to the ‘best’ school but on average still had similar outcomes.
This isn’t true for black/Hispanic/native American students whose economic outcome depreciated. These students benefited from being able to break into the social networks provided by elite universities. Something that white/Asian students might already have access to.
So if all that matters is going to elite schools then sure, but there are externalities that are important and not everyone benefits equally from the top echelon of schools. It’s not a perfect system but it’s better than not having it.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/06/27/1184461214/examining-the-impact-of-californias-ban-on-affirmative-action-in-public-schools
Harvard specifically suppressed asian applicants based on their race, not via some secondary effect, but as a core aspect of their race-based admissions. In the court case, this was demonstrably proven and is why the race-based admissions were struck down under the Equal Protections clause.
"The First Circuit found that Harvard’s consideration of race has resulted in fewer admissions of Asian-American students. Respondents’ assertion that race is never a negative factor in their admissions programs cannot withstand scrutiny."
Yes, if all that matters in your life is where you go to school then yes they were held back from achieving that.
For a lot of people higher education is seen as the mantle to climb the socioeconomic ladder and on average the Asian or white kid who was competitive but didn’t get to go to harvard will achieve similar outcomes regardless.
This is gross. Why are these people allowed to be in charge of anything?
Why? Colleges can still give preference to students who live in poor neighborhoods or bad school districts. What's the problem with that approach?
my understanding was that affirmative action is about creating a diverse student body
I see it as compensating for disadvantages people have. So, if one student has lower test scores, but achieved them despite going to an underfunded school and having a part-time job, then that student scores are actually more impressive than someone else who scored better, but had private tutors throughout high school. Once you account for people's disadvantages, you should naturally get more diverse student body.
And of course minority students have disadvantages that should be accounted for. But they don't affect everyone the same, and racial quotas is a very lazy way to do this. Instead, admissions should look at the individual circumstances of each student.
It's also worth pointing out, high flying students will do fine wherever they go. Cream rises to the top. They'll be fine no matter where they go.
Diversity of opinion, background, and perspective is important. Diversity of skin color is meaningless on it's own.
Well with the supreme court it isn't because we elect them. They are appointed so I'd say it's to protect the interests of the elite like banning abortions etc.
They are there to interpret laws, not go along with what's socially acceptable at any given time
They are not the group of people you should look to for social progress and it's by design
Not at all. Why should wealthy black students get consideration denied to a poor white student? Why should Asian students be straight up discriminated against?
Use economic status, not skin color.
The unfortunate reality is that left unattended these organizations revert to extreme bias for white and rich. Getting rid of AA in favor of something better is fine - but getting rid of any guideline full stop is a much, much worse answer to the problem.
California eliminated Affirmative Action. Are they some racist hellscape now?
And by all means, legislate against advantages to the rich. Make legacy admissions illegal. Make admissions tied to donations illegal. But the 2 wrongs make a right idea can’t be a basis for policy.
Treating people equally, regardless of their skin color, is gross?
The problem is that people were NOT being treated equally and so we had to try to force institutions to accept people they'd otherwise discriminate against. This isn't going to bring any equality, we're going to go back to marginalized groups and historically discriminated groups being left out again and rich white people will be back "on top."
I say this as a white guy with all the advantages society gives me so I'm not some rando asking for a leg up on anyone. It's not about me.
Two wrongs don't make a right. If it was wrong to exclude people based on race before, it's still wrong now.
Agreed. But if in this context, the harmful impacts of race aren't addressed, only the beneficial impacts, then it's just engaging in further harm.
Say Population A is constantly having their things stolen from Population B. The government steps in and says, "Ok, we will give Population A a certain amount of money to make up for what is constantly stolen." While it isn't enough to make up for their loss, it helps Population A mitigate the impact of the theft. Population B then says, "That's not fair. They shouldn't get anything just because they're Population A. That's populationist." Meanwhile, Population A is still getting their things stolen by the same population that are claiming the policy is unfair, and now the policy that was implace to help mitigate that is being removed. The real immediate solution would be for Population B to stop stealing from Population A, and ultimately stop dividing the entire population into A & B. However, the latter isn't going to happen until the former stops.
Affirmative action actively and deliberately keeps asians down purely due to the race of the asian individual applying. It isn't some secondary effect, but a primary facet of Harvard's race-based admissions. Why are you defending a system that keeps a minority down by specifically targeting their race? How is that not active harm?
Disadvantaging certain groups now doesn't fix what happened in the past. Arguably it makes it even worse
The most egregious example of institutional racism is finally undone.
In a country built by slave labor this is the most egregious example of institutionalize racism? Not the slavery? Or the time we took Japanese people and put them in camps?
Those were rightfully outlawed. And now AA goes with them.
Man you moved the goalposts fast.
Yeah man, black people going to college is right up there with chattel slavery and putting people in concentration camps. The great injustice of our times.
Slavery was codified into the Constitution. It was never outlawed. You should take 5 minutes to actually read on the subject.
So racism is still okay but only when it is against certain groups? That sounds pretty racist
You must be joking. Have you ever looked at history in your lifetime?
I'd argue the whole "you can't enslave black people unless you accuse them of a crime first" is much more eggregious but go off I guess.
"But this one affected 'Asians'! Oh, and white people, but that's totally not what we're focusing on." - these people