[HN Gopher] Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in col... ___________________________________________________________________ Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions Author : rbrown Score : 663 points Date : 2023-06-29 14:16 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.latimes.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com) | tekla wrote: | "Racism in US college admission has been banned" | | I'm a huge fan of this. | tomohawk wrote: | Clarence Thomas' concurring opinion begins on page 49. He pulls | no punches, and its worth a read. | | His concluding 3 paragraphs: | | > The great failure of this country was slavery and its progeny. | And, the tragic failure of this Court was its misinterpretation | of the Reconstruction Amendments, as Justice Harlan predicted in | Plessy. We should not repeat this mistake merely because we | think, as our predecessors thought, that the present arrangements | are superior to the Constitution. | | > The Court's opinion rightly makes clear that Grutter is, for | all intents and purposes, overruled. And, it sees the | universities' admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, | race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix | in their entering classes. Those policies fly in the face of our | colorblind Constitution and our Nation's equality ideal. In | short, they are plainly--and boldly--unconstitutional. See Brown | II, 349 U. S., at 298 (noting that the Brown case one year | earlier had "declare[d] the fundamental principle that racial | discrimination in public education is unconstitutional"). | | > While I am painfully aware of the social and economic ravages | which have befallen my race and all who suffer discrimination, I | hold out enduring hope that this country will live up to its | principles so clearly enunciated in the Declaration of | Independence and the Constitution of the United States: that all | men are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated | equally before the law. | Osiris wrote: | I think public college admission should just be a random lottery. | mcpackieh wrote: | A good development but I think this won't stop the practice. | Harvard lawyers are now hard at work finding new way to achieve | the same effect. | isykt wrote: | [dead] | Spivak wrote: | > Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting | universities from considering an applicant's discussion of how | race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, | inspiration, or otherwise. | | But this _is_ affirmative action. What did they strike down? | | Also god damn I hate this supreme court for overruling their own | decisions. Even the ones I would personally benefit from. This is | going to ruin the court in the long run for partisan bullshit. If | going to the court twice for the same issue can get you different | decisions then the ruling of the court means absolutely fucking | nothing. You might as well just continue your affirmative action | program because the next time the court makeup might be different | and they'll change their mind again. | | This was already decided forty years ago | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_University_of_C... | rufus_foreman wrote: | >> Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting | universities from considering an applicant's discussion of how | race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, | inspiration, or otherwise. | | The decision continues with: | | "But, despite the dissent's assertion to the contrary, | universities may not simply establish through application | essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today. (A | dissenting opinion is generally not the best source of legal | advice on how to comply with the majority opinion.) "[W]hat | cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. The | Constitution deals with substance, not shadows," and the | prohibition against racial discrimination is "levelled at the | thing, not the name."" | | They are warning the universities to not play games with them. | rufus_foreman wrote: | >> I hate this supreme court for overruling their own decisions | | Which Supreme Court decision did they overrule here? They | upheld the Equal Protection Clause. Should they have overruled | that? | | "Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor | tolerates classes among citizens" | | They upheld that. Should they have overruled it? | | They had to overrule something. People are mad because they | didn't overrule the Equal Protection Clause. | Spivak wrote: | That's not how this works. The supreme court interpreted the | equal protection clause to mean A in the original case and | decided that limited discrimination didn't violate the | constitution. Disagree with it all you want, I'll join you, | but that was the ruling. Today the supreme court interpreted | the equal protection clause to mean B and struck down their | previous decision. | | Also lol our constitution isn't anything blind and both | acknowledges and establishes different classes of person in | order to make rules about them. | parineum wrote: | After being presented with new information, they came to a | different conclusion. As a result of their previous | decisions, the data showed that the limited discrimination | allowed has had a larger effect than anticipated and led to | an outcome of less than limited discrimination. | Spivak wrote: | I actually agree, but what you're describing is | effectively legislation. The courts were asked to make a | decision and interpret the law as it's written and they | did. Honestly, I care more that the court makes a | decision than they make the right one. They took a | dispute over ambiguous law and disambiguated it. After | that the ball is in the other branches' courts. | Legislation that outright banned affirmative action would | have been constitutional and we let the status quo stand | for 45 years without feeling the need to intervene. I can | only speak for myself but a ruling that people just | accept and don't feel the need to pass new legislation to | correct is to me the gold standard. | parineum wrote: | I don't think that's the case. | | The effects of a law can end up being unconstitutional, | that's something that may only reveal itself over time. | falcolas wrote: | > I hate this supreme court for overruling their own decisions | | Yeah. Based off the various deep dives I heard about a year | ago, the court is supposed to strongly favor leaving prior | court rulings in place, but the current justices decided that | they were fine changing prior rulings since it's a convention, | not a rule. | | The current SC really dislikes all the prior rulings that were | based off the 14th amendment, so I fully expect this same | behavior to continue. | jwond wrote: | The Supreme Court has a long history of overruling prior | Supreme Court decisions, and has done so over 200 times. | | https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions- | overru... | Timon3 wrote: | The problem goes further - a number of justices previously | declared they'd honor the previous decisions. They should | have lost the publics trust over that alone. | falcolas wrote: | > They should have lost the publics trust over that alone. | | Public opinion - let alone public trust - does not matter | to a Supreme Court justice; they're appointed by the | government for life. There's literally nothing the public | can do (short of revolution) that impacts their jobs. | | Only the opinions of the house/senate members even remotely | matters to them, and so long as congress can't get enough | votes to impeach them (a majority in the House, and 2/3 of | the Senate), they can do pretty much whatever they want. | | Historically, no Supreme Court justice has ever been | impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. It's | been around 200 years (1805) since the last attempt was | even made. | dragonwriter wrote: | > they're appointed by the government for life. | | "In good behavior", actually. | | > There's literally nothing the public can do (short of | revolution) that impacts their jobs. | | Political pressure on Congress to impeach a particular | justice, or exercise its power to adjust the scope of the | appellate jurisdiction of the Court, as well as taking | direct extralegal action against specific judges are all | acts "short of revolution". | | > Historically, no Supreme Court justice has ever been | impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. It's | been around 200 years (1805) since the last attempt was | even made. | | No, 1805 was the only successful impeachment of a Supreme | Court justice, though no conviction occurred in the | Senate. The last _attempt_ (counting only those where | there is some official action in the House directed | explicitly directed at impeachment) was far more recent, | 2019 against Justice Kavanaugh (H.Res. 560). | Timon3 wrote: | Public opinion and public trust absolutely do matter to | the justices. They derive their mandate from the people. | If the people really want to relieve a justice of their | duty, they will find a way - "the government" can't exist | without any public support. | | The Supreme Court is only the Supreme Court if enough | people say it is. | emmelaich wrote: | I guess you can consider an individual's hardships (whatever | they may be) but not a blanket consideration based on race or | religion or ... | bitcurious wrote: | Do you feel the same about the courts rulings on segregation? | Initially decided on 1896, revisited in 1954. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education | Spivak wrote: | I do, I think this should have been done with amendments to | the constitution like we did for the 15th and 19th amendment. | | Taken to its logical extreme if the US had a single dictator | but they did good things would you argue against needing a | democratic process? The court lives in a weird place where | they have close to unchecked power and make their own rules. | It is what it is, there's always a root account somewhere. | But the convention/culture of the courts has been the primary | thing keeping this in check and if that goes we're in | trouble. | mucle6 wrote: | The court changing their mind feels like a feature not a bug. | The court represents people, and those people change their mind | from generation to generation. | | I don't want to live in a world where we can't overturn bad | decisions. Would America be better off if we legalized slavery | 300 years ago, and could never undo it? | Spivak wrote: | Our government is structured so that nothing is really set in | stone. The people who are supposed to check bad decisions by | the court are the legislature. | | This game we're playing is we now have one legislative body | that writes laws and another that writes effectively | constitutional amendments. This makes no sense at all and | we've created an in-practice unchecked branch of government. | | So I don't disagree that the court has done good things with | their power but once in a generation swings is much easier to | put up with than what we have going now. The world hasn't | meaningfully changed since they originally upheld | universities' limited ability to discriminate and as much as | I don't like that choice I still think take-backsies is a | worse one. | | My (red) state has a bill going through right now to outlaw | university diversity quotas and it likely won't pass so this | isn't cultural attitudes changing. | [deleted] | kllrnohj wrote: | There's a process for overturning "bad decisions" it's called | passing legislation. There's a reason Stare Decisis is | supposed to be a thing, after all. | | But if the Supreme Court doesn't have to listen to itself, | then does any court? Should every minor court just decide SC | precedent was bad & overturn it? | parineum wrote: | No two cases are the same. Often, a unique situation can | highlight why a previous decision was erroneous. | [deleted] | cpascal wrote: | I think universities can probably come up with a different set of | non-protected criteria to lift underrepresented communities out | of social/financial oppression. This might even provide greater | access to some equally needing students that are looked over by | racially-based criteria. In a perfect world, everyone would have | equal opportunity and support throughout their primary education, | and college admission could be much more merit-based. | Unfortunately, that is not the country we live in and there is | little appetite to invest in ensuring all Americans have access | to high-quality primary education. | commandlinefan wrote: | > lift underrepresented communities out | | There already is, though - study hard! | mehlmao wrote: | *study harder than the rich legacy admissions | peterfirefly wrote: | And choose your parents well! | cpascal wrote: | This isn't always possible, though. You could grow up with | parents and teachers who do not push you to study. Perhaps | you are malnourished or abused. Having the environment and | support to study hard is something not all students have. You | cannot hand wave studying as the solution to the disparity in | educational outcomes. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | Why does it need to be more complicated than investing more | into underperforming areas? Money talks | [deleted] | rtkwe wrote: | My read and view has been for a long while that to reverse the | centuries of race based discrimination you have to do something | to specifically funnel opportunities and resources to those | affected groups. PoC were kept out of many of the big wealth | building booms in the US like the post WW2 golden era for | example so unless we're willing to wait for one of those to | come around again or a couple centuries of diffusion to even | the starting point discrepancies the pre Civil Rights Era built | deep into our cities and economies, the race based issues of | the past kind of demand addressing with race based solutions. | Lendal wrote: | Yeah, and I think it will be pretty simple to do. Just switch | over to looking at what district the applicants graduated (or | what neighborhood they grew up in) from and try to equally | represent all school districts over time. For instance, if you | have a poor high school that's never had anyone admitted to | your university, then try to choose the next outstanding | applicant coming out of that high school. That promotes | diversity without involving race. Poor families can't easily | change school districts just because they find themselves with | a gifted child on their hands. I know because I've been there. | TMWNN wrote: | >Just switch over to looking at what district the applicants | graduated (or what neighborhood they grew up in) from and try | to equally represent all school districts over time. | | This is basically what the University of Texas does; the top | x% of applicants from each Texas high school is admitted, | with other applicants competing against each other. I think | it's a good way for a state school with the duty to educate | its citizens to do so without using race as the determinant. | caditinpiscinam wrote: | For people who are against affirmative action, what is your | preferred course of action, given the racial disparities that | exist in academia? I see three options: | | 1) say that these disparities are inevitable | | 2) wait for the disparities disappear on their own | | 3) address the disparities through some other policy or | initiative | Izikiel43 wrote: | 4) which race you are doesn't matter, it's your skills that | matter and what should be judged on | caditinpiscinam wrote: | How do you measure skill? And if your measure of skill | over/under-represents races, does that mean that your metrics | are flawed, or that skill is distributed unevenly across | races? | Izikiel43 wrote: | From a non US perspective, your questions don't make sense | and are flawed, and the whole race discussion is racist | (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racist | definition a). | | Why is race important at all when discussing academia? | | The merits are what matter, not your race. | ProllyInfamous wrote: | 3) e.g. See how Texas uses "Top 7% Rule" as a color-blind | method of increasing diversity through meritocracy. When I was | applying, it was a "Top 10% Rule." | dreday wrote: | Ok. Did they propose a different way to combat systemic racism? | mythrwy wrote: | They did issue this ruling, which in my estimation does exactly | that. | bluepod4 wrote: | Can someone explain why the military academies were explicitly | exempt from this ruling when their policies are similar to those | of UNC and Harvard? | losvedir wrote: | As someone of Hispanic descent this is very interesting to me. | Affirmative Action probably helped my father, whose father was a | construction worker and mother a homemaker both of whom dropped | out of high school, get into college and ultimately become a | doctor. | | But because my father was a doctor, I had a fairly privileged | upbringing. I'm a generation removed, but growing up in | California always had to indicate my background on standardized | tests and always checked "White" for race and then "Hispanic" for | ethnicity (which is how all the tests asked it in those days, not | sure if it's still the case), without thinking much about it. | | I went to MIT, and to this day I wonder how much checking | "Hispanic" helped me there and if I "deserved" to go. I was | valedictorian and had a perfect score on the SATs and I feel like | I was a strong candidate, but then everyone who gets into MIT is | strong. And since I did successfully graduate then I guess it was | fine that I was accepted, but I was constantly blown away and | overwhelmed by the accomplishments of my peers there, and always | wondered a bit if I belonged. | | I've always had an identity crisis about what I am. I know in the | current zeitgeist there's a big push for racial justice, of which | being Hispanic and "brown" is a part. But it also feels totally | irrelevant to me, personally, because of my upper class | upbringing and elite education, and I feel like I've never really | been discriminated against. Though I possibly have been | discriminated "for", and benefited tremendously from it. | | So I don't know how I feel about this change. It's certainly a | big one, but in the long run, maybe it's good? I know I've always | wondered if being Hispanic helped me get into college or into | jobs, but the flip side is that other people must wonder the | same... | azinman2 wrote: | If affirmative action is what enabled your father to become a | doctor, then it almost certainly sounds like the success story | that motivates the action. I don't know percent of the time a | similar story is required to justify the means, but it sounds | like you should embrace the path that your family's life has | taken. The alternative, presumably, would be effectively unfair | knowing what could and then did become. | CuriouslyC wrote: | Do we need race based affirmative action though? Couldn't we | have needs based discrimination? What makes a poor hispanic | immigrant more deserving of a hand up than a poor ukranian | immigrant? | zo1 wrote: | Because the issue goes way further back than college, yet | they sit here at the college-level with little-dictators | breathing down their necks about why is their college "so | white". So how far back does one need to go, and how | patient are we to see generational results? | | Honestly, I think this is 100% the responsibility of | parents. They are the ones that need to break the | generational cycle of whatever they're facing. Beyond that | - as you say - needs based approaches to this. | | I don't understand why we as a society can't simply have | "Oh you got more than 95% on your standardized test scores? | 100% full scholarship to any college and any degree you | wish without paying it back." That is how you fix a society | if you ask me, by rewarding hard work and merit. | nyolfen wrote: | people vote in racial/ethnic blocs, so spoils are doled out | on those terms | azinman2 wrote: | I would say both are in need, personally, but affirmative | action is looking at the reality that society will | discriminate more against the Hispanic immigrant... so | everything on the way to education and afterwords will | reduce the chances of upward mobility and the self- | confidence to withstand such discrimination compared to | someone who is the dominant perceived race. | AuryGlenz wrote: | Well, there's someone out there who is white or Asian that | didn't get to become a doctor. Are their kids as successful? | | Otherwise I agree with you. It's in the past. We all have | advantages and disadvantages, whether genetic or societal. | There's no reason to feel bad about something in the past you | had no control over. | hospitalJail wrote: | They don't get into medical school, they have a pre- | med/biology degree. Make $40-60k/yr. Maybe 100k-200k if | they are exceptionally talented | | vs... | | 250k-1M/yr | | The difference is being middle class to being upper | class/upper-middle class. | | The school district differences are stark. So yes, these | kind of things make a big difference. | | We really just need to remove power from the AMA/AGCME in | this specific case. It hurts everyone except the Physician | cartel members. | jlawson wrote: | It's worth bearing in mind that if affirmative action helped | his father become a doctor, it also prevented someone else's | father from becoming a doctor. I wonder what that person | could have achieved. | hondo77 wrote: | No, it means it prevented someone else's father from | attending _that_ school. There are others. That 's why you | apply to more than one. | Maxion wrote: | In the end, higher education is a scarce resource. Making | it harder for group X to get in is absolutely | discrimination, and does reduce the amount of people from | group X who can attain higher education. | | Affirmative Action is talked about as positive | discrimination, but it is still discrimination none-the- | less. | fwungy wrote: | What if Group X has their own country where they will get | that preference but Group Y is native born and gets a | taint? The top class of Group Y will be fine. It's the | lower ranks of Group Y who lose out to Group X and the | higher ranks of Group Y who cement their own status by | cutting off their native competition. | dragonwriter wrote: | > Affirmative Action is talked about as positive | discrimination, but it is still discrimination none-the- | less. | | _Every_ decision is discrimination. Basis and purpose is | what matters. | [deleted] | Maxion wrote: | > Every decision is discrimination. Basis and purpose is | what matters. | | That is true, which is why it is illegal in my country to | discriminate based on things that you _are_. In my | country, we value equality and believe that everyone | should be treated fairly and without discrimination. Laws | are in place to protect individuals from discrimination | based on factors such as race, gender, religion, age, | disability, and other protected characteristics. | | Discrimination based on who you are, such as your | inherent traits or characteristics, is considered unjust | and contrary to the principles of equality. The focus | should be on a person's abilities, qualifications, and | merits rather than factors that they have no control | over. | cadlin wrote: | There's a saying in my country. "The law, in its majestic | equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under | bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their | bread." | peterfirefly wrote: | I doubt the poor likes having their bread stolen. | Der_Einzige wrote: | The poor are overwhelmingly the victims of petty crime. | The rich can live in gated communities and afford | security systems. | peterfirefly wrote: | Or even a small private army for their protection. The | poor have to rely on the mercy of the law, the police, | and the courts. They don't like having their things | stolen, they don't like being accosted in the street, | they don't like disorderly conduct around them -- but | they don't have nice villas or townhouses to retire to. | | I don't think Anatole France really had thought things | through when he wrote that quote... | anthk wrote: | That's poverty related, not race. Keeping fighting over | the skin color instead of joining forces together against | these money-addicted thugs. | Maxion wrote: | There aren't any beggars or any people sleeping under | bridges in my country who don't want to do that | themselves. We have social security for everyone, and | homeless shelters for those who cannot behave well enough | to not be evicted from apartments. | Maxion wrote: | As someone not from the US, this whole Affirmative Actions | seems to just be reversed racism. I.e. in the end more-or- | less still unfair. | | Better to just remove race all together, and e.g. require | college admissions by law to be judged without knowing the | applicants name or ethnicity. | | To me as an outsider, the US focuses wayyyyy to much on | race. Race really does not matter, and no matter how much | the US claims to be racism free, the degree to which it is | focused on just proves that the US isn't free of racism. | Even asking for ones race or ethnicity in my country would | be considered descriminatory as there can be no purpose for | collecting that information that isn't descriminatory. | | Discriminating based on race (among other things) is | forbidden in the constitution, and that is absolute. | AlgorithmicTime wrote: | > Affirmative Actions seems to just be reversed racism. | I.e. in the end more-or-less still unfair. | | It's not even reversed racism, it's just plain old | racism. The only difference is the targets of the racism | are European descended and Asian descended people instead | of African and Latin American descended people. | 1234letshaveatw wrote: | This post reeks of smugness. I hope you aren't from | western Europe, as you can easily see that there is | discrimination based on race with regards to eg policing- | where crimes committed by certain individuals of a | protected status aren't even allowed to be reported on. | And FYI- equality is also enshrined in the US | constitution, but constitutions are (universally) subject | to interpretation | xienze wrote: | > Better to just remove race all together, and e.g. | require college admissions by law to be judged without | knowing the applicants name or ethnicity. | | Believe me, this has been considered and tried in various | contexts. The problem is that in the end schools and | companies find out that they don't achieve the "right" | mix of ethnicities and genders and so it's back to square | one. | megaman821 wrote: | They tried this with orchestra auditions by doing them | behind a curtain but they didn't end up with the "right" | mix. As of yet they haven't figure out how people's | auditory senses are racist. | parineum wrote: | When I was growing up ('90s, 00s), that was the | "movement" and teaching that was going on. It's | colloquially known as being "colorblind". It has | radically shifted the opposite direction. It's the | difference between equality and equity, equality of | opportunity vs. equality of outcome. | | I don't know what's right or wrong really but I can say | that the rapidness of the shift was definitely shocking | to me. There's a lot of disagreement between Gen X, | Millenials and Gen Z on the topic because of it. | mrguyorama wrote: | It's because no matter how much you tell people "don't | see race", it doesn't stop a large percentage from being | raised by explicitly racist people, of the "That football | player is acting like a n***" type. If the people who | understand that racism is bad do nothing, and the racists | are the only ones who act on stuff, what do you think | happens? You can't counteract racism with silence. | megaman821 wrote: | Is there any shred of evidence that a large percentage of | people are raised by explicitly racist people? That is | just total fantasy on your part. | throw38264 wrote: | China had this policy as well. | | Minorities, like the Uyghurs, were exempt from the | 1-child policy and they got extra points on the national | college exam. | Clubber wrote: | >this whole Affirmative Actions seems to just be reversed | racism | | It is, but it is an attempt to right a wrong, which isn't | an easy thing to do or measure. It's a moralistic | endeavor and moralistic endeavors can become monsters in | their own right. | | >To me as an outsider, the US focuses wayyyyy to much on | race. | | It's become a political football, because of this, I | think it's perpetuating it more than it would be | naturally. Morgan Freeman articulated this well many | years ago. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpnpIhqSLto | | >Even asking for ones race or ethnicity in my country | would be considered descriminatory as there can be no | purpose for collecting that information that isn't | descriminatory. | | It's funny, this is done to ensure that historically | oppressed races are measured for success / failure. It | seems to support to your reverse racism comment. | | >Discriminating based on race (among other things) is | forbidden in the constitution, and that is absolute. | | I agree, that's why AA was struck down. It's a clear | violation of the 14th amendment. This was known at the | time and known in the early 2000's (2003?) when this came | up before. It's always been considered an emergency | measure that would need to end because it was a clear | violation of equal protection under the law clause of the | 14th. | | _All persons born or naturalized in the United States, | and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of | the United States and of the State wherein they reside. | No State shall make or enforce any law which shall | abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the | United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of | life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; | nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal | protection of the laws._ | MisterBastahrd wrote: | If it were absolute, then affirmative action would never | have been necessary in the first place. | peterfirefly wrote: | They weren't... | ScoobleDoodle wrote: | The socioeconomic class of the family is the highest | indicator of socioeconomic class of the children in that | family. | | In America, the socioeconomic class of people of non- | white races has been systematically kept as low as | possible, through racist systems. Affirmative action | (race based admissions quotas) is one tool to breach that | ceiling. | | In an already racist system, doing something like | economic class based support (example: 20% of college | admissions need to come from poor households) would just | mostly go to the privileged race and perpetuate the | systemic racism. | | Your post is also an illustration of what white privilege | can look like. I know you said you're not American, but | the tone matches to a T. White people don't realize the | negative effects of racism on others and others family | history and can't even conceive of it. From having cab | drivers not willing to pick you up, to not getting a job | or being passed over for promotions, let alone going to | schools that are under funded. And as a side effect of | that racism towards non-whites, white people benefit by | getting the can, the job, the promotion, the good schools | that the non-whites, but equally qualified did not. | | And as the head paragraph states, that gets embedded into | society in the socioeconomic trajectory of the family. | gwright wrote: | > In America, the socioeconomic class of people of non- | white races has been systematically kept as low as | possible, through racist systems. Affirmative action | (race based admissions quotas) is one tool to breach that | ceiling. | | According to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ | ethnic_groups_in_the_U... | | The per capita income for "whites" in the US is $36,962 | | The per capita income for the following groups is higher | than that: Indian, Taiwanese, Japanese, Chinese, Korean. | | Similar results for median household incomes. | | I couldn't easily find the data but I've seen previous | reports of sub-groups of "blacks" that also have higher | median incomes than whites (as a group). Ahh, here is an | article talking about the success of Nigerian immigrants, | as an example. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1 | 177/23780231211001... | | Please explain how to reconcile this data with your | statement. | peterfirefly wrote: | > Affirmative Actions seems to just be reversed racism. | | Nothing "reversed" about it. Racism is racism. | | This is the second time the current Supreme Court has | reversed a previous unconstitutional Supreme Court | decision. I love it! | toofy wrote: | in addition to this, in this scenario, it's worth bearing | in mind that they both should have achieved their dreams. | 1024core wrote: | > If affirmative action is what enabled your father to become | a doctor, then it almost certainly sounds like the success | story that motivates the action. | | But that begs the question: should GP still get the benefit | of AA if their parent took advantage of it and succeeded in | life? | azinman2 wrote: | Did discrimination stop since then? Did the percentage of | underrepresented minorities get balanced out since then? | | My guess is not, in which case it would be justified under | the principles behind it. | | Having successful minorities that continue to produce | success multi-generationally is a good thing. It brings | people out of poverty, creates positive examples for people | that look like someone who is struggling, creates more | wealth in the targeted communities which can be spread | around, etc. | 1024core wrote: | But then you end up with a "creamy layer" that always | stays at the top. | | As The Boss said, "meet the new boss, same as the old | boss"... | azinman2 wrote: | Except if this creamy layer is a minority, society at | large will still be trying to push them down. I think | it's important to have some cream to resist this and | provide counter examples. | brightball wrote: | Something else that isn't really factored into most of these | conversations is the level of gatekeeping around professions | and schools where a much larger group of people can succeed | or even flourish, yet never get the opportunity due to | limited class sizes. | | Around the healthcare debate specifically, there were a lot | of people who talked about the restrictive policies that | artificially limit the supply of doctors as well as the | policies that prevent the creation of more hospitals. | | When my dad was growing up, his father was a mechanic and he | really just wanted to go be a mechanic to work with his | dad...who told him that it wouldn't support 2 families. So | instead...my dad became a dentist. Don't get me wrong, he's | very smart (particularly with math) but how many people could | be doctors? How many people could handle the curriculum at | MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt, etc? | | My guess is that it's a whole lot more than are actually | admitted. Further, is the curriculum at these schools that | much better than everywhere else or is it more a factor of | surrounding yourself with highly motivated peers that makes | it better? | euix wrote: | What's that saying? Something like: "It's not that Einstein | was so brilliant, it's that so many more Einsteins spend | their whole lives in the farm fields" and in between is | there is a whole spectrum of talent vs opportunity and | recognition going from brilliant and unknown to famous and | undeserving. | joh6nn wrote: | "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and | convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near | certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died | in cotton fields and sweatshops." -- Stephen Jay Gould | bamfly wrote: | > Further, is the curriculum at these schools that much | better than everywhere else or is it more a factor of | surrounding yourself with highly motivated peers that makes | it better? | | I've watched the full set of lectures for a few classes at | top universities (Yale, MIT, that kind of thing) for a | topic area in which I took a lot of classes at a very-cheap | low-tier ex-normal-school state university that's | completely unknown outside a ~150 mile radius, and only | somewhat recognized within it. | | From what I could tell, the content, pace, and amount & | sort of assigned work were all pretty similar. | | What differed? Two main things: | | 1) The guest lecturers--cheap state school, none, or | unremarkable ones; the fancy schools, both more common to | have them, and universally _very_ impressive credentials, | possibly someone you 've heard of even if you don't really | follow the topic, basically, their guests were | "celebrities", at least within a field. | | 2) How engaged the students seemed to be--not at all, at | the cheap state school; very, at the fancy schools. | | This is for undergrad. The ways they differ may not be the | same in grad school. | jmoss20 wrote: | Really? | | Maybe my (large, relatively well respected state school) | lectures were uniquely bad. But I found MIT lectures to | be leagues ahead of what we got. They covered more | content, went deeper and were faster paced. The lecturers | were more talented and engaging, and the problem sets | were harder and more efficient. It really was night and | day. | hospitalJail wrote: | Yeah if Physicians didn't have a monopoly on medicine, OP | probably would have lived in a middle-class school district | and not had every advantage of a 1-5%er. | | While AA is an issue, OP most benefited from the Physician | cartel/AMA who lobbies/bribes their way to wealth for their | members at the expense of the 99% of the population. | nradov wrote: | The supply of physicians is artificially limited by | Medicare funding for residency programs at teaching | hospitals. This shortage will only get worse as the | population ages. | | https://www.ama-assn.org/education/gme-funding/save- | graduate... | exhilaration wrote: | The corporations running America's hospitals and health | systems are fully aware of this problem and have lobbied | state governments to give physician's assistants, nurse | practitioners, and in some cases even pharmacists the | same powers as doctors. Depending on your state, you'll | find an NP or PA where you might have expected a doctor | 10 years ago -- places like urgent care clinics and | standalone ERs. | ummonk wrote: | Using parental income as well as parental education level in | admissions would have helped GP's father just fine without | any need for race-based affirmative action. | commandlinefan wrote: | > parental income as well as parental education level in | admissions | | But that leads to the same fundamental problem - somebody | who was "unfortunate" enough to be born into decent | circumstances but _who was actually more qualified_ than | the diversity admit gets rejected. | kaitai wrote: | That's where things fall down, though. I've done some | admissions work (I am not professionally in admissions or | HR or anything, I was just an academic mathematician). A | lot of "qualifications" are experiences you can buy. You | can buy volunteer experiences here or there, whether as | literally as flying your child to Africa to volunteer or | as simply as not asking your kid to contribute to paying | the rent and letting them tutor for no cash. You can buy | your kid test prep classes -- yes, the poor kid can get | an SAT prep book from the library but the rich kid can | have a tutor take their child by the hand and | cajole/harass/massage the kid through test prep. You must | pay pay pay to have your kid participate in traveling | soccer league, dance team, lacrosse, etc. Remember travel | soccer and similar activities are a way of divesting from | the public schools, ensuring that this money and coaching | benefits kids whose parents can pay (the right kinds of | kids, the kids you want your kid to marry). What else? | The music lessons, the robotics contests, the school | district that has a full suite of AP or IB classes rather | than just a couple, but in which houses start at $425k... | | I sure as shit am buying qualifications for my kid, fully | recognizing my role in participating in this flawed | system. Kid's in robotics, language classes, gets to | travel. We switched the kid's school to go to a school | with higher standards. We teach the kid both reading (100 | Easy Lessons...) and writing (workbooks from the non-US | country with better public education) -- small expenses | in $ but nevertheless expenses. I'm sure someone will | happily tell me that the last part is just good morals on | my part, or something, but you can't tell me that | $100/day for a robotics summer camp is just good morals. | I am buying that kid qualifications. | | And then someone will tell me that's not race-based, but | look at the perpetuation of wealth disparity thru US | history, from chattel slavery on through the robbery from | the Freedmen's Bank to the riot that burned down Black | Wall Street to the fact that Black servicemen couldn't | get mortgage assistance or GI Bill college assistance | after WW2. Follow the money. | CuriouslyC wrote: | Poverty has a huge impact on childhood accomplishment. If | someone is a regular A student while dodging bullets with | a mother on crack, they are probably a much stronger | human than someone who comes from an upper middle class | family and gets valedictorian, is class president, does | volunteer work and won a teen writing award or some-such. | worrycue wrote: | > Poverty has a huge impact on childhood accomplishment. | | So help the poor. This has nothing to do with race. | xyzzyz wrote: | Indeed, but the goal of affirmative action as actually | practiced is not to help people who are unlucky in terms of | where they are born and are growing up, but to literally | just achieve desired racial balance. It is pure racism, | it's all about skin color. | | This is why, for example, children of African immigrants | are something like half of black Harvard students, despite | being a minuscule fraction of population: they want to meet | their 13% black quota, but there are too few American | descendants of slaves who will not be utterly out of place, | so they make up the shortage with Africans. | peter422 wrote: | You don't believe there are 300 multi-generation American | black students per year that wouldn't be utterly out of | place at Harvard? | | Don't throw out numbers like that unless you are willing | to back them up, because your claim seems completely | insane. | sanderjd wrote: | I love this confessional personal anecdote of ambivalence. I | often wonder how so many people seem to be so sure about how | they feel about seemingly everything. But you, I relate to. | e40 wrote: | This smacks of (and I don't mean this in an unkind way) of | pulling the ladder up after you use it. | | Yeah, maybe you didn't need the extra help, but I'm pretty sure | there are still a LOT of people with your background that | did/do. | brodouevencode wrote: | > I went to MIT ... I was valedictorian [presumably in high | school] and had a perfect score on the SATs | | > I've always wondered if being Hispanic helped me get into | college or into jobs | | I've been on plenty of hiring committees for engineers and | product owners. The fact that you have stellar academics and | went to MIT stands out well more than your name or whatever | your skin color is. Good for you for your accomplishments. | | AA had a purpose and place at some moment in time. I think that | moment has passed. | falcolas wrote: | > AA had a purpose and place at some moment in time. I think | that moment has passed. | | Given how women and people with disabilities are still | largely absent from these discussions and who still face | massive challenges in breaking into some industries - let | alone leadership roles in those industries - I think AA still | had a place. | | I think it's a mistake to say that absent AA we have a pure | meritocracy. Instead the discrimination is simply based on | criteria that we (US voters) no longer have a say in. | Maxion wrote: | > Given how women and people with disabilities are still | largely absent from these discussions and who still face | massive challenges in breaking into some industries - let | alone leadership roles in those industries - I think AA | still had a place. | | Throwing out a philosophical question, is the end goal that | every industry, workplace, and residential are to have a | completely equal proportion of every group label that can | be created? | kaitai wrote: | Nah, I just want to have a fair chance in any industry I | go into, rather than being measured on a different meter | stick. | mrguyorama wrote: | Fun, that's something that black people want, and yet are | denied, simply for being black. | burkaman wrote: | Not every workplace and residential area, those are often | too small to expect perfect statistical representation. | But for every industry, yes I think that's the goal. | "every group label that can be created" is quite broad, | this obviously only applies to labels like gender, | ethnicity, etc. that have no impact on ability. | nradov wrote: | Should professional sports have gender balance? | falcolas wrote: | Is there a reason they should not? Or at least have | representation? | | With such a small subset of the population, statistically | there wouldn't be an even mix. But IMO there should be at | least some representation of every "protected" attribute. | There's plenty of women with the physique and skills to | fill roles in the NFL, for example. Not every player | needs to be able to be a linebacker, after all. | goatlover wrote: | > There's plenty of women with the physique and skills to | fill roles in the NFL, for example. Not every player | needs to be able to be a linebacker, after all. | | Doubt it, outside of possibly kicker. Otherwise, you | wouldn't see the biological differences in track and | field performances between males and females, given how | much football relies on physical attributes like size, | strength and explosiveness. | | There could be a professional female league of course, | like the WNBA for basketball. But if even tennis has to | keep men and women separate to be fair, then there's | little chance a physical sport like the NFL would be | competitive for women alongside men. | falcolas wrote: | > Otherwise, you wouldn't see the biological differences | in track and field performances between males and | females, given how much football relies on physical | attributes like size, strength and explosiveness. | | I will grant you this. A top-level woman can not out- | physical a top-level man. | | But, there's more to professional sports than just | physicality. You brought up Tennis - but as proven in the | various exhibition matches, women have not been cleanly | swept as one might expect, and many have won over the | years. | | This leads me to say that there's room even in the | physically intensive sports for both genders, not to | mention in the less physically intensive sports. | nradov wrote: | Are you sure about that? I don't think there has ever | been a tennis match played under normal rules where a top | pro woman has beaten a similarly ranked pro man. In the | most recent such major exhibition, Karsten Braasch easily | defeated both Williams sisters even though he was only | ranked #203. The difference in speed and power is | enormous, to the extend that at elite levels women and | men are playing totally different games. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Sexes_%28tenn | is%... | brodouevencode wrote: | > There's plenty of women with the physique and skills to | fill roles in the NFL, for example. | | Please provide three examples. I played college football | at a tiny division 2 school and have never met a woman (I | live in the gym these days) for which this is close to | true. | | Even if you're referring to a low/no contact position | like kicker/punter you're still under threat of a 220 lb | linebacker destroying you [1]. | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqjGBqDwhUU | [deleted] | mrguyorama wrote: | We live in a society where it's impossible for any woman | to ever even do college football in any serious capacity. | Of course there are zero NFL capable women in that | system, do you think people just magically and | spontaneously arise from the aether fully developed to | such capacity? | nradov wrote: | How is it impossible? There are no rules barring women | from playing college football. They can try out for the | team like any other student, and if they're good enough | then they'll get playing time. | brodouevencode wrote: | It requires a physical and genetic predisposition to even | start to qualify for the NFL and most college teams - | which was my point. | burkaman wrote: | Kind of a complicated question, but not necessarily, | gender (or sex I guess) does impact ability in many | sports. | | I say complicated because it's not just about the number | of people employed, but also how much they're paid, | whether or not there are separate leagues, what about the | coaching staff, etc. | | It's fine to think of pro sports as one of the very few | professions where you're performing so close to the human | limit that biology actually becomes a factor. It's not | just gender, for example short people won't be equally | represented in many sports, which does not need to be | true for almost any other job. | reducesuffering wrote: | So you believe that in every industry where men have less | than 50% representation (also college admissions), they | are being discriminated against, because our goal should | be 50/50? | burkaman wrote: | Direct discrimination is not always the primary cause, | sometimes there is a self-selection issue caused by | broader societal or cultural issues. But yes, in nursing | for example, there is no inherent reason for the 90/10 | women/men gender split in the US, and we should aim to | equalize that. I don't know what causes it, probably some | combination of discrimination by employers and patients, | and cultural norms that discourage men from pursuing | nursing. | | Also, given that the split of working-age humans is quite | close to 50/50, if we successfully equalize male- | dominated industries, we would expect female-dominated | industries to also equalize just because of the available | employees. As in, we shouldn't just consider each | industry in isolation, they're all part of one big | society, and they all impact each other. | reducesuffering wrote: | You don't see any possibility that the 90/10 split is in | some part due to each genders' preferences, in general? | You don't think that, in general, women prefer more | social careers and less staring at a screen for 8 hours? | | For example, men are well established to be physically | stronger in general, so fields requiring heavy manual | labor like parts of construction requiring a certain | level of strength, will naturally favor men. All else | equal, this pulls men from other fields so that the other | fields would be like 52/48 women/men. Of course things | aren't equal and we see an amalgamation of different | factors, some preferential, some physical, some | discriminatory, leading to imbalanced outcomes. But | remove the discriminatory and that doesn't mean you get | 50/50. | | If not, then by a purely discriminatory worldview, men | are severely discriminated against in higher education by | their low college attendance rates. | burkaman wrote: | > You don't think that, in general, women prefer more | social careers and less staring at a screen for 8 hours? | | I don't think there's any biological reason for that, and | if it's true I think it's due to mostly contrived | cultural factors that are themselves caused by historical | discrimination. | | > If not, then by a purely discriminatory worldview, men | are severely discriminated against in higher education by | their low college attendance rates. | | Yes, I'm not fighting you on this, I don't know who | you're arguing with. There used to be a male bias in | college admissions, now there is a female bias. There is | clearly no biological explanation, so it must be due to | the discrimination and cultural factors I described. | balls187 wrote: | Equal proportion? No. | | Equal opportunity to participate, yes. | | It starts with a basic belief--do you agree that US | Society is disadvantageous for certain racial | demographics? | falcolas wrote: | > is the end goal that every industry, workplace, and | residential are | | Well, if we follow the meritocratic ideology that | everyone has the same opportunities available to them, it | would be a natural conclusion. There is nothing that | inherently causes a specific skin color or gender to have | the ability to capitalize on an opportunity. | | But, not all things are equal, so IMO we need to give | folks help in ensuring that the same opportunities are | actually available to them. Provide help with ensuring | that everyone has the same tools available to them to | capitalize on those opportunities. | | Now then, WRT disabilities, this gap in opportunities and | tools to capitalize on the opportunities is even greater. | However, given that the one constant in life is that "you | will become disabled, unless you die first", it makes no | sense to leave those with disabilities behind. | athenaRising wrote: | "Well, if we follow the meritocratic ideology that | everyone has the same opportunities available to them, it | would be a natural conclusion" - no, there's always | endogenous interactions. Protected class identity isn't | randomized. | | "There is nothing that inherently causes a specific skin | color or gender to have the ability to capitalize on an | opportunity." The word "inherently" is doing all the work | here by making acknowledgement of endogeneity look | bigoted. But whether any of the thousands of factors that | produce an outcome are "inherent," whatever that means, | is irrelevant. You should always expect endogenous | interactions if you haven't used a methodology that | prevents it, like randomized blind experiments, | difference in difference, instrumental variables, etc. | parineum wrote: | > it would be a natural conclusion | | The counterfactual to that claim is nursing. Nursing is a | very good job that has a relatively low barrier of entry | yet the field is 88% female. The reason for that might be | cultural but the reason is certainly self-selection, not | discrimination. However, the difference may, in fact, be | genetic (hormonal, more likely). | | Nursing is the mirror image of programming. If the gender | compositions were reversed, the campaigns for STEM would, | instead, be for healthcare. | | It may not be useful to look at outcomes to determine if | opportunities are equal. It may be harder, but looking at | opportunities to determine if opportunities are equal is | really the only option. | falcolas wrote: | Ironically, when it comes to nursing, no small part of | the gender difference is because of discrimination | against male nurses by doctors, nurses, and patients. | | Until that's addressed, we can't even begin to assert | that Nursing is inherently a field dominated by a single | gender. Ditto teaching, writing, and so forth. | | "discrimination of men in nursing" returns some great | resources for looking into this further. | klyrs wrote: | Likewise, there's discrimination against women doctors by | doctors, nurses and patients. These are two sides of the | same shitty coin. | balls187 wrote: | Nursing may be 88% female, but outcomes in nursing show a | disparity based solely on race. | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4799908/#:~: | tex.... | prottog wrote: | > if we follow the meritocratic ideology that everyone | has the same opportunities available to them, it would be | a natural conclusion | | It's a natural-sounding conclusion that has no | evidentiary basis in reality. Different cultural and | ethnic groups value and specialize in different things, | which over generations make for significant differences | in the average member of those groups. | | This is one of the biggest fallacies when it comes to | policies that incorporate preferences based on racial, | gender, or whatever other demographic basis you can think | of: that absent biases (or "structures of oppression" or | what have you), each and every subsection of society will | reflect the composition of the whole more or less | perfectly. | | Asians are 6.3% of the US population yet comprise only | 0.1% of the NFL (literally a handful of players among | 1500+ in the active roster). Is it because football | racially discriminates against Asians? No, it's because | Asians as a whole are not very interested in being | professional football players. There's nothing that stops | the odd individual of Asian descent from making it to the | NFL. | | Women are roughly half of the population yet comprise | only 13% of taxicab drivers. Is there a taxicab union | that's preventing women from joining? No, on the whole | women aren't very interested in being taxicab drivers. | There's nothing that stops the odd woman from being one, | though. | | So on and so forth for literally every slice of life you | can think of; you will never find anything that reflects | the demographics of the underlying society. Hell, even | the demographics of the 50 states don't reflect the | demographics of the country as a whole. Vermont is only | 1.5% black, whereas Alabama is nearly 30% black. By that | metric, Vermont would be 20x as discriminatory against | black people, wouldn't it? | worrycue wrote: | To have complete equality of outcome between ethnic | groups would surely involve homogenisation of their | cultures. That sounds totalitarian as hell if you ask me. | falcolas wrote: | > So on and so forth for literally every slice of life | you can think of; you will never find anything that | reflects the demographics of the underlying society. | | Aside from discrimination built into the slices of life, | sure. | | To use your NFL example, a pull quote from a 2022 Yahoo | article: "Those who did come faced virulent racism and | discrimination". There's a number of articles on Google | under the search "nfl discrimination against asians" | which show the same thing. | | This can be repeated with similar results for all of the | other examples you've brought up as well. | | And when there's discrimination happening in the | workforce, it can't be used to say "this is the natural | balance of [attribute] in the workforce". | naniwaduni wrote: | Can you take the smallest slice, "people who are | literally exactly you" and find no preferences that can't | be attributed to discriminatory experiences? | worrycue wrote: | > Well, if we follow the meritocratic ideology that | everyone has the same opportunities available to them, it | would be a natural conclusion. There is nothing that | inherently causes a specific skin color or gender to have | the ability to capitalize on an opportunity. | | But why divide things along skin color? There are so many | ways to group people, income of parents, whether they are | from single parent homes, history of severe illness in | family line, ... etc. No one seems to care about equal | outcomes when it comes to such groupings though. | EatingWithForks wrote: | Additionally WRT disabilities we actually need disabled | people (i.e. pregnancy) in order for society to continue! | vxNsr wrote: | You're saying you want to encourage 85 year olds with | arthritis and glaucoma to keep working until they keel | over? Why put them through that? | falcolas wrote: | No, I'm not saying that - and it's rather disingenuous to | even infer that statement from my post. | | However, if an 85 year old with arthritis and glaucoma | _wants_ or _needs_ to join the workforce, they should | have the opportunity and the tools available to them. | Many from the Baby Boomer generation are finding | themselves in the "needs" category, for example. | brodouevencode wrote: | How are women absent from these discussions? And what | industries are you referring to? | falcolas wrote: | The SC canned AA due to racism, even though AA also | applied to gender and disability. So the value of AA for | women (and men) and disabled people was completely | disregarded. | | One potential industry to consider, especially | considering the site we're on, is startup entrepreneurs - | especially those who are able to get VC and Angel | funding. | brodouevencode wrote: | My understanding is that they didn't can AA whole cloth - | but that race cannot used as a consideration in | admissions. | 1234letshaveatw wrote: | MIT's acceptance rate for women is more than double that of | male applicants (11% v 5%)? | falcolas wrote: | Those NBs are really making some inroads into MIT then, | aren't they? | BlueTemplar wrote: | Sure, but we're talking here specifically a policy based on | a racist concept, which goes on to normalize it, aren't we | ? | falcolas wrote: | The policy was based on several factors, of which race | was one. | | And helping some groups of people - yes, sometimes the | grouping is determined by race - is not discriminating | against everyone else. | | In other words, lifting Asians, Blacks, Hawaiians, and | Eskimos is not being racist towards "Whites" as is | asserted elsewhere in this discussion. I use quotes | because white is a pretty new categorization. It used to | be Germans, English, Italians, Irish, etc. | hospitalJail wrote: | >The fact that you have stellar academics and went to MIT | stands out well more than your name or whatever your skin | color is. | | But his dad did use it to their advantage. OP then gets to | grow up in an upper-class city with a great school district. | | Meanwhile some white or asian person gets bumped off, and | instead of their kids growing up in that area, they grow up | in a worse school district. | hondo77 wrote: | > Meanwhile some white or asian person gets bumped off, and | instead of their kids growing up in that area, they grow up | in a worse school district. | | Because if someone can't go to MIT, they're doomed to a | life of abject poverty? Really? | hospitalJail wrote: | Depends on what they lost on. | | A premed, biology grad just lost out on a 500k/yr job by | not getting into medical school. | | OPs dad got into medical school with this discrimination, | so its not a leap to imagine OP would have grown up in a | lower middle class area if not for discrimination. | hondo77 wrote: | > A premed, biology grad just lost out on a 500k/yr job | by not getting into medical school. | | Into _that_ medical school. There are others. | hospitalJail wrote: | pedantic | parineum wrote: | If that were always true, AA wouldn't be needed. OPs data | could have just gotten into a different school where they | don't discriminate. | brodouevencode wrote: | When his dad was coming through it was probably necessary. | His dad capitalized on it and made seemingly good use of it | by becoming a doctor. | xienze wrote: | > I know I've always wondered if being Hispanic helped me get | into college or into jobs, but the flip side is that other | people must wonder the same... | | What I find amusing is that black college students tend to have | a MASSIVE chip on their shoulder about people assuming that | affirmative action helped them get in or get a job, but suggest | that affirmative action should be eliminated and here comes the | rhetoric about how black people will be banned from ever | attending college or getting a good job. Affirmative action | helps everyone else, but not me! No sir, I was 100% merit- | based! | mtklein wrote: | Hey dude, I was in your class, and I can say firsthand that you | deserved to be there like any of us. | | Almost everyone at a place like MIT feels some impostor | syndrome, and I think maybe even for good bogus-mathematical- | theorem reasons: if a place like MIT tries to select from the | top few percent of a normal distribution, that new distribution | after selection will look bottom-heavy (and feel that way | around campus). We all knew those few incredible superstars who | could run laps around us, but that doesn't mean you're not a | star too. | DesiLurker wrote: | Hmm, I can definitely say I've seen a version of that at | Indian IITs. all great students but most feel like imposters | there. also the subtle thing is that the risk/reward calculus | gets f-ed up, meaning, for all the students who have been at | the top of their games wherever they came from now the | rewards for significant incremental efforts were minuscule. | So I have seen many disengage & get into 'enjoy life' mode. | SCAQTony wrote: | "It's simple: overspecialize, and you breed in weakness. It's | slow death." -- Major Motoko Kusanagi (Ghost in the Shell) | blagie wrote: | I had no impostor syndrome. Many of my peers didn't either; | it's certainly not the case that almost everyone feels it. | There seemed to be little correlation between ability and | impostor syndrome too, so it's not a question of ability. But | I digress. | | Decades out, and understanding university admissions in-and- | out: | | 1) At least an order of magnitude more people "belong" at MIT | than there's space for. Elitist universities manufacture | scarcity. | | 2) It's a pretty random process if you get in or not. The | level of noise in admissions is huge. | | 3) It's not a meritocracy otherwise. There isn't a single | axis of "quality," and if there were, it's not what | admissions selects for. A lot of this became public with the | Harvard lawsuit, where it turned out close to half of white | students at Harvard got in through back doors (alumni, | legacy, children of faculty, athletics, etc.). MIT is | different, but no better. | | 4) Where you go matters a lot less than we make it out to. So | much of MIT (and other elite schools) is about building out | alumni as brand ambassadors. It's like the magic of Disney -- | manufactured by PR departments to fool people. MIT builds | itself on being hyper-elite, but there's no difference in | quality of individuals at MIT, Georgia Tech, or many other | good schools. | | 5) The elite school advantage is mostly in having a brand | stamp and a power network when you graduate, not educational. | That helps a lot of you're trying to be a CEO, faculty | member, or similar, but not so much for the jobs 90% of my | MIT-graduating peers are in. The educational outcomes are the | same. | | Unfortunately, the "best-and-brightest" brand-building leads | to things like impostor syndrome. It may help if you know you | were manipulated, but it probably won't. It's pretty deeply | embedded in most graduates, and even if you know everything | in this post internally, most people take decades to | internalize it. | | Breaking conditioning is hard. | kernal wrote: | >2) It's a pretty random process if you get in or not. The | level of noise in admissions is huge. | | So the person that got into Stanford by writing | #BlackLivesMastter 100 times was just a coincidence? | sanderjd wrote: | > 1) At least an order of magnitude more people "belong" at | MIT than there's space for. Elitist universities | manufacture scarcity. | | This is how I've always felt when I'm involved in hiring | (especially when I was at Google). I don't relate to the | whole "nobody can do fizzbuzz" thing at all. There are _so | many_ ridiculously smart and talented people out there, and | so many bottlenecks letting fewer of them through than | would actually be capable of succeeding. I think it ends up | being almost entirely luck who gets through these | bottlenecks and who doesn 't, because of this. I have found | it very dispiriting to see candidates who I felt were | definitely better than me be rejected by hiring processes | that I made it through, and realizing that I was just lucky | and they were just unlucky. | googhopeful000 wrote: | as someone who's going through the Google hiring pipeline | right now (as a candidate), I just wanted to say thanks | for these nice words of encouragement / rational thinking | about all of this. | | the process (this isn't Google's fault) feels quite a bit | like a semi-objective judgement about my competency and | worth (both as a professional... and individual). sure, I | know I "shouldn't" think like that, but it's overall very | very tough. | | thanks for a clear headed view on it all. | blagie wrote: | Hiring is a die roll. Here's a good model: | | - You want to hire someone with a competency of 100 units | | - A bad hire is expensive, and you definitely don't want | one slipping in. | | - There is a noise floor in the interview process of 50 | units | | - This means you need to set the hiring bar at 150 units | to be sure no one below 100 units slips in | | This means the vast majority of qualified people won't be | hired (which is okay; the cost of a lost hire is low), | but you're very unlikely to get the person who can't pass | fizzbuzz. | | The flip side is that the job applications are saturated | with idiots. Consider this model: | | - You have 100 people in a work force. | | - 95 are qualified, and quickly find jobs after 1-6 | interviews. They stay in those jobs until they get bored, | typically 3-10 years. | | - Five can barely tie their shoelaces. They send out | hundreds of resumes until they get hired, and then stay | in jobs until they're found to be incompetent and fired, | typically 3-6 months. | | Although there are O(20x) as many qualified people as | unqualified, they'll send out at most 100 resumes per | year, and so job applications are dominated by the | unqualified ones. This means hiring needs a very high | noise floor, indeed, and a few idiots will still sneak | in. | | This is oversimplified in a millions ways, but it's why | you probably won't get a Google offer no matter how good | you are. Interviews have a huge noise floor, and to be | hired, you need to be qualified AND have a good day. How | good a day depends on how qualified you are, but that's | why you see twitter posts from world-famous developers | about not qualifying for this job or the other. | azinman2 wrote: | I would disagree with your larger point. While I didn't go | to GATech (although I did get in), I did go to MIT and a UC | as well as a state school and community college. I've also | worked for a couple of FAANGS, startups, etc. So I've seen | a diversity of environments and the people in them. MIT by | far had the highest concentration of top talent of anywhere | I've been. It also had _culturally_ the most ambition which | pushed people into excellence, even if they didn't know | they were capable of it. I was in an honors society at my | UC, and there were very bright people who went onto top | graduate schools, but overall the percentage of them was | lower in the school (which was already hard to get into), | and the ambition level was much less despite (for this | group) raw talent being similar. | | Of course there are more people who deserve to be there | than there is room. But keeping it small allows it to | achieve something special that being bigger wouldn't allow. | Those that do make it in are by and large absolutely top | talent. | | So it's not just education and network that matters. I'd | argue culture is one of the most important under- | appreciated aspects. And MIT culture is top notch. | mywittyname wrote: | My friend, you absolutely deserved to go to MIT. I'm sure the | person you "beat out" for your spot landed at a different, but | equally impressive college and had an experience that they | wouldn't trade for anything. | | > Though I possibly have been discriminated "for", and | benefited tremendously from it. | | So have a lot of people. You're probably surrounded by people | whose familial background benefited them in numerous ways. You | just happen to have some empathy about yours. | strikelaserclaw wrote: | Do "white" hispanics face the same issues as those of say | Indian heritage? | peruvian wrote: | I'm a white Latino and no, we don't. Maybe on paper if | someone assumes I'm mixed or Afrolatino, but I get all the | privilege of being white passing. Not only that, if I'm | hanging with brown Latinos they feel safer with me. I've | often seen my friends stopped by police or given looks when | alone but not with me. | | The whole Hispanic thing is a mess in the US. Not only due to | color of skin but culture and class. I have friends in my | home country who are mixed and dark skinned but culturally | fit with a suburban white American more. | erickhill wrote: | I took a class in college that focused on Latino culture in | the US. It was taught by a professor originally from Puerto | Rico. For context, this class was taught in Los Angeles. | | He said that even across central and south American | cultures skin tones affected how people were perceived and | treated as applied to class. The lighter the skin the | better in most cases but not all. He wasn't proud of it or | endorsing it, just stating it as a fact of life in many | countries. And he'd been on the other side of that | perception, too. He later intersected those prejudices with | the interesting pride many take (or appropriate) from the | art and symbols of indigenous and ancient civilizations | (Aztec, Mayan, etc.) even if there were no direct | biological ties. It's a very complicated topic with | countless caveats and anecdotal experiences. | | But the biases we witness and experience in the US are not | unique by any means, that's for sure. | Der_Einzige wrote: | It also doesn't help that | | 1. Latinos are extremely colorist in their own countries | and have serious racism from the "European" heritaged ones | vs the "indigenous" ones. This dynamic is a big deal in | latin america | | 2. Latinos in the USA voted more heavily from Trump in 2020 | than in 2016, and iirc trump got like 39% of the latino | vote in 2020. Latinos are extremely conservative and are | straight up abandoning catholocism and embracing | evangelical protestantism due to the "liberalisation" of | the catholic church. | 1024core wrote: | I grew up in India, where they have taken "affirmative action" | to the logical extreme: there are explicit quotas in | admissions, jobs, etc. You can have up to 50% (if not more) | seats in a college reserved for somebody or the other from some | historically marginalized/discriminated classes. As a result, | you have situations where somebody from a marginalize class | scores, say, 30 in the entrance exam and still gets in, whereas | somebody from the "general" class scores 90 and still doesn't | get in. | | Where I'm going with this is: this remedy (affirmative action) | is a terrible one; because once it is in place, it is | impossible to get rid of (notwithstanding today's USSC | decision, which was caused by a unique confluence of factors | which resulted in a court dominated by conservatives). No | political party will want to touch it in the future, and if at | all, politicians will fall over each other trying to add more | and more reservation for their voting blocks. | | IMHO, the solution to historical discrimination is not to lower | the standards of admission, but to raise the standards of | applicants. Inner city schools are terribly lacking in quality | teachers, resources, facilities, etc. and that's where the fix | should start. Make inner city schools so good that white | families will lie about their residential status to get their | kids into those schools. This, of course, requires hard work on | the part of politicians, so instead, they choose the easy way | out: let's just lower the standards. | OkayPhysicist wrote: | Inner city schools are terrible, not for a lack of resources, | but for a lack of familial support. I live in a state where | those inner-city schools receive substantially _more_ funding | (per student, and total) than ones in wealthy suburbs. Yet, | guess what, the wealthy suburbs still have wildly better | outcomes. Turns out the parents working several jobs to try | to make ends meet have less time to push their kid to succeed | than the stay-at-home moms. Why are poor neighborhoods | predominantly made up of groups that are minorities in the | American population? Because America, within the last few | generations by law, and up through today by social | convention, has given fewer opportunities to succeed to these | marginalized groups, including in education. | | Left to its own devices it's a cycle of poverty: Better jobs | go to the better educated, better educations go to the people | with parents who had better jobs. When you had a legal system | actively applying a cap to the success of people in these | groups less than 3 generations ago, it should come as no | surprise that it takes active measures to unfuck the mess. | 1024core wrote: | > Inner city schools are terrible, not for a lack of | resources, but for a lack of familial support. | | But we've known this for a long time, and still refuse to | deal with it. With some resources you can deal with this | issue. | Covzire wrote: | Here's a crazy idea, how about universities lower costs? | They're spending insane amounts of student Tuition on | Administrators that were never necessary in the 80's or 90's or | even most of the 00's. Why are colleges hiring so many | administrators, some even approaching 1 administrator per 1 | student, how is that sustainable? | mips_r4300i wrote: | Every day just after 5pm, sitting in my college's Engineering | atrium, I would start to see a veritable army (dozens and | dozens) of youngish, well-dressed people walk out to the | parking lot and leave. They weren't faculty, because I knew | all of the faculty, and they weren't students. They had | little embossed metal nametags. | | I suddenly realized that the classrooms and labs I knew were | only a tiny part of the actual building, and we were | outnumbered. | shultays wrote: | I was interviewing a person and in post interview meeting with | HR and managers, HR made a comment like "this would be the | first hire from country X" | | After the meeting I noticed that I am the first person that was | hired from my country. I am still wondering if a similar | comment was made about me as well | whateveracct wrote: | Hah this mirrors my life & experience to a T! [1] I had other | "high-achieving" kids at my school be sour grape-y about the | MIT thing, saying I only got in because I was Mexican. On the | one hand, it probably helped. On the other, I was imo clearly a | cut above them academically. | | I've never really had an identity crisis about it though. I'm | white, but I'm also Mexican. The majority of my extended family | is Mexican (I basically have no extended family on any maternal | branches). But I wasn't raised to speak Spanish and in general | had a pretty generic white American upper-middle-class | upbringing. Both are parts of who I am and neither deserves | shame or uplifting. | | [1] Except while I got into MIT, I did not go (went to my very | good in-state school - whole other topic + I am very happy with | the outcome.) | prottog wrote: | > Both are parts of who I am and neither deserves shame or | uplifting. | | This is a good point. I've always thought that my esteem of | anybody should not change based on immutable characteristics | of that person, or other factors that they had no material | choice in being. | [deleted] | balls187 wrote: | Do you think this ruling will help or hurt people who identify | as Hispanic? | surement wrote: | > I went to MIT, and to this day I wonder how much checking | "Hispanic" helped me there and if I "deserved" to go. | | the problem with aa is not about people getting in that didn't | "deserve" it, it's people getting in who don't have the means | to succeed; elite colleges brag about their diverse admissions | but don't talk about people who go on to fail when they | could've succeeded at less prestigious schools | | if you succeeded then you deserved to get in. | TheBigSalad wrote: | Take every advantage you can get. Don't be sorry. | tqi wrote: | I think the idea that anyone "deserves" to what they get is | misguided at best. None of us got to where we are on our own, | so I think all that we can really judge ourselves on is how we | use the opportunities that we are given. | | For me the most hurtful revelation from the Harvard case was | their use of "personality scores" which were systematically | lower for Asian applicants[1]. I don't mind that students from | other backgrounds might be given a leg up in admissions. What I | do mind is the implication it is because who I am is somehow | less than - less interesting, less personable, less "deserving" | - rather than merely a mechanism to create diversity. The | latter is an attempt to rectify historical injustices, while | the former an attempt to fuck up someone's sense of self worth. | | [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian- | enrollme... | | Harvard consistently rated Asian-American applicants lower than | others on traits like "positive personality," likability, | courage, kindness and being "widely respected," according to an | analysis of more than 160,000 student records filed Friday by a | group representing Asian-American students in a lawsuit against | the university. | e40 wrote: | I completely agree. I think these scores were merely a made | up metric so they could discriminate against Asians. | az226 wrote: | Harvard has said that 85% of students who apply would do well | academically, but they only accept like 4%. | zapataband1 wrote: | If your family benefited from it and taking it away is now | 'good' then it sounds like you're saying you couldn't care less | about any future generations who could've used this ladder to | better their lives. As the immigrant, much like your father, | whose father is a construction worker, that's how it reads. | peruvian wrote: | This. "I got mine so no one else needs it". And sorry GP but | you absolutely got into MIT partly because of your ethnicity | - along with your grades of course. I benefited from that as | well and it was fairly clear. | catiopatio wrote: | The problem is that it's a zero sum game - if you've | benefited from it, then someone else was discriminated | against on the basis of their race for your benefit. | uoaei wrote: | That's simply not true, it is largely on colleges to | improve staffing and facilities to accommodate more | students. It is well-known that populations generally | increase so especially public schools should probably try | to understand and address that. Due diligence is | something we should ask of our publicly funded services. | | It's not the role of students to delay or defer their own | education out of some sense of guilt. | zapataband1 wrote: | Someone else, who historically was a white person that | benefited from their race in every other aspect of | society | dmix wrote: | Everyone obsesse about Harvard/MIT but AA affects every | school and not all of them give you a fancy big name on a | resume. | | And if we are talking high end schools I've also read it's | not simply a matter of getting admitted and that the rates | of affirmative action candidates drops outs at much higher | rates, which hurts/delays their chance to succeed in the | future because they would have been better off dominating | at a lower percentile school. | _gabe_ wrote: | >> I was valedictorian and had a perfect score on the SATs | | Sounds like OP certainly deserved it to me. Instead we have | these perverse incentives to go to "elite" schools purely | because of the school's name (not because you're really | getting that much of a better education than you would in a | different top 100 university). These schools end up with | thousands of applicants who definitely deserve to get in, | but they need to cull the group of perfect candidates | somehow because of practical considerations like faculty to | student ratio. Whether they discriminate using race, or | implement a lottery system, there's plenty of candidates | that deserve the entry but don't get in because of | practical limitations. | | I certainly didn't get perfect scores on the SAT and I | certainly wasn't valedictorian. | | This mentality is very gross, and treats life like it's a | fair game with clear winners and losers. Life is messy, and | you can still do every single thing right and end up worse | off. Likewise, you can, and many people do, fail "up" into | extraordinary positions of power due to no merit of your | own. | kenjackson wrote: | Why do you think you didn't belong? I know a lot of white and | Asian MIT grads and only one had perfect SAT scores. And | several were valedictorian, but I'm not sure it was the | majority. | | Curious how often you wonder if the white people you work with | had an advantage by not being historically discriminated | against? Probably never. And rightfully so. If people do wonder | then that's on them. There's a lot of dumb stuff people can | wonder about. | catiopatio wrote: | He wonders because there's been systemic sustained racial | discrimination for the benefit of people of his race. | | It's one of the insidious and corrosive ways affirmative | action undermines the accomplishments of its potential | beneficiaries. | saddd wrote: | Hispanic isn't a race. | kenjackson wrote: | Do white people in general feel that way because of | systemic sustained racial discrimination for their benefit? | | I get what you're saying, but racial discrimination has | worked against Latinos and Blacks for so long and in so | many facets of life -- you don't find it odd that this | singular event of college admissions trumps everything | else? | AuryGlenz wrote: | Most white/Asian people (especially men) living now | haven't really had any "systemic" advantages. It's been | the opposite for a while now. | | If you want to argue non-systemic, then maybe. There will | always be some racist people out there, whether it's | white people favoring white people or black people | favoring black people. | kenjackson wrote: | This is an oft debated topic. Some possible examples of | system advantages include family wealth. Blacks | historically weren't allowed to have jobs that paid, or | were paid less than whites for the same work. Or weren't | allowed to own real estate. Or weren't given access to | the same loans (including federally subsidized loans). | Even as early as this year there have been cases of | discrimination relating to real estate and race. | | So as a white male, when you inherit your parent's house, | that's system advantage built from advantages that most | blacks couldn't benefit from. | | Additionally, where you live and proximity to better | schools. Blacks in many cases weren't allowed to move | into certain neighborhoods. Busing attemnpted (horribly) | to compensate, but even that now is largely no longer | done. Blacks simply tend to go to worse schools by almost | every metric (including total funding). | | Health care is another example, where most research has | been done for white ethnicities. And there is still | discrimination in how health care is administered. And | health insurance coverage is still more difficult for | Blacks to get, and they often pay more for it. | | These are a few examples of "systemic" discrimination | that benefits white people. There are literally books | written about this if you do want to research it | yourself. | prottog wrote: | > Or weren't given access to the same loans (including | federally subsidized loans) | | I'm not sure which time period you're talking about, but | if it's the Boston Fed 1992 research on mortgage loans, | then it has had legitimate academic challenges to its | methodology. | | > So as a white male, when you inherit your parent's | house | | The same advantage goes to a black male who inherits his | parent's house, and the same disadvantage to anyone of | any color who did not inherit a house. | | > where most research has been done for white ethnicities | | The US was nearly 90% white as recently as 1960, and was | 75% white as of the 2000 census, so of course most | research that has been done in the past was done with | white research subjects. | | Ultimately, nobody serious rejects the fact that there | was past de jure racial discrimination against blacks in | this country. What many people challenge is the notion | that present de jure discrimination is the only way to | remedy past de jure discrimination. | kenjackson wrote: | > I'm not sure which time period you're talking about, | but if it's the Boston Fed 1992 research on mortgage | loans, then it has had legitimate academic challenges to | its methodology. | | I was referring to redlining. See | https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten- | history... | | > The same advantage goes to a black male who inherits | his parent's house, and the same disadvantage to anyone | of any color who did not inherit a house. | | Of course, and any difference in equity associated with | the house. Around 75% of whites own a home versus 45% of | blacks. And as you know -- homeownership is the single | largest source of wealth for most people in the US. | | > The US was nearly 90% white as recently as 1960, and | was 75% white as of the 2000 census, so of course most | research that has been done in the past was done with | white research subjects. | | Of course. I'm talking about proportional representation. | See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4670264/ | | > Ultimately, nobody serious rejects the fact that there | was past de jure racial discrimination against blacks in | this country. What many people challenge is the notion | that present de jure discrimination is the only way to | remedy past de jure discrimination. | | The person I was responding to seemed to be making that | assertion. And I never said that discrimination was the | only way to remedy past discrimination. | | The part that's disheartening is that so many people are | so up in arms about affirmative action -- and how its | discriminatory. But consider everything else we discussed | (and there's a lot more) as having no real impact. I | mean, why are we even talking about it... | mantas wrote: | What about people who come from families who immigrated | into US very recently? On both ends of affirmative | action. Why would sub-Saharan african immigrant get a | preferential treatment while eastern european one | wouldn't? | dumpsterlid wrote: | [dead] | uoaei wrote: | The opposite was true for the entire time affirmative | action was not in place. Hindsight doesn't make history | less relevant for our present for addressing | intergenerational inequities, just like foresight-blindness | doesn't make our present actions less relevant for our | future. | | It's a hard problem. | nsfmc wrote: | i won't speak for gabe, but i (hispanic) had two distinct | (and memorable) instances at mit where a classmate told me, | to my face, that the only reason i was at mit was because i | was hispanic. one passed it off as common knowledge in a | group conversation, the other said it to me, unprompted, | while we were talking to each other. they were assholes, to | be sure, but it's not some hypothetical scenario. | chasil wrote: | Our world has foolish ideas with regard to class, and it is | best to set them aside. | | Be the person that you are. That person is no more or less | worthy than any other. | | The judgements of the world do seep into our subconscious, but | with a clean view, you can put them where they belong, which is | away. | ben7799 wrote: | You have standard high achiever imposter syndrome and probably | would if you were white/non-hispanic as well. You deserved to | be there... | max_ wrote: | Why don't they Just ban people from divulging what college thet | went to during Job applications? | | Not everyone can go to an Ivy League College. Employers should | only be focusing on GPA or other performance metrics. If its | really about meritocracy. | duped wrote: | I admittedly skimmed the opinion, but is this the first case that | establishes a private entity like Harvard University is bound by | the Equal Protections Clause? I thought existing law and | precedent only had it applied to state/state actors (and a few | cases where private businesses acted like governments, eg company | towns). | [deleted] | jeffbee wrote: | The private nature of Harvard is debatable. The value of the | subsidy represented by the tax exemption of their endowment is | $50k per student per year. | duped wrote: | It's not debatable, Harvard is a private entity. The fact | they receive tax preference or federal funding and whether | they should if the government considers their acceptance | policy to be racist is a very different question than the one | in the opinion, as far as I can tell. | | And whatever debate could be held seems to be absent in the | opinion, which is why I asked. | [deleted] | torstenvl wrote: | I was also confused by this, at first. However, it's explained | in footnote 2 of the majority opinion. Title VI of the Civil | Rights Act makes the analysis identical for public institutions | and private institutions subject to the Civil Rights Act. | leephillips wrote: | However, the text of the opinion only invokes the 14th | Amendment, not this Act or any other federal law. So I share | this confusion. | mindslight wrote: | Yeah, I do not understand this claimed basis of Equal | Protection either. | | Taking into account _only_ equal protection, it would still be | acceptable for a private institution to say "We want to limit | our association with $RACE". Such a policy does not rise to the | level of being law (notwithstanding that private institution | being considered a de facto arm of the government, which is an | argument I'm open to but doesn't seem to have been explored | here). | | If the reasoning of this decision hinged upon interpretation of | the Civil Rights Act as banning "positive discrimination", that | would make sense independently (I think a concurring opinion | might be based on this?). If Harvard College maintained that it | didn't want to be discriminating based on race but was being | forced to by Title VI, I would see the link to Equal | Protection. But as presented the majority opinion seems like a | mismatch trying to somehow tie the issue directly to | constitutionality. | | edit: I think they're getting there by this chain: Title VI has | provisions mandating equality. Due to the Equal Protection | clause, Title VI's provisions that prohibit discrimination must | also be construed to prohibit "positive" discrimination. | Therefore Harvard is bound by this new interpretation of Title | VI which prohibits it from engaging in "positive" | discrimination. (contrast with simply ruling parts of Title VI | unconstitutional and therefore null and void) | | Ultimately this feels in line with the continued erosion of | separation of powers as every activity gradually comes under | the purview of the federal government. | stjohnswarts wrote: | Corporations are also private entities and they have to also | adhere to the Civil Rights Act and not discriminate based on | race/ethnicity, why wouldn't Harvard? | adolph wrote: | _The Equal Protection Clause operates on States. It does not | purport to regulate the conduct of private parties. By | contrast, Title VI applies to recipients of federal funds-- | covering not just many state actors, but many private actors | too. In this way, Title VI reaches entities and organizations | that the Equal Protection Clause does not._ | | p 129 of | https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf | ProllyInfamous wrote: | From majority opinion: | | "The universities' main response to these criticisms is 'trust | us' ... Universities may define their missions as they see fit. | The Constitution defines ours." | alberth wrote: | DEI? | | Does this impact internal corporate DEI programs? | HeavenFox wrote: | One thing I never understood is why colleges themselves fight so | hard for affirmative action? Wouldn't admitting the most | qualified students, regardless of race, be in their own interest? | If they are afraid of the political pushback for having too few | Black and Hispanics, doesn't this decision give them cover? | rendang wrote: | One explanation is that the officials involved are "true | believers", not acting out of fear of pushback but out of their | own values. | dahwolf wrote: | Thousands of very well paid administrators depend on this | problem persisting, hence it's not supposed to be ever solved. | shmde wrote: | Wow flagged within 30 mins before people could even start having | a discussion. HN audience is wild. | [deleted] | commandlinefan wrote: | > HN audience is wild | | Predictable, too. | flowerlad wrote: | It is important to note that Harward's admission policy that is | the subject of this case was designed to favor White students | over Jewish ones [1]. Today it is being used to discriminate | against Asian Americans. | | Colleges are already prepared for this ruling. Many, such as the | University of Washington have abandoned standardized tests | because such tests compell universities to admit the kinds of | students universities are trying to limit (Asian Americans). | | [1] https://www.economist.com/united- | states/2018/06/23/a-lawsuit... | givemeethekeys wrote: | > White students over Jewish ones | | Isn't Judaism a religion? Most Jews I know are very white. | rendang wrote: | Ashkenazi Jews are an ethnic group originating in the Near | East, but with some admixture from Europeans. At least the | plurality if not majority of American Jews are nonreligious, | see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews#Religious_bel | ief... | flowerlad wrote: | Good question. There is no consensus on who is considered | white. Nazis considered Jews to be a separate and inferior | race. At one point in the US, Italians were not considered | white. Irish, Greeks and Poles were not considered white at | some point, and were discriminated against in the US. "No | Irish need apply" (NINA) signs were common at one point in | history. | hospitalJail wrote: | This ends up moving the burden onto individuals. | | If you have an Asian Medical Doctor, they are AAA. If you have | a multiple minority Medical Doctor, they are not necessarily | AAA, they could be As. | | Which one do you want to do brain surgery on you? | | Without Affirmative action, you'd trust a multiple minority | doctor equally to an Asian doctor. | | I wonder what the cost is on the healthcare system/US citizens | when we have worse performers in critical positions. | einszwei wrote: | > If you have an Asian Medical Doctor, they are AAA. If you | have a multiple minority Medical Doctor, they are not | necessarily AAA, they could be As. | | > Which one do you want to do brain surgery on you? | | I have no strong opinion on affirmative action but this is a | dishonest way to frame this topic. | | Affirmative action doesn't mean an institution can produce | unqualified doctors. Both doctors should've gone through same | examinations at medical schools, studied same textbooks and | have similar training. | vxNsr wrote: | Look at grade averages for med schools over time. | | Also if the school is willing to bend their standards on | admissions, who's to say they won't bend their standards on | grading? It's also almost impossible to get fired from a | residency program once you get in, graduation rates are | near 95%... | | I already don't trust MD's compared to DO's because MD | schools nearly all got rid of grading and all classes are | pass/fail which encourages doing just well enough to pass. | DO schools meanwhile continue to grade students which | encourages excellence. | crackercrews wrote: | IIRC some med schools are getting rid of grades in favor | of pass/fail. This makes it hard to tell which students | are great and which ones barely passed. | cbm-vic-20 wrote: | > who's to say they won't bend their standards on | grading? | | Schools that do this will lose their accreditation. | Exoristos wrote: | Schools that _don't_ do this will lose accreditation | soon. | hospitalJail wrote: | Wishful thinking. The Physician club is one of back | scratching, not critical evaluation. | | The Physician->AMA->ACGME->Physician pipe benefits | everyone involved. | | What's the worst thing that could happen? Malpractice | lawsuits have doctors win 50% of the time when there is | strong evidence, and 90% of the time when there is weak | evidence. | | The rich created a cartel and the feedback loop is | already here. | ekam wrote: | Taking the same texts and having the same books mean | nothing since the point of tests is the grades so what | matters is if they had the same grades or not | ekam wrote: | I just saw the stats from a medical school-- I believe it was | UCSF but correct me if I'm wrong-- where the average Asian | reject had higher scores than the average Black/Hispanic | accepted applicant | elishah wrote: | > I just saw the stats from a medical school-- I believe it | was UCSF but correct me if I'm wrong-- | | Given that affirmative action was banned at UC schools in | 1996, I suspect that you're mistaken about at least the | school in question. | | Which, it should be noted, means that we've accrued ~25 | years of data about the results of such a ban. And the | answer is that it's bad: https://www.latimes.com/california | /story/2022-10-31/californ... | ekam wrote: | Affirmative action was banned across California and the | article you cited itself says that the problem is only | with UCs and not CSUs. The reasons proposed (distance, | costs, number of UCs vs CSUs) intuitively ring true to | me. Today's decision is obviously correct from a legal | standpoint (equal protection clause bans all race-based | discrimination) but the difference between CSUs and UCs | actually suggests a positive path forward for helping | boost Black and Latino enrollment in UCs- step one might | be building a lot more and making them cheaper. | [deleted] | ProllyInfamous wrote: | An asian applicant scoring 25 on the MCAT has a 6% | acceptance rate. | | A black applicant scoring 25 on the MCAT has a 56% | acceptance rate. | | As a medical school dropout, scoring 33S... I had a hard | time accepting this. | jeltz wrote: | The one who is the best surgeon which could be any of them | judging from my experience from other jobs. All the best | programmers I know did well in school and on tests, but | beyond a certain point test scores mean very little and other | factors not measured by tests matter more. | | I would not want a doctor who did poorly on tests, but a | doctor who is great at tests vs one who is top in the country | probably does not matter. | crackercrews wrote: | UPenn Med School lets in minorities through a side door, no | MCAT required. [1] | | This will increase discrimination against minority doctors. | It most hurts the ones who could have gotten in through the | front door but will be assumed not to have. | | 1: https://dailycaller.com/2022/08/26/some-underrepresented- | stu... | jppittma wrote: | Do people who do better on standardized tests make better | doctors? I take the null hypothesis. One's grades and test | scores in high school are poor predictors of one's | professional efficacy after a certain point. | | I say, eliminate obvious cases of students who aren't trying, | take the handful of obviously excellent students, and for | every applicant in between, have a lottery. | bouncing wrote: | America has long had most of the best universities in the | world. Getting rid of all standardized tests and instead | relying on (heavily inflated, or not) grades, combined with | bullshit essays, is going to significantly undermine that. | oluwie wrote: | Standardized tests have been known for years as an very | unfair way of judging students. People with resources to | prepare and study for those tests often end up with inflated | scores than for people who don't have the resource to prepare | for them. High school grades have been consistently found the | be #1 leading indicator of how well a student is going to do | in college. | pie_flavor wrote: | They have been _claimed_ for years; what is _known_ is that | they beat the hell out of every other way of judging | students, especially subjective ones. When standardized | testing was adopted in the first place it was rightly | heralded as a tremendous win for diversity. | graeme wrote: | Could you name a metric where rich people get _less_ of a | boost due to their wealth and status than standardized | tests? | | To properly compare standardized tests vs. an alternative | you need the other half of the comparison. | flowerlad wrote: | So untrue. The best resource for preparing for standardized | tests is Khan Academy. It is free. | | High school grades on the other hand are getting inflated | now, because of parental pressure, now that colleges are | abandoning standardized tests, and relying more on GPAs. | High schools don't even have a standardized curriculum. | Comparing GPAs across high schools make no sense. Within | the same school it may make sense though. | charlieyu1 wrote: | And the alternative is letting rich parents hire agencies | who will prepare their kids with a perfect portfolio of | extracurricular activities starting year 10 that poor kids | have no chance to match. | | At least poor people have a chance when it comes to | standardised testing. | JamesBarney wrote: | The question is not "Does being rich help you with the | SAT?" The question is "Does being rich help you more on the | SATs the other possible criteria?" Because being rich and | having resources helps with everything. | | And being rich benefits GPA, extracurriculars, and college | essays far more than it helps SATs where prep costs a | couple hundred dollars and a month of weekends. | MichaelDickens wrote: | So you're saying the SAT gives a _bigger_ advantage to | people with resources to prepare, compared to a GPA which | is the result of many assignments and tests across four | years? That does not sound remotely plausible to me. | | SAT + grades is a stronger predictor of college performance | than grades alone. AFAIK this is a pretty uncontroversial | finding. For a review article, see Frey (2019), "What We | Know, Are Still Getting Wrong, and Have Yet to Learn about | the Relationships among the SAT, Intelligence and | Achievement." | | [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6963451/ | SV_BubbleTime wrote: | Are you discounting that the factors that go I to the GPA | are wildly different between schools? | | I think the guy that got a 2.9 in a school that was | seriously focused on education is going to be better | prepared for the 4.1 from a peace and love participation | trophy school. | | Are you missing "standardized" portion? | omginternets wrote: | >America has long had most of the best universities in the | world. | | That's a very questionable claim. | DiogenesKynikos wrote: | In terms of research, it's been roughly true since WWII. | Persecution by the Nazis and the war drove the cream of the | European scientific establishment to the US, and the US | poured a large amount of government funding into science | funding after the war. Things are changing, first because | the European scientific community has recovered and also | because scientific research has been taking off in Asia. | 93po wrote: | In terms of reputation, name recognition, notable people | who come out of them, publishers of leading research, and | advancers of technology? If you looked at a list of the top | 20 I would bet more than half are in the US. | omginternets wrote: | Many of those people are imported from foreign | universities. If the claim had been "American | universities are better able to drain talent and fund | research", I'd agree. In terms of educational quality, | it's _questionable_. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _If the claim had been "American universities are | better able to drain talent and fund research", I'd | agree. In terms of educational quality, it's | questionable_ | | Education quality at most top universities is middling, | they're designed for smart people who will reach for | knowledge. Being around the best people drained from | around the world provides fertile ground for that. | Pigalowda wrote: | What do you know? You're claiming something else but | framing it as fact. You don't know anything! | seanmcdirmid wrote: | The ability to fund research and attract the best | researchers (not necessarily educators) is useful at | education's high-end, which is why many come to the USA | in the first place. It isn't so great for standard or | remedial education, however. | _jab wrote: | Care to elaborate? I know I'd been making the same | assumption about American universities - Harvard, MIT, | Berkeley, and Stanford do seem to represent a good share of | the world's best universities. | throwawayXX1X wrote: | India had a caste system for a long time. The lower castes were | relegated to menial jobs while upper classes enjoyed ruling. | After India got independence in 1947, a new legislation was | passed with 20% seats given to the lower castes. Soon, people | demanding more and more seats, A classic case of vocal minority. | | Now, In 2022, almost 70% of all seats reserved for the "lower" | castes with a small population. The rest population competes for | 30% of seats. | | If someone tries to reduce the amount of quota: Riots happens, | ministers are dethroned, shot etc. Nobody even touches this issue | anymore. | | The result is that the top brass of the skilled population have | built up a deep resentment. The moment they start earning well, | they leave the country and surrender their citizenship without | hesitation. | | This leads to a feedback loop where the general population is | taxed more and more to cover the revenue gap of HNI (High | Networth Individuals) leaving. And then more population with the | ability to leave , leaves. | | 1. https://www.shiksha.com/engineering/articles/jee-main- | reserv... | | 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_India | | 3. | https://www.forbesindia.com/media/images/2023/Jun/img_210405... | govg wrote: | The Mandal Commission in 1980 determined the fraction of OBCs | to be 50%, a later sample survey in 2006 showed it to be around | 40%, [0] current reservation policies for this category are | around 30%. | | The Indian Census of 2011 shows that SC/ST category accounts | for roughly 25% of the population. [1] | | I agree with people making the point that these designations | have now been used as a political tool, and that sometimes | cases arise where people fake credentials. But to claim that | they are a lower population is absurd, given that SC/ST/OBC | would account for more than 50% of the population. | | [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class | | [1] - | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheduled_Castes_and_Schedul... | solardev wrote: | I often wished universities (and other organizations) would use a | scoresheet-like "matrix of oppression" to determine someone's | background difficulties. | | Like okay, you get X points if you're this race, Y points for | that. Z points if your parents were poor. Or if you grew up in | these bad zip codes. Or if your dad was gone and mom was an | addict. Whatever. | | As an Asian American of relatively privileged (middle class) | upbringing who went to a state college, I often found it unfair | that many of my desperately poor white peers worked their asses | off their whole lives, despite minimal support from their | parents, to get into college on merit alone. Meanwhile for me, my | admissions counselor handwaved away all the entrance requirements | (my GPA was low, I didn't have the pre reqs done, etc.) and | admitted me on the spot. Years later I'd find out that I was part | of their zip code based recruiting program designed to get non | whites into the school for the benefit of their diversity quotas. | In California they already weren't allowed to use affirmative | action due to Prop 209, so they just used a geographical proxy | for race (finding zip codes with high non white ratios to recruit | from). | | I didn't deserve that spot at all. I never worked for it, I never | suffered for it, my parents didn't much either. I just happened | to benefit from policies meant to protect Black and Hispanic | people, at their expense, while simultaneously throwing white | people under the bus. It was pretty unfair all around. | | I get that as a society we want to help give people a chance to | escape the circumstances of their birth. But skin color alone is | an awfully broad brush that paints only a vague picture of who | that person is and what kind of adversity they may or may not | have overcome. I wish we looked at it with more nuance is all I'm | saying. | Taylor_OD wrote: | The who is more privileged game is not a fun one to play. | | Watched a white male friend and a white passing Hispanic female | friend get into this argument before. He grew up poor in a | rural area, only one parent worked a low paying job and the | other was the care giver. She grew up middle class in a city, | parents were college professors. | | There are a ton of other factors but even at those basics it | got complicated. Is a male always more privileged than a non | male? How do you weight one point of privilege vs another? It | all started to feel very subjective. I wonder if a matrix like | that would even be legal. | dcsommer wrote: | > I wonder if a matrix like that would even be legal. | | Probably not, but I heard from an acquaintance college | admissions official that systems like this exist, and they | are highly secretive. This is just one anecdote, so make of | that what you will. | Balgair wrote: | Even if it did happen, it would immediately become useless. | What's the old adage? Once a metric becomes a target, it | ceases to be a good metric. | | Such a matrix would only become a goal for those wanting to | get their kids into schools. I have no doubt at all, you'd | get a cottage industry of counselors that would plan out how | to best maximize your kids' privileged scores to get in. | | Sell your house to a relative at X months before admissions, | find an ancestor of Y race on our special website at Z months | before submission, claim a disability of ABC and take a | SAT/ACT/FGH test under that disability, etc. You'll have a | score of III with Stanford, a score of JJJ with Harvard, and | a score of LLL with your safety school. Yadda yadda yadda, | and here's the percent chances for each school. | | Hell, with AI and all this jazz, this won't even cost all | that much and be the purview of the upper-middle class. You | could likely just buy that service for under $100 by 2040. | solardev wrote: | Yeah, that's a good point :/ | ars wrote: | I read an article somewhere about parents "divorcing" | before their kids goes to school so that he gets extra | points on the admission sheet. | | They also "move" to a worse zip code for the same reason. | solardev wrote: | For me, the goal wouldn't be to rank the oppressed against | each other, but to provide resources for all those who need | it. | | I think of it less like a tournament and more like food | stamps: below a certain income, food becomes difficult to | afford, and aid is helpful (I was on food stamps for a short | bit and really appreciated it). It doesn't really matter WHY | their income is low, just that society can help them with | food. | | College aid is similar, except that admission seats aren't as | easily fungible as tuition dollars. Same for job spots, I | suppose. | | Let's say you have 100 openings of something. A candidate | would be scored across the board, mixing demographics with | performance. 10 points for an essay. -3 for bad GPA. +5 for a | bad zip code. +3 for being a woman. -6 for wealthy parents. | Whatever. In that way all those factors could be considered. | | But yes, the exact numbers would be difficult to arrive at. | Maybe we could try to statistically model those based on | their impact to lifetime earnings, updated every census or | whatever. It wouldn't be easy. At all. | | Is it legal? I don't know. But the law can change. More to | your point, I'm not even sure if this is a GOOD or ethical | idea. Just a thought for discussion. | DonsDiscountGas wrote: | That's what the University of Michigan used to do, it was ruled | unconstitutional in Gratz v. Bollinger in 2003. | | It was never really clear (imho) how affirmative action (as | actually practiced) could be implemented; discrimination based | on race has been explicitly illegal since 1964 but somehow the | courts ruled that some discrimination was legal (in Bakke v. | California) but the courts can't actually provide a workable | solution, they can just shoot down what people try. | koolba wrote: | > ... but the courts can't actually provide a workable | solution, they can just shoot down what people try. | | And they do it because reverse racism is just racism. | | The way you truly eliminate racism from society is by | eliminating all its forms. And that includes "well | intentioned" racism. | | If there's any metric outside of academic competence that | will be a deciding factor in an admittance process, the only | acceptable choices are wealth and income. Though even those | have their contrarian arguments. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | You're worried about skin color being used as a determining | factor, but you were admitted based on zip code. That's trying | to admit disadvantaged people, but _not_ doing so based on skin | color. So maybe in this specific case, they 're already looking | at it with more nuance? Or at least a different axis than skin | color? | solardev wrote: | While a charitable view, my impression is that was unlikely. | The school itself was already located in an impoverished | area. They didn't need to recruit from the other side of the | state to find disadvantaged students. And their materials | said nothing public about special admissions for | disadvantaged people. | | It wasn't until I met face to face with a counselor that they | let me in. My guess -- it's only a guess, I can't prove this | -- is that the counselor had some leeway to determine whether | to admit me, and that there was an unwritten mandate to | prioritize candidates of color. I don't know if whites from | those same zip codes would've gotten the same treatment. It | seemed to me like the face time was a possible way for the | university to hide race quotas behind judgment calls. I don't | have the numbers for this though, just a hunch. | | And to their credit, we did have poor white applicants who | did get in, obviously, or I wouldn't have gotten to know | them. It wasn't an especially selective school to begin with. | But it did seem like zip code recruiting was a proxy for race | based recruiting. If they wanted income based recruiting they | could've done that from anywhere without geography as a | constraint. | glonq wrote: | > _I often wished universities ... would use a scoresheet-like | "matrix of oppression"_ | | Be careful what you wish for. Like most well-intentioned ideas, | this would become terribly exploited/gamified. | everdrive wrote: | I don't think this is a bad idea conceptually, but I worry that | the implementation would be a race to the bottom. Who gets to | decide who's been the "most oppressed?" It seems like nearly | anyone could feel slighted by this. | solardev wrote: | It's not really about "who is the MOST oppressed" but rather | that there are many oppressed peoples who are right now | slipping through the cracks altogether. | | Probably we need to support all of them, at the expense of | people who could afford it (the upper middle class and up), | not make them fight for scraps against each other. | | I think the likely outcome of such a system (my hypothesis | only, untested in reality) is that we'll find that yes, | believe it or not, life is harder for Black people in | general, especially in some areas, but that there are also | rich Latinos, poor whites, cis men who've been abused, Asians | who grew up in the hood, whatever. | | Our society is too heterogeneous to neatly segregate us by | any one line alone, whether that line is race or class or sex | oe whatever. Our backgrounds are a complex mix of variables | that each have an impact and shouldn't be ignored. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | I think the qualification of how to label the matrix parent | mentions is irrelevant. The chart clearly exists and has | been used. Whether we call it something like 'race | conscious equity generator' or 'oppressed totem pole' is | just a way to polarize each side of the spectrum ( and adds | to the point GP made about whether it is just a play for | making people fight over relatively stupid stuff ). | | The point is that points for being $race and $class exists. | As a society, do we want to fine tune everything to ensure | that our individual mix of variables are accounted for or | do we want individual to adjust to societal mold? | | It is a real question. For school, that clearly values | obedience to the mold and passivity ( for better or worse | ), I would assume the latter. | solardev wrote: | Are you talking about assimilation vs maintaining | cultural heterogeneity (like "melting pot" vs "salad | bowl" models)? | | (Sorry, it's a bit hard to keep track of which post/point | is a parent or GP or such. Not sure if I understood your | point correctly.) | | I think this is more about opportunities than conforming, | like whether we could have a system that provides | supplemental resources (whether it's tuition or teaching | aid or job opportunities or whatever) to people who have | the same drive and merit as anyone else, but for whatever | reason was given a significant handicap early on. | | That just lets them get into an organization to begin | with. What they do with their participation, whether it's | to conform or rebel or something else, is a separate (but | still fascinating) question, I think? | | There is this idea that diversity will automatically lead | to change. Sometimes it does, but yeah, sometimes people | just choose to assimilate and stay quiet instead. | everdrive wrote: | One thing I've heard people suggest is move away from | oppression whatsoever, and move towards a purely economic | consideration. I would definitely be in favor of this, but | I'm sure this approach would have its own detractors. | | I don't disagree with any of the considerations you've laid | out here, but again, I worry about how well we could really | rate people like this in a large scale and fair way. | Bo0kerDeWitt wrote: | This idea of a "matrix" often occurs to me when such topics are | discussed. What attributes would you add to the matrix? You've | suggested race, family wealth, zip code, whether a parent was | an addict. You could also have height, physical beauty, IQ, | degree of disability, sporting aptitude. Perhaps even degree of | neuroticism or autism. The problem is, the matrix quickly gets | bigger and bigger. The number of unique matrices starts to | increase exponentially. What you end up with is a unique matrix | for each individual. So why not do away with the matrix | altogether, and just treat people as individuals, without | fetishizing one or a couple of the attributes? | | Also the weight you assign each attribute is a subjective | judgement. Who do you trust to make such a judgement? For | example, what bestows more "privilege", having a pretty face, | or being from the middle class? And by how much? I don't know. | solardev wrote: | I think there are two questions here, both of which are | totally valid, difficult, and important. | | One, how do you quantify "oppression" or "deservedness". My | honest answer to that is I don't know. I wonder if a | statistical model of demographics vs lifetime earnings can | help, at a first estimation, by it wouldn't be simple at all | and would probably be even more controversial than | gerrymandering. | | But the other side of the question: the "why" should we do | this at all, I think there is a clearer answer for that. | Because if we don't, power and wealth quickly entrenches and | polarizes society. Those with existing privileges share them | with their offspring, and in so doing create dynasties of | power that are counterproductive to the dream of an equitable | democracy (which isn't a dream everyone shares). Those | dynasties can arise from race, but also class, family name, | legacy admissions, etc. People aren't just blank slate | individuals but also very much the product of their | environments. I think the goal isn't to wash away individual | performance but to give people the chance to actually | discover, express, and utilize their individual ability | despite handicaps of circumstance -- at its core, the basic | idea is that there are people who are richly deserving of aid | and recognition because they could be great, "if only" | something. It's the "if only what" that isn't easy to agree | on. | | We don't want to exclude someone just because they had poor | parents. Or because they're neurodivergent. Or white. In an | ideal society there would just be ample opportunities for | everyone. We don't live in such a society, so as long as | there are limited resources and opportunities, we have to | either fight over them or try to share them. I prefer the | sharing model, but not everyone does. | zmgsabst wrote: | Institutional racism is highly corrosive to society. | | All we've done is create new grievances among poor whites to | justify the guilt of upper class whites about things their | grandparents did. Those people are rightly upset that the | government has been openly racist to them their entire lives. | | How did that help? -- I mean, besides soothing the feelings of | elites that they're not bigots, even though they made 1950s | style racist policies about "too many" Jews and Asians in their | universities. (Which is what triggered this lawsuit...) | solardev wrote: | Yeah. There's nobody really fighting for poor white men, | except maybe Bernie? But it's all too easy to capitalize on | their grief and anger and redirect it into cultural wars | instead. That anger is politically more potent left unchecked | and weaponized than actually addressed. | | Some of the most down to earth, hardworking people I knew | were poor white men with a dream: teachers, farmers, | builders, activists, lawyers. They weren't interested in | going into tech or finance or getting rich and retiring early | or whatever, just to pursue their dreams and some semblance | of happiness. Reminds me of old homesteaders. | | Same with the Black and Hispanic folks I knew at the same | time, many of whom got support or scholarships of one kind or | the other. On the ground, we were all just peers and friends | and supported each other however we could. But officially the | poor whites had no formal support network at all, while | diversity programs had special buildings, funding, time, and | labor devoted to the rest of us. My white peers never held | that against me, as far as I know, but they did comment about | how unfair it was to them to be punished for the sins of | their (great grand) fathers. And I can't say they're wrong... | zmgsabst wrote: | I find it interesting that certain people seem unable to | comprehend that Donald Trump is the result of that racism | by Democrats: | | Not because his supporters are racists, but because they're | done with an establishment openly bigoted towards them -- | and pathologically unwilling to address their needs. | dahwolf wrote: | It is goes further back, and is way more international. | | In Western Europe, somewhere around the early 90s most | social democratic parties abandoned their blue collar | base. They used to fight for them. For reasonable hours, | minimum wage, social benefits. | | I guess they were not cool or interesting anymore, as | they shifted focus almost exclusively to minorities as | well as various forms of elitist salon socialism. | | On top of being abandoned politically, blue collar got | destroyed economically by manufacturing moving overseas. | And if that wasn't enough still, they were next | culturally destroyed and labeled bigots or privileged, on | the basis of their skin or what is between their legs. | | This class, which is very large and makes sure shit works | in society, is why you have Trump but also various other | right-wing rises in Europe. | solardev wrote: | Our politics are really, really ugly these days, with no | room for this sort of nuance anymore. It's really sad. | | Talking one on one with people though, it's easier to | find common ground. And sometimes make a new friend. But | it's hard for sure when the elites are so insistent on a | divide and conquer strategy. | [deleted] | hnburnsy wrote: | Can't Harvad et al just stop taking Pell Grants and all other | Federal funding and mostly admit who ever they want? If so would | they do this or do they value that funding too much? | poorbutdebtfree wrote: | This is good. When life and death is on the line I don't want | some guy/girl/thing with a lower SAT/IQ score than me doing the | differential diagnosis. | mikece wrote: | The SCOTUS opinion here: | https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf | Footnote7341 wrote: | The most elite colleges already pre-empted this ruling by rapidly | moving towards non-merit based admissions | | they will just make it so you can't really tell if they are using | affirmative action or not instead of having it be explicit. | stjohnswarts wrote: | Won't people be able to prove statistically that they are | obviously still using affirmative action policies via GPAs/SAT | scores/racial mix? I'm not that great at statistics but that | doesn't seem like a very hard task even using basic figures of | merit like ratio of applicants to population of accepted | students. Seems like something easy to bring a class action | suit against a University after a few years of data is | available. | twobitshifter wrote: | The elite schools are cartels of opportunity that feed themselves | a self-affirming diet of the smartest people to maintain their | place. It's a diversion to look at your race versus somebody | else's race. That's only a small fraction of the admission. A | fraction of the best and brightest across races will gain | admission, but the rest are usually the elites. These people pay | for college out-of-pocket but the colleges themselves don't | actually need tuition to function, their endowments are well- | funded by the same families ahead of time to maintain the | business talent conduit. | | So what does the elite institution actually do? It largely feeds | the smartest to lower business ranks to allow elites to better | their portfolios. You are smart when you get out to Harvard and | you'll still be smart when you leave. A great school would change | low performers into high performers, but that's not what Harvard | does, it looks for those who will already do well after Harvard. | Note that with the business focus on DEI, elites need DEI in | their portfolio, but nepotism comes first. DEI is a worthy cause | to address structural inequities, but it's now also a business | scorecard. | | A meritocracy would eliminate the legacy admissions and make | admissions not only need-blind but also PII blind. Some elite | universities have done need-blind, but this is only sustained by | their endowment which is predicated on admitting the less | qualified legacies. A meritocracy like this is only possible if | the endowment is self sustaining or the college is a public | institution. But is meritocracy what we want? Should we focus the | most energy on advantaging the already gifted? | | It's notable that in other areas of the world, public | institutions provide the best education. Here society is less | stratified and college is for learning more than networking. What | is needed for the same in the US is a change in perception about | our elite schools. | thegjp210 wrote: | These are good points. I think a compelling argument can be | made towards the admixture of the best and brightest with the | daughters and sons of the rich and famous. Net net, I think | that the opportunities provided to the best and brightest from | exposure to, and friendship with the offspring of the | spectacularly rich is why schools and network spun out of | Harvard have generated such an effective flywheel effect over | the generations. Granting access and pedigree to society's | elite by a school isn't purely a vocational exercise - and the | social element is why the Ivies and Oxbridge have thrived so | spectacularly. | aliljet wrote: | [flagged] | paulvnickerson wrote: | Relevant summary from the decision: | | > Because Harvard's and UNC's admissions programs lack suffi- | ciently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of | race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve | racial stereo- typing, and lack meaningful end points, those | admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of | the Equal Protection Clause. At the same time, nothing prohibits | universities from consid- ering an applicant's discussion of how | race affected the applicant's life, so long as that discussion is | concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that | the particular applicant can contribute to the uni- versity. Many | universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the | touchstone of an individual's identity is not challenges bested, | skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. | This Nation's constitutional history does not tolerate that | choice. | NoRelToEmber wrote: | > Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that | the touchstone of an individual's identity is not challenges | bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of | their skin. | | This conflates whether racial discrimination is legal, with how | much people base their identity on race. Because on the latter | question, the universities have concluded correctly - 74% of | Blacks, 59% of Hispanics, and 56% of Asians (but only 15% of | Whites) say their race is extremely or very important to their | identity: | | https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/04/09/race-in... | skrebbel wrote: | The concept of affirmative action is foreign to me (quite | literally so). I only know it from American media, and I've come | understand it to mean "positively discriminate based on race, so | long as it's a minority race" - please correct me of I'm wrong. | | But anyway, my question for the Americans here who grok this | stuff: I assume the intent is to help disadvantaged people have | opportunities that more priviledged people have already. Right? I | mean, I can get behind that. But then why the entire detour with | race? Why not just.. well, let poor people come first? Would the | goal suddenly not be met if poor smart white kids get into good | schools, too? Who loses in this case? | | I don't mean this as a hihi actually sneaky anti-affirmative- | action post, I don't understand the subject matter well enough | (nor America in general). I genuinely don't get why the race | thing is part of the equation. Shouldn't this just be run-of-the- | mill social democratic "lets hand out some extra | opportunities/benefits to the poor" program? | naveen99 wrote: | math needs to work out. if you have a 100 people and 50 defined | to be poor, but can only admit 5 people. How do you decide | which of the 50 poor come first ? The top 5, and you are back | to square 1. The bottom 5, and you have the devil's problems. | Remember the poorest people, the people with billions in | negative wealth, are in jail or worse. You do not want to bring | them back to the top ! | arcticbull wrote: | Lottery? Seems to be the foundation of the immigration | system. | naveen99 wrote: | Why stop at the students, choose the professors by lottery | too, Nih grants by lottery... May as well just burn limited | resources. Lottery math doesn't work. Someone has to fund | the lotteries. And lotteries funding lotteries ain't going | to do it. Someone has to actually produce something of | value for there to be value to allocate. | arcticbull wrote: | I think the argument here is that once you've already | filtered down to qualified candidates by primary | criteria, then you can lottery off the rest instead of | performing a secondary sort. | naveen99 wrote: | I guess the secondary sort is reserved for university, | with a tertiary sort waiting at the corporate level. the | heavy lifting is being done by the sorting, not the | lottery at each level. | rawgabbit wrote: | _I genuinely don 't get why the race thing is part of the | equation._ | | In the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, the US fought a | civil war to end racial discrimination. In his opinion, he | argued that affirmative action which is a race based policy is | logically incompatible with the Equal Protection clause. | | Affirmative Action was always about race. The US historically | and systematically discriminated, disenfranchised, and | disadvantaged slaves and children of slaves. The problem with | race based policies like Affirmative Action is (a) like Roberts | argues it is illogical to fix historical racial discrimination | with modern racial affirmation (b) you have unintended | consequences like discrimination against Asians (c) how do you | even define race in today's hyper connected world? e.g., Is | Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa, an African-American? | Are recent immigrants from West Africa also African-American? | Race conscious policies are generally distasteful because you | then dwell into how many generations of your ancestors were | from X continent and what percentage you are of Y race. | ZeroGravitas wrote: | > In the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, the US fought a | civil war to end racial discrimination. | | That is so ahistorical, it makes me wince. A war to end | slavery, yes (though you could argue even that). To end | racial discrimination? That is a ludicrous thing for a | supposedly educated person to say. | | Abraham Lincoln didn't think the freed slaves should get the | vote. | rawgabbit wrote: | It was during oral arguments with Waxman. Below is the full | quote from https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/01/politics/john- | roberts-affirma.... | | _The controversy animated Roberts, himself a graduate of | Harvard College and Law School. | | "Take two African American applicants," he said to lawyer | Seth Waxman, representing Harvard. "They both can get a | tip, right, based on their race? And yet they may have | entirely different views. Some of their views may | contribute to diversity from the perspective of Asians or | Whites. Some of them may not. And yet it's true that | they're eligible for the same increase in the opportunities | for admission based solely on their skin color?" Waxman | acknowledged that being an African American or being a | Hispanic could give the applicant a boost and may even be | determinative of who gets a coveted place in the freshman | class. | | "Race, for some highly qualified applicants can be the | determinative factor, just as being, you know, an oboe | player in a year in which the Harvard-Radcliffe orchestra | needs an oboe player will be the tip," Waxman said, | offering an example that Roberts immediately skewered. | | "We did not fight a Civil War about oboe players," he | rejoined. "We did fight a Civil War to eliminate racial | discrimination, and that's why it's a matter of | considerable concern."_ | MisterBastahrd wrote: | > In the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, the US fought a | civil war to end racial discrimination | | The US Civil War wasn't even fought to end slavery. That's a | jingoistic talking point that "patriots" like to tell | themselves that has absolutely no basis in reality. But | "discrimination?" That's pure, unadulterated idiocy. | | The war was fought to put down a rebellion by Southern states | who refused to modernize because they used slavery to | maintain their representational numbers in Congress. The | Emancipation Proclamation wasn't even enacted until year | three of the US Civil War, but the Southern states saw the | writing on the wall and decided to act while they believed | they still had time to do so. | | The rebellion was the important thing to the North. | rawgabbit wrote: | How do you define modernize? | chris_wot wrote: | The problem is, according to my reading of SCOTUS, that you can | have affirmative action on anything _but_ race. It occurs to me | that it would have been far more effective if Harvard based | their selection criteria on socio-economic considerations | rather than race. | | It seems like a well-intentioned but badly thought through | process designed to ensure disadvantaged groups gain access | they might not have gotten to their system. | | The general idea seems to be - if you are of a particular race, | you are automatically disadvantaged over ever other race. There | is probably some truth to this. However, perhaps they now need | to look at how people of a certain race are disadvantaged | (other than because of their race itself) and use this as their | selection criteria. This might actually also raise all groups - | there are plenty of people in other racial groupings who also | are disadvantaged for reasons other than their race. | | FWIW, I am not American and I realise this is a sensitive area, | so if I am out of line for whatever reason I can just say this | is an observation which may not be accurate. | gghffguhvc wrote: | As a non-American, I think watching season 4 of The Wire, which | has an education and politics focus, was both eye opening and | profound. Highlighted the profound gap between US and where I | grew up on a number of issues. | rrauenza wrote: | > I've come understand it to mean "positively discriminate | based on race, so long as it's a minority race" - please | correct me of I'm wrong. | | In theory, but in practice it often includes "unless you are | Asian." | | https://www.wsj.com/articles/asian-american-fight-school-dis... | whatgoodisaroad wrote: | To preface: I don't really have an opinion on affirmative | action per se: | | That said, the elephant in the room is that institutions like | Harvard and UNC aren't really about education. They're "ivy | leagues" for preserving class inequality having been marketed | as schools. | | To the extent that race is a distraction from class, the fact | that counteracting racial bias in admissions has failed to | uplift the poor just puts too fine a point on this arrangement. | stu2b50 wrote: | I'm not sure I'd lump UNC in there. It's a fairly elite | public school, but still a public school, with 20k students | and a 20% admission rate. | prossercj wrote: | For many in America, the race issue is more about who we are as | a nation than it is about practical results. We want to | identify as abolitionists, who defeated the slaveholders and | moved toward "a more perfect union" (a line from the | Constitution which Lincoln echoed in relation to the war). | | The disagreement is essentially about the best way to achieve | equality, which though a nebulous term is accepted as a goal | without debate, even though the definition of the term can be | widely different, as in this case. The conversatives argue that | we can only achieve equality by being colorblind. The | progressives argue that we can only achieve equality by | consciously addressing inequality. | | I see some merit on both sides. I tend to lean toward the | conservative view, but I recognize moments in our history where | active intervention was both noble and necessary (desegregating | schools, for example). The question is whether those actions | were special cases or are examples for us to follow going | forward. | mcpackieh wrote: | Equality has fallen out of vogue, the new hot term is equity. | goatlover wrote: | Because the focused has shifted to outcome over equal | opportunity or treatment in the present. Some of us think | that's misguided and the equal opportunity approach was | working. | hedora wrote: | The equity approach is so blatantly racist / classist | that I can't believe it has taken root in left leaning | states like California. | | Equality based: Fund the schools, and use evidence based | educational reforms, with the result that California | schools were top ten in the US. | | Equity based: Not everyone can do math and stem, so | defund science and art programs (already done) and try to | discontinue funding for calculus (almost happened this | year). Schools are now 43rd in country, but rich | districts can have parents fund the missing programs via | donations, and are some of the best in the country. | Further fuck with things by forcing UC admissions to be | based on standing within each school's graduating class, | so illiterate minority kids end up being admitted to the | top schools, and need to be weeded out. | BobbyJo wrote: | The intent is to factor in some unknown "racism" value. Poor | White and Asian kids still beat out poor Black and Hispanic | kids academically on average, so if you naively stratified by | income, you'd still wind up with a mostly white and Asian | student population. | | There are a lot of reasons Black and Hispanic kids | underperform, and it's just easier for the school to short | circuit all that and choose based on race rather than | incorporate all those other factors. It might not even be | viable to incorporate all those other factors. | | We really only have two choices: | | 1) Wait out the effects of racism, historic and contemporary, | which will take hundreds of years. | | 2) Sacrifice some of our "individual determination above all | else" principles to reach some palpable level of racial | equality. | | I think both are flawed in their own ways, but the world is | always imperfect, so pick your side. | spacephysics wrote: | The underlying important question is what do you define as | equality? | | Equality of outcomes, or equality of opportunity? | | This is a very slippery slope when some definitions are not | equal, or stated, as we've come into a recent crisis of | definitions being rewritten unnaturally (I understand the | meaning of words change over time, but there have been recent | inorganic changes, I'd argue) | | The classic opportunity of outcome is proven to be doomed, | and is not aligned with your imperfect world assertion. | | I can get behind equality of opportunity, which I'd argue | affirmative action's impact was antithetical to this vision. | | We've come to a point where the new generation is being held | accountable for something they had no hand in. | | We shouldn't be trying to treat these diversity reports as a | checkbook that needs to be balanced. | | I heard something that resonated with me, and will probably | get me downvoted to oblivion (if it hasn't already happened): | | those that want to look for racism, will find it. | | Once a certain area is solved so to speak, some groups tend | to look even harder, and we get to a point now where we have | this ever-widening definition of what racism is, the goal | posts ever expanding, and this endless loop is our culture | eating itself alive. | | I shouldn't have to say this, but this doesn't imply racism | doesn't exist. But it does imply that our definitions of it | have radically evolved, and perhaps is being used for | ulterior motives outside of "equality" | BobbyJo wrote: | >The underlying important question is what do you define as | equality? Equality of outcomes, or equality of opportunity? | | On an individual level, the obvious answer is opportunity, | but how do you measure that? Generally via outcomes. If two | groups are equally capable and have equal opportunity, you | would expect similar outcomes. | dcow wrote: | [flagged] | BobbyJo wrote: | > At a most naive level, yes. But the post-modern left's | big assumption is that evolutionary, biological, and | other factors can't play a roll in those outcomes. | | Democracy's big assumption too btw. | | > At some level we have to be okay allowing for | inequality of outcomes because we cant even identify let | alone control all the social and biological variables of | being human. | | We are. MIT isn't admitting people with IQs in 60s due to | genetic defects are they? It's a matter of degree, and | managing that requires measuring. We can't measure | people's inborn abilities, so we have to make palatable | assumptions measure what we can, and act accordingly. The | "to discriminate or not to discriminate" choice is purely | one of lesser evil. There is no good answer here. | dcow wrote: | I'm not sure I understand your MIT point. So what are the | numbers today? Where's the gap? | | In my example Native Americans are expected to thrive in | a college environment that promotes binge drinking | despite having equal distribution of IQs. That's arguably | unfair to them and isn't solved by tweaking the input | distribution by identifiable racial characteristics. | Rather, it's an unfortunate adversity that needs to be | overcome (ideally with awareness, empathy, and support of | other people even those who do not have to face that | adversity). | BobbyJo wrote: | > Rather, it's an unfortunate adversity that needs to be | overcome. | | Well yeah, but again | | > ideally with awareness, empathy, and support of other | people even those who do not have to face that adversity | | the question here is _how much_ support and what kinds. | Any amount based on race is still a form of affirmative | action, it 's just not happening in a college admissions | office. | dcow wrote: | In the context here I think people take affirmative | action to mean "official race-based consideration in the | college admissions process". While helping others out | when they demonstrate need is action, it's usually just | called being a decent person and you don't have to limit | it to artificial racial boundaries. | BobbyJo wrote: | > While helping others out when they demonstrate need is | action, it's usually just called being a decent person | and you don't have to limit it to artificial racial | boundaries. | | 100% But back to the context: controlling for racial | disparity. If your answer is "just be nice" then you're | choosing the "wait it out for 100's of years" option. | That's totally your prerogative, and I personally flip | flop between the two in terms of which I think is better | for society. | naasking wrote: | > If two groups are equally capable and have equal | opportunity, you would expect similar outcomes. | | No, because this assumes that different groups have | equivalent values. This is plainly false. There are some | broad similarities for sure, but each gender, ethnicity | and culture values different things which will inevitably | produce different outcomes. | | This is why obsessing over outcome equity is doomed from | the start. It implicitly relies on either enforcing | homogeneity, thus erasing cultural uniqueness, or | outright discrimination in preferring some groups over | others to overcome any cultural values that might impact | outcomes so the final numbers look pretty. | calf wrote: | But what empirical historical example of "outcome equity" | has proven as harmful in scale and magnitude as slavery | or other oppressive, authoritarian social orders? How | much of this concern is founded in actual history? Even | one example would help ground such a hypothetical | concern. | BobbyJo wrote: | > No, because this assumes that different groups have | equivalent values. | | Values are not intrinsically tied to your race, they just | correlate to some degree like income and geography. | Saying we shouldn't compensate for your parents values is | like saying we shouldn't compensate for your parents | income or zip code. That's fine, and it's not immoral to | believe that, but just make sure you're being logically | consistent in the things you believe we should and | shouldn't control for. | TechBro8615 wrote: | In favor of affirmative action, one argument that doesn't | even require comparing "equality of outcome/opportunity" | between individuals, is that the university should have | some say in the makeup of its incoming class, and should | have a right to minimize its homogeneity. You might argue | that race is not an attribute upon which homogeneity can | legally be measured, but that won't change the fact that | it's a proxy for life experience. All else being equal, two | people of the same skin color will have more in common with | each other than two people of differing skin colors, by | definition of "all else being equal." So if you're an | admissions office building a freshman class with the goal | of optimizing the learning experience for each member of it | - which includes the learning experience from interacting | with classmates - then which would be the better outcome: | (a) one where everybody looks the same and has a large | degree of overlapping life experience simply due to shared | skin color, or (b) one where each student has a chance to | meet another student with a completely different upbringing | from their own? | | Now, I'm personally against race-based affirmative action, | but I also recognize that a freshman class composed | entirely of students of the same skin color is not an ideal | outcome. The fact of the matter is that everyone in that | class would have some degree of similarity in their life | experience, because their skin color is unavoidably | something upon which people notice and discriminate (e.g. | dating preferences, subconscious stereotyping, etc.). | | I think the ruling also understands this, and it emphasizes | that university admissions offices are allowed to consider | upbringing in their evaluations of applicants. So if they | want a class with some poor kids and some rich kids, and | some musical geniuses and some athletes, and some boys and | some girls and some gay people and straight people, then | they should be allowed to consider all those factors. And | perhaps naturally this will result in a class with a | heterogenous racial makeup. But what they can't do is work | backwards from that, and assume the racial composition of | their class must be a proxy for all the other axes along | which they want to minimize its homogeneity. | | I'm not sure about the underlying logic, and I think it's | possible it just shifts the problem - because there is | always some human element in admissions, and I'm not sure | it's possible to minimize group homogeneity along an axis | without discriminating along that axis when evaluating an | individual - but I do feel that explicitly discriminating | evaluations of individual applicants based on race is | clearly wrong. | | As a final point: It's also worth considering that even | when discriminating on race, the universities were still | discriminating along other axes arguably not "in the | spirit" of affirmative action - for example, a black person | from a boarding school would receive more "benefit of the | doubt" than a black person from a public school. And isn't | that institutionalizing whatever biases led one applicant | to a boarding school but kept another at home? Maybe a | positive outcome of this ruling is that it will force | universities - who rightfully strive to minimize | homogeneity of their incoming classes - to actively seek | metrics for measuring diversity instead of lazily depending | on skin color while ironically institutionalizing the same | biases that affirmative action sought to eliminate. | wonderwonder wrote: | "the university should have some say in the makeup of its | incoming class, and should have a right to minimize its | homogeneity." If they don't take federal funding, I could | understand that. Both Universities involved in this case | do, so are subject to the Constitution of the United | States. | dragonwriter wrote: | > Both Universities involved in this case do, so are | subject to the Constitution of the United States. | | No, accepting federal funds doesn't make them government | actors, nor does it subject them, particularly, to the | Constitutional provision here (which binds neither | private parties _nor_ the federal government, but only | the states.) | | They are bound by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of | 1964, though, and the Court has a history of interpreting | the language of that statute through the lens of its 14th | Amendment jurisprudence regarding similar language, which | it followed (while altering the guiding jurisprudence) in | this case. | wonderwonder wrote: | I agree with you; however, the federal government is of | course a government actor and cannot continue to give | funding to these schools if they continue to use | affirmative action. Without the funding, the school | essentially closes its doors or offers severely curtailed | services. | dragonwriter wrote: | > I agree with you; however, the federal government is of | course a government actor | | Not one affected by the restriction on _state_ action in | the 14th Amendment. | | > and cannot continue to give funding to these schools if | they continue to use affirmative action. | | Yes, it can (this is obvious, since the decision itself | explicitly allows the federal government _itself_ use | race-based criteria in its own admissions at the schools | it runs, notably, the military academies) and it can | change the terms of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 so that | the interpretation of the 14th Amendment limits on state | action that the Supreme Court imported to it due to | textual similarity are not imposed on recipients of | federal funding. | wonderwonder wrote: | I'll consider myself outplayed as I am not going to take | the time to research a response that may just end with me | saying "I'm wrong" :) | | Either way I'm happy with today's ruling and look forward | to everyone getting a little more equal treatment under | the admissions process. | TechBro8615 wrote: | But race discrimination should (in theory) be illegal | regardless of federal funding status. So if it's already | illegal, and the assertion is that universities don't | have the right to minimize homogeneity in their classes | (presumably along legal, non-racial axes), then taking | that logic to the extreme, why should admissions offices | have any discretion at all? Should every university that | accepts federal funding be required to follow a | standardized rubric when evaluating applicants? | | Standardized metrics are one of the constraints that made | affirmative action a problem in the first place, because | when evaluations are limited to standardized metrics like | test scores and GPA, the top universities have enough | applicants to fill their class a dozen times. So they | need to discriminate on some attributes. Maybe one | alternative is a standardized baseline and a lottery | system for the remaining spots. But when you're at the | point of removing discretion from the process, and | imposing government designed rubrics on every school, the | process starts to look a bit Soviet... | wonderwonder wrote: | Is it soviet or is it meritocratic? I think the Soviet | Union was inherently corrupt and would wager that more | discretionary decisions were made there than in the US | today. I would be fully on board with your suggestion of | a baseline and companion lottery system. I think all | discretion should be removed. Let the most qualified | people in based on high school grades and standardized | test results. Everyone should have the chance to succeed | based on that. | | I understand completely that life is harder for some than | others, whether due to race, religion, financial history, | etc. but to allow for a selection process to use any | combination of that and intentionally exclude people due | to their race is wrong. This is America, some people have | it easy and are born with golden parachutes, but those | people are actually few and far between and everyone has | the chance to work hard here and succeed. Again the | effort involved will vary but the opportunity is always | there. | dcow wrote: | This is fundamentally the _only_ thing that bothers me | about the entire post-modern left narrative. If the goal | posts were "equality of opportunity" (as they historically | have been) then I'd have no problem continuing to fight | until opportunity is provably equal. But if you move the | goal posts to "equality of outcome" (what people mean when | they say "racial equity") and say "look we're still a | racist society" I just can't get behind that definition and | framework. | | The hard reality is that we have made a lot of progress and | it's almost impossible to argue that we're missing equality | of opportunity anymore. We've been legally equal for at | least 3 generations. Yes, there are still some poor and | intensely disparaged communities of predominately minority | populations. I have no problems with people coming together | to help those communities. But we can't let racial equity | seep into our legal framework or we'll literally be | discriminating based on race all over again and all the way | down. No horrors of the past justify that level of | wrongness. It's hopeless and fruitless to try and design a | "racially equitable" society, and you're going to always | just be an angry person if you set out on that path. | | All that said, as always with these situations, I ask "what | is the end goal and how can I help get there". 9 times out | of 10, there is no end goal and that's where I draw the | line in lending my valuable time, my money, my vote, and/or | any mental space for stress and concern to a proposed | cause. If you came to me and said every white person has to | pay e.g. $5000 this generation, 4k the next, then 3k, and | so on to balance out slavery and then we're done talking | about race and we can move on I would pay up immediately | _even though_ I disagree with the idea of reparations and | holding future generations accountable for the sins of | their fathers. I would do it because there's a clear goal | (correct for the past) and path to achieve it (pay money). | | What I can't get behind is being perpetually discriminated | against as a white person under a framework of ever- | evolving goalposts chasing racial equity of outcomes into | the sunset. | EatingWithForks wrote: | I'm more than happy to forgive white people for the sins | of their parents once white people no longer inherit from | their parents any assets gained during segregation, any | houses bought with new deal mortgages (black people were | barred from these), any building in an HOA that has | historically banned renting to blacks, any legacy | admissions preferences which originated when black people | couldn't attend colleges, any businesses started with any | new deal era loans (again, barred black people), any | benefits from degrees or education fostered from | segregated schooling etc. | carefulobserver wrote: | Under what moral philosophy is it acceptable to hold | people responsible for things they had no part in? Other | than your abstract idea that "history should be fair," do | you have any justification for this idea? | greedo wrote: | I had no part in interning Americans of Japanese descent | during WW2. But I believe that the country I live in is | responsible for addressing that wrong. And I feel the | same about addressing the wrongs of slavery and racism | that continue to this day. | HideousKojima wrote: | I'm more than happy to forgive black people for the sins | of their parents once they no longer inherit from their | parents businesses that get preferential treatment in | government contract bids, any houses bought with special | mortgages designed to subsidize minorities, etc. etc. | etc. | | Or you could realize that civil society is impossible if | you insist on punishing people of the present for the | sins of the past. | cma wrote: | > if you insist on punishing people of the present for | the sins of the past. | | I think Germany's reparations for the Holocaust make | sense, for instance. | dcow wrote: | Did German jews get a tax break? Or was the burden | carried by all? | | Generally, I think the nuanced take is that nobody is | saying they don't want to help right past wrongs if the | effects are still present today. They're saying that | doing so on an artificial boundary of a protected class | is toxic and backwards and does not positively contribute | to the solution. | | What if we just invested more in poor and disparaged | communities and added a 10% federal poor and disparaged | communities tax. I don't see anything rhetorically sour | about that (the number isn't the point). A burden shared | by all to work towards a better world given to those | communities with clear needs... | dcow wrote: | I have inherited nothing from my parents except financial | help with my college education. My dad is utterly in debt | from funding his 7 children's college educations because | he believes (correct or not) that _that_ is how you set | your kids up for success. He will likely die barely out | of debt. I am white. I have worked for everything I have. | I bought an auction property in the low income | neighborhood in my city and have invested blood swear and | tears and financially to the point where I am in debt for | years to come to turn it into a nice property for the | neighborhood. I do not take my privileges for granted. Do | I deserve your scorn? | polygamous_bat wrote: | > I have inherited nothing from my parents except | financial help with my college education. My dad is | utterly in debt from funding his 7 children's college | educations... | | Contradicting yourself much? The whole point of the | previous comment was if your father was black he would be | much less likely to get the loan in the first place, | which would result in, at the very least, crippling | college debt for yourself, which would in turn lead to | renting until you're ready to pass the ghost. | orangepurple wrote: | He didn't get a loan. His father paid out of pocket, | massively harming his own finances to help his children. | dcow wrote: | No, the point is I have no traceable lineage to a hoard | of wealth amassed by slave owners 6 generations ago that | is filling the family coffers as people seem to be | implying is true of all white Americans. My family | immigrated over here 3 generations ago from shit | conditions in a war torn Europe. | | Furthermore you have no idea my family's situation and | whether my father would or would not have been actually | more likely than a black man in a similar situation to | "get a loan" (he didn't even get loans like you suggest). | And generally your comment doesn't even apply to my | situation it's cant be reduced in the way you're trying | to argue it can. Also student loans ensure that there | isn't discrimination in who can take out a loan for | college. Arguably my dad paid a tax because he didn't | have use take out loans and help pay that way. | MisterBastahrd wrote: | > My family immigrated over here 3 generations ago from | shit conditions in a war torn Europe. | | And? How's that even matter in this conversation? The | United States of America as an entity benefitted greatly | from wealth generated through slavery. Doesn't matter | whether your ancestors were slave owners. They came over | to this country and immediately had more rights than any | black person walking down the street. | | > Furthermore you have no idea my family's situation and | whether my father would or would not have been actually | more likely than a black man in a similar situation to | "get a loan" (he didn't even get loans like you suggest). | | We know for a fact that this is the case. | | > Also student loans ensure that there isn't | discrimination in who can take out a loan for college. | | Student loans also conveniently are non-dischargable | except by death. Almost like being enslaved. | | > Arguably my dad paid a tax because he didn't have use | take out loans and help pay that way. | | What's your father's poor planning have to do with the | plight of other people? | wonderwonder wrote: | With all due respect, white people don't need your | forgiveness. When will the black Africans who's ancestors | sold people into slavery earn your forgiveness? They | don't need it either. | | No one alive in the US has legally owned slaves. The more | we focus on this insane rhetoric of "sins of the father" | the longer it will take for everyone to just see each | other as humans. I'm a jew from a tiny family, most of | them died in the holocaust and Russia. I don't expect | reparations from the current Germans or Russians, they | had nothing to do with it. I came to this country in my | early teens with my parents who had literally a few k to | their names after selling all their possessions in our | home country. | | My dad died essentially a pauper. My brother and I each | are by all measures financially and socially successful | now. People should stop spending so much effort blaming | the past for their present, just get on with it. Its your | life, do or do not. | tourmalinetaco wrote: | I'd never pay that. Because the money would go into | someone's pockets, sure, but not the disadvantaged. Just | some fat cats of the "right" color running the group | collecting the money. I mean look at what happened with | Black Lives Matter. | | > Yes, there are still some poor and intensely disparaged | communities of predominately minority populations. | | And there are poor, intensely disparaged communities in | majority populations. A great example is "American | Hollow", a 1999 documentary by Rory Kennedy about an | Appalachian family, their life with poverty, and making | ends meet in the mountains. | | Generational wealth exists, and Blacks are certainly | affected, but I'm not convinced that trying to "shift" | wealth so unnaturally (and especially in such racist | ways) really helps anything. | dcow wrote: | I mean yeah it was a rhetorical device. You're paying for | people to stop making everything about race, was the | point. | camgunz wrote: | LBJ gave the commencement speech at Howard more than 50 | years ago and said: | | That beginning is freedom; and the barriers to that | freedom are tumbling down. Freedom is the right to share, | share fully and equally, in American society--to vote, to | hold a job, to enter a public place, to go to school. It | is the right to be treated in every part of our national | life as a person equal in dignity and promise to all | others. | | But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars | of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you | want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you | please. | | You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled | by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting | line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete | with all the others," and still justly believe that you | have been completely fair. | | Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of | opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to | walk through those gates. | | --- | | It's gonna take a very long time. Reparations are valued | in the trillions. Truly insane violence has been | perpetuated on racial minorities in America. It's gonna | take more than ~60 years of Jim Crow-free America to make | things right. | itsoktocry wrote: | > _It 's gonna take more than ~60 years of Jim Crow-free | America to make things right._ | | How does this work, in practice? Look at the comments | here; do you think one half of the population is going to | vote for politicians who want to implement a special tax | that sees money from their pay check going to their | neighbors, based on race? That will never happen. | carefulobserver wrote: | I would challenge you to cite any government program in | history in any country that has successfully achieved | "equalization of outcome for racial groups." For those | advocating extreme measures and philosophies, the burden | of proof should be very high. | dcow wrote: | Then why have the goal posts moved? That's my only | challenge to the status quo. Presumably they've moved | _because_ moving them is the only way (or at least the | only cheap /easy way) to maintain a narrative of | injustice. Shouldn't we be able to pursue this vision | without frivolously chasing a metric we have absolutely | no understand of let alone control over? | | It's subtle but the motives are very different: if you | want to maintain a narrative of injustice, then you will | find ways to do that. OTOH, if you want to build a | narrative of equality, success, and support, then you | need to be open to the outcome that racial undertones and | the victim status of minorities will fade into history. | Thats the entire goal, right? | camgunz wrote: | The goal posts never moved. They were always: | | - People of color don't experience special violence | | - People of color don't experience special rates of | poverty | | - People of color aren't specially diverted from the | pursuit of happiness | | We're so far away from this goal that we can only hazily | imagine achieving it. For example, white high school | dropouts have higher home ownership rates than Black | college graduates [0]. Either you think Black people are | just bad with credit cards (which would be racist) or you | think there's some structural cause. | | I think people want a number, like a number of years or | an amount of money so we can finally say, "we did it, we | made things right." It's even in this opinion. I don't | think that's a useful way of looking at it, because no | metrics really capture what it's like to be in a | marginalized group. Hell we can't even agree on metrics | for software engineers; we definitely can't get it right | for this. | | What we should do instead is create race conscious | policies that address inequalities when we find them. We | should do this for everyone btw: white people who have | been victimized by the opioid epidemic, women who've | experienced violence, etc. etc. Race-conscious admissions | programs were doing this work for college admissions, but | sadly not anymore. | | [0]: https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp- | content/uploads/2019/10/Umb... | amluto wrote: | I think you jumped to a poorly argued conclusion with: | | > What we should do instead is create race conscious | policies | | Of course, the goalposts you mentioned are good goals. | But it's far from clear that face conscious policies are | appropriate or effective. | | Appropriateness is, of course, a matter of opinion, but | the Supreme Court has decided that the policies in | question are unconstitutional. But effectiveness is an | empirical matter. For example, in 1996, California banned | most affirmative action in public universities. (To be | clear, a lot of very well intentioned people at the | universities supported affirmative action. Source: | personal knowledge.). It took a few years for the | situation to settle down, but the results of removing | affirmative action seem to have been a pretty clear | _benefit_ to black students at the University of | California campuses. | | It turns out that, just because a policy is well | intentioned, it does not follow that it is effective at | achieving its good intentions. I could rattle off quite a | few examples of policies that fail in this regard. | | https://archive.is/bjv8J | camgunz wrote: | > the results of removing affirmative action seem to have | been a pretty clear benefit to black students at the | University of California campuses | | This is incorrect; removing affirmative action was real | bad for Black students [0]. The article you cite | references the discredited "mismatch" theory also pushed | by Justice Thomas. Mismatch theory was never supported by | data, and the studies that do seem to support it have | huge problems [1]. No serious person thinks it's real. | | Race-conscious admissions were an unqualified good for | millions of minority students. They're probably only | second to Social Security as a US anti-poverty policy. | There's no amount of weirdo reasoning or fact twisting | that can obscure that. | | [0]: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/137/1/115/63609 | 82?guest... | | [1]: https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/studies- | supporting-mi... | EatingWithForks wrote: | I think the problem is obviously a racial hierarchy is | motivated to pretend that minority status is already | faded into history, especially if it isn't faded right | now. Similar to how my boss says that his kneecapping my | career is in the past now, there's a new peer review | quarter and I have new opportunities so why should I be | mad? Maybe sure 10 years from now it'll be whatever, but | he just sabotaged me last quarter. Of course to him it's | water under a boat, he has every motivation to pretend it | to be so, and to say my pointing out that I'm still a | harmed party to be goalpost moving or whatever nonsense | he wants to come up with to say it doesn't exist anymore | and therefore he doesn't even have to lift a finger to | make it up to me. | dcow wrote: | It's important for me to be very precise and clear here: | I am not arguing that speaking up and pointing out that | you were actively wronged is moving the goalposts. It's | literally not and I'm not trying to silence you or | discourage the royal your initiative to do so! I think | your boss should probably be fired and you should get a | bonus. | | There _are_ , however, people making the argument that we | need to focus on equality of outcome as the solution (vs | firing your boss and paying you damages). And followers | of this idealogical doctrine have made political inroads | in schooling and government. It's this behavior | specifically that I'm criticizing. | | Yes, part of the problem is that we're such a binary | society so these nuances get bucketed into larger issues | and it's all really hard to sort out. | dlivingston wrote: | > It's gonna take more than ~60 years of Jim Crow-free | America to make things right. | | Agreed, but as the parent comment said, what's the end- | goal? What are the metric(s) whereby we can say "things | are now right", or even, "things are approaching the | direction of right-ness"? | howinteresting wrote: | p25, p50, p75 wealth among Black and white families for | starters. | strstr wrote: | Is attending a prestigious college an outcome or an | opportunity? | kajecounterhack wrote: | > 9 times out of 10, there is no end goal and that's | where I draw the line in lending my valuable time, my | money, my vote, and/or any mental space for stress and | concern to a proposed cause | | Is ending systemic injustice that hard to grok? Certain | races in the United States face discrimination on a daily | basis, and in addition to the social effects of this they | are also significantly disadvantaged on education and | family income. You can measure things like "how many | people in your family went to college," as well as family | AGI and do breakdowns by race. You can draw a direct line | to racist social policies, even ones less extreme than | slavery or Jim Crow. Ones that come to mind include | redlining, the historically rough medical treatment of | black folks, and, I don't know, the frequent shooting of | unarmed colored people by police? | | > If you came to me and said every white person has to | pay e.g. $5000 this generation, 4k the next, then 3k, and | so on to balance out slavery and then we're done talking | about race and we can move on I would pay up immediately | even though I disagree with the idea of reparations and | holding future generations accountable for the sins of | their fathers. | | The problem is you want a "clear goal" a.k.a simple | solution when there just isn't one. This is a multi- | faceted issue that requires thoughtfulness. Yours is the | same mentality missionaries bring to Africa -- "just give | them clothes, food, and shoes" with no regard to the more | important things like building an economic engine that | lets people self-sustain, contribute, and compete. | | There are a _lot_ of kinds of reparations that could | happen beyond affirmative action (e.g. better investment | in black-majority communities via schools, favorable | loans, etc) and they don't have to come out of just white | folks' pockets (just spend taxpayer money so we all share | the burden). | | > The hard reality is that we have made a lot of progress | and it's almost impossible to argue that we're missing | equality of opportunity anymore. | | Opportunity is a function of preparation and people | taking chances on you. | | - Preparation costs time and money and racial minorities | have measurably less time and money on average. | | - People taking chances on you requires network. Folks | from historically disadvantaged races don't have the | benefit of legacy, or even role models (consider being a | mexican high schooler visiting Google campus -- would you | think becoming a software engineer there is attainable | for you?) The psychological impact of stuff like this is | profound. | | A black friend I met in college went through high school | assuming that would be the end of his education because | that was just how it was in his mostly-black neighborhood | -- is that something you can internalize at all? Is that | not evidence against "equality of opportunity" ??? The | year was 2010 for pete's sake. This is a frequent thing. | | > What I can't get behind is being perpetually | discriminated against as a white person under a framework | of ever-evolving goalposts chasing racial equity of | outcomes into the sunset. | | As a white person, your individual chances of going to | Harvard are not meaningfully affected by the presence of | affirmative action. Consider their admission rate of | 0.04, then consider affirmative action affects 10% of | applicants. Your chance of admission is now 0.036, which | at the end of the day is basically the same. You have a | 96.4% chance of not being admitted vs 96% chance. | | More importantly, as a white person _you started with a | better dice roll_ so you should compete against folks who | started with similar dice rolls. Affirmative action | doesn't mean black folks get guaranteed admission to | harvard; they still have to compete against other high- | achieving people of the same race. | | I'm Asian -- affirmative action is technically worse for | me than you because Asian-american immigrants | historically have optimized against college admission | metrics very well. But I fully support it, because the | continuing legacy of slavery and race-based | discrimination in this country is too egregious to do | nothing about. Equality of opportunity is the long term | goal, but to get there you need to create less-unequal | outcomes to prime to pump. It's just too lopsided as it | is. My child will do fine at a solid state school if | their 0.036% chance at Harvard doesn't pan out. | | Take yourself out of it for a second: consider whether | your child will be more or less discriminated against | than an average black person's child. They have some | solid advantages: they won't get killed for calling the | police, they have you as their parent (you're posting | multiple paragraphs on hacker news about paying $5k+ in | reparations, so you're probably doing fine), they | probably won't have problems booking an AirBnB or with a | doctor treating them like they're 5 years older, and they | probably won't do jail time for smoking marijuana or even | doing coke if we're being honest. | amluto wrote: | > As a white person, your individual chances of going to | Harvard are not meaningfully affected by the presence of | affirmative action. Consider their admission rate of | 0.04, then consider affirmative action affects 10% of | applicants. Your chance of admission is now 0.036, which | at the end of the day is basically the same. You have a | 96.4% chance of not being admitted vs 96% chance. | | I can't follow your math at all. | | Something like 30% of the student body, per the opinion, | is black or Hispanic. If you assume that all of those | people were admitted solely as a result of affirmative | action (which is obviously not the case), that creates a | 30% reduction in available slots, which will reduce the | admission rate of everyone else (assuming the same people | apply) by 30%. | | This is made up, but I don't see where your 10% comes | from. | dcow wrote: | > You can measure things like "how many people in your | family went to college," as well as family AGI and do | breakdowns by race. You can draw a direct line to racist | social policies, even ones less extreme than slavery or | Jim Crow. Ones that come to mind include redlining, the | historically rough medical treatment of black folks, and, | I don't know, the frequent shooting of unarmed colored | people by police? | | Of course you can measure this stuff, that's the point! | | > The problem is you want a "clear goal" a.k.a simple | solution when there just isn't one. This is a multi- | faceted issue that requires thoughtfulness. Yours is the | same mentality missionaries bring to Africa -- "just give | them clothes, food, and shoes" with no regard to the more | important things like building an economic engine that | lets people self-sustain, contribute, and compete. | | I presented that hypothetical solution rhetorically. I | actually don't think that paying money is a real | solution. But I want to get to the point where someone | advocating for the cause can say "these are the | acceptable end conditions". | | > In college one of my black friends went through high | school assuming that would be the end of his education | because that was just how it was in his mostly-black | neighborhood -- is that something you can internalize at | all? Is that not evidence against "equality of | opportunity" ??? The year was 2010 for pete's sake. This | is a frequent thing. | | I had white and black and brown and yellow friends in | college from low income neighborhoods who all experienced | this. Yes, it's something I'm able to consider | compassionately. | | > I'm Asian -- affirmative action is technically worse | for me than you because Asian-american immigrants | historically have optimized against college admission | metrics very well. But I fully support it, because the | continuing legacy of slavery and race-based | discrimination in this country is too egregious to do | nothing about. Equality of opportunity is the long term | goal, but to get there you need to create less-unequal | outcomes to prime to pump. It's just too lopsided as it | is. My child will do fine at a solid state school if | their 0.036% chance at Harvard doesn't pan out. | | I am well aware of the dynamics of AA. | | > Take yourself out of it for a second: consider whether | your child will be more or less discriminated against | than an average black person's child. | | Where's the framework for evaluating as much? Where's the | audits to confirm that any temporary cheap discrimination | is actually priming the pump and not causing more harm | (and yes there _is_ evidence that affirmative action isn | 't all that you're cracking it up to be). All I'm asking | for is to be objective and calculated about these things | and not emotional and sloppy. | | --- | | Look, you and I are different people with different | tolerances for discrimination. | | I am hypothetically okay being discriminated against in | the short term (as you are) if it provably corrects a | clear issue and we have an agreement in place to evaluate | the program as it's happening, make sure it's | contributing to the desired outcome, and to stop the | discrimination once clear end conditions are met. | | Of course I'd _rather_ not be discriminated against | explicitly since I think that 's a sloppy proxy solution | and instead I'd rather address the actual problems even | if they're more expensive and more difficult programs to | execute--everyone should share the load of building the | society we want to live in. | | In general, you're okay hearing about the atrocities of | the past and allowing yourself to be discriminated | against on the loose grounds that any discrimination | serves to correct the atrocities. You feel guilt about | the wrongs of the past and are thus able to justify | discrimination as a form of atonement. | | On the other hand, I am not okay allowing myself to be | discriminated against because of past events I had no | control over or participated in, despite arguably | indirectly benefitting from them loosely based on the | color of my skin. I do not feel guilt or the need to | atone for those previous wrongs. I do feel responsibility | to contribute to correcting any outstanding issues that | still exist today. | | Therefore I am not phased by an argument that lists all | the bad things that happened and concludes "oh you must | still atone". And it is not justification outright for | introducing discrimination to me or my children today. | | I am swayed by logical assessments of the _current_ | situation and well thought out proposals on how to | address remaining problems. I want equality of | opportunity and I very much disagree we 'll achieve it by | focusing on equality of outcome. I don't think that's the | right path. AA has primed the pump as you say of the | opportunity engine for generations now. Let's assess the | situation and move on. | | We share a desire for the same goal, but we are different | in our approaches. If that makes me an asshole and you | not, well that's outside of either of our control. I can | assure you my stance isn't some cheap sensational | response to this headline or something. I have spent more | time than I'd wager most have considering these issues | and determining how I wish to engage. | kajecounterhack wrote: | > I am hypothetically okay being discriminated against in | the short term (as you are) if it provably corrects a | clear issue and we have an agreement in place to evaluate | the program as it's happening, make sure it's | contributing to the desired outcome, and to stop the | discrimination once clear end conditions are met. | | Do you consider it discrimination that disabled folks get | to park in special spots? I don't consider | discrimination. Some people just need more help to get | where they're going, and some of us will be just fine | using the legs we were born to walk with. In the same | vein, I don't feel like I'm being discriminated against | by affirmative action. And I'm not worried about my kid | even if those policies remained in place. | | Nobody thinks affirmative action is perfect. For example | if I could make a change myself I'd focus on the economic | part of socioeconomic more so that it's not mainly | privileged people of color getting priority. But you have | to start somewhere. With systems governing people it's | just not that realistic to ask that everything be | perfectly measurable or that there is a neat objective | function to optimize. | | > Therefore I am not phased by an argument that lists all | the bad things that happened and concludes "oh you must | still atone". And it is not justification outright for | introducing discrimination to me or my children today. | | You're very focused on yourself. Nobody is asking you as | an individual to "atone" for anything because you didn't | do anything. What we are discussing is _systemic changes_ | designed to help folks who are disadvantaged _also | without having done anything_. Broad, high-level changes | like affirmative action just don't have the impact on | individuals in the majority that you are making them out | to have. They do however have outsized impact on folks in | the minority. | | In general I find it gross to be so focused on what | you're calling your own discrimination when it totally | pales in comparison to the experiences of folks who face | actual discrimination. You say you're able to consider | others' experiences compassionately, but that's clearly | just lip service, otherwise you wouldn't be calling | affirmative action "discrimination." | f154hfds wrote: | > Some people just need more help to get where they're | going, and some of us will be just fine using the legs we | were born to walk with. | | This is exactly the issue at play. There's a fundamental | difference between _unending_ affirmative action and | temporary 'help'. If you believe in equality of outcome | then you will never be satisfied and we will always be | 'helping' the disadvantaged group achieve various metrics | forever. Eventually people deserve the dignity of a level | playing field, otherwise you seem to be saying they're | incapable of handling a level playing field which would | be.. racist (by definition). | | Your example of handicaps is disturbing, I know you | didn't intend it in a racist way, but read what you wrote | from the perspective of an African immigrant. Just | because a person is black does not mean they're | 'handicapped'! | kajecounterhack wrote: | > Your example of handicaps is disturbing | | Being born a certain race is a disadvantage in the same | way being born with physical disability is a | disadvantage. They're not the same but that was the point | I was trying to make: we look out for disadvantaged folks | in some societal contexts. Why are y'all complaining | about systemically disadvantaged people getting some | help? Is it because you can't trace the taxpayer dollars | we spend on things like Section 8 housing back to your | wallet, but you can trace back your rejection letter from | Harvard to accursed affirmative action? | | > If you believe in equality of outcome then you will | never be satisfied | | If you re-read what I wrote earlier, I said equality of | opportunity is the north star. But just because you | believe in that north star doesn't mean you can't see the | value in skewing the current state by other means until | you're there. | | > you seem to be saying they're incapable of handling a | level playing field which would be.. racist | | No, I'm saying colored folks _are_ capable of achieving | the same things as white folks if given the same | advantages and privileges. But they don't get those | advantages and privileges because society is broken. | Affirmative action is one tool we can use to help put | more colored folks in places of power in society. Without | this, we will never sniff equal opportunity. Having | people who look like you in places of power is important | because they can advocate for you. | calf wrote: | White fragility is demanding that minorities provide a | well thought out, objectively quantified solution or else | nothing is worth trying. We see this over and over again. | suresk wrote: | I agree that the goals and means to get to them are fuzzy | and it feels frustrating at times, and things like | affirmative action felt like trying to make two wrongs | equal a right. But it also feels shitty and callous to | say "Sorry about the whole segregation thing, hopefully | everything evens out in a few hundred years or so.." | | I think the hard part is that "Equality of Opportunity" | is either so strictly defined that it is pointless, or it | very quickly becomes really squishy and feels like | "Equality of Outcome". | | Most college applicants today are going to be something | like 2 - 4 generations removed from official, legally | sanctioned segregation (a situation I think most people | would agree doesn't count as equality of opportunity). | Would you argue that the average white student and | average black student have equality of opportunity today? | djur wrote: | How exactly has equality of outcome been "proven to be | doomed"? At the aggregate level, at least? | akomtu wrote: | If the outcome doesn't depend on your actions, there's no | point in doing anything. Such a lethargic society cannot | function, so to push it into motion the ruler has to use | force and cruelty. The people will do the work, not | because they hope to get something, for the outcome is | always the same - cheap food and 4 hours of sleep - but | because they want to avoid punishment. | wizofaus wrote: | I don't think anyone seriously suggests "equality of | outcome" should mean "regardless of any actions/decisions | you take in life". I would treat it as meaning "given two | different large subsets of society that differ | markedly/measurably on key indicators, there shouldn't be | a difference in average outcomes between those born into | one subset vs the other". Depending on the | indicators/subsets in question that may well be a | worthwhile & achievable goal. Particularly if the | "outcomes" being measured go beyond just material wealth | (e.g. health/wellbeing outcomes). | dcow wrote: | Equality of outcome can only be enforced currently by a | tyrannical government. It's wholly doomed unless we can | identify and correct for every hidden variable affecting | outcomes. | f154hfds wrote: | One issue is there's infinite metrics to measure outcome, | and any measurement you choose will have certain groups | excel in compared to others. Once we achieve equality in | a certain metric we will always have new ones to work on | essentially forever. This may be a good goal for | people/institutions but it can't contribute to | discrimination being indefinite in scope. | | Another issue is we're talking about group level outcomes | here - which means we're already accepting that there | will be biases in measurements, otherwise the group | wouldn't be a 'group' (unless it's literally just skin | color which is - a pretty arbitrary/racist way to group | people all else being equal). | kneebonian wrote: | Equality of outcome is just a fancy way of saying | tyranny. Freedom can only exist and only be freedom if | you have the right to fail or succeed, if no one can fail | or succeed because everyone is made the same there is no | freedom, there is no choice. | | Those that advocate for equality of outcome desire to | make again a slave state, where they as "superior | educated white people" can ensure that black people are | "taken care of" by ensuring they all have jobs, they all | have housing, they all have healthcare, they all have | food, and that they have no freedom. | [deleted] | cdmcmahon wrote: | Equality of opportunity after centuries of slavery and then | legal discrimination in a society that allows (and even | outright promotes) inherited wealth and opportunity is not | possible. | | Imagine my ancestors stole all of your ancestors stuff and | I still get to keep it all and anything I've built using | it. We've stopped stealing your stuff now, though, so we | have "equality of opportunity." | [deleted] | ryandrake wrote: | That's a very good way of framing it: Opportunity is | largely inherited, therefore there cannot be real | equality of opportunity. | f154hfds wrote: | You're changing the definition of opportunity here to | still mean outcome I think. | | > <Outcome> is somewhat inherited, therefore there cannot | be real equality of <outcome>. | | The US used to be a land of 'opportunity' for poor | immigrants. They came to the US and worked hard to | overcome their circumstances and make a better life for | themselves and their children. | | It would be insulting and demoralizing to them to say | that opportunity is impossible because they're poor, | because their uncle doesn't own the bank down the street. | The point of opportunity is that it's _possible_ to | succeed, the scales are not unfairly weighed against you | by law or societal prejudice. | | Many things make achieving outcomes hard - poverty, | mental health, bad luck - these are sometimes affected by | the past too, but they don't necessarily take away | opportunity in that the hope in success is still | possible. This hope is important to the soul is it not? | This is why opportunity is so important, it's essentially | hope. | ryandrake wrote: | Opportunity is not a boolean "have" vs "don't have". It's | a probability distribution, and much of that probability | is inherited. | | The son of an investment banking executive has much | greater opportunity to also become an investment banker | than some rando dude from the street, even if it is | remotely possible. That opportunity delta is real, and | it's largely, almost entirely, due to family ties. | | I would not say that I have the opportunity to become a | billionaire, even though it is technically possible, but | astronomically unlikely. | f154hfds wrote: | I agree that opportunity is a spectrum but I disagree | that it's inherited in our country because I disagree | with your definition of opportunity. It's a spectrum in | the sense that people can succeed regardless of societal | prejudice or discriminatory laws, even though they'd have | more opportunity if that prejudice didn't exist. Equal | opportunity does not necessitate an equal outcome, nor | does it imply it. | | Immigrants don't have the opportunity to become president | of the US because of US law, but any natural-born citizen | of the country does have that opportunity regardless of | the likelihood. The US has always had immigrants achieve | boundless success here which is why it was considered the | land of opportunity, not because everyone did - or | because it was 'fair', but because it was possible. | onos wrote: | It's reasonable but then you learn that poor Asians do | well. They inherit nothing, go to poor schools, but then | do well. | kajecounterhack wrote: | Asians are not a homogenous group. For example, Filipino | and Vietnamese outcomes did not do as well as Taiwanese, | Korean, and Japanese immigrants in the wave from the 60s. | | There are lots of factors that contribute to an ethnic | group's relative success in playing the economic game, | some of which are unique to that cohort and not the | ethnicity itself. Past results do not guarantee future | performance. | | One example: the communist revolution expelled professors | and academics from China, thus many Chinese and | Taiwanese-american immigrants from that generation had | scholarly backgrounds which obviously translates well. | Compare to a history where your people were enslaved and | your cultural background entirely erased. | | Another example: getting an H1B as an Indian person today | is super competitive / hard, but much easier if you're | another ethnicity. What does that mean for future | generations of Indian-Americans? There's going to be a | selection bias. | Manuel_D wrote: | > Asians are not a homogenous group. For example, | Filipino and Vietnamese outcomes did not do as well as | Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese immigrants in the wave | from the 60s. | | There's some variation, but even so they still perform | better than "white" people with the same socioeconomic | status - even among Filipino and Southeast Asians: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4060715/ | itsoktocry wrote: | > _Imagine my ancestors stole all of your ancestors stuff | and I still get to keep it all and anything I 've built | using it._ | | Yes, I agree! | | But what if _my_ ancestors did not steal your ancestors | stuff? Am I still responsible, because I have the same | skin color as the folks who harmed you? | nameless_prole wrote: | [dead] | akomtu wrote: | This example is about generosity. In this case you don't | owe anything to your less fortunate peer, but not sharing | it is greed and when greed is the driving force of our | society, it's not surprising nobody wants to share his | wealth. In a society of a far future that will run on | generosity, being obsessed about possessions will be seen | as a weakness. It seems that some proponents of the | "affirmative action" sense that future society, and try | to implement it here, but since they poorly understand | human nature, and since their own nature is imperfect, | they pervert the high ideal. | ahtihn wrote: | > Poor White and Asian kids still beat out poor Black and | Hispanic kids academically on average | | Why is that the case? | | For Asians, I don't see what systemic privilege they could | have that would need to be compensated away? | crackercrews wrote: | Asians spend much more time than others on homework. [1] | | 1: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0731121422 | 1101... | Izikiel43 wrote: | So, because they study more, and their family places more | importance in studying, they should be brought down | because they are not the right race? | HDThoreaun wrote: | I think it's more that admissions aren't actually | optimizing for academic success. They're optimizing for | career success. If you just look at academic signals | you'll accept the most academically successful students | but that's not the point. It's not unreasonable to punish | applicants for spending more time studying because | studying skews the metric they're using to predict career | success. | Izikiel43 wrote: | > studying skews the metric they're using to predict | career success | | Which is what? Studying is hard, getting academic success | is hard, and there is a positive correlation for both of | those and career success, as academic success requires | discipline, grit, and hard work, which are all useful for | career success. | HDThoreaun wrote: | They've been using academic success to predict career | success. I agree it's a good predictor. It's not | foolproof though. The issue is that it can be skewed by | devoting more resources to academic success instead of | for example starting a business or political action or | sports. Is someone less likely to have a successful | career because they started a business instead of | studying an extra hour every day? This is why the most | elite schools switched to extracurricular and interview | heavy admission criteria which ended up disfavoring | asians who tend to spend more time on academic success. | | The goal was to actually do a better job of finding the | applicants with discipline and grit, not just the ones | who have it in an academic context. | crackercrews wrote: | Where did you see that in my comment? I don't think that | at all. | adventured wrote: | They're not concerned with the angle used - any angle | that works is acceptable - just that more successful | groups are brought down, and they're concerned with the | levers used to bring them down (as a matter of cultural | control). The idea is to be able to dominate politically | through manipulation. For some political machines that's | viewed as a critical tool: intentionally segment people | into conflict groups (forever subdividing as you go), | spur endless conflict and cultural control through the | conflict (hate speech controls = end of free speech, and | so on). | charlieyu1 wrote: | So hard work should be punished? | crackercrews wrote: | I definitely did not say that! I was just answering GP's | question with a simple fact and link. | koolba wrote: | No of course not. We'll just ban it to level the playing | field. | nirav72 wrote: | Lot of schools no longer put emphasis on SAT/ACT scores. | So yeah that's basically what they did. | nfw2 wrote: | The ironic thing is that standardized tests are the most | objective metric we have. Things like extracurriculars | reflect more on the parents and community than the kids. | mcphage wrote: | > So yeah that's basically what they did. | | You think you need to work hard to get a high SAT score? | orangepurple wrote: | I needed to work hard to get a very high SAT score | because I'm a dummy. But I did it. | tbihl wrote: | The 'systemic privilege' you're looking for is _culture_. | | Unfortunately, the treatment is even more complicated than | the diagnosis is simple. | rd wrote: | It's a zero-sum game. There's no such thing as taking | privilege "away" from Asian kids. If you increase the | acceptance rate of some race, it has to be decreased from | somewhere. There's literally nothing else that can be done. | tester756 wrote: | Why would it take hundreds of years instead of e.g 80? | ix-ix wrote: | Generational wealth. | nfw2 wrote: | All else equal, poor white kids probably get a leg up as well | if they can articulate it in some way in their application. | | For example, my (white) dad got into Yale and Princeton, and | it probably helped that he was from a podunk town in Wyoming. | | For a lot of poor white kids though, their situation isn't | obvious from their application. | klyrs wrote: | Yep, I got some scholarships for being the first in my | family to go to college, and also from the Dante Alighieri | Society for my Italian heritage. They really didn't put | much of a dent into tuition, and I worked full-time or took | on loans for the rest. I wouldn't describe myself as "poor" | but my parents were lower-middle class. | purpleblue wrote: | Except it's not mostly poor, hardworking ADOS (African | descendents of slavery) students that benefit. It's rich, | Black students that are benefiting, especially those from | outside the US and no lineage from slavery. The problem with | affirmative action is that everyone is only looking literally | at skin color, which is the opposite of what we should be | doing. | rd wrote: | Anyone who's attended an Ivy League school can attest to | the truth of this, and I've been vehemently disagreeing | with every anti-AA comment in this thread, so that says | something. | | Pretty much every Black student I see at school is African | (immigrant)-American, not ADOS. | pessimizer wrote: | Rich ADOS should still benefit, though. We should be | looking at lineage instead of skin color, because thinking | all black people are the same is a handicap of both | | the left: who think that all "people of color" should be | compensated for slavery, and | | the right: who love to say that US blacks were sold by | "their own people." That's like claiming innocence for | molesting a child because their parents sold it to you. | | (I know you know this:)) | Izikiel43 wrote: | The rest of the developed world: why do you care so much | about race? Just decide on household income | BobbyJo wrote: | > Just decide on household income | | Why not just decide on a test scores? Or just grades? Or | just sports? Because there is no silver bullet | measurement for "how deserving is this kid?" | | I'd venture to guess that if you asked 50 people how to | measure someone's worth with regard to some goal you'd | get 50 different answers. | Izikiel43 wrote: | Test scores and income are enough, as they are objective | measurements. Grades, as mentioned in another comment, | are not consistent across different high schools, and | they favor people with more resources. Sports, as in play | in the university team, which demands high performance, | is also fair, and probably doesn't demand a lot of | places, as you can't have a sports team with hundreds of | people. | BobbyJo wrote: | Are test score objective? If your school doesn't prepare | you for the test doesn't that skew things just as much as | schools inflating grades? | Izikiel43 wrote: | If you don't put any independent effort, then the tests | would match whatever the school taught. However, you do | have the opportunity to apply yourself and put all the | extra effort you need to get a higher grade, independent | of your school. The things that would matter there are | family support, not in economical sense, but in moral | support that your extra effort is right. | tester756 wrote: | Good thing that you don't have to rely on school and | start putting effort yourself | | Skew the odds | bobthepanda wrote: | The issue is that also, generally speaking, anyone who | was legally discriminated against probably lives in a | jurisdiction performing poorly in test scores, since all | schooling in the US are based on geographic districts | funded by local property tax, and due to historic | discrimination the formerly discriminated groups also | live in areas with lower housing wealth. (A lot of people | also moved out of districts with large minority | populations when integration was mandated, taking their | taxes and wealth with them.) | | Want to make a bunch of people very angry? Propose a | metropolitan-area wide school district. | Izikiel43 wrote: | > areas with lower housing wealth. | | So, in other words, lower income. | marcosdumay wrote: | > Want to make a bunch of people very angry? Propose a | metropolitan-area wide school district. | | By that you mean that kids can not choose their school on | the US? | sib wrote: | Correct. If you live in [poor high-percentage African- | American town in Alabama] you cannot choose to go to high | school in [wealthy mostly-white town in Massachusetts]. | | (Setting aside private schools...) | purpleblue wrote: | No they can't. That's why Republicans are a big proponent | of school vouchers so that parents can choose which | school a child can go to, but Democrats say that is | racist. | SAI_Peregrinus wrote: | That would run the risk of helping the poor. We don't | like doing that here in the USA. | prepend wrote: | I think ADOS stands for "American Descendants of Slavery" | [0] as it is used in terms of US populations and, by | definition, Americans aren't African. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Descendants_of_S | laver... | earthboundkid wrote: | Yeah, the point should always have been explicitly to be | reparations for slavery/Jim Crow and the Native American | genocide. But that was never really explicit, and there was | a lot of mission drift over the last fifty years. | tbihl wrote: | It's probably a reliable collective action problem. For | example, the point of the 1965 Civil Rights Act was to | help black men so their families could stay intact, but | Howard Smith poison-pilled the whole thing by diverting | it to women. | | For people who are in the military, I point this out in | its internship form. The Skillbridge program was designed | to facilitate internships for departing servicemen to | address difficulties with veteran unemployment, but the | spoils mostly go to officers with highly marketable | skills, like submarine and cryptography officers. After | all, those officers have each been practicing the art of | finding and utilizing beneficial programs to their | advantage for decades by that point in their lives; why | wouldn't they use this one too? | giardini wrote: | Yes, and generations have passed, so that train has left | the station, so to speak. Reparations are no longer an | acceptable solution. | mrguyorama wrote: | And yet the grandkids of those slave owners sure as hell | still profit from their ill gotten gains | BobbyJo wrote: | > And yet the grandkids of those slave owners sure as | hell still profit from their ill gotten gains. | | Source? I'd venture to guess most have reverted back to | mean wealth given downward mobility rates [0] and the | time since slavery ended. | | [0] https://www.chicagofed.org/research/mobility/intergen | eration... | prpl wrote: | and redlining, and other formal, informal, intentional | and unintentional institutional (particularly | governmental and financial) policies that limited | people's access to success based on their race. | pessimizer wrote: | Anything explicitly discriminatory that the government | could have done something about and chose not to. We need | to forget about "microaggressions" and deal with the | macroaggressions. It's typical that white liberals have | embarked on the project of detecting subtle clues to the | slightest slights and condemning people for them, when | they should just treat historical race-based abuse claims | like any other compensation claim. | | If you look at black people's family trees enough, you'll | find plenty with specific inheritance claims against | their _white, slaver_ ancestors. Black people in America | are the descendants of white rapists as well as imported | slaves. | earthboundkid wrote: | Yes. I was sort of lumping redlining in with Jim Crow, | although I guess it's technically a distinct thing. | pjc50 wrote: | > I assume the intent is to help disadvantaged people have | opportunities that more priviledged people have already. Right? | I mean, I can get behind that. But then why the entire detour | with race? | | Up until about 1971 (possibly later, but that's the date of | _Loving vs Virginia_ ), the US had formal, legal discrimination | against black people. On finally removing that, there was at | various times discussion of whether people who had been legally | discriminated against all their lives should be compensated, as | if they had been wronged in a tort sense. This would obviously | be extremely expensive, and anyway impossible to quantify, so | it never happened. | | Harvard, and many other colleges, has a big base of "legacy" | admissions, as well as a certain amount of generational | knowledge and connections - you're more likely to get into | Harvard if your parents went to Harvard, over and above mere | class status. Since black people were under-represented in this | category, people came up with the idea of putting a thumb on | the other side of the scale and artificially increasing their | rate of admission. Can it balance exactly against the | disadvantages of discrimination? No. | | > I genuinely don't get why the race thing is part of the | equation. Shouldn't this just be run-of-the-mill social | democratic "lets hand out some extra opportunities/benefits to | the poor" program? | | America is not in the least social-democratic, but racism and | anti-racism have been there since the beginning and will | probably dominate US politics until the last person who | remembers the KKK is dead. | | (It could be worse: Haitians who had freed themselves from | slavery by the mass murder of their oppressors were made to pay | a huge amount of compensation to them!) | JackFr wrote: | > Up until about 1971 (possibly later, but that's the date of | Loving vs Virginia) | | Minor nitpick, _Loving_ was 1967. | seanmcdirmid wrote: | > Harvard, and many other colleges, has a big base of | "legacy" admissions, as well as a certain amount of | generational knowledge and connections - you're more likely | to get into Harvard if your parents went to Harvard, over and | above mere class status. | | Harvard also gets lots of Asians (well, Chinese) who are | obviously not legacy admits, and there is/was active | discrimination against them at Harvard (they don't want the | student body to be too white and asian?). The decision | specifically calls this out: | | > The high court found that Harvard and the University of | North Carolina discriminated against white and Asian American | applicants by using race-conscious admissions policies. | | Also see: | | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian- | enrollme... | | Using merit alone, it is totally possible that Harvard would | be mostly Asian very quickly. However, it doesn't fit the | narrative that the system is biased towards white legacy | admits. | SV_BubbleTime wrote: | This decision was a big win for Asians. Who right now are | being discriminated against. | | Before race based admission was used "as a positive" for | minorities, it was being used to keep ivy leagues from | being "too Jewish". | | It doesn't take very long to see what this is, but the | topic is always about removing the benefit, not preventing | the abuse. | seanmcdirmid wrote: | Asians do have a general leg up in terms of family income | (which correlates to education success), so if we were | discriminating based on income, then we could come up | with something fair that gives poorer people (which can | act as a proxy for disadvantaged minorities) more | opportunity, but at the expense of rich people since we | don't have unlimited resources. The problem being that | now you are denied getting into Harvard because your mom | and dad are too rich...and I don't think many people | would think that is fair either. | skrebbel wrote: | Appreciate the context, thanks. It doesn't feel less weird to | me yet but maybe I gotta let things sink in a bit first. | adventured wrote: | > but racism and anti-racism have been there since the | beginning and will probably dominate US politics until the | last person who remembers the KKK is dead. | | The KKK has nothing to do with it fundamentally. Matters of | racism and similar (it doesn't just have to be about race, | this is a problem of collectivism, of which racism is a | subset) will dominate the politics of any highly diverse | nation (diverse not necessarily pertaining only to race of | course), and without exception. | | See: what has been going on in Sweden the past decade (it has | gotten worse as Sweden has gotten more diverse). Or see: the | forever riots in France by the poor minorities there that | have never integrated into French culture. | Georgelemental wrote: | Many beneficiaries of "affirmative action" are not | generational African Americans whose ancestors experienced | slavery and Jim Crow, but immigrants or children of | immigrants from Africa: | https://www.msnbc.com/podcast/harvard-s-complicated- | relation... | NoRelToEmber wrote: | > Harvard, and many other colleges, has a big base of | "legacy" admissions, as well as a certain amount of | generational knowledge and connections - you're more likely | to get into Harvard if your parents went to Harvard, over and | above mere class status. | | Let's explicitly look at how this affected race (instead of | leaving it to readers imaginations), since that was the issue | the court was asked to consider. The student body of the US | Ivy League looked as follows, circa 2019 (international | students excluded): | Ivy League US Ratio Mean nationwide SAT score [1] | Jewish 17.2% 2.4% 7.16 | Asian 19.6% 5.3% 3.71 1216 | White (incl. Jewish) 50.3% 61.5% 0.82 1148 | Hispanic 11.4% 17.6% 0.65 1043 | Black 7.8% 12.7% 0.61 966 | White (non-Jewish) 33.1% 59.1% 0.56 ~1141 | (lower bound estimate) | | SAT score seems to offer no benefit, up until the magic | cutoff somewhere between 1142 and 1216. | | The numbers don't sum to 100% because multi-ethnic students, | a few minor ethnicities (American-Indian, Pacific | Islander..), and students categorized as "unknown" or "other" | by the universities were excluded from analysis. Data on | university undergraduate demographics was taken from the | universities own diversity reports. Jewish representation was | gathered from http://hillel.org/college-guide/list/, | https://forward.com/jewish-college-guide/, and | https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/how-many-jewish- | undergraduat..., taking the _lowest_ estimate when sources | conflicted. ejewishphilanthropy.com (eJP) points out flaws in | Hillel 's data gathering (e.g. showing Harvard as 30% Jewish, | when eJP found it only 16%) Hillel seems to have since fixed | these flaws, as the estimates they now give are in-line with | those of eJP. | | No correction has been made to look at only the college-age | population of the US, or only at the Northeastern US where | all the Ivy League universities are located, so that may be a | source of some bias. | | [1] https://www.ednc.org/eraceing-inequities-the-influence- | of-ra... | | Edit: Clarified that the SAT scores are nationwide, and not | just of the Ivy League students. Thank you to stanford_labrat | for bringing it up. | Melchizedek wrote: | So clearly non-Jewish whites are by far the _most_ | discriminated against considering their share of the | population and SAT scores. Why is this fact never mentioned | in the media? | gmarx wrote: | You'd need to know the percentage and scores for ivy | league applicants to say such a thing a clear. It's | likely true but not from these numbers | stanford_labrat wrote: | If anyone was confused at first glance as I was, these are | the mean SAT scores nationwide and not at the ivy league | institutions. I was very surprised for a moment to think | the average SAT score at these colleges was in the 1200s... | makomk wrote: | Legacy admissionss are part of the problem with Harvard's | affirmative action scheme that made it really blatantly | discriminatory - basically, they kept those legacy admissions | and balanced them out by putting a thumb on the scale against | other groups that didn't benefit from legacy admissions | either, primarily Asian candidates. | 8ytecoder wrote: | To me - very simply put - merit doesn't make much sense when | one set of people didn't get any of the opportunities the | other set did. It's like comparing height with one person | standing atop a stool. The nuance here is to find the lost | potential in marks and tests due to a lack of opportunity. | Race is a crude proxy and it really doesn't have to be based | on just race. But it'd mean admins spend more time | interviewing and verifying people's background and make | subjective decisions based on that. | [deleted] | az226 wrote: | Legacy is always brought up in these discussions. The amount | of students who get into Harvard because of the boost from | their race outnumbers the number of legacy students who get | boosted from their status 20 to 1. Basically a race and | legacy blind policy would reject 20 times more minorities | than legacy applicants and then if the policy is race and | legacy discriminatory. | jenenfnfnfnf wrote: | > Harvard, and many other colleges, has a big base of | "legacy" admissions, as well as a certain amount of | generational knowledge and connections | | Had? | akiselev wrote: | Pasadena, a decent sized city in Los Angeles County that | houses _Caltech_ of all places, was forced to officially | desegregate in the 1970s but they 've still got tons of | policies left over that discriminate in housing [1]. South | Pasadena real estate agents unofficial redlined the | neighborhoods well into the 1980s and possibly even the | 1990s. Schools, especially in Altadena, were still highly | segregated when I went to elementary school there _in the | 2000s._ In the 21st century, for f**k 's sake. | | And that's in a city adjacent to _Los Angeles_. We don 't see | many rebel flags in Southern California but the segregation | is just staggering. | | IME it's even worse in the East coast cities, especially with | the way roads, highways, and mass transit are built. I'll | admit I had no idea what true segregation looked like until I | lived in Ft Lauderdale/Hollywood in Florida (in the | mid-2010s). | | [1] https://makinghousinghappen.net/2020/06/23/pasadenas- | raciali... | greedo wrote: | Oh the racism spread to the West very early in those states | histories. Look up sundown towns, and Portland's history. | selimthegrim wrote: | Caltech itself famously had more black students in the | 1970s than it did in the following three decades | kbelder wrote: | From that article, I don't see any racially discriminatory | laws still in place in Pasadena. Plenty of laws | discriminating against the poor, though. | thegaulofthem wrote: | > (It could be worse: Haitians who had freed themselves from | slavery by the mass murder of their oppressors were made to | pay a huge amount of compensation to them!) | | At risk of starting a fun flame war, it's more complicated | than that. | | Outside of a contingent of Polish mercenaries, whom were | deemed something to the effect of honorary blacks, the new | former slave regime effectively genocided the whites of the | island. Men, women, children, the works. Not only that, but | they threw in the mixed as well. Then went about taking all | of everyone's property. | | I don't know where the exact reasonable line is for revenge | when you've been enslaved, but I'm certain they went well and | unquestionably over it. | | To that end, I don't know where the reasonable counter- | balance is for France to make claim against the former slave | colony for its crimes against humanity but the idea that they | have clean hands and or are owed something is an appalling | revisionist history of the country. | tourmalinetaco wrote: | > appalling revisionist history | | And this is where most of the problems lie. It's like a | game of telephone, someone says one thing and its passes | along until its an extremely toned down propagandist | version of what it was before. | tomp wrote: | _> Harvard, and many other colleges, has a big base of | "legacy" admissions, [...] Since black people were under- | represented in this category, people came up with the idea of | putting a thumb on the other side of the scale and | artificially increasing their rate of admission._ | | This is a nice story, but actually not true. | | If it were true, Harvard etc wouldn't also discriminate | _against_ Asians. Maybe they weren't as oppressed as blacks | in the US, but they should thus get at least equivalent | treatment as whites and hispanics, not _worse_. | jensensbutton wrote: | > If it were true, Harvard etc wouldn't also discriminate | against Asians. | | This logic makes absolutely no sense. Why can't they have a | legacy admits AND discriminate against Asians? Are you | seriously trying to claim Ivy League schools don't have | legacy admits? | mistrial9 wrote: | > the US had formal, legal discrimination against black | people | | this is misinformation; State laws had complete jurisdiction | over certain matters, by design. "The US" is calling | Washington State the same as Alabama. So, no. | amluto wrote: | I think you're missing the point. The US had _state, local | and private laws, regulations, and institutions_ that | discriminated against black people with varying degrees of | formality. The discrimination in question existed and was | widespread in the US. | mcv wrote: | Yeah, every time the discussion comes up about, for example, | reparations for the descendants of slaves, I start out | thinking: it's been 150 years! Some of those descendants are | very successful now and some descendants of slave owners are | probably very poor now. And some people are descendants of | both. | | And then I learn about the Jim Crow period, and then you hear | that even the GI bill explicitly excluded black people, and | lynchings into the 1950s, and the extremely hard fight the | civil rights movement had, and even legal discrimination up | to 1971, not to mention tons of possibly illegal but still | very real discrimination after that. And then I think: you | can't just stop doing a bad thing and pretend it didn't | happen. You've got to try to make things right. | | Have things been made right by now? I have no idea. I do know | plenty of black people still live in fear of the police, and | that when black people call the police, there's the non-zero | chance that they're the ones who end up getting shot. | | Not to mention that many universities also have affirmative | action for children of alumni, who are still predominantly | white and rich, partially because of the legal discrimination | uo to 1971, and partially because universities are | ridiculously expensive. Has that affirmative action also been | struck down? | | > America is not in the least social-democratic, | | It used to be, though. The New Deal and many of the social | policies of the 1940s and 1950s were very social democratic. | Well, except that they tended to exclude black people. | naasking wrote: | > And then I think: you can't just stop doing a bad thing | and pretend it didn't happen. You've got to try to make | things right. | | You're implicitly assuming it can be made right. That seems | doubtful. The people who had been harmed by those policies | are not the ones seeking admission to Harvard. Everyone | seeking admission to Harvard has been born into | circumstances through no fault of their own, so just help | the financially less fortunate to provide more equal | opportunities across the board. Black people are | disproportionately represented among the poor, so this | would disproportionately help them anyway. | RajT88 wrote: | > You're implicitly assuming it can be made right. That | seems doubtful. | | I would agree with this. The best you can hope for is to | try and engineer society such that the progress enjoyed | by white people historically in this nation is enjoyed by | other ethnic/social groups as well. There will never be a | consensus on what is "made right" and "fair". And there | is good reason to focus on black folks instead of all | poor people - black folks are disproportionately poor, | and they are because our systems of governance tried to | keep them that way. | | Affirmative action in college admissions was an OK way to | start - but doesn't address other underlying issues. For | example: Redlined districts still are majority black and | poor, and the way public schools are funded means their | K-12 schools generally suck. Education is of course one | of the major ways to improve generational wealth, | especially in today's information economy. Another way to | improve generational wealth is enabling home ownership. | This was another thing which prevented black folks from | attaining generational wealth - people wouldn't give them | loans to buy homes, sometimes even if they were buying in | redlined districts. There are still property titles in | the US which contain "racial covenants" which basically | say "you can't sell or rent this property to a black | person", although this is not enforceable any more. | | I think we'll get there. It may take another few hundred | years. I had a surprisingly frank discussion with a | Burundian cab driver in Amsterdam about it once (we were | stuck in traffic and just shooting the bull). Over time, | people just mix and the past is dulled, lines are blurred | and it's all sort of whatever. He drove cabs all over | Europe and people don't care about the color of his skin | or where he came from. It's... A bit different in the US | he's found. | | Coming back to poor people - we can and should help all | of them too. We can do more than one thing at a time. | mensetmanusman wrote: | "And there is good reason to focus on black folks instead | of all poor people - black folks are disproportionately | poor, and they are because our systems of governance | tried to keep them that way." | | I have family who recently immigrated from Liberia, and | their general sense is that the black slave descendants | had their family structures so incredibly destroyed that | it makes sense to focus on those descendants instead of | all Black people. | | In their communities with strong family networks and more | fathers in the home, they don't see nearly the same | issues as the mostly fatherless slave descendent | families. | cloverich wrote: | But the question is whether those wrongs will right | themselves and over what time period and at what cost. | (Black) Affirmative action seems like a reasonable way to | speed that process up, given the strength of network | effects (ie who you know) on progress and wealth. | | IMO compared to helping the poor, its something that | should have a stopping point, presumably at least several | generations out. | | Lastly its also about atonement and making amends, also | distinct from poor and even other races / genders with a | history of oppression. IE when i lived in austin tx I | often walked by a statue near the capitol building, | erected after the civil war, whose inscription rejects | the outcome entirely. Its bananas that thing exists, or | that replacing it would be contentious. Yet here we are. | scarmig wrote: | [flagged] | HideousKojima wrote: | And the moment you allow for wrongs that far back, | there's no reasonable stopping point. People of Norman | descent in the UK have measurably greater wealth than | those of Anglo Saxon descent. Should those of Anglo Saxon | descent be able to get reparations from those of Norman | descent because of William the Conqueror's invasion? And | then what about the Welsh, can they get reparations from | the Anglo Saxons? My own ancestry is primarily Scottish, | French Canadian, and Irish, can I get triple reparations | from the English? | | https://www.spectator.com.au/2019/07/anglo-saxons- | deserve-re... | lifeformed wrote: | It's not about ancient wrongs, the wrongs being talked | about were happening as AA was implemented. We're talking | about things happening in 1971, not just the 1850's. | mech987987 wrote: | I figure that there is no binary distinction between what | is ancient and what is modern enough to matter. | | Would you agree that older wrongs are only different from | newer wrongs as a matter of degree, rather than a matter | of kind? | malkia wrote: | Yes, that's true, and yet generations and generations | have suffered from this and this affected their children | | for example it took so many years to get to this: | | https://www.santamonica.gov/blog/statement-apologizing- | to-sa... | caeril wrote: | How are the children and grandchildren of Japanese- | Americans living through the 1940s doing | socioeconomically? Arguably, they were subject to worse | racism, harassment, and violence than African-Americans | for about two full decades, _and we literally put them | into camps_. | | Chinese-Americans worked largely as indentured labor on | railroads and various other large projects both before | and after the Civil War. How are their descendants faring | today? | | Howabout Ashkenazi Jews, who have suffered probably the | worst through all of recorded history? We're talking TWO | MILLENIA of oppression, not a measly two centuries or so. | Where are all the Jewish kids killing each other and | flunking out of school for all of their historical | oppression? | | The generational racism trope/excuse is played out, has | been massively contradicted by every model minority you | can think of, and needs to die. It has no basis in | reality. | | Do people who regurgitate this insane idea just think | Asians and Jews don't exist? The only way one could | possibly entertain an obviously incorrect hypothesis is | if you intentionally blind yourself to the voluminous | countervailing evidence. | UncleMeat wrote: | Japanese Americans who were interred were paid | reparations after a hard-fought battle. Maybe we should | do the same for other oppression? | llbeansandrice wrote: | There are kids applying to college very literally right | now whose parents were legally discriminated against by | the Federal government in the 1970s. | scarmig wrote: | How _exactly_ does present-day affirmative action | recompense the victims of racist policies from half a | century ago? | | Are their children materially worse off statistically? | Yes, and that should be remedied, by the same methods | that everyone who's materially worse off should be | uplifted. What racism exists now against their children | should be remedied. But victimhood is concrete and not | something that's passed on from generation to generation. | llbeansandrice wrote: | You cannot have a world that has generational wealth and | privilege while not having generational disadvantages. | Your definition of victimhood is incredibly narrow here, | and wrong. | | Using the Federal policies is simply a stark example of | how recently racism was aggressively state-sanctioned. | The purpose of affirmative action is to help directly | break the racist biases in a complex process to being | able to attend college. | | It is not a singular solution, nor is it a perfect one. I | feel like you are attempting to topple AA since it's not | a magic bullet to the complex problem of racism in the | US. It is an imperfect effort in part with many others to | try and tackle the various inequalities in the US. | | Even if the US was able to have a truly holistic effort | to solve racism and the wrongs minorities have | experienced, what good does funding k-12 schools, | scholarships, etc. do to help disadvantaged college | applicants right now? Nothing. The common dissent is that | if they are poor or otherwise disadvantaged then they | should receive benefit from programs targeting those | disadvantages. But those still are unable to directly | address the various unique ways in which a black person | with some set of disadvantages is different than a white | person with the same checklist. The problem is simply too | complex and the breadth of experiences of minorities in | the US far too broad to be tackled any way but directly | imo, which is what AA attempts to do. | scarmig wrote: | We agree that there are still racial biases in the | present day that disproportionately affect Black | applicants. But that's not the only disadvantage, and as | AA is set up, a Black kid whose parents are doctors who | goes to a ritzy boarding school is considered | "disadvantaged" compared to a poor Viet kid in a crappy | public school who has to spend all his evenings doing | deliveries for his parents' restaurant. That is, frankly, | ridiculous. | ilovetux wrote: | > How exactly does present-day affirmative action | recompense the victims of racist policies from half a | century ago? | | Referring to five decades in relation to a century makes | it sound like a lot more time has passed than has | actually passed. | | > What racism exists now against their children should be | remedied. But victimhood is concrete and not something | that's passed on from generation to generation. | | How can it not be? If a parent is traumatized how can | that not affect their child? Do you think that the black | children from the 50's were not affected by their parents | showing up beaten, bruised and bloodied or by seeing | their parents hanging from a tree after they didn't come | home the night before? | | Entire generations of people were victimized in ways that | are hard to explain to someone who has not lived through | it, and acting like everything needs to be calculated as | a 1:1 transaction if it is even to be considered is not a | constructive way to enter the discussion. | [deleted] | adbachman wrote: | > How exactly does present-day affirmative action | recompense the victims of racist policies from half a | century ago? | | Near the top of this thread one specific "how" was | discussed. | | Legacy admissions are affirmative action which offers | preferential access based on ancestry. If your parents, | your grandparents, or anyone of their race was (legally | at the time) forbidden from attending, how else would you | have representation in that process? | | Affirmative action is an artificially generated | membership in the "belongs at this institution" club for | people who may otherwise be excluded. | scarmig wrote: | That's missing the point: how does giving person A | preferential access to college recompense person B who is | distinct from person A? | | As far as legacy admissions go, they're noxious, but | you're not accounting for the ~99% of people who don't | have that privilege. | mcphage wrote: | > the ~99% of people who don't have that privilege | | What percentage of _accepted_ students have that | privilege? It 's pretty high. | jcranmer wrote: | A quick search suggests that for Harvard (one of the | institutions specifically sued here), it's 36% of the | class of 2022. | scarmig wrote: | That's irrelevant, though, when you're talking about the | vast majority of people who apply who don't get accepted | _because_ of those factors. Telling someone "you're | privileged because a child of a Kennedy gets a leg up in | going to Harvard and shares your skin color, even though | you don't get that same leg up" is ridiculous, to say | nothing of Asians who are discriminated against despite | having relatively few legacies. | diputsmonro wrote: | Victimhood can be passed through generations if the | parents' harm was not remedied. Merely ending harm does | not remedy it. If someone is prevented from getting a | home loan, job, raise, education, etc. because of racist | policies, that absolutely affects the kind of life and | opportunities that their children will have. | | As an analogy, if I have stolen money from you for years, | stopping me from stealing further money doesn't repair | the damage I've done. You would rightly expect your money | back, or something of comparable value. | | Affirmative action programs are specifically designed to | seek out and uplift people who have been generationally | affected in that way. It recompenses them by giving them | job/education opportunities that they would likely have | had if their parents (and _their_ parents, etc.) weren 't | artificially held back. | scarmig wrote: | How? By having the kid get a smaller inheritance? Or by | having the kid not having the privilege of having college | educated parents? | | If those are the metrics we're using, then use them | directly: prioritize first gen college applicants, | applicants whose parents rent, applicants whose parents | don't have professional jobs. Otherwise, why should a | poor Asian immigrant going to a crappy public school be | considered "more privileged" than a rich Black kid who | goes to Andover? | | > if I have stolen money from you for years, stopping me | from stealing further money doesn't repair the damage | I've done. You would rightly expect your money back, or | something of comparable value. | | The comparison here would be more something like "your | grandfather killed my grandfather, therefore I should get | privileges over you." | ilovetux wrote: | > It's impossible for someone born in 2000 to have been | wronged by something done in 1800. Crimes committed | during their lifetime? Absolutely, and fix those. | | That is disingenuous, Slavery didn't end until the 13th | amendment was ratified in 1865 which is 65 years later | than you said, but really, slavery was not even a crime. | | Systemic abuses continued long after that and even into | today. Those are not crimes either...they are written | into law like how property taxes are used to fund public | education which ensures that people of means get a good | education and those that struggle will continue to | struggle. | | Lynchings, murders, beatings, being forced by gunpoint to | not vote...those are crimes and (while they do happen | even today) they happened a LOT in the 50's and into the | 60's. The people who committed those crimes are | grandparents/great-grandparents and a lot of whom are | alive today. | | Wrongs against minorities are not some long-ago, almost | mythical events that we need to just move on from. They | are still happening, and they are indicative of a society | that values sameness and predictability over the | individual rights and freedoms of the people. | | That being said, giving a leg-up to a minority applicant | over someone else is, in fact, one way to decrease the | effects of the abuses that were experienced. | gmarx wrote: | When Sandra Day O'Connor cast the deciding vote in favor | of keeping AA back in 2003 even though she was against | it, she suggested it might be done away with after | another 25 years. We have had affirmative action in | college admissions for 50 plus years now. Seems we would | have some data to judge its effectiveness by now. More | than 20 years ago I recall some top Harvard people | lamenting that at Harvard it was mostly helping people | who were black but not descended from American slaves. | Also, from what I read it is much heavier than a thumb on | the scale | naasking wrote: | > But the question is whether those wrongs will right | themselves and over what time period and at what cost. | | How can the Holocaust be made right? How can the genocide | of the Native Amercians be made right? I think these | questions are a distraction at best, probably because | they are unanswerable at this time (maybe unanswerable | period). | | If you want to live in a world where people are treated | as individuals and where individuals have equal | opportunities, then you have to normalize language and | behaviours and create systems that treat people as | individuals. I agree there will be lingering | discriminatory effects, which is why every system should | take precautions and have feedback loops for self- | correction, like blinding, regular audits, etc. This last | part is where most of the failures occur, mostly because | they're missing entirely. | dayvid wrote: | The real answer is you have to get anything you want ASAP | before people stop caring or it becomes more difficult to | achieve. This is why certain groups have received | reparations and others haven't. | | Saying how can we or what can we do is an honest answer | at best and a stalling tactic at worst. | kenjackson wrote: | > If you want to live in a world where people are treated | as individuals and where individuals have equal | opportunities, then you have to normalize language and | behaviours and create systems that treat people as | individuals. | | I'd love this world. How do we get poor kids access to | the same healthcare as a child (and prenatal) and the | same schooling prior to college. It seems like for many | Americans this philosophy first applies during college | admissions. The first 17 years of everyone's life is | apparently equal enough. | Clubber wrote: | >How do we get poor kids access to the same healthcare | | Medicaid attempts to accomplish this. I'm not sure how | well. Careful when you say "same," the solution might end | up being equally bad for everybody. | | >same schooling prior to college. | | Stop funding by zip code, that's the cause of it. Fund by | either voting district or entire state. | haberman wrote: | > Stop funding by zip code, that's the cause of it. | | What is your basis for saying this? | | Info I have come across suggests the opposite: | https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/is-the-conventional- | wis... | thworp wrote: | I will recommend Thomas Sowell's writing on this topic, | he has some very poignant (and somewhat depressing) | points on AA and the wider black cultural landscape that | surrounds it. | naasking wrote: | > How do we get poor kids access to the same healthcare | as a child (and prenatal) | | Universal healthcare, like everywhere else in the world. | | > and the same schooling prior to college | | This one is tougher with wealth disparities, because the | wealthy will always have more opportunities and programs | available to them. Public funding for after school | programs and camps. | | > The first 17 years of everyone's life is apparently | equal enough. | | Democrats did a good thing with the child tax credit that | lifted millions of kids out of poverty. They of course | botched it, per usual, by placing a time limit on it, and | now it's expired. | nightski wrote: | Universal healthcare sets a base standard which is | fantastic but it in no way equalizes healthcare across | the economic spectrum. | naasking wrote: | I'm frankly not concerned about the 0.1% that can afford | to fly to another country for experimental treatments. | The US is the primary place for this anyway, so if the US | went universal healthcare route, that shrinks the pool | even further. | cycomanic wrote: | While that would very much be the the rational decision | to make it goes against one of the core principles of | much of the discourse in the US, which is that poor | people are poor because of some character flaw or being | financially irresponsible if you would have just tried | hard enough you would not be poor, so why should the | state help you. | | Rutger Bregman talks about this quite a bit in his book. | pkulak wrote: | But poor white people are poor for a reason other than | the color of the skin of themselves and their ancestors. | And black folks who are doing fine, but not great, might | be doing great right now if not for the color of their | skin. Sure, affirmative action based on income will | accidentally sweep up some of the right people, but we | know how to exactly target these programs, even if we're | no longer allowed to. | naasking wrote: | > But poor white people are poor for a reason other than | the color of the skin of themselves and their ancestors. | | Maybe they were discriminated against because they were | Irish 100 years ago, or Italian 70 years ago, neither of | which were considered "white" at the time either. I'm | sure we can play this grievance game back to the first | humans, but I'm not sure what that would accomplish. | | The question you have to ask yourself is: is it more | important to help people who are suffering right now, | regardless of their race or ethnicity, or is it more | important to try and fail to solve some nebulous, poorly | understood "inherited grievance" problem. | vkou wrote: | Very few people in the US piss on the Irish today, but | plenty of people and institutions continue to piss on | African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, etc. | Sundown towns, and the same sick mentality that produces | them hadn't gone away, even if some of them have mellowed | out on the edges, or are too afraid to be brazen about | it. | | There's a large difference of degree between the problems | faced by those groups. | NeverFade wrote: | The social justice movement presumes to "make things | right", but often it's hard or impossible to do so, and | trying can have the opposite effect. | | Case in point: a black family whose great-great- | grandparents 200 years ago were slaves, versus an Asian | family that immigrated from a nation impoverished by | colonialism last year. The child of the former will | heavily benefit from Affirmative Action, while the child | of the latter will be heavily penalized. | | Why? | | Who is to say that the child whose ancestors lived in a | rich country for the past 200 years, is more | "disadvantaged" then the child whose entire ancestry as | far back as the records go always lived in a dirt-poor | nation, further impoverished by colonialism? | wizofaus wrote: | Except those even able to immigrate out of such recently | "impoverished" nations are a small self-selected subset | of that population, that are likely considerably better | off than those who stay behind and and certainly likely | to be those with a strong determination to succeed. | Perhaps you could argue the same of slave-descended | native born Americans who then apply for college, but the | former group are making the same decision, and at any | rate, applying for college is rather easier than deciding | to move your entire family half-way across the world. | FWIW I'm generally skeptical of whether AA is actually a | good thing for various reasons but I assume it's felt | "something" has to be done to address underrepresentation | of particular races in college admissions. Recent Asian | immigrants if anything seem to be slightly | overrepresented so for AA policies to have their desired | effect, yes, they will by design discriminate against | such a group. | thworp wrote: | The first and second generation descendants of dirt poor | immigrants from Latin America are doing very well in the | US (or at least better than African Americans). Some of | the recent Caribbean and African immigrants even decry | the toxic culture embedded in the "Black" community. | | As an outside it seems to me that the issue is much | deeper than economic calculus and I'd recommend you | read/watch some of Thomas Sowell's thoughts on the | matter. | parineum wrote: | > Not to mention that many universities also have | affirmative action for children of alumni, who are still | predominantly white and rich, partially because of the | legal discrimination uo to 1971, and partially because | universities are ridiculously expensive. Has that | affirmative action also been struck down? | | It hasn't but it should be. One thing I know for sure is | that the first step to ending that discrimination shouldn't | be to add more. Why not start by removing that? | EatingWithForks wrote: | Additionally we had issues where banks were being | prosecuted for not giving housing support to primarily | black neighboorhoods all the way still to STILL IN 2023! | https://apnews.com/article/city-national-bank-redlining- | sett... | ThatGeoGuy wrote: | > Yeah, every time the discussion comes up about, for | example, reparations for the descendants of slaves, I start | out thinking: it's been 150 years! | | Well, that might be a bit disingenuous. The "last chattel | slave" was only freed around September 1942. I've seen this | reference in several places, but the most direct one is a | footnote on a wikipedia page [0]. | | Regardless, it is probably not worth putting a time limit | on suffering. The children and grandchildren of enslaved | black people are still alive today! Waving it away with | "time has passed" seems more an attempt to bury the issue | than to approach it with some semblance of acknowledging | the wrong done. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeville,_Texas#/media/Fi | le:Be... | Y_Y wrote: | Historically, many slaves were not permitted or able to | reproduce, this is one thing that distinguishes the slave | trade in the United States. Trying to make amends for | those slaves whose line ended with them is probably | impossible. | | On the other hand, a great many people today all around | the world, and of many skin colours are descended from | slaves. I am mostly familiar with this history in Europe | and Africa, though I have no doubt it went on to a | greater and lesser extent elsewhere. Supposing that the | average reader here, who does not consider themselves to | be "minority", is a "white" American, how confident are | you that your ancestors do not include many slaves? | Slavery in Europe still exists, but in the traditional | sense with open buying and selling and large-scale | enslavement it was openly and widely practiced in England | and Germany and Poland and wherever you trace your | ancestry no more than a thousand years ago. | | You may consider it inappropriate to put a time limit on | suffering, but in practice it's implicitly done all the | time. The US is exceptional in having so many people who | bear clear marks of historically nearby enslavement. | Other parts of the world have been more successful in | forgetting. | | If I proposed to some Ivy League admissions panel that | the descendants of biblical Jews should be favoured over | those of Egyptians on account of enslavement would anyone | listen? | mensetmanusman wrote: | Population wise there are more slaves today than 100 | years ago, so the world has not quite moved on. | javajosh wrote: | _> it is probably not worth putting a time limit on | suffering_ | | I'm not a historian, but if you believe this, how do you | propose to make things right for all the suffering of the | past? You would need to examine history for winners and | losers, every battle and atrocity and societal structure, | and then assign blame to modern people who look like the | bad guys, and victimhood to modern people who look like | the victims. How do you deal with the (probably very | common) case when a group of people that looks one way | has been both oppressor and victim? How do you deal with | issues like pedophilia, incest, or domestic violence, or | torture, all of which have had very different moral | weight historically? | | To me, that's the tragedy of this ideology. The problem | isn't the desire for making past wrongs right - that's a | very good urge, and one I share. It's that the method for | making past wrongs right is based on a very simplistic | reading of history and a simplistic, and deeply unfair, | idea that you can assign blame and victimhood based on | similarity of appearance. There ARE cases when you can | address great wrongs, but there is a kind of natural | "statute of limitations" where it becomes actually | impossible to do anything. Should the Jews still be angry | with Egyptians? Or does the Israeli treatment of | Palestinians wipe that debt out? What about the Jews who | weren't involved? What about the blood libel, the | assertion that Jews killed Jesus (nevermind that he was a | Jew), and so it is right to hold all modern Jews | responsible? What about all the tribal massacres in | Africa, where the victims and oppressors a) look exactly | the same, and b) would do exactly the same thing if their | positions were reversed? How do you deal with the Aztecs, | who were slaughtered by Europeans, but who themselves did | human sacrafice and slavery, and who eventually interbred | with the Europeans? Same for the Russians and Mongolians. | (There are probably a hundred other examples of this - | Vikings and the Anglo Saxons? The French and the Celts? | Etc). | | What we can do, we should do. Japanese internment at | Manzinar was wrong, and they deserved all the reparations | and apologies they (eventually) got, and more. Harvey | Weinstien's female victims deserved to see him in prison | (at least). Black neighborhoods deserve to have freeways | rerouted to not split them and make them terrible, and | money to rebuild. But do all white people deserve to be | hated, and to hate themselves, because they look like a | group of wrongdoers? No. Heck, some of them are recent | immigrants. Ditto for black people. And the whole idea we | can assign blame based on a person's appearance is a CORE | racist belief, and yet now the zeitgeist holds that if | you don't do it, you're the racist. The world is upside | down, and this ideology is utterly unjust. In my view, | it's not anti-racist, it's a new racism that doesn't seek | to end racism, but rather to turn the tables and swap the | roles of victim and oppressor. This will not, cannot, end | well, and it's not the world I want for myself or my | children, and I don't think it's the world any right- | thinking person wants. | specialist wrote: | > _...how do you propose to make things right for all the | suffering of the past?_ | | Yes and: What is justice? | | > _You would need to examine history for winners and | losers..._ | | That'd be a good start. | | Until something better comes along, I support the "truth | & reconciliation" strategy. With a splash of sociology. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_commission | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory | | Another good step would be to enfranchise people. Like | giving the all the people impacted by a new freeway some | say in the planning process. | prottog wrote: | Your society would be doomed to forever look back at | historical grievances and never make progress. | | As Ibram X. Kendi says: "The only remedy to past | discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy | to present discrimination is future discrimination." | Under your and his vision, there will never come a day | when people aren't discriminated for things they had no | control over. | specialist wrote: | > _Under your and his vision,_ | | You know me so well. | | > _...there will never come a day when people aren 't | discriminated for things they had no control over._ | | Um, what? | | While I'm ambivalent towards Kendi, I have zero doubt | you've got him wrong. | | Maybe you're thinking of McWhorter? | ThatGeoGuy wrote: | I think it is probably unwise to pre-suppose an extreme | here (that society will never "progress"). | | The default action today is "do nothing and don't | acknowledge the problem." Suggesting any action be taken | against that status quo does not in any way suggest that | it is a permanent inviolable law that society must | continuously optimize for nor does it suggest that it | can't be done in tandem with other "progress" society may | achieve. | javajosh wrote: | _> The default action today is "do nothing and don't | acknowledge the problem."_ | | Ambivalence is the human default, and logic requires it | must be so. The world presently has 10e9 people. | Historically, something like 10e12 people have ever | existed (I'm estimating). If you were to somehow _feel_ | the sum total of human suffering in just one instant, I | daresay it would destroy you. We ALL pick and choose what | suffering to acknowledge, for the simple reason that to | do otherwise is impossible (and deadly if it was | possible). Heck, we ignore _entire categories of | suffering_ in every discussion, like that caused by | disease, heart-break, ostracism, bullying, or old age. | | You loudly proclaim your aversion to all human suffering, | past and present, and claim to know how to fix it. This | is absurd. It is vain virtue signaling. Your position | smacks of an ignorant pride, wrapped in a claim of | impossible compassion. And this sin of pride extends to | your "solutions" - you assert that you can accurately | assess the suffering of all humans throughout history and | take just action to make it right. That's even more | absurd. | | We _can 't_ address ALL suffering. That doesn't mean that | we can't address ANY suffering. It means we must (must!) | be highly selective. We must let (almost) everything go. | We deal with what's in front of us. We must acknowledge | how human life is twisted: Rape and plunder...that yields | good kids. Civilizations collapse...to make new for the | next one. Rampant exploitation...that yields just and | fair societies. Cultural appropriation...that yields | great ideas and art. Slavery and dehumanization...that | ultimately leaves the descendants in a better position | than the descendants of those that weren't taken. It's | twisted, messed up, and that's life. (btw the most | twisted thing I know of in nature is the life-cycle of | this slime-mold/ameoba life cycle. | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlANF-v9lb0). | | Yeah, there are plenty of structures that need to be | dismantled in the US. The police are out-of-control and | there is no meaningful separation of powers at the local | level; the health-care system is plundering us all for | profit; wealth inequality continues to get worse; money | in politics has ossified our power structures. And yeah, | America has a profound and unique history of racist | dehumanization rooted in southern slavery that continues | to this day and negatively impacts many American black | people in profound ways. But the solution to the KKK (the | original recipe anti-black version) is not to invent a | ~KKK (the crispy anti-white version) and tell whites that | if they don't join ~KKK then they are in the KKK. That's | just fucked up. | ThatGeoGuy wrote: | Look I'm not exactly engaged enough to dismantle this | piece by piece so this will probably be my last comment | but: | | > Ambivalence is the human default, and logic requires it | must be so. | | You'd do well to do more than assert it. This is | ideology. | | > You loudly proclaim your aversion to all human | suffering, past and present, and claim to know how to fix | it. | | I said no such thing, and the remainder of your prior | statements are also asserting I made any such claim. | Making efforts to fix wrongs is not itself a moral | failure, nor is it some kind of foolish pride. | | > We can't address ALL suffering. That doesn't mean that | we can't address ANY suffering. | | What is odd to me is that this is exactly my point. If | you somehow think that racism isn't still "in front of | us" as you so boldly claim, I encourage you to prove that | substantially and convince the people who to this day | still feel victimized by it. | | > But the solution to the KKK (the original recipe anti- | black version) is not to invent a ~KKK (the crispy anti- | white version) and tell whites that if they don't join | ~KKK then they are in the KKK. | | I haven't claimed this at all. For what its worth though | -- you are in some form invoking the paradox of | intolerance here. I'm not sure why you felt the need to | write this screed, it is entirely separate from anything | I've said and completely off-the-rails. | javajosh wrote: | You may be right - I suppose that apart from my first | point about ambivalence being the default, it doesn't | necessarily apply to you personally. But it _does_ apply | to the general ideology this thread is addressing. I 'm | sorry if I grouped you in with views that you don't | share. | wizofaus wrote: | > tribal massacres in Africa, where the victims and | oppressors a) look exactly the same | | To you. There's almost certainly more genetic difference | between two people randomly selected from two African | tribes than two people randomly selected from different | self-identified racial groupings in a Western country. | And a much longer history of conflict between tribes vs | races. I'd note the fact this is true goes some way | towards explaining why Africa suffers the levels of | violence and poverty today that it still does. As for the | rest of your post, while AA clearly is a strong form of | racial discrimination that does little to help us achieve | an ideal world where "race" is no longer a thing, it's | also a policy with an underlying philosophy of "let's | provide help to other people different in | appearance/ethnic backgrounds" , which is rather | obviously a massive improvement on "let's actively | discriminate and/or commit violence against such people". | And hopefully a step towards a policy of "let's help | other people when they need help, regardless of their | appearance or ethnic background". | javajosh wrote: | _> To you._ | | No, to them. I was thinking specifically of the Rwandan | Genocide[0], where there was and is no visible difference | between the Hutu and Tutsi. The difference was via a | field on their national id card [1]. | | 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide | | 1 - http://www.preventgenocide.org/edu/pastgenocides/rwan | da/inda... | wizofaus wrote: | Accepted, the Tutsi/Hutu division isn't one where | difference in genetics/appearance seems to be a major | factor, though I'd still assume the average Tutsi or Hutu | could easily distinguish one from the other in a way | outsiders mightn't be able to. | wk_end wrote: | I think you may have misread the comment you're | responding to. | concordDance wrote: | > And then I think: you can't just stop doing a bad thing | and pretend it didn't happen. You've got to try to make | things right. | | Here's where your thinking goes askew, you can't simply | draw a boundary around a subset of people and declare that | an agentic thing. Groups of people don't have guilt or | automatic responsibility, only individuals do. | | Thinking of very diverse groups of people as single | entities is how you get sentiments like "Muslims did 9/11 | and they must pay" without considering that the tendency- | towards-9/11-ness might not carry over to the entire set of | "Muslims". Less than half of Americans were even alive in | 1971 and no one is alive from the days of US slavery. | | Thinking "those who have inherited benefits due to negative | treatment of African Americans should transfer wealth to | the descendents of those African Americans" is a separate | idea to race based affirmative action. Race based AA would | see the children of a pair of Ukrainian immigrants put | below the children of a pair of Ethiopian immigrants, even | though neither group has anything to do with slavery. | mcv wrote: | I'm not talking about guilt, I'm talking about getting | hurt. Black Americans were quite clearly discriminated | against as a group. | | Your examples are all about punishment, I'm talking about | lifting them up, correcting the wrongs, reimbursing the | damage done. It's not about benefits they inherited, but | obstacles they inherited, opportunities that were denied | to them, unjust punishment that they received. This has | been structural for a ridiculously long time, and it's | still not gone. Black people still receive more severe | punishment for the same crimes, are still often denied | opportunities that are available to white people (months | ago there was an article here about how black founders | couldn't get funding if they didn't get a white co- | founder who was then assumed by VCs to be the real CEO). | Even if they are technically equal before the law, that | still doesn't mean that they're treated as equal in | practice. | sokoloff wrote: | > Your examples are all about punishment, I'm talking | about lifting them up, correcting the wrongs, reimbursing | the damage done. | | Lifting one group up is almost always at the expense of | other groups, which is isomorphic to punishment. | | If you have a way to lift some up without any | disadvantage to others, we should probably just do that | to an infinite extent to everyone. | lern_too_spel wrote: | If some groups were so oppressed that they now put a cost | on the rest of society via crime and welfare costs, | fixing that will be a long term net benefit for other | groups, not an expense. We can discuss the most effective | way to fix it, but pretending the problem doesn't exist | won't make it go away. | mcv wrote: | > Lifting one group up is almost always at the expense of | other groups, which is isomorphic to punishment. | | Not necessarily. Life is not a zero sum game. | | Who is hurt by better funding for schools in poor | neighbourhoods? Who is hurt by training cops to not shoot | first and ask questions later? Who is hurt by encouraging | home ownership by black people? | sokoloff wrote: | > Who is hurt by better funding for schools in poor | neighbourhoods? | | Whatever that money would otherwise have been spent on is | harming the recipient of that now foregone benefit. If | you raise taxes to do it, taxpayers are harmed. | | > Who is hurt by encouraging home ownership by black | people? | | If home ownership is a good thing, whoever would have | otherwise bought those marginal houses is harmed. | Denzel wrote: | You missed the part where it's not a zero-sum game. If | you're interested in the economic concepts behind why an | economy is a positive-sum game in an open system, look | up: production possibilities frontier (PPF) and | comparative advantage. | | An economy would become zero-sum if we ran up against the | limits of the universe. Until then, rest assured that | opportunity can _grow_ for both sides in a transaction. | namaria wrote: | >Whatever that money would otherwise have been spent on | is harming the recipient of that now foregone benefit. | | This would only make sense if the amount of welfare for | rich people weren't outrageously high in the form of | regressive income taxation, non meaningful wealth | taxation, corporate tax breaks and subsidies, loan | forgiveness programs for business owners etc etc all that | on top of a nearly trillion dollar budget for military | kit that sees what 40% usage? | fugalfervor wrote: | > If you raise taxes to do it, taxpayers are harmed. | | This is not true. If I, a taxpayer, want my taxes raised | for the sake of extending equality to a historically and | currently oppressed group, then I am not harmed. | | If you, a taxpayer, disagree with the notion of | restorative justice, I posit that your overall happiness | would be helped more by empathy and less by "lower | taxes". | antisthenes wrote: | > Not necessarily. Life is not a zero sum game. | | Life is a zero-sum game in way more ways than it is not, | especially on the scale of a typical human life-span or | important decisions that people make. | | This is a bad trope that just won't die. | | In fact you can see a lot of negative outcomes in spheres | like housing and medicine precisely because of zero-sum | issues. | oceanplexian wrote: | > I'm talking about lifting them up, correcting the | wrongs, reimbursing the damage done. | | I don't think people realize how dangerous trying to | "repair" or "correct" history can actually be. It could | literally go on for thousands of years, look at the | Israeli's and Palestinians. While I'm fine if people who | committed discriminatory acts are held accountable in the | law, it's a period of time we should be ashamed of and | need to stop revisiting. | | In my opinion, the best way to respect people who were | wronged is to let it go. Yes it will always be unfair, | but people in history books are not "us". We are a | different generation of human beings with the power to | create the world we want to live in. | vore wrote: | How would you feel on the other side of this? Given how | recently discrimination was still legal, is it really | great that you can shrug and say "well, tough tits I | guess"? | [deleted] | paiute wrote: | > Groups of people don't have guilt or automatic | responsibility, only individuals do. | | Humans are a eusocial species, and history is full of | group guilt, plight, dominance. I do agree with the | direction of your thought though. We should strive at the | individual level. | blueboo wrote: | Groups were advantaged over groups. Your line of | reasoning itself draws a boundary--in history--and | thereby quite conveniently sidesteps the issue. | | And yes, a pair of Ethiopian immigrants, even in 2023, | face structural racism over and above their Ukrainian | friends, alas, arising from America's legacy of slavery | -- hence affrimative action. | lom888 wrote: | But perpetuating the logic of groups being advantaged | over groups only keeps the identitarian mindset going. By | openly favoring certain groups the discrimination never | ends. All you need to do is look at India where the | active discrimination in favor of scheduled castes goes | on ad infinitum to see that the effect of any | discrimination amplifies sectarianism. The line needs to | be drawn somewhere. You don't fight fire with fire, you | fight it with water. You don't solve discrimination with | more discrimination, you fight it by having people not | accept the logic of identitarianism. | mcv wrote: | The discrimination doesn't go away if you ignore it. The | discrimination has continued. It still is. Not forced by | the law any more, but still many times perpetrated by | individuals based on other individuals' membership or a | perceived group. That is the real identitarian mindset | you should be worried about. | Misdicorl wrote: | "you can't simply draw a boundary... Https if people | don't have responsibility... Only individuals do" | | I think this is specious reasoning. We accept this just | fine in other tort circumstances e.g | | 1) lawsuits against a city after miscarriage of justice | | 2) lawsuits against corporations when X happens. | | Often individual responsibility will be a portion of the | trial but to my understanding it is | | 1) a secondary or even tertiary concern | | 2) used to deflect blame from the group | | I think in general not allowing blame to be allocated to | individuals will lead to poor results. We need methods to | call systems bad and curtail them in addition to | individuals | bandrami wrote: | It doesn't really have anything to do with "guilt", it | has to do with the fact that white middle class | intergenerational wealth was built entirely through | housing, which was government subsidized for white people | and whatever the opposite of subsidized is for nonwhite | people (they didn't just not get the loans, the | government took active steps to discourage private | lending and devalue nonwhite neighborhoods to push up | property values in white areas). | | If the racial aspect of it is intolerable to you, there's | an easy fix: a 100% estate tax distributed universally as | a nest-egg to 18 year olds. | blackle wrote: | 9/11 was not a systemic injustice, it was perpetrated by | a small group of extremists in a single act. Racial | discrimination was a systemic injustice perpetrated by | lawmakers, enabled by an unjust society, with country- | wide effects lasting multiple decades (if not centuries). | It's not a logical fallacy to think that a systemic | injustice requires a systemic solution. | jimbob45 wrote: | _it was perpetrated by a small group of extremists_ | | A small group of extremists cheered on by a vast number | of international Muslims worldwide and domestically. | robertlagrant wrote: | But the solution is to remove the injustice. That's not | what's contended here, I think. | mcv wrote: | It is what I'm discussing. Not sure what else there is. | fugalfervor wrote: | That is one proposed solution. There are many others. | otikik wrote: | > Groups of people don't have guilt or automatic | responsibility, only individuals do. | | Then the words "accomplice", "collaborator" and | "facilitator" would not exist. | | I believe countries, families and things in between can | be guilty of stuff. | sokoloff wrote: | "accomplice", "collaborator" and "facilitator" are all | singular nouns rather than collective nouns. | idopmstuff wrote: | > And then I think: you can't just stop doing a bad thing | and pretend it didn't happen. You've got to try to make | things right. | | I don't disagree with you, but I've always found it wrong | that in a lot of cases of academic affirmative action, it's | Asians who are absorbing the cost of making things right, | when they are definitely not responsible for any of the | wrongs done. | [deleted] | marcosdumay wrote: | > You've got to try to make things right. | | Well, ok, you should. | | Now, favoring person A due to their skin color, at the | expense at person X, because person B was once harmed to | favor person Y due to their skin color does not strike me | as a productive way to do that. | | You can start to make things right by banning that shit | about children of alumni, all the bullshit police behavior | there, doing some real wealth redistribution, etc. You can | go looking at individuals that were harmed too, but modern | legal systems have a really hard time dealing with that | kind of situation, so be prepared to cover new ground, and | be wary of not creating larger injustices than the ones you | are trying to fix. | | Anyway, I'm far from the US too. The entire thing isn't | completely academic to me, but it's close to that. | justinclift wrote: | > ... when black people call the police, there's the non- | zero chance that they're the ones who end up getting shot. | | In the US, isn't that the case regardless of people's skin | colour? | | This example springs to mind for me anyway: | | https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/verdict-in- | polic... | RhodesianHunter wrote: | Statistics matter, anecdotes do not. | willcipriano wrote: | Unless they are the FBI crime statistics, then we are | back to anecdotes. | ParetoOptimal wrote: | The way you analyze statistics matters too. For instance | most don't cross-reference crime statistics with economic | background and see how drastically that affects any prior | (likely racist) conclusions. | Amezarak wrote: | Have you cross-referenced that? What I saw was that the | lowest economic quintiles of some groups committed less | crime than the wealthiest quintiles of other groups. The | "economic" in "socio-economic" is important, but so is | the "socio", which may include being discriminated | against in the past. | | Unfortunately, statistics don't really bear out a lot of | popular claims about the impact of poverty. For example, | per-student funding does not make as big a difference in | academic performance in schools as demographics and the | local social environment: there are a lot of schools with | bottom barrel funding that perform great and schools with | exorbitant funding that perform miserably. And family | income is not the strongest predictor of SAT scores. | eastof wrote: | Don't the statistics show that black people have about | the same rate of deaths per encounter as other groups? | | https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1903856116 | | Deaths per capita are higher, but their police encounter | rate is also higher. The higher encounter rate is | possibly due to discrimination, but it doesn't match with | your story about calling the cops and then getting shot. | tildef wrote: | Worth noting that this paper has been retracted: | https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014148117 | LanceH wrote: | The bar was set at non-zero, so a single (true) anecdote | surpasses that. | j_walter wrote: | The point of saying "when a black person calls police" | implies that the "non-zero" is in reference to an | increase from the status quo of "when a white person | calls police". | | Everyday there is a non-zero chance of being shot by | police whether you intiate the encounter or not. | belorn wrote: | Germany went through a similar phase after 1945 with a lot | of guilt and reparations towards fixing all the problem | cause during the war. It was very noticeable in behavior | and attitude, through around 2000s it seems that the past | is being put behind them. | | We should not forget that world war 2 happens, but it also | doesn't make much sense for Germans to continue self- | flagellation forever. If anything, the lessons learned by | the period between world war 1 and world war 2 is that | lasting peace is not about trying to fix every past | injustice by never ending reparations. It is not feasible | to create a world as if world war 2 did not occur, and at | some point people has to accept the past and work as a | single group, like say a European union rather than Europe | vs Germans. | Teever wrote: | Germany paid reparations. | mcv wrote: | But not to Greece. | throw_a_grenade wrote: | And not to Poland. | snovymgodym wrote: | Germany has paid reparations to Polish individuals harmed | by the second world war. | | > In the meantime, Poland and Germany concluded several | treaties and agreements to compensate Polish persons who | were victims of German aggression. In 1972, West Germany | paid compensation to Poles that had survived pseudo- | medical experiments during their imprisonment in various | Nazi camps during the Second World War.[35] In 1975, the | Gierek-Schmidt agreement was signed in Warsaw. It | stipulated that 1.3 billion DM was to be paid to Poles | who, during Nazi occupation, had paid into the German | social security system but received no pension.[36] In | 1992, the Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation was | founded by the Polish and German governments, and as a | result, Germany paid Polish sufferers approximately zl | 4.7 billion (equivalent to zl 37.8 billion or US$7.97 | billion in 2022[citation needed]). Between 1992 and 2006, | Germany and Austria jointly paid compensation to | surviving Polish, non-Jewish victims of slave labour in | Nazi Germany and also to Polish orphans and children who | had been subject to forced labour.[37] The Swiss Fund for | the Victims of the Holocaust (which had obtained | settlement money from banks in Switzerland) used some of | its funds to pay compensation between 1998 and 2002 to | Polish Jews and Romani who were victims of Nazi | Germany.[37] | | Germany also ceded around 20% of its pre-1938 territory | to Poland. The ethnic Germans who lived in those | territories were subsequently denied citizenship and | expelled. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bierut_Decrees) | | I'm not really sure that there's anything more to settle | between the two countries in 2023. | throwaway6734 wrote: | And not to Ukraine | belorn wrote: | The West and east Germany split was a form of | reparations, including conceding and dismantling of the | German industry and railroad system. | | The key however is that such reparations are not being | continued, nor are they repaying the full cost of the | damages cause to every person on the planet that was | impacted by the war. No amount of reparations can make | right the wrong of world war 2. | | If we just look at the dollar amount, according to the | britannica, the money cost to governments involved has | been estimated at more than $1,000,000,000,000 (in 1945), | which does not account for the human costs (the cost of | slavery in Amercia is mostly about human cost). The | reparations that Germany has paid is nowhere near those. | | If we imagine them having a debt of $1,000,000,000,000, | the inflation alone would be around the same as their | GDP. | Kye wrote: | Ta-Nehisi Coates' _The Case for Reparations_ was widely | dismissed for the title in 2014, but it 's a chronicle of | this sort of thing, and it's very much ongoing. | | https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the- | cas... | 93po wrote: | > Have things been made right by now? I have no idea. | | Ask any black person and there's your answer. | Fatnino wrote: | Ask justice Thomas | 93po wrote: | Ask any black person with a net worth that isn't $30 | million | rayiner wrote: | The decisive majority of black people agree with justice | Thomas that colleges shouldn't use race as a factor for | admissions: https://www.pewresearch.org/short- | reads/2019/02/25/most-amer... | gmarx wrote: | Where did you get 30 million? One online source estimates | 1 million net worth and has some reasoning to back it up. | My guess is that if he has owned a house in the DC area | since he has been on the supreme court, he would have a | lot of home equity too but probably not up to 30 million | ryan93 wrote: | Thomas was anti affirmative action going back 50 years to | when he graduated from yale law. he grew up very poor. | SV_BubbleTime wrote: | Seems like you are moving the goal post? | | Are you saying rich black people aren't as black as poor | black people? I seem to remember a presidential candidate | saying something similar. | | Why would you punish someone for their success despite | the disadvantage you insist must be accounted for? | pessimizer wrote: | [flagged] | kneebonian wrote: | > t's obvious that they're talking around it, especially | when "culture" comes up. | | I 100% think it is because of culture and has nothing to | do with race. I have a friend who is black, he grew up in | the Ivory Coast and moved to the US for school, he is | hard working, contentious, polite, and all the other | things that are associated with success. This is because | he was raised to value education, to work hard, to do | good for the world, the importance of family, etc. | | In comparison I spent several years doing humanitarian | work in the inner cities of northern Ohio. There I saw | veneration of doing as little as possible, hostility | towards education, glorification of violence, and a host | of other things that lead to negative outcomes. | | I won't pretend that some people aren't racist, but no | person can tell me with a straight face that the inner | city culture and everything that comes with it isn't part | of the reason we have the disparity in our country. | nobody9999 wrote: | >I won't pretend that some people aren't racist, but no | person can tell me with a straight face that the inner | city culture and everything that comes with it isn't part | of the reason we have the disparity in our country. | | I'd posit that when the institutions of society | disrespects, discriminates against, humiliates and | _murders_ members a group with impunity for generations, | it 's not very surprising when that group is | disrespectful of society and its institutions is it? | | And while, for the most part (leaving aside voter | suppression, gerrymandering and other mechanisms that | disadvantage/disenfranchise) the government _mostly_ no | longer murders /discriminates with impunity, there's | plenty of anti-African American _bigotry_ (I use that | term instead of "racism" as there's only one _human_ | race, and we 're _all_ part of it) still around. | | While I don't think it's constructive for those who have | been/are being abused/discriminated against for nearly | _half a millenium_ to distrust the institutions that have | done so, it 's certainly understandable. | rd wrote: | Why do you think that the inner city culture has evolved | to be the way it is? Say, in comparison to, Menlo Park or | NYC or Virginia suburbs culture? | rayiner wrote: | At least in part, it's the 20th century political | alliance between black politicians and white social | liberals. These are not problems that existed in the | first half of the 20th century. Ironically, you're now | seeing the same social breakdown in working class white | communities, who historically were aligned with white | social liberals. Fatherless "barstool conservatives" are | the product of that alliance. | | Almost all the disparity in income mobility between black | and white people is caused by disparities between black | and white men. (Black women have similar mobility to | similarly situated white women in terms of individual | income.) And Harvard's Raj Chetty has shown that the two | things that eliminate racial disparities in income | mobility for black boys is growing up in a neighborhood | with (1) low levels of racism among whites; and (2) high | levels of fathers living at home with their biological | children: | https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/2/711/5687353. | There's only a handful of places in America, | unfortunately, that meet both criteria. | RhodesianHunter wrote: | >are intrinsically inferior to whites. Most white people | (and plenty of black people) choose to believe the | latter. | | Your assertion is that most (>50%) of whites in the US | believe that blacks are inferior? I find that hard to | believe. | | It's my impression that these folks are mostly | concentrated in certain states and retain power solely | due to the fact that land mass = power due to the nature | of our government. | VirusNewbie wrote: | John Wood Jr. would be a good person to listen to for | getting a very interesting answer to this very complex | questions. | FireBeyond wrote: | > not to mention tons of possibly illegal but still very | real discrimination after that | | High schools in Georgia have had segregated proms as | recently as 2019 (and possibly since then too), either | formally, up to 2012, or informally (one county had schools | that had a prom that was open and then a "white prom" which | didn't specify attendance requirements, but I'll leave it | as an exercise for the reader as to who was welcome where. | lotsofpulp wrote: | > You've got to try to make things right. | | The issue is this has nothing to do with the goal of | educating someone in a certain subject based on their | academic proficiencies. | | Go ahead and give poor people money, but no reason to make | other processes and institutions less meritocratic. I know | legacy/bribed via donation admissions exist, and those are | obviously also a problem too. | pessimizer wrote: | You can give poor people money, but that has nothing to | do with black people. Black people aren't asking for | money because they're poor, they're asking for money | because the country was built with their ancestors' | uncompensated labor, it was entirely legal, and the | descendants of their owners still enjoy the fruits of | that uncompensated labor. | | You can _also_ give poor people money, but changing the | subject to poor people instead of black people is an | instant smokescreen. | JamesBarney wrote: | Why do you think the country is richer because of | slavery? | | I'd argue that slavery made a small % of influential | plantation owners very rich at the expense of the | suffering of a large number of people, and less | importantly the economy. | | Places in the U.S. that didn't have slaves are richer | today than places that did. | [deleted] | nemothekid wrote: | > _Why do you think the country is richer because of | slavery?_ | | There are plenty of books on this subject, I think | "Capitalism and Slavery" goes into this well, but it's | pretty well documented. Slavery was a _huge_ part of the | southern economy, it wasn 't just a few individual | slaveholders getting rich; it was embedded in the very | way of life in the south. It's akin to saying "America | isn't rich because of Apple, there's just a few wealthy | executives at Apple" - it totally ignores how embedded | Apple is in our economy - from the app store, to digital | payments, to the entire businesses that live on that | platform. It's not controversial at all to say the | country was made richer because of slavery. | | It's not to say that every plantation owner was massively | wealthy, or America was a super power due to slavery, but | America's implementation of chattel slavery was | incredibly vast and was one of its major economies until | the industrial revolution. | philwelch wrote: | > Slavery was a huge part of the southern economy, it | wasn't just a few individual slaveholders getting rich; | it was embedded in the very way of life in the south. | | The part you're leaving out is that, as a direct | consequence of this practice, the South was a backwards | and impoverished part of the country for that entire | period. | | > America's implementation of chattel slavery was | incredibly vast and was one of its major economies until | the industrial revolution. | | That Industrial Revolution started not too long after | American independence, but it only happened in the North, | not the impoverished slave economy of the South. That's | one of the fundamental reasons the North won the war. | Slavery didn't make America richer; it made America | significantly poorer. And the Northern capitalists knew | it at the time, which is why they were a major part of | the antislavery coalition that ultimately formed the | Republican Party. | MisterBastahrd wrote: | > The part you're leaving out is that, as a direct | consequence of this practice, the South was a backwards | and impoverished part of the country for that entire | period. | | The part that you're leaving out is that they were | backwards and impoverished BY CHOICE. They could have | automated just as much as the North did. They chose not | to, because it was politically advantageous for land | owners to keep their slave populations, which effectively | also kept wages low for non-land owning white folk. | JamesBarney wrote: | Do you think that if the South had freed the slaves | before the civil war GDP would have dropped? | | Or conversely if a large nation today enslaved a | substantial portion of it's population do you believe | that their GDP would increase or decrease? | skippyboxedhero wrote: | Slave societies are generally poor. Africa's economy was | largely slave-based until relatively recently (and still | is the only place where you have active slave markets, | the reason why slaves came from Africa was because it was | the only place where there was a local slave industry, | largely due to the trade into the Middle East), Brazil's | slave trade was 10x larger than the US (the US never | actually had a large first-generation slave population | because mortality was so low and fertility so high), | Caribbean the same, the Middle East the same, India the | same. | | There is a lot of research on this subject but it is | worth remembering that slaves were capital that had a | price too. So it wasn't "free labour" in any sense. | | Most plantation owners didn't end up rich either, there | were economies of scale and the price of cotton collapsed | over the 19th century. | | Over the long-term though, slave labour has typically | inhibited economic development. | smileysteve wrote: | In part because when labor is free you have less | incentive to innovate; | | American slavery in the U.S. South was threatened more by | the invention of the cotton gin and the global floor for | cotton prices dropping. This was diversified away | somewhat with Tobacco, but still a major factor in the | economics of slavery. | | The sad part is that the US South was fearful of this | economic reality - up to runaway slaves and illegal slave | trade decimating the profit margins - which meant the | powder keg for revolt was ready. But as we can see from | the Southern "Tax" men stealing from the citizenry, the | French less incentivised because of global cotton prices; | the future in American slavery was futile. | philwelch wrote: | I think you have the economic history of the cotton gin | backwards there. The slave economy was much more tobacco- | centric before the cotton gin, because even with slaves, | cotton was too labor-intensive to be worth large scale | agriculture before the cotton gin. The cotton gin is a | good example of Jevons paradox, where making something | more efficient (in this case, making cotton harvesting | more labor-efficient) ends up increasing demand (in this | case, of cotton-harvesting labor). | btilly wrote: | Except that the country wasn't built on that labor. It | was built on agriculture and industrialization, mostly in | non-slave states. | | And most of cotton generated by slaves went to Britain, | whose textile mills also captured most of the profits off | of that industry. Should the USA therefore demand | reparations from Britain? | | But we could go the other route, and tax the descendants | of the slave owners. Unfortunately, the largest and most | easily identifiable group of descendants of slave owners | are blacks themselves! (You can thank a common practice | of raping slaves for a lot of that.) | | The best solution that we ever came up with for this mess | was school busing. Since we got rid of it, the black- | white income gap has been rising. But nobody wants to | talk about it. Instead, let's focus on the token gesture | of affirmative action, which never made a difference in | the lives of most blacks. And which tainted the success | of blacks whose success was not because of affirmative | action. | greedo wrote: | There was a lot of slavery outside of the South, long | before cotton became king. | jstarfish wrote: | > they're asking for money because the country was built | with their ancestors' uncompensated labor, it was | entirely legal, | | If anything, this is an argument against reparations. | Slavery has been around and accepted since before the | Bible was written; we just keep finding ways to redefine | it. An entire war was waged in which people died fighting | to restore slaves' freedom. The debt has been paid. | | What reparations _should_ be paid out for is the systemic | effect of abusing the justice system to keep blacks in | cages long after slavery ended. The war on drugs, the war | on crime, the wrongful convictions from both, BLM... | _that_ much is extrajudicial _and occurred in our | lifetimes_. They really get /got fucked by the system in | a not-so-legal way, which merits correction. | MisterBastahrd wrote: | > If anything, this is an argument against reparations. | Slavery has been around and accepted since before the | Bible was written; we just keep finding ways to redefine | it. An entire war was waged in which people died fighting | to restore slaves' freedom. The debt has been paid. | | It does not matter how long slavery has been around. What | matters is that the nation accrued gigantic collections | of material wealth on the backs of American slaves. The | American Civil War was NOT fought to restore the freedom | of slaves. The Civil War was started because the South | decided that they had "state's rights" to slavery. It was | never fought to "end slavery." It was fought to put down | a rebellion, the same way that Washington put down | multiple rebellions during his tenure as POTUS. | | No debt has ever been paid. Those union soldiers were | never fighting to end slavery. They were fighting to | maintain the union. Those are fundamentally different | objectives. Your perspective is not held by any | scholarship on the matter past jingoistic elementary | school textbooks. | lotsofpulp wrote: | No one is going to be able to go back in time and change | history. | | Getting into the weeds of defining who is and is not | deserving of wealth redistribution is just going to waste | society's resources by pitting tribe versus tribe, and | ironically mostly helps those at the top. | | "Poor" is easier to define and rectify, and at the end of | the day, I think the goal should be to provide a floor to | members of society and maximize opportunities to all. | skippyboxedhero wrote: | I would look at what happened in South Africa. An | explicit part of Mandela's agenda was setting an end | point for the discussions around what happened during | apartheid. | | South Africa is also a good example of what happens if | people decide to go back and reopen that box (and tbf, | when it came to money the initial movement was quite | short-lived, the current President of South Africa got | very rich very quickly). | cloverich wrote: | You dont need to go back in time or define who is and | isnt to blame. A few simple tax based measures (ex: free | college for black people for 200 years) and genuine | atonement (ex: replace civil war relics that downplay | southern role in slavery and its associated atrocities) | and wed be light years ahead of where we are today. | | Staple an endpoint on it then move on. The trick is doing | SOMETHING meaningful and country wide is whats missing. | lotsofpulp wrote: | Why restrict it to black people? Then you have to get | into defining black and not black? | | Instead, just offer free college to everyone. | dragonwriter wrote: | If we neutralize generational economic disadvantage, we | also eliminate any merit to the claim to compensation for | economic injury to past generations. | | I would rather _no one_ bear the economic burden of the | myriad of diverse injustices committed by our society in | the past than that only specifically the descendants of | those enslaved in the past be freed of the economic harm | of that particular injustice, even if its effects could | be fairly isolated, computed, and compensated. | Pladbaer wrote: | Well, it's an intersectional issue. You have to take into | consideration that the academic successes or failures of | an individual are going to be heavily impacted by the | schools they had access to. | | Which is directly tied to the above mentjoned issues. | khasan222 wrote: | What I believe they're trying to say is that it already | has not been a meritocracy, and because of human nature | that stain will always be there somewhat at least this is | a attempted washing of the stain | iosono88 wrote: | [dead] | lotsofpulp wrote: | I specifically wrote "less meritocratic" to imply that | meritocracy is a spectrum. Obviously, humans are | currently unable to achieve perfectly meritocratic | institutions, but it is a spectrum where we can attempt | to be more meritocratic than less. | justinclift wrote: | Sounds like there would be plenty of edge cases in this | kind of thing too. | | For example, apparently not all the slave owners were | white: | | https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/applied-and- | social-s... | | That's likely to complicate the heck out of things. | chmod600 wrote: | "you can't just stop doing a bad thing and pretend it | didn't happen. You've got to try to make things right." | | For individual humans, that works. Applying that opinion to | society at large is at the core of the social justice | philosophy, but in my opinion is misguided. | | When people are focused on the past, they aren't focused on | the future. It becomes a never-ending argument over | history, trying to divvy up blame and virtue and money | among people who weren't even present at the time the | evilness happened and who themselves have a mixed heritage. | | Should students whose parents arrived from China in the 80s | be discriminated against so that you can discriminate in | favor of someone whose parents arrived from Kenya in the | 80s? There are a zillion scenarios like that, and when you | add them up they aren't the edge cases, the complexity is | the normal case. America is a place of immigration and | mixing. | | History is history. A lot of it is bad. You can only fix | the future, and a never-ending argument about history isn't | going to do that. We know discrimination based on race is | bad. If an individual needs help, help them regardless of | race. | endisneigh wrote: | The problem with your logic is that if you leave the past | the past then there's effectively no punishment for | discrimination in the present. | | Suppose the war in Ukraine ends today. Time skips forward | a year with no change from the present. A committee | recommends reparations for the Ukrainians affected. Do | you do it or not? I don't have the answer but leaving the | past the past is simply choosing a certain status quo, as | is full reparations another status quo. | chmod600 wrote: | The Ukraine war is not 50 years ago and clearly affects | the entire country. If Russia decides to pay reparations | that could make sense but it's a different issue by a | long shot. | | 50 years later after a bunch of people have been born, | died, and moved in and out? No way. | endisneigh wrote: | Why or why not does the time matter? And what length does | or does it not matter? | | This is not math, no matter the answer it's clearly | opinionated, hence this Supreme Court case. | chmod600 wrote: | In one year, the people involved are basically the same. | In 50 years, a lot of births, deaths, and immigration | have changed the population dramatically. | | There could be a discussion about one year vs ten years | or something, I don't know. But it's irrelevant to the | current topic. | | Just do what's right based on individual circumstances. | If person A is poor, help them, don't discriminate | against person B. That just feels like a government | trying to pass blame for its own failed social policies | over the last 50 years. | endisneigh wrote: | Well clearly you have all the answers lol. Again your | logic is faulty. There is no world government compelling | action thus by your own logic any government can simply | fail to take action until the duration you have mentioned | has passed and then they are absolved of responsibility. | tester756 wrote: | Just like in "statute of limitations"? | endisneigh wrote: | Irrelevant. The question isn't about legality. It's | morality and one of ethics. Even if it were legal it's | the government itself that would need to be compelled. | There's no higher force. There's the citizenry which | takes us to the current discussion and thread. | UncleMeat wrote: | How convenient that groups can simply run out the clock | on this stuff. | tester756 wrote: | The concept of "statute of limitations" exists. | UncleMeat wrote: | I'd believe that conservatives were genuine about this | argument if they were actively supporting policies that | repaired more recent oppression. | emkemp wrote: | True, but in American law at least, some crimes like | murder don't have a statute of limitations. | mensetmanusman wrote: | Justice is often thwarted by death. Welcome to the human | condition. | mistermann wrote: | Let's hope the sins of the fathers are not visited upon | the sons! | throwaway6734 wrote: | How much money do you think the Germans and Russians owe | the Poles, Belarussians and Ukrainians for WW2? | nobody9999 wrote: | >When people are focused on the past, they aren't focused | on the future. It becomes a never-ending argument over | history, trying to divvy up blame and virtue and money | among people who weren't even present at the time the | evilness happened and who themselves have a mixed | heritage. | | As is widely discussed and intuitively obvious, "the past | is prologue." | | What happened in the past is relevant to the present | because the past quite literally _creates_ the present. | | As Eugen Weber[0] put it[1]: ...we are | going back to the old country. We're going back to where | many of our ancestors came from, to see where | their stories came from, and their memories, and | their habits and the way they are, which has made us the | way we are. This is what history is | about. Where we come from, what lies behind the way | we live and act and think. How our institutions, our | religions, our laws were made. | | Should we ignore all that came before, knowing that it | informs and structures our societies, ideas and | proclivities? I say, "no." | | Because we don't exist in a temporal vacuum (thank you, | Second Law of Thermodynamics). Rather, our pasts and the | impact of the events of those pasts inform and shape the | present. Ignore it at your own peril. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Weber | | [1] https://youtu.be/XCyO8meahME?t=410 | e40 wrote: | [flagged] | mahdi7d1 wrote: | This legacy system in likes of Harvard boggles me. If | someones parents went to Harvard it might be actually logical | to be harder for him to get into not easier. His educated | parenting is already a huge plus for him and if he is unable | to get into the same university it's on him. | TrackerFF wrote: | What you need to know about Harvard is that they are a | business. Their business is to amass donations from alumni | and the likes. Their endowment fund is currently over $50 | billions. | | Rich and successful alumni means more donations, so it | makes sense to take in the kids of rich and successful | people. | gmarx wrote: | You are making some assumptions about what Harvard is | attempting to do when filling its classes. If its goal is | to have a class full of people who did the most with what | they had you have an argument. If their goal is to maximize | alumni support (financial and otherwise) then maybe not | skotobaza wrote: | Well if your parents went to Harvard then they had money to | pay for Harvard. And they probably have money to pay for | their children. | tourmalinetaco wrote: | Harvard and similar universities are all about | "donations" to the school, so yeah. It's definitely an | assumption of generational wealth. | lr4444lr wrote: | This is good, but it also leaves out that the Civil Rights | Act legislation made this kind of "thumb on the other side of | the scale" for "disadvantaged races" patently illegal. | Affirmative Action was, therefore, a recognized court | exemption - explicitly stated by judges as a temporary | measure - and which has been further narrowed in multiple | later cases brought to it (cf. University of California v. | Bakke, Gratz v. Bollinger). | | A more recent group, Students for Fair Admission, largely | cited the anti-Asian angle its effects were producing. | | Affirmative Action was never part of formal U.S. law, and | never designed to exist indefinitely. | cheekibreeki2 wrote: | It's an idea as obsolete as daylight savings time. | j45 wrote: | It's a part of the equation because the Equation is so designed | to be against it by the variables that are included and | excluded. | | I promise if you spend even an iota of time digging into this | you will find some meaningful substance that resonates wi the | buoy without asking other (indirectly or unintentionally) to do | your mental labour for you and to your satisfaction to be | convinced otherwise. | | This itself is an example of the type of variables and | equations that exist that seem second nature because of how | they are conditioned into most people from a young age without | awareness. | aredox wrote: | Because the US uses race as a trigger to keep the poor fighting | amongst themselves. | | That's why. | edgyquant wrote: | The reason often given is that most poor people are white | russdill wrote: | I think if you want the historical context, read the dissenting | opinions from the other justices. Such as | https://thehill.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Jacks... | CorrectHorseBat wrote: | A tangent question I have, and have asked here before without | any satisfactory answer: | | How does it even work? I can proof I'm poor with for example | tax returns, but how does someone proof they are of a certain | "race"? | snowwrestler wrote: | There is another reason, less talked about, that higher | education started considering factors like socioeconomic | status, race, ethnicity, and national origin in admissions. | | It became clear that immersing predominantly white, privileged | students in a predominantly white, privileged campus during 4 | years of college was poorly preparing them as leaders for a | future world in which they will encounter a greater diversity | of backgrounds than their parents did. (Because of both | changing U.S. demographics AND growing global trade.) | | And it became clear that sourcing students primarily from | white, privileged backgrounds was poorly positioning the | institutions themselves in an increasingly diversifying | society. | | As legal barriers to the financial and political participation | of women and minorities fell, there were more opportunities for | people of those backgrounds to succeed. And elite higher | education institutions want to remain the schools of choice for | the most successful members of society (regardless of | background). They can't do that if everyone thinks they only | care about rich white people. | | Adjusting admissions to increase the diversity of backgrounds | of new students was a way to short-cut solutions to these | challenges. | | In short, a thumb on the scale to bring the student body more | in line with global diversity was also done with an eye toward | remaining competitive as a top choice among options for higher | education. | Balgair wrote: | I'm going to assume positive intent on this and that it's not a | troll comment. | | Race in the US is horribly complicated and tied into so many | parts of life here in the US. Full Stop. | | HN comment sections aren't really the place to go into the very | fine details, especially just one comment like mine. and the | fine details do matter. Ok, all that out of the way, now to the | questions here. | | Let's take a small micro-example and explore a bit: | | You are an African-American woman experiencing preeclampsia at | 30 weeks gestation. Preeclampsia is a very serious medical | condition and can cause death to you and your baby. You go into | the hospital not knowing what is wrong with you, but you know | something is wrong. | | Like it or not, many medical professionals still believe that | African-Americans don't feel pain like other people do. | | Like it or not, many medical professionals still believe that | women over-react to pain [0]. | | Like it or not, many medical professionals do not believe the | above if they are African-American women. | | So, as a worried mother-to-be, you get a doctor assigned to | you, likely at random. If your MD is not of the same race or | sex as you are, then your experience is _likely_ to be less | positive than if they were. From what I have heard from | African-American women whom I am able to talk with about | medical care, the experience is highly likely to be a negative | one unless they get someone of their own race or are lucky. | | So, having more people that are of diverse backgrounds in the | medical field leads to more positive outcomes for patients of | every race and sex. | | Meaning that you have to get more diversity into the med | schools to begin with. Which means that you have to get more | diversity into colleges. Which means you have to get more | diversity into Secondary education, and in primary education. | Which means you have to get more diversity in pedagogical | training. And round we go. | | Yes, we could solve this by untying med school from college. | Yes, we could open up the med schools to more than just the | select few we already have. Yes, we could have more nurses and | RNs that accompany MDs. Yes we could make medical care a single | payer system and try to solve this from there. Yes, there are a | million other ways to fix this. | | Hopefully you begin to see what a complex mess racial issues | are in the US and how at each and every level, race is a | contributing factor that affects everyone. I haven't even come | close to any of the real issues here, and there are so many | spider webs that tie into each sub-issue. Look at this Supreme | Court Decision itself, the first black supreme court justice, a | Harvard Grad, voted to end it. Thing get really really | squirrely. | | [0] I have personally experienced this with my SO during labor, | BTW. The attending OB-GYN, a man, remarked to me 'How can you | stand the screaming all the time'. I threw him out of the room. | No joke, this really did happen. | molsongolden wrote: | Differences in racial health outcomes are absolutely | concerning and the medical training issues you call out are | unacceptable. | | However, examples like OBGYN diversity might outline a | slightly different aspect of race and racial issues in the | USA. | | OBGYN is one of the most diverse specialties and, even with | more diversity, it's still going to be unlikely for an | African-American woman to end up with an African-American | female doctor (assuming emergency intake and ignoring sorting | done at the time of physician selection). | | In the 2022 NRMP Match data[0], OBGYN residency applicants | were 86% female and 11% Black/African American(B/AA). Quick | and possibly unreliable skimming of recent paper abstracts | returned ~62% female and 11% B/AA for the current overall | OBGYN pool. | | 11% of OBGYN is lower than the overall population | demographics in the USA but the B/AA population is still only | 13%. | | The answer might be better education and training for all | doctors, or it might involve matching patient and doctor | demographics for the best patient experience, but we're never | going to have enough minority group doctors to make a | minority group patient likely to receive care from a minority | group doctor in a randomized setting. | | [0] https://www.nrmp.org/wp- | content/uploads/2023/02/Demographic-... | onetimeusename wrote: | > I assume the intent is to help disadvantaged people have | opportunities that more priviledged people have already. | | I don't know about this. Like about 1000 undergraduate students | are admitted to Harvard each year, Harvard being named in this | suit. Affirmative action at Harvard being necessary to help | anyone seems like a stretch. Is Harvard really the only way to | help people? It's an elite school so I think the stakes are | different than helping people because the applicant pool is | very elite already. | | I think in reality the US is embroiled in ethnic conflict and | people are fighting over spots at elite schools for their | children and a lot of this is political. There are other | countries where affirmative action is used and a similar thing | happens. Like in India for example, the child of a billionaire | from the OBC designation has a much higher chance of getting | into IIT than the child of poor Brahmins. The OBC designation | has expanded over time for political reasons to form | coalitions, as I understand it. | | > Would the goal suddenly not be met if poor smart white kids | get into good schools, too? | | Ironically the SFFA case argued that specifically white kids | were being backdoored into Harvard at the expense of Asian | students[1]. So yes, the goal would not be met. Although I need | to read this case closely because the official decision | mentions more about Black and Latino affirmative action. | | [1]: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v... | crooked-v wrote: | Racial discrimination in the US significant enough that, for | example, merely having a "Black" name leads to worse results | from job applications, regardless of other factors [1]. Merely | focusing on wealth levels won't counteract that kind of effect. | | [1]: | https://www.businessinsider.in/policy/economy/news/distincti... | trompetenaccoun wrote: | Or an Asian name maybe? | | The ruling is about college, not job applications. It's | actually the other way around in universities when it comes | to black applicants. As another non-American foreigner it's | bizarre to me how many "anti-racists" are shocked by a | constitutional court affirming that discriminating based on | race is unconstitutional. | treis wrote: | They never run these experiments right and this one looks to | be no different. What they choose as "Black" names are those | associated with lower class blacks but they do not do the | same with "White" names. In this case, they use names like | Latonya for blacks and Heather for whites. You never see them | use names like Cletus or Billy Bob or other names associated | with lower class whites. | Volundr wrote: | > What they choose as "Black" names are those associated | with lower class blacks but they do not do the same with | "White" names. In this case, they use names like Latonya | for blacks and Heather for whites. | | Is Latonya associated with lower class the way Cletus is? I | honestly don't know, and I'd be surprised if most of the | people hiring did. What are some "black" names not | associated with lower class? My sneaking suspicion (without | evidence) is that "black" names in general are more likely | to be associated with lower class and to escape those | connotations one would have to avoid the more ethnic names, | but I'm open to being educated on this point. | treis wrote: | Traditional African/Arabic names. Jamaal, Aisha, Hakeem, | etc. | thworp wrote: | It would be quite illustrative to have had the same | experiment run in the late 19th/early 20th century with | southern Italian and Irish peasant names. | UncleMeat wrote: | If black-coded names are more strongly associated with | being lower class in spite of data demonstrating that | they actually have the same class distributions as white- | coded names then _that is racism_. | eli wrote: | This is incorrect. | | The names in the NBER study were drawn from actual birth | certificate data correlated with race. It was not a | subjective choice from researchers. Latonya was used | because Latonya was the first name given to 4.7% of the | black female babies born during the study period. Just like | Allison was 4.7% of white female babies in the same data. | | If you perceive common African American names as lower | class than equally common white names, I believe that's | part of what the study is trying to demonstrate and not a | flaw of its design. | saltcured wrote: | I am hesitant to wade in here. I am not asserting | anything about the actual study, but just observing this | thread. | | You seem to be ignoring the earlier statistical complaint | by the other poster. They are implying a null hypothesis | where names signal socioeconomic status and | discrimination may be on that status rather than race. | | To test for this, you cannot start with unequally | characterized populations (black and white) and compare | equally popular names from each population. You need to | first stratify by socioeconomic status and then draw | popular names from equivalent sub-populations. E.g. | equally popular black and white names among babies born | to households with lowest quintile income and high school | as the parents' terminal degrees; equally popular black | and white names among babies born to households of middle | quintile income and 4-year college degrees; etc. | eli wrote: | I don't think it's even relevant. Hiring practices that | are based on class discrimination but result in racial | discrimination can still be racist even if that isn't | their intent. | | But more to the point, racial discrimination has been | replicated by many studies constructed in different ways. | A famous 1978 study found discrimination when sending | equivalent resumes that had a headshot of either a white | or black person attached. Other studies have looked at | including extracurricular activities that imply a certain | race. | hedora wrote: | Yes, but this sort of gotcha study is missing the fact | that any merit-based system will discriminate against | minorities that are not given a proper education. | | Explicitly filtering by race is bad. However, if it leads | to the same outcome as filtering by qualifications, then | forcing people to switch hiring practices doesn't | actually improve anything. | | The blame shouldn't be on the hiring process, but instead | (at least in the US) by the politicians that have set up | our cities and schools to be systematically racist. | | (I still think this is a bad SCOTUS ruling, to be clear.) | UncleMeat wrote: | The Emily and Jamal paper explicitly accounts for this by | controlling for parent's education level. There's a _whole | section_ on this. | ZeroGravitas wrote: | Imagine the same argument but swap race for gender. | | Why are you trying to get women into medicine? Just to help the | historically disadvantaged? Why don't you just let poor people | in and not care about their gender? | | Nowadays, you could probably get away with that because | everyone has got over the whole "women's brains are too small | and their wombs too big for logical thought to even be | possible" idea. But when the (highly successful) affirmative | action for women was brought in, that was still a major part of | American culture that it was designed to work around. | | Similarly with the race thing. The US fought a big civil war | about whether people with dark skin were livestock or people | and the losing side didn't actually change their mind just | because they lost. So they needed laws to address that. | [deleted] | influx wrote: | This is an interesting point, however: "As of spring 2021, | women made up 59.5 percent of all U.S. college students", | does that argue that we should have affirmative action for | men's admissions to college? | dahwolf wrote: | No, doesn't count for men. They're just broken and need to | "step up". | Natsu wrote: | I've long thought that poverty is the best way to do this, | because it's self-correcting. We'll probably never be truly and | fully equal in every way, just because random stuff happens and | there's only one perfectly equal state out there, but a whole | lot of unequal possibilities. | | So inasmuch as any group is disadvantaged, they'll get more | help due to there being more of them that are poor and this | strategy will work to self-correct the imbalance. | VoodooJuJu wrote: | >Why not just.. well, let poor people come first? | | Completely agree, but I think the dirty secret is that | affirmative action and its supporters have no intent to help | the poor, not anymore at least. Its current intended use is as | a weapon to wage class warfare. Create and support plebian | race-based factions and pit them against one another so they | can't fight the elites. | | It's an archaic but convenient leftover from another time. | CrazyStat wrote: | > Create and support plebian race-based factions and pit them | against one another so they can't fight the elites. | | So pretty much the opposite of class warfare? | | Class warfare would be warfare between classes. What you're | describing is racial warfare intentionally engineered to | avoid class warfare. | mcpackieh wrote: | > _I 've come understand it to mean "positively discriminate | based on race, so long as it's a minority race" - please | correct me of I'm wrong._ | | More or less, but not precisely. How do you define a "minority | race"? Universities in America discriminate _against_ Asian | Americans despite them being a minority of the American | population generally, ostensibly because they 're over- | represented in universities. | chimeracoder wrote: | [flagged] | VirusNewbie wrote: | [flagged] | mcpackieh wrote: | > _it 's been debunked countless times_ | | Change my mind then, and debunk it. Refuting isn't | debunking. | goatlover wrote: | Claiming it's a myth and has been debunked is not the same | thing as actually debunking. | prepend wrote: | [flagged] | Supermancho wrote: | Making someone else do a simple google search, because | you simply want to reply "nuh uh" is uncharitable. | | https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/selectivebias/ | | https://www.city-journal.org/article/college-admissions- | bias... | | As I understand it, there was some evidence: Asians | applications were being suppressed, due to volume to | maintain...a more diverse student body (or maybe just | every elite school was racist?). https://www.forbes.com/s | ites/christopherrim/2023/02/27/what-... | JamesBarney wrote: | [flagged] | chimeracoder wrote: | [flagged] | prepend wrote: | [flagged] | mrguyorama wrote: | [flagged] | prepend wrote: | [flagged] | cogman10 wrote: | > Why not just.. well, let poor people come first? | | Mostly it was a justice thing. The US spent decades | disadvantaging people based on race and this was a step to try | and reverse some of that. | | I agree that changing it from race to economic class is | probably the right move at this point. | | That being said, I don't like that the SC is legislating from | the bench. They are striking this down for purely political | reasons. | thereisnospork wrote: | > They are striking this down for purely political reasons. | | On its face affirmative action is pretty blatantly a | violation of the 14th amendment: | | Which to a trivial reading would come out as 'All persons | [black, white, rainbow] shall have equal rights to attend | [state funded school], and as such a right to a fair and | impartial admissions process'. | | Affirmative action adds the clause: "except those whose skin | color we do not like today, those shall have to score higher | on tests. Those whose skin color we do like today, those | shall not have to score as high. Those whose skin color we do | not care about can score the same as before." | djur wrote: | I don't think it's accurate to say that affirmative action | programs are driven by racial animus. What's your evidence | for saying so? | cogman10 wrote: | No, it isn't. From a strict textual reading, the 14th says | | > No State shall make or enforce any law which shall | abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the | United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of | life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor | deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal | protection of the laws. | | Admittance to a school is not a deprivation of life, | liberty, or property. Nor is this "equal protection of the | laws". | | Where in the 14th does it say anything about school | attendance? When did school attendance become a right? | Which amendment does that come from? | | Seems like a pretty liberal reading of the 14th to come to | the conclusion that prestigious school attendance is | somehow a right for white people. | | Oh, and this ruling also said that "private schools are | allow to discriminate on race if they so choose, this only | strikes down the federal law tailored to roll back | institutional racism." | | But hey, if you want to make the argument that higher | education should be a right funded by the public I probably | could get behind that. I just don't think there's | constitutional or historical backing for that conclusion. | nyolfen wrote: | what about admittance to a restaurant? | cogman10 wrote: | Easy, the civil rights act is great. | | The supreme court is picking and choosing how they want | to follow their textualism/originalism (as are the | defenders of this opinion). There's no originalist | argument for striking down AA. That makes them political | activists (my original claim). | | But if you want my personal opinion on AA, it's that it's | a net good even though it's not perfect. We do need to | deal with the fact that PoC have been discriminated | against and that discrimination shows itself in | generational poverty. | | There is a mountain [1] of evidence that poverty has | detrimental effects on education. We've spent decades | forcing black people into poverty through red lining, | racist loans, and even firebombing them when they became | too prosperous [2]. So, of course, the offspring of these | actions are going to have a much harder time succeeding. | | Black americans have had higher rights of poverty for as | long as we've tracked that statistic [3]. | | So should we "discriminate" against white people by | making it easier for PoC to get admitted? Absolutely. The | racism of the past has ripple effects that still haven't | been fully addressed. | | Now, to be frank, I'd rather that discrimination be based | on income. Which would STILL result in black people | getting a leg up (see poverty stats). But, you can't just | say "well let's just be color blind now" and think | everything is hunky dory. | | I also support government reparations. Which could also | be argued to be "discriminatory" since they'd primarily | go to black people. Well, guess what, we discriminated | based on race. The only way to heal that is helping the | race that was discriminated against. | | [1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C3 | 8&q=pov... | | [2] https://www.neh.gov/article/1921-tulsa-massacre | | [3] | https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/09/poverty- | rates... | [deleted] | nyolfen wrote: | > Easy, the civil rights act is great. | | okay, what constitutional basis does the civil rights act | have to protect you from discrimination by a restaurant | that should not apply to a university? | cogman10 wrote: | > Whenever the Attorney General receives a complaint in | writing signed by an individual to the effect that he is | being deprived of or threatened with the loss of his | right to the equal protection of the laws, on account of | his race, color, religion, or national origin, by being | denied equal utilization of any public facility which is | owned, operated, or managed by or on behalf of any State | or subdivision thereof, other than a public school or | public college as defined in section 401 of title IV | hereof, and the Attorney General believes the complaint | is meritorious and certifies that the signer or signers | of such complaint are unable, in his judgment, to | initiate and maintain appropriate legal proceedings for | relief and that the institution of an action will | materially further the orderly progress of desegregation | in public facilities, the Attorney General is authorized | to institute for or in the name of the United States a | civil action in any appropriate district court of the | United States against such parties and for such relief as | may be appropriate, and such court shall have and shall | exercise jurisdiction of proceedings instituted pursuant | to this section. The Attorney General may implead as | defendants such additional parties as are or become | necessary to the grant of effective relief hereunder. | | Did you know that private schools can discriminate based | on race today (In fact, this SC opinion reaffirms that)? | The civil rights act explicitly only applied to public | schools, not private ones. | | What prevents the civil rights act from applying to a | (private) university? The text of the bill. Could it? | Yeah, if we amended it. Should it? Yup, we should push | for that. | | What gives the civil rights act its power? 9th amendment, | 14th amendment, and article 1 of the constitution. | nyolfen wrote: | it applies to schools that receive public funding, like | harvard | thereisnospork wrote: | >Where in the 14th does it say anything about school | attendance? When did school attendance become a right? | Which amendment does that come from? | | Brown v. Board of Ed, to start, seems to pretty clearly | dictate that public schools may not discriminate on the | basis of race because it is a violation of the 14th | amendment. What is affirmative action if not a | discrimination based on the color of one's skin? | | > When did school attendance become a right? | | I don't really feel like in 2023 I should have to be | arguing that the right to attend a public school | shouldn't be conditioned on a pupil's race or ethnicity. | cogman10 wrote: | > public schools may not discriminate on the basis of | race | | Harvard is NOT a public school! It is a private | institution which receives public funds. Huge difference | but I guess that's not something you want to consider. | | Nobody has the right to attend Harvard. They must | discriminate based on something. (see: their legacy | admission system which accounts for half of all their | admissions. Which is fundamentally racist because, guess | what color of skin harvard legacy admissions | predominantly have?) | | > I don't really feel like in 2023 I should have to be | arguing that the right to attend a public school | shouldn't be conditioned on a pupil's race or ethnicity. | | Again, Harvard is NOT a public school. Affirmative action | was conditions for receiving public funds. But if you are | really mad at harvard for not letting in more deserving | students maybe redirect that hate towards the legacy | admissions which almost certainly pushed out well | deserving students. | remarkEon wrote: | > Harvard is NOT a public school! It is a private | institution which receives public funds. Huge difference | but I guess that's not something you want to consider. | | That's okay, because CJ Roberts did consider it. | | > Title VI provides that "[n]o person in the United | States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national | origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the | benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any | program or activity receiving Federal financial | assistance." 12 U.S. C.SS2000d. "We have explained that | discrimination that violates the Equal Protection Clause | of the Fourteenth Amendment committed by an institution | that accepts federal funds also constitutes a violation | of Title VI." Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 244, 276, n. | 23 (2003). Although JUSTICE GORSUCH questions that | proposition, no party asks us to reconsider it. We | accordingly evaluate Harvard's admissions program under | the standards of the Equal Protection Clause itself. | rendang wrote: | I'm not a legal expert and was wondering about the same | question. Does the reasoning imply then that if Harvard | wanted to forgo Pell Grants and other public funding a la | Bob Jones University back in the day, they'd be permitted | to practice AA? | remarkEon wrote: | I am not a lawyer but my understanding is it just means | that as long as they do, they are evaluated as a public | institution for the purposes of interpreting compliance | with the Fourteen Amendment. I don't know if it would be | permissible to do explicit racial discrimination and call | it AA, and then say "well we don't take federal funding | anymore so we're good". Interesting thought experiment, | however. | firstlink wrote: | It's telling that not a single reply to your comment actually | engages with the question about poor smart white kids. The | answer is simple: poor white kids are the outgroup, and | "mainstream" American society would like them to kindly go | away. They aren't wanted. Society has no use for them. | [deleted] | aylmao wrote: | It's worth thinking about this beyond the money-- what values | does the USA and its people want to stand for? Affirmative | action can be viewed as an obstacle to individualism and self- | determination, but as a boost to multiculturalism and | tolerance. | | Specifically in the context of education, do we want to think | of universities as institutions that help people earn more | money and affirmative action as the university deciding who | _will_ earn more money, or do we want to think of universities | as institutions formative of the American zeitgeist, and | affirmative action as the university ensuring the zeitgeist | involves said multiculturalism and tolerance? | | My experience, as a foreigner who went to a university in the | USA, is that the cost of college leads a lot of students to | think of universities as the former-- one can't really blame | them. Another thing I noticed, and this might be cultural, is | that at my university I saw a lot of fear of mediocrity and a | very clear idea in students of what their "path path success" | was. I came in quite lost and undecided, thinking of college as | a place to explore, take different classes, figure what I want | to study and what I want to do with my life as I go. Some of my | peers seemed to think as college as a step in a grander plan, | and were doing internships freshman summer already aiming for a | specific job at a specific company after graduation. | | For people in that mentality it's not hard to see why | affirmative action very much matters, and why they might think | of it with so much disdain. | calf wrote: | Norm Finkelstein recently said the careerist trajectory of | college education (in America, but probably everywhere | really) has been steadily going on for over half a century, | and it really is a loss for cultivating an freethinking | public commons. | jldugger wrote: | > But then why the entire detour with race? Why not just.. | well, let poor people come first? | | Because the state apparatus systematically oppressed people by | race. If poor smart white kids succeed but smart black kids do | not, this is a failure of the policy goal to repair the harms | to black families, and black communities. | dudul wrote: | European naturalized American here and yes I do agree with you. | In the few EU countries where I lived before settling in the US | it would be _unthinkable_ to include race in these policies. | Just help poor people and that 's it. | | I'll put on my tin foil hat here, but I genuinely believe that | "race" (and now "gender") is being weaponized by the American | elites/politicians to form nice clear camps/teams for voters. | People _need_ to focus on race otherwise they would start to | pay attention to the _enormous_ social /financial disparity | between the top and the bottom of the pyramid. And we _really_ | do not want that. | MisterBastahrd wrote: | Europeans don't really have much of a right to comment on | this issue, especially given their own attitudes towards | race. The sheer levels of racial hostility in most of your | collective political discourse would make the far-right in | the US blush. | dudul wrote: | Good move not providing any example, probably much simpler | to lump 30-ish different countries all together that way. | MisterBastahrd wrote: | Yeah, I'm sure that Googling for racism in Europe doesn't | pull up any relevant stories for you to educate yourself | with. | scohesc wrote: | I've heard people make references to the Occupy Wall Street | protests a decade+ back being the catalyst for corporations | and governments to start using "diversity" as a wedge issue | to distract and divide people into groups to keep people from | organizing. (Further down the conspiracy rabbit-hole, the CIA | has been known to work with entertainment and critical | industries to push opinions and ideas to sway the populace) | | It really does feel like people weren't at each others | throats as much 10 years ago as they seem to be now. It's | almost like it's being used as a wedge to divide and distract | from more important issues. | mrguyorama wrote: | Or maybe you just weren't as aware of the problems black | people face in america? The amount of times my conservative | family members tell me "Such and such wasn't a problem when | I was a kid" while completely ignoring the problems proves | it isn't a genuine concern. | TurkishPoptart wrote: | That's because it is. | trompetenaccoun wrote: | But the identity and diversity stuff was a thing long | before that time. | | Don't get me wrong, politicians and elites are absolutely | using identity to play the populace against each other. | But this is less part of a grand conspiracy and more the | oldest trick in the book of politics, there's evidence of | it going back all the way to classic antiquity. | dahwolf wrote: | Finally somebody who gets it. | | The poor black urbanite and poor white trumpist are arch | enemies but should be close allies. | | The world is governed by international capitalist classism. | It gives no shit about race or gender. It just cares about | having lots of disposables that have few options. There being | more disposables in a particular race is a historical | artifact, not a goal in itself. | | Likewise, you could diversify the captains of industry but | the system remains exactly the same. Because it isn't | governed by race. | frankfrankfrank wrote: | I cannot go into the actual reasons for automatic action here | because it is heresy against the church, so to say. But let me | put it this way, it makes no sense and is insane, because it is | of course not logical or sane, regardless of the various | excuses and irrational mental knots America has been twisted | and abused into in orders to support it. | nameless_prole wrote: | [dead] | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | One issue is it isn't applied fairly. I know a Chinese-American | who inquired into AA and was turned away because he wasn't a | "traditionally disenfranchised" minority. | [deleted] | whinenot wrote: | Because the US has systematically disenfranchised ethnic | minorities over the course of its history. Any time there was a | non-white person or community that was starting to become | prosperous, the power of the state could be used to crush them. | At times it was overtly murderous[0], but as that became | unfashionable, it was relegated to more subtle methods. Some of | the most blatant examples include: | | - Want an interstate in your city? Run it through a black or | brown neighborhood.[1] | | - Want a stadium? Build it in a black or brown neighborhood.[2] | | - Black folks got a nice property? Just take it from them.[3] | | [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre | [1]https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984784455/a-brief-history- | of-... [2]https://americanhistory.si.edu/pleibol/game- | changers/big-lea... [3]https://www.theguardian.com/us- | news/2021/oct/01/bruces-beach... | dionidium wrote: | > _- Want an interstate in your city? Run it through a black | or brown neighborhood.[1]_ | | A lot these debates really come down to just how impressed | one is by arguments like this. It so happens that an | Interstate was built through the neighborhood my entire | family occupied in St. Louis in the 1950s. Some of them were | "displaced." I can't for the life of me figure out how this | is supposed to be relevant to my life today. I'd wager that | I'm the only one of my cousins to even know about it, since | I'm interested in local history and bugged my grandparents | about this stuff before they died. | | It just doesn't amount to anything. My family members had a | trillion decisions to make -- big and small -- both before | and after that singular event and the sum of those decisions | had a much bigger impact on familial wealth -- note: there | was none -- than that one time in the 1950s they were forced | to move. | whinenot wrote: | If that interstate was never routed through that | neighborhood, would members of your family be financially | better off today? A fully paid off house unlocks _a lot_ of | financial freedom for the current occupants and potentially | generational wealth for future family members. | gmarx wrote: | This is a new argument in the past few years and it | doesn't make sense. You do not need a parent with a paid | off house to go to college and be successful. I didn't | have that and I don't know many people who did. My | friends whose parents have paid off houses now did not | have them back when the kids were going to college and | how would that have helped anyway? Home equity loan | instead of student loan? How often is that choice made? | There are some rich families who manage to pass wealth on | generation after generation but it's rare in my | experience and not needed to succeed | animal_spirits wrote: | The one thing I can think about is that it is much harder | to maintain a strong and healthy community if your | community is divided by an interstate. | dionidium wrote: | [flagged] | whinenot wrote: | I personally avoid living near interstates. The noise, | the pollution & the walkability around them generally | suck. YMMV. | animal_spirits wrote: | Do you believe that people who can not afford a car can | have the same long-distance family+friend support that | you had? Do you think that your situation applies to | everyone? | [deleted] | stu2b50 wrote: | Then it should be explicitly a penalty to white people, no? | This is the same country that passed a law called the | "Chinese Exclusion Act". | kneebonian wrote: | > Why not just.. well, let poor people come first? Would the | goal suddenly not be met if poor smart white kids get into good | schools, too? | | This is what I will never understand, why don't we focus on | just helping the poor instead of based on race. If people of a | certain race are proportionally more poor than people of | another race than they will be helped more and it helps out the | people of a specific race. | | However in my more conpsiracy minded moments I can't help but | wonder if the focus on race is designed to keep the power and | the middle class fighting each other over things like that | rather than fighting against the people that have the power. | | But seriously why can't we just focus our help and aid around | people who are poor and needs based rather than all this | faffing about with race? | | EDIT: Well the votes on this comment are going up and down | faster than an "Essex birds drawers" as the BOFH would say. | postmodest wrote: | Let's imagine a hypothetical America, where we remove the | economic aspect. Let's imagine that every household in | america pulls in $250k/year and prices are uniform for every | household across the nation. No one is poor. Everyone goes to | the same excellent free schools where the teachers also make | $250k/year. We've removed economics as a variable. Everyone | is equally educated and equally rich. | | But let's leave one variable in: America is exactly as racist | as America is currently. Ethnic backgrounds and cultures | still exist, and there are enough white assholes in | "gatekeeping" roles to affect the distribution of people who | pass their gates. This is a fact that is a true thing that | already exists in America; we're not ADDING it to the model, | we've just left it in as the only thing we want to measure. | | Structurally, as a society, you want the distribution of | people who pass through higher education into roles like | "Doctors" and "Lawyers" and eventually "Politicians" to | broadly match the distribution of cultures that comprise the | society as a whole. Otherwise you create an apartheid state, | and an angry under-class that threatens the stability of the | system. This is an axiom so simple that even Lyndon Johnson | understood it. | | So in our Model America, you need to have a law that says | "yeah we know that everyone is the same, but because a degree | from [Prestigious University] has a ripple effect that | affects society as a whole, we want to make sure that | graduating classes have at least the CHANCE of reflecting the | cultural diversity of the nation as a whole, so we need to | have a law that prevents Bad Actors in Admissions from just | saying 'Oh, we already let in all the white people in line, | wink wink wink, sorry, maybe next year'" | | That's the reason you might still want quotas. And given the | distribution of test scores because everyone ISN'T identical | frictionless spheres, you might want to add a weight to | minority test scores to float them overall, so they get in. | | And yeah, that might not seem fair if you're in the majority; | or if you're in the minority whose test scores are highest, | but there's a clear and self-evident purpose to those kinds | of weightings. Life's not fair, but it should be equitable, | overall. | zpeti wrote: | Because divide and rule works way better in America based on | race and not class... | | It's intentional. These political footballs are half real, | half tactics. | MockObject wrote: | > However in my more conpsiracy minded moments I can't help | but wonder if the focus on race is designed to keep the power | and the middle class fighting each other over things like | that rather than fighting against the people that have the | power. | | But is there really any better explanation? | jeltz wrote: | An alternative one: A culture which has a history of | structural racism due to slavery which therefore still | thinks about many topics through the lens of race despite | it often not being the best suite lens. | swagasaurus-rex wrote: | Dr. Martin Luther King said he dreams that one day his | children will be judged not by the color of their skin, but | by the content of their character. | | Here we are 60 years later still focused on the color of | people's skin. | sotorfl wrote: | William J. Bennett's Aug. 12 commentary is the latest | example of a recent trend in conservative public relations | --opponents of affirmative action claiming to be the heirs | of Martin Luther King Jr. They invoke the sentence from | King's 1963 speech looking forward to the day his children | would be judged by "the content of their character," not | the "color of their skin." | | Bennett conveniently ignores one fact--King was a strong | supporter of affirmative action. In "Why We Can't Wait," | published in 1963, he argued that given the long history of | American racism, blacks fully deserved "special, | compensatory measures" in jobs, education and other realms. | Four years later, in "Where Do We Go From Here?" he wrote: | "A society that has done something special against the | Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special | for him." | | You are incorrect about MLKs assessment. From the LA Times. | zapataband1 wrote: | Bennett conveniently ignores one fact--King was a strong | supporter of affirmative action. In "Why We Can't Wait," | published in 1963, he argued that given the long history of | American racism, blacks fully deserved "special, | compensatory measures" in jobs, education and other realms. | Four years later, in "Where Do We Go From Here?" he wrote: | "A society that has done something special against the | Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special | for him." | Timon3 wrote: | Do you think that Dr. King would argue that, aside from | affirmative action, we live in such a world today? | JKCalhoun wrote: | Yeah, arguing with my dad some time back he says, | "Minorities have unfair rights over whites: affirmative | action." | | "Name another," was my response. | ahtihn wrote: | Name a single unfair right that whites have over others, | today? | panarchy wrote: | They might not be law enshrined rights but... | | More peaceful police interactions? | | Fewer police interactions (for the same initial | conditions other than race)? | | Better housing options? | | Better renting options? | | Biased voting districts from gerrymandering? | | Better healthcare outcomes? | | Better employment opportunities? | | Greater upwards mobility in general? | | Greater social outcomes? | | Greater chances of being taken seriously? | | Better cultural representation? | swagasaurus-rex wrote: | These are all statistical measures. For any one | individual may not see the benefits of these privileges. | Grouping everybody into their race and statistics will | tell you there is variation. That's unavoidable. | | There are thousands of homeless white men in my city. | Maybe police interactions might be calmer for them, but | what does it matter for somebody whose life is sliding | downhill often by their own addictions? | | This is why the focus on race seems like such a | distraction to me. We could be helping the poor when | we're still too busy discussing race and ethnicity. | Timon3 wrote: | > These are all statistical measures. For any one | individual may not see the benefits of these privileges. | Grouping everybody into their race and statistics will | tell you there is variation. That's unavoidable. | | Some variation is unavoidable, but statistically | significant variation isn't! Why should people in those | underpriviledged groups accept a society which gives them | fewer chances? | | > There are thousands of homeless white men in my city. | Maybe police interactions might be calmer for them, but | what does it matter for somebody whose life is sliding | downhill often by their own addictions? | | Yes, it does matter? If police interactions are calmer | and you live longer, you have more chances to turn your | life around. We as a society have more chances to help | them. | | > This is why the focus on race seems like such a | distraction to me. We could be helping the poor when | we're still too busy discussing race and ethnicity. | | We should help the poor, _and_ we should work to remove | disparities between races and ethnicities. Why are those | things opposed in your mind? | swagasaurus-rex wrote: | 1) Many people of that race may be independently wealthy | and do not need help. Grouping people by race is a bad | measure of "need" | | 2) I haven't heard realistic plans for actually helping | people of a specific race. Helping poor people seems | achievable, helping black people sounds presumptuous. | | 3) Race itself is a nebulous grouping with many edge | cases. | | 4) You could easily find other ways to group people to | locate "disadvantage". Religion is an easy one, but | affirmative action based of religion sounds quite | discriminatory. | | 5) The focus on race is actually just racist. People's | difficulty of life is not measured by privilege but by | actual experiences. | Timon3 wrote: | > 1) Many people of that race may be independently | wealthy and do not need help. Grouping people by race is | a bad measure of "need" | | But people are being treated badly due to their race. Why | can't we use race as one criterium to decide who needs | help? Why do we have to pretend that racism isn't a real | social thing that affects peoples lives? | | > 2) I haven't heard realistic plans for actually helping | people of a specific race. Helping poor people seems | achievable, helping black people sounds presumptuous. | | Well, if you define these plans as unrealistic you're not | going to find realistic plans. But affirmative action for | example is a very realistic plan - so much so that it is | (or was) reality! | | > 3) Race itself is a nebulous grouping with many edge | cases. | | Sure, but people are being treated badly due to those | nebulous groupings with many edge cases. Why do we have | to ignore that? | | > 4) You could easily find other ways to group people to | locate "disadvantage". Religion is an easy one, but | affirmative action based of religion sounds quite | discriminatory. | | Do you have statistics showing that a similarly | statistically significant difference exists between | different religions? | | > 5) The focus on race is actually just racist. People's | difficulty of life is not measured by privilege but by | actual experiences. | | "The people who identify racism are the real racists!" | isn't as good of an argument as you think. People have | different experiences due to their race. Attempting to | find ways to curb that isn't "racist", it's "normal | social behavior". | swagasaurus-rex wrote: | > But people are being treated badly due to their race | | Unfortunately, I do not think you can force racists to | stop being racist. Bigotry is perfectly legal. | | > affirmative action for example is a very realistic plan | | It's also kinda racist. | | > people are being treated badly due to those nebulous | groupings | | This is one of the valid reasons to discuss race. | However, I do not see why this means people need "help". | What kind of help? How are you going to help? I still | have no answers. | Timon3 wrote: | > Unfortunately, I do not think you can force racists to | stop being racist. Bigotry is perfectly legal. | | Why should the affected groups, or society at large, | accept this? Why shouldn't we band together to try to | make things fair in light of this fact? | | > It's also kinda racist. | | Can you explain why? You cited MLK Jr. earlier. He didn't | think that AA is racist. Where do you disagree with his | position? | | > This is one of the valid reasons to discuss race. | However, I do not see why this means people need "help". | What kind of help? How are you going to help? I still | have no answers. | | No, you've gotten answers, you just don't like them. I've | explained pretty clearly why this means people need | "help", what kind of help and so on. | MockObject wrote: | > Why should the affected groups, or society at large, | accept this? Why shouldn't we band together to try to | make things fair in light of this fact? | | That's exactly what the court just did. It prevented | universities from being racist. | Timon3 wrote: | I'm trying to take your reply in good faith, but I'm | really not understanding. Can you walk me through your | thought process? The earlier discussion was: | | >>> But people are being treated badly due to their race | | >> Unfortunately, I do not think you can force racists to | stop being racist. Bigotry is perfectly legal. | | > Why should the affected groups, or society at large, | accept this? Why shouldn't we band together to try to | make things fair in light of this fact? | | So the court helped black people in regards to the | bigotry of racists by "preventing universities from being | racist". Your solution to racism is to treat everyone | equally - which in turn means that black people just have | to accept the bigotry of racists. So your solution is for | them to just suck it up. Am I understanding you | correctly? | Volundr wrote: | > We could be helping the poor when we're still too busy | discussing race and ethnicity. | | Why not both? I expect you'd find the cross-section of | people who want to, say, give black people better medical | outcomes, and those who support helping the homeless and | poor is quite large. | | I feel like "what about the poor" reliability shows up | when discussing helping brown people, but as soon as | something is designed to help the poor the same | politicians show up to condem it as entitlements or | socialism. | | I've seen no evidence to suggest that anyone trying to | better minority outcomes has ever actually distracted | from implementing programs to help the poor. | swagasaurus-rex wrote: | What do you think should be done to help underprivileged | races? | | The focus on race breeds inaction because we insist | something must be done before we have any idea how to | solve it. | | Focusing on minorities isn't helpful either because | minorities includes demographics that are doing quite | well. | Volundr wrote: | Well for example we already discussed that black people | have worse health outcomes, we could perhaps study why | that is and focus on fixing those things, ex through | outreach programs. | | Assume we can fix poverty entirely. We already live in a | world where, accounting for income, black people have | worse health outcomes than whites. Why do you assume | helping poor people will fix that? Wouldn't it be more | reasonable to assume we'd now love in a world where no | one is poor , and black people still are underserved by | our healthcare system? How do you propose fixing it if we | can't acknowledge the racial disparities? | | > The focus on race breeds inaction because we insist | something must be done before we have any idea how to | solve it. | | Bull. We aren't unable to implement programs help the | poor because people dare mention race. Plenty of people | are trying to push for programs to help the poor | regardless of race. It's not the people who acknowledge | that black people are more likely to be poor standing in | the way. | swagasaurus-rex wrote: | > study why that is and focus on fixing those things, ex | through outreach programs. | | This isn't a solution, it's passing the buck along. | Volundr wrote: | Outreach programs can't be part of the solution? Why not? | The suggestion was based on studies that found a high | amount of distrust of the medical system. | djur wrote: | Representation in the Senate. | Volundr wrote: | None. Non-whites have plenty of unfair disadvantages | however. | charlieyu1 wrote: | Let's fix the unfair stuff instead of introducing more | unfair stuff then | hackeraccount wrote: | Do you think being an African American hurt Barak Obama's | chance to be the Democratic nominee for President? Or to | be elected President? | | To answer my own question - it's complicated; it did hurt | him in some regards but it helped him too. There were a | lot of people in the primary and general election who | wanted to know they weren't prejudiced and voted for him | at least in part for that reason. | | This wasn't legal affirmative action. It was something | else. I don't know if I'd call it an "unfair right" but | for the right person in the right circumstance it can be | an advantage. Does it out weigh all the disadvantages? | Probably not. | [deleted] | Der_Einzige wrote: | I can name several more | | 1. Communal cultures and stronger family structures. | White Americans are insanely atomized and individualistic | and that is a serious issue | | 2. Birthrates/Fertility | | 3. Far better food/cooking and eating | | 4. Cultural control, especially in music and to a lesser | extent in sports. | | 5. In the case of certain immigrant groups, significantly | higher family wealth than the average white american | | 6. In the case of some ethnic groups, significantly | better physical prowess (it's a handful of tribes where | many of the best runners come from) | | Obviously these are not all that significant compared to | the disadvantages, but the idea that there are no other | "unfair advantages" is just wrong. | kacesensitive wrote: | 1. Not a right 2. Not a right 3. Not a right 4. Not a | right 5. Not a right 6. Holy shit not a right | [deleted] | sotorfl wrote: | [dead] | panarchy wrote: | https://indypendent.org/2015/01/the-white-race-was- | invented-... | | https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/20/the- | invention-o... | | I also seem to recall a factory or trade uprising/strike | in/around Europe between 1400-1700 where they basically made | up whiteness to divide the laborers and get them to argue | amongst themselves (successfully), but this may be apocryphal | as I cannot seem to find a source. | sornaensis wrote: | Really, people had to be told that people with white(r) | skin, are similar..? | | How stupid do these people think 'everyone else' is. This | is the most absurd thing I've read all day. | | Humans, who divide themselves along such lines as _what tv | shows they like_, had to have the concept of _skin colour_ | invented for them. Really think about how ridiculous this | assertion is. | MockObject wrote: | People naturally mix. They work together, worship | together, and marry each other, unless this natural | mixing is opposed by external forces. | panarchy wrote: | It wasn't that they just said that they looked different | obviously, what a ridiculous assertion . They seeded | talking points of racial supremacy amongst them to divide | them when before they saw themselves more unified as | workers with their race not having inherent merit. | maxsilver wrote: | > But seriously why can't we just focus our help and aid | around people who are poor and needs based rather than all | this faffing about with race? (snip) If people of a certain | race are proportionally more poor than people of another race | than they will be helped more and it helps out the people of | a specific race. | | Because that assumes "poor people" get "help" in a uniformly | fair and anti-racist way, and that's never really true in the | US today. | | If you help "all people" with "no regard" to race, you have | just participated in favoring white folks over all others, | even though you likely don't realize it. The systems by which | you choose to "help" all have various types of racism built- | in, and you will have racist results as output, even if you | yourself never directly try to commit such an act. (This is | what systemic racism _is_ , sometimes called | 'institutionalized racism' | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism ) | | Affirmative Action, while not perfect, is one of the few | things ever tried that actually accounts for this. It's | saying, "you can't be more racist than X" where X is some | kind of objective metric (say, "percent of enrollment by | race"), and it does not care which of the thousands of people | or systems involved are causing the issue, it attempts to | force-corrects for it. | | It is an emergency stop-gap, until such a future as that | result is already happening naturally, making it redundant. | The fact that we still depend on it ~60+ yrs later, is sort | of living proof that we haven't really dealt with systemic | racism yet. (As if all the other evidence, between housing, | employment, police brutality and murders, etc, wasn't already | enough) | crackercrews wrote: | > Why not just.. well, let poor people come first? Would the | goal suddenly not be met if poor smart white kids get into good | schools, too? Who loses in this case? | | Universities would do this instead of affirmative action if it | would lead to the same result. But it wouldn't. It would help | poor Asian students. And it would hurt the URMs who are not | poor. They currently benefit from strong affirmative action | programs but would fare much worse under a program like you | describe. | JKCalhoun wrote: | > I've come understand it to mean "positively discriminate | based on race, so long as it's a minority race" | | Is that true? I have heard that white males benefit most from | admission rules to colleges (perhaps primarily in California?). | But maybe that's "quota rules" and not affirmative action. | | Regardless, it appears as though the while male is probably | going to take a hit if all admissions become strictly | academically based. | 0xcafefood wrote: | https://thehill.com/changing- | america/enrichment/education/57... | | Why would White students choose to claim non-White ancestry | at these levels if it's going to disadvantage them? | etchalon wrote: | Because people believe things which are untrue? | az226 wrote: | Patently false | etchalon wrote: | Not "patently false", but, complicated: | | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/who-benefits-from- | af... | | The central argument, and what Zimmerman backs with data, | is that affirmative action benefited white men because it | disadvantaged Asians and women, both of whom, | statistically, will be more-likely to have higher academic | scores. | earthboundkid wrote: | Because we did harm to African Americans and Native Americans | as groups, so the remedy has to be to them as groups. | charlieyu1 wrote: | So what had Asian Americans done to deserve being treated | worse? | goatlover wrote: | Who's we and how do you delineate those groups? | earthboundkid wrote: | The United States is a legal entity. It's the one | responsible for the harms, and it's the one responsible for | the reparations. | | Or we could just dissolve the country every 4 years and | start over from scratch if you prefer. I don't see how that | could go wrong. :-) | orangepurple wrote: | Please identify the slave owners and punish them, not the | rest of us. Most people in American didn't own slaves. | Hell even most white people that weren't Jewish didn't | own slaves. The reputation was earned: | http://heyjackass.com/ | 0xcafefood wrote: | Why did you harm these groups? What are you doing to fix what | you have done? | zo1 wrote: | There is no way to untangle any of that from the past in any | fair way. We are just making more victims that future | generations will look down on us for. | | I want to leave a fair world to my children, not one filled | with hate and systemic racial discrimination. | earthboundkid wrote: | > There is no way to untangle any of that from the past in | any fair way. | | Agreed. At some point you do have to shrug and say we tried | our best and move on with a moral bankruptcy. But we're not | really close to that point yet. Bankruptcy comes after | you've exhausted extraordinary measures. I would say | realistically you need maybe 100 or 150 years of positive | effort before you shrug and give up, and we're barely even | at 50 yet. | [deleted] | JohnMakin wrote: | > Shouldn't this just be run-of-the-mill social democratic | "lets hand out some extra opportunities/benefits to the poor" | program? | | In a lot of ways, affirmative action is a boogeyman that | doesn't exist in the way many people think. In many large | states, such as california, they already for a long time do not | consider race as a factor in admissions, as per law. And, IMO, | california has done a pretty good job of having fairly diverse | schools, and they do precisely what you say - they focus their | efforts on lifting up those who come from poor socioeconomic | situations, which tends to capture a lot of the same people | affirmative action was trying to do. | 0xcafefood wrote: | > In a lot of ways, affirmative action is a boogeyman that | doesn't exist in the way many people think. | | In that case, can you explain why two schools would've fought | for the explicit use of race in deciding school admissions | all the way to the Supreme Court? | jvanderbot wrote: | California has been trying to overturn it's race-blind | policy for some time. The original policy was instituted | about the same time as everyone else's. The intent of | overturning it, of course, is to then go further and | institute a policy more like the one seen in this case. | | It has been overturned at the referendum level every time. | prpl wrote: | Laziness? It's cheap and it gives them a lever they wanted. | arcticbull wrote: | I expect part of this was just retaining their right to do | so as they are losing a degree of flexibility in admissions | here. | Georgelemental wrote: | > [In California], they already for a long time do not | consider race as a factor in admissions, as per law. | | They do to an extent, they just try to hide it as "holistic | review" or such, make it hard to prove. | nradov wrote: | You are referring to California _public_ colleges. Some | California private colleges which received federal funding | were still using racial identity as a factor in admissions. I | received an email from my _alma mater_ today stating that | they were discontinuing this practice due to the Supreme | Court decision. | rayiner wrote: | There was a logic to the idea of racial preferences as | originally envisioned. Studies show that the income gaps | between American descendants of slaves and indigenous Americans | basically have been unchanged even after segregation and legal | discrimination was ended. The reasoning goes that racial | preferences are necessary to undo these disadvantages. | | But the actual practice in US universities has become | completely disconnected from that logic. For example, the | largest group eligible for racial preferences is Hispanics. But | Hispanics enjoy similar income mobility to whites and previous | generations of white immigrants: | https://economics.princeton.edu/working- | papers/intergenerati.... Insofar as they are poorer than whites | as a group, that's a transient condition due to recency and | circumstances of immigration, just as it was for say Italians | or Vietnamese. | | A child of a poor Guatemalan immigrant statistically will end | up _better off_ than the child of a poor Appalachian whose | family has been in the US for centuries. It makes no sense to | put a thumb on the scale in favor of the Guatemalan under the | original justification for racial preferences. | | Moreover, most black students admitted to say Harvard are not | American descendants of slaves: | https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/10/15/gaasa-scrut/. | Some are immigrants from the Caribbean and Latin America, who | also are descendants of slaves. But many (up to half) are | immigrants from Africa. Not only are they not descendants of | slaves, they are typically elites in their home countries. | da39a3ee wrote: | The answer is basically: America has managed to make race and | socioeconomic status incredibly highly correlated, especially | in its large coastal cities where basically all poor people are | non-white. It's nothing like, for example, Northern European | cities with large white working class populations. | | Obviously there are a huge number of poor white people in | America. Mostly in the vast countryside with its small towns. | And you're right that they're forgotten about a bit in this | debate; certainly no one expects them ever to send their | children to Harvard. | | I think the reason they are forgotten about in this debate is | that the white educated classes feel very guilty about the | terrible race-wealth correlation. | EatingWithForks wrote: | One of the things of "why not class only" is because in America | race matters a lot. I mean it quite literally: studies have | shown simply having a black-sounding name makes you equivalent | to a white-sounding name of an order of magnitude less | qualification. In some cases black people with a college degree | have job prospects similar to a white person with a felony | record. | 0xcafefood wrote: | > studies have shown simply having a black-sounding name | makes you equivalent to a white-sounding name of an order of | magnitude less qualification. | | Can you link to a study showing this? How did this study | define what an "order of magnitude less qualification" means? | EatingWithForks wrote: | http://thecrimereport.s3.amazonaws.com/2/fb/e/2362/criminal | _... | | Here's a PDF. White people with a criminal record are | received more positively than noncriminal black-sounding | people. | | "Employment discrimination against people with criminal | records, especially in entry-level positions, is rampant, | as demonstrated by a 2005 report produced by the Commission | called "Race at Work: Realities of Race and Criminal Record | in the NYC Job Market" written by Drs. Devah Pager and | Bruce Western. [1] The report relied on results from | matched pairs of testers of young white, Latino, and | African-American men who applied for 1470 entry-level jobs | throughout New York City. Not only were whites more likely | to get a callback or job offer than Latinos or African- | Americans, African-Americans were nearly half as likely to | be considered as whites.[2] When white testers presented | with a recent felony record, they were as likely as Latinos | and much more likely than African-Americans to receive a | callback or job offer.[3] Overall, people with criminal | records are only half as likely to get a call back than | those without; for African-American applicants, the | likelihood is reduced to one-third.[4]" | | from https://www.cssny.org/news/entry/testimony-in-support- | of-tes... | 0xcafefood wrote: | Got it, so not studies in the sense of a peer reviewed | publication. Maybe something more like a "position | paper." | EatingWithForks wrote: | You can't exactly double-blind study black people but how | many studies do you really need? My original stance was | only "in some cases, discrimination exists". You're | really ridiculous about the bar of evidence you expect | from me here. | | "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and | Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination" | https://cos.gatech.edu/facultyres/Diversity_Studies/Bertr | and... | | "Systemic Discrimination Among Large U.S. Employers" | https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/137/4/1963/660593 | zuminator wrote: | One of the issues with the US is not just that certain races | are more likely to be poor but they are segregated as well, | meaning that there are counties, neighborhoods, and school | districts where minorities are concentrated, at levels | sometimes approaching 90% or more. And as a result of that, | historically the residents of those neighborhoods weren't just | economically deprived, but cut off from power, and influence. | People lived in dilapidated housing. They couldn't afford to | repair because banks wouldn't issue loans. They couldn't afford | good schools because schools are funded by county or district | in the US and so a poor local population means underfunded | schools. They couldn't get good jobs because they had a poor | education. All of their friends, family and neighbors were | similarly dirt poor. In other words there was a cycle of | pervasive generational poverty which didn't exist in the | mainstream culture. Even if they scrimped and saved to try to | move to a better neighborhood, they were often either entirely | excluded on the basis of race, or faced rampant and sometimes | dangerous discrimination upon settling in the new neighborhood. | | Anyway, so the goal of affirmative action was to try to break | that cycle, by essentially awarding the best and brightest from | those segregated communities opportunities they could never | achieve otherwise. | | There was also maybe a sense of society thinking (at least in | the case of blacks and maybe indigenous americans) "We owe them | because we put them in this situation by kidnapping/enslaving | or massacring their ancestors." Whereas with just generic poor | people, to say that we owe them anything (as in "we owe them | because our economy requires a pool of desparate labor") would | be an indictment of capitalism, which is not an acceptable | thought pattern in the USA. | danabrams wrote: | For 350 years of US history africans and their descendants were | enslaved. Native Americans were ripped from their land and | relocated, often with genocidal levels of casualties. | | After that, these two groups were substantially discriminated | against in law, and other races were added to the mix to be | given less rights than others. | | Today, there are huge disparities between outcomes for | different races in large part due to this historical | discrimination. There's also an ingrained culture of | stereotyping and discrimination that's hard to lift. It doesn't | matter if you're the first generation of Americans descended | from African immigrants who came in the 1980s... you still are | impacted by this legacy. | | The concept of affirmative action was to specifically | counteract the effects of these negative, historical | circumstances and provide a countervailing effect. | | I can't speak to other countries, but in the US, it is | definitely the case that poor people of color have a harder | time getting ahead than equally poor white people. (I suspect | it's similar elsewhere, but we are also a pretty racially | diverse country, so the effect is larger) | arbuge wrote: | > it is definitely the case that poor people of color have a | harder time getting ahead than equally poor white people | | Do you have any sources for that? | danabrams wrote: | Do I have any sources that systemic racism is real? | | I mean, there's a large body of evidence (I personally like | the economics methodology of this study, which has been | repeated many times: https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr- | magazine/pages/0203hrn...). | | But just like many will never be convinced that vaccines | are safe and the earth is round, many will never be | convinced that racism in the US is real, I suppose. | ix-ix wrote: | I once failed an undergraduate student because they | argued that racism ended in 1965 and that racism did not | exist after that. It's like they didn't pay attention in | class at all. | pessimizer wrote: | > I assume the intent is to help disadvantaged people have | opportunities that more priviledged people have already. Right? | | It has been transformed into that through the twin attacks of | "diversity" and "class, not race," but what it was meant to do | was aid the problem that the US ran into after it released | millions of slaves into the street with nothing, and they | didn't manage to magically create something from nothing. | | It transformed from that into an efficiency argument to stay | "constitutional" in a country that largely doesn't feel any | guilt over slavery. Instead of staying an excuse not to pay | reparations to their discarded farm equipment, the | justification was A) that everybody should get a fair shake, | and some people couldn't because of who their parents were | ("class, not race", "equality of opportunity"), and B) that | "diversity" of background gave an creative and decisionmaking | advantage to businesses. | | The problem with these stupid justifications for affirmative | action is that they don't support it at all. A) actually argues | _against_ race-based affirmative action, and B) paints it as a | problem that should be naturally solved by the market with no | intervention. | | The problem that the US has is that it had brutal | discrimination by laws at times so harsh that in 18th century | Maryland (iirc) there was a law that would sentence a white | person to death for teaching a black person how to read. The | problem is that black people collectively have barely more per | capita wealth than they had when they were freed (which was | $0.) | | That being said, black people have increased their proportion | of national wealth since freedom, and white people's proportion | of national wealth has been reduced, so that's sure libertarian | evidence that black people are intrinsically superior to white | people, though who can say if that's due to genetics or | culture. If reparations were paid that brought the black share | of national wealth to parity with the black proportion of the | population, racism against black people would cease to be an | issue that the government should be concerned with. | variadix wrote: | People want to play identity politics, not solve tangible | issues like income disparity and economic mobility. | kylerush wrote: | Racism tells us that the white race is superior to all other | races. If you reject that, you expect to see that white people | (or "model minorities" like Asian race) are not | disproportionately receiving access to opportunity or | disproportionately controlling the wealth. In the USA, it's the | opposite. | | You can invent whatever system you want, like the one you | proposed here, but if the outcome is disproportionate then it | is, by definition, a racist system. | | Why? Because race is a construct. It's fake. Factually | speaking, the only differences between these constructed racial | groups are things like hair texture and skin pigmentation. | Anyone saying otherwise is lying to preserve the construct. | | If your values include a rejection of racism, you need to | create a system that achieves the outcome of proportionate | access to opportunity and proportionate control of wealth. | Affirmative Action is the system that got the USA closest to | achieving that outcome. | thworp wrote: | But it could be cultural. All the facts point to that being | the cause. If there is so much racism against black people | how could Nigerians and Carribean Blacks be some of the most | prosperous ethnic groups in the US? | lolinder wrote: | This is an extremely simplistic take on a very complicated | topic. | | While race may be a social construct, it has _correlations_ | with a number of other, less artificial factors. A random | sample of people with the characteristics we associate with | Asian race will tend to have more ancestry that traces back | to Asia than would a random sample of people with Caucasian | characteristics. This ancestry brings with it cultural and | genetic factors that _do_ affect outcomes and are in no way | artificial. | | This isn't to say that we can just shrug and say that people | are different and therefore there's no racism. We absolutely | need to be trying to actively eliminate racism. But it's | absurd to try to claim that all people are essentially | identical across all ethnic groups, and it's frankly | offensive to a lot of people who take pride in their culture | and ancestry. | kylerush wrote: | The point you're making is that some cultures devalue | educational achievement and success? So much so that we | should expect to see members of those cultures | disproportionately lacking access to opportunity because | they "don't want it?" | asimpletune wrote: | I think it's a mistake to think the intent is to benefit | individuals of specific races. This has very much been | something where the intended benefactor is American society in | general. | | As an example, I went to a good public school that had a policy | where the top 5% of high school students were automatically | given admission to the university. While this was technically | race blind, it was de facto affirmative action, because a more | poor high school is not as competitive as a rich high school. | | At first, I too, thought that affirmative action was bad | because racism of any kind is bad. However, it dawned on me one | day that if this policy wasn't in place, there just wouldn't be | many minorities at our university, and in a way I would be | deprived off a well-rounded, diverse college experience. | | Simply put, being exposed to a a rich, diverse student body is | good for everyone, not just minorities. | | I don't think it's really any different in how the American | justice system doesn't exist solely to provide justice for | victim or the accused. The most important beneficiary of our | justice system, is what happens when you have justice for | society. Sure, individual cases don't always have what is | perceived as the "right" outcome, but that's considered | acceptable in our system if the result is justice for society. | lolinder wrote: | OP's point is still important, though: you're talking about | the wrong kind of diversity. If you go to a school with a | bunch of kids who grew up in upper-class neighborhoods in | Washington, D.C., who cares if a few of those kids have black | skin? They're contributing _~nothing_ to the diversity on | campus, because they grew up in the same place and come from | the same income level. | | On the other hand, if your admissions policies make a point | of drawing from many income brackets or many countries, | suddenly you have a whole world of people who you likely | would never have associated with and who are _actually_ | different than you in meaningful ways. | | Country of origin and socioeconomic status are a much bigger | deal when it comes to diversity than race, because race isn't | real. It's a proxy for things that are real, and continuing | to use it as a proxy perpetuates a subtle form of racism. | pknomad wrote: | Guessing UT Austin? | asimpletune wrote: | Yeah, great experience | pknomad wrote: | Oh yeah I bet. I agree with you on positive benefits of | having a diverse class, fwiw. | | I know few friends from Lake Travis who disagree though | but I think that has to do with not making the top 8% | (back then I think it was lower?). | bcatanzaro wrote: | I have wondered this myself and I think the answer is that | American universities want to discriminate based on wealth. | They actually want the richest kids possible going to their | schools. Their business model depends on it. | senthil_rajasek wrote: | I am from India and have lived in the U.S for over 2 decades. I | have observed "affirmative action" arguments in two continents. | | I am going to answer your specific questions, | | >Why not just.. well, let poor people come first? | | Racial justice issues are separate from economic justice | issues. | | Shouldn't this just be run-of-the-mill social democratic "lets | hand out some extra opportunities/benefits to the poor" | program? | | Racism is a complex issue and in listening to Black/Asian/Brown | Americans I have come to the realization that such programs | have to be specific to each and every race because they | experience racism in different ways. | mc32 wrote: | At some point, you have to declare the war against something, | over. The war against polio, the war against dengue fever, etc. | even while there may continue low-grade outbreaks. Perfect is | the enemy of the good. | lost_tourist wrote: | Go read any article/book about living as a person of color in | America, also read about the history of slavery, jim crow, and | civil rights. You might understand then, you will never get | that story via HN or American mainstream media. I mean if | you're serious about it at all, read about it from the | perspective of those who are being discriminated against. | fundad wrote: | It's foreign to most American college students too, almost all | US colleges accept almost all applicants. | | A very small number of private, public and military colleges | attract so many applicants they have to select students for | admission. | sbdaman wrote: | [flagged] | TheFreim wrote: | Could you explain why? | stcroixx wrote: | [flagged] | zapataband1 wrote: | [flagged] | coolhand2120 wrote: | I think he might be talking about "Racism in US college | admission has been banned" which sounds like a good thing. Do | you argue that Asian and Indian students should be rejected | because of their race in favor of less qualified black or | Hispanic students? I would love to hear your case for why | that is ok. | HDThoreaun wrote: | "Less qualified" opens a can of worms. If one student spent | twice as long studying does that make them more likely to | have a high income after they graduate? Because in the end | that's what these schools are looking for, "How do we admit | the people who will be the most successful in their | career?" Just looking at grades and test scores can't | figure that out. Academic success may be correlated with | cultural values in a way that income isn't. | coolhand2120 wrote: | > Just looking at grades and test scores can't figure | that out. | | Do you have any citations to back up that assertion? I | think we've reached the point of calling these metrics a | bit more than correlations. | | I hear this all the time from pro affirmative action | groups, but I don't think it's backed up by any science. | People who practice more are going to be better at that | thing. Same in sports, musics, medicine, literally | everything. Hard work it turns out pays off. It's very | unfortunate that some can't do the hard work required to | make the grade. But that doesn't mean that they should be | elevated _over others that did_ make the grade _based on | the color of their skin_. I can't even believe I have to | argue this. | | Looking at academic factors should be the strongest | determining factor, economic factors is fine, but looking | at race is racist, by definition. | | Advocacy groups trying to change the definitions of words | as a way to sort of "legislate from the bench" is | dishonest and an obvious attempt to avoid the debate on | very controversial topics. It will always be racist to | make determinations based on race. Attempts to change | this definition is racist. | HDThoreaun wrote: | I absolutely believe hard work pays off. But different | people value different things. If one person works | incredibly hard to get their grades and test scores up | and the other works just as hard to start a business who | is the harder worker? The academic criteria says it's the | first person, but I don't think that means they will have | more success in their career. And in the end maximizing | career success is what admissions is trying to do. | zapataband1 wrote: | I think an economic based affirmative action makes more | sense, so don't put words in my mouth. Let's just celebrate | rule by 5 people in a country of 330M dumbocracy | stcroixx wrote: | [flagged] | jl6 wrote: | One question I have is: did it work? | | These types of policies have been in place for decades. We have | data on inequality between different demographics over time. So | can we detect a measurable improvement attributable to the | policy? | peterfirefly wrote: | More recent immigrants from Africa with an Ivy League degree, | yes. That looks superficially like an improvement to many. | w10-1 wrote: | The improvement was clear and obvious in many aspects of | society, but the question is whether the cost was worth it, and | whether it's really a long-term solution, since it may | exacerbate some aspects. | | Further, it left open the question of the goal: is it to | assimilate cultures? To ensure equal resources? participation? | representation? respect? understanding? freedom to be | different? | | Which means different affirmative-action programs had different | cost/benefit and no one really knows the path. | | In logic, not-not-A is A, but it's anything but in reality. | syngrog66 wrote: | I wrote my thoughts on this news (and how it relates to MLK) | here: | | "I Have A Dream" Today https://synystron.substack.com/p/i-have-a- | dream-today | seanw444 wrote: | This comment section is a frightening wake-up call to how | peoples' mindsets are nowadays. I choose to believe that it's | over-represented on HN because most people that exercise interest | in the topics HN is made for, are the stereotypical liberal | types. | kernal wrote: | Racial discrimination is racial discrimination no matter how you | try to sugar coat it. | dmvdoug wrote: | Regardless of what your take is on the substance, as a former | lawyer, I was really struck at the language in the various | concurrences and dissents. They are very clearly pissed and/or | disgusted with each other in a way that is very not-normal, even | for hot button cases. | Georgelemental wrote: | This issue is personal for justices Thomas, Jackson, and | Sotomayor especially. I think that is reflected in their | opinions. | dmvdoug wrote: | Sotomayor as well. What fascinates me about Thomas's dissent | is towards the end he talks about HBCUs and how effective | they are. You'll find language of his in a lot of places | suggesting black separatist--type sympathies. He was a | genuine radical in his college years in that respect, and | he's still clearly sympathetic to sone extent. | | Cards on the table: I think Justice Thomas has a genuinely | nutty jurisprudence. Like way out there nutty. And I disagree | with him about virtually everything. But he's much more | complex than the standard caricatures allow for (even when | they come from fellow-travelers, like the people who thought | Thomas was just Scalia's lapdog; wrong; Scalia was nakedly | unprincipled when compared to Thomas). | HDThoreaun wrote: | > I think Justice Thomas has a genuinely nutty | jurisprudence | | How many other judges routinely cite their own opinion when | it was in the minority? I gotta say though I respect the | massive the balls to constantly be doing that. | ekam wrote: | Yeah he does seem to have a somewhat cohesive and distinct | philosophy of his own that undergirds his decisions and | that's been underappreciated given his influence over the | Court and American jurisprudence | fzeroracer wrote: | [flagged] | b8 wrote: | Thomas Sowell successfully convinced me that affirmative action | is a disservice with his cogent affirmative action book. | ProllyInfamous wrote: | Justice Thomas's concurrence cited Dr. Thomas Sowell TWICE in | support of the disservice affirmative action can have on | preferentially-admitted students of color. Justice Sotomayer's | dissent dispelled Dr. Sowell's sage publications. | | I found it particularly offensive the pettiness embedded within | the footnotes, to an obviously-divided court [and on such a | simple topic, too]. | | From majority ruling: | | "ELIMINATING RACIAL DISCRIMINATION MEANS ELIMINATING ALL OF | IT." | subpixel wrote: | I'd rather live in a society that made it an imperative to have | more students from more ethnicities be eligible for the best | universities every year. | | That requires addressing inequality earlier, and more thoroughly, | and across more axes, than an approach that is, in the final | analysis, about setting quotas based on ethnicity. | | Affirmative action can do everything it was designed to do while | having essentially zero impact on inequality in society at large | - it's always seemed like a cop out to me. | dahwolf wrote: | Even more so because all these discussions evolve around elite | institutes only. Which doesn't help 99.999999% of people. | stjohnswarts wrote: | That's probably not going to happen in the USA given current | status of public schools barely hanging on. | imtemplain wrote: | [dead] | ricardoplouis wrote: | Worth noting that while affirmative action has been banned, we | still have proxies for race (aka legacy admissions) which | overwhelmingly favor rich and white students. And given the | historical discrimination of elite universities, this ban on | affirmative action without addressing legacy admissions or | historical harm will only increase the number of white students | at universities. We can't pretend that eliminating race based | admissions will serve the greater interest without addressing | past (and current) systems of white supremacy. | | Link to demographics on legacy admissions: | https://www.culawreview.org/journal/legacy-admissions-an-ins... | vorpalhex wrote: | From your source | | > In addition, 70 percent of Harvard's legacy applicants are | white. | | From US Census: | | > Race and Hispanic Origin | | > White alone, percent | | > 75.5% | jasonlotito wrote: | From the source of the source you quoted: | | > Our model of admissions shows that roughly three-quarters | of white ALDC admits would have been rejected absent their | ALDC status. | | So, three-quarters of those individuals didn't earn their | place academically. | | > Removing preferences for athletes and legacies would | significantly alter the racial distribution of admitted | students away from whites. | | So, the mechanisms in place for academics currently favor | white people. | | Yes, 70% vs 75% is about the same, but it was helped that way | in part because of legacies, and would be much lower | otherwise. | | Which supports the original comment: | | > [legacy admissions] overwhelmingly favor rich and white | students. | | Maybe the paper itself has more details. I'm only going by | the abstract. But unless the abstract is lying, I think it | makes sense. | [deleted] | onetimeusename wrote: | > overwhelmingly favor rich and white students. | | not really. Legacy students have higher SAT scores than non- | legacy. https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/freshman- | survey/academi... | | Whites are also the only ethnic group on Harvard's campus that | are underrepresented relative to their percentage of the | population. I think to argue that Harvard (I am using them as | the example since they are part of the SC case and relevant | here) is white supremacist is absurd. It's really quite the | opposite. | | In fact, I think the SFFA case will reduce the number of white | students because Harvard may have been using affirmative action | to help poor white students who are the least likely to take | test prep[1] and likely didn't attend a high powered high | school. | | There is absolutely 0 appetite from Harvard to favor white | people in any way. | | [1]: | https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/03/th... | Der_Einzige wrote: | This ruling will overwhelmingly help Asians and only marginally | help white people | gnicholas wrote: | It will be especially helpful for Asian people who don't have | Asian-sounding last names. I suspect that schools will | continue to discriminate against Asians, and I wish that my | mixed-race kids had a less Asian-sounding last name. | chmod600 wrote: | " I have a dream that my four little children will one day live | in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their | skin but by the content of their character." | | --- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | | https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-spee... | arpyzo wrote: | If you agree with this decision on the grounds of supporting | meritocracy, consider that the real travesty with regards to | meritocracy in college admissions are legacy admissions. | xyzelement wrote: | How big a deal and how common is it in reality? "We have one | fewer spots because we admitted the son of a donor" and "we | won't accept you based on race" are different magnitude. | MisterBastahrd wrote: | It's the difference between "we're setting aside this slot | specifically for you because of who your parents are" and | "we're placing you in this competitive pool that will make up | a certain percentage of the overall class." | | They're vastly different in terms of magnitude. | kemayo wrote: | It has a surprisingly strong effect as schools get more | prestigious / exclusive. At schools like Harvard, which have | in incredibly low admission rate (something like 5% of | qualified applicants get an offer, I think?), legacies get a | massive bump. | | https://admissionsight.com/harvard-legacy-acceptance-rate/ | says it's 25-35% of students who're legacies at Harvard. | | https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26316/w263. | .. is analyzing the admissions data that got released from an | earlier lawsuit against Harvard about Asian American | admissions bias, and says that although being a legacy isn't | as good as being a recruited athlete, it still gets you | admitted at about 5x the rate of non-legacies. | deilline wrote: | https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1060361 | JKCalhoun wrote: | 43%, crazy. | s1artibartfast wrote: | For one specific private university. If you consider | every state university and College, I expect far more | people are impacted by affirmative action | arpyzo wrote: | Legacy admissions are not just a few spots. They constitute a | high percentage of admissions. I've seen estimates ranging | from 10% to 35%. | kadomony wrote: | Interesting to see if companies will be slapped back to reality | away from their DEI bullshit that hires lesser qualified | individuals simply because of their levels of melanin. | Eumenes wrote: | A win for meritocracy - https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-chart- | illustrates-graphic... | manuelabeledo wrote: | Then the headline should be: "Legacies are banned from top tier | private schools". | | Around 25% of admissions in Ivy League schools are legacies. | Unsurprisingly, this does not seem to _outrage_ certain parts | of society that much. | Eumenes wrote: | That's bad too. | throw0101c wrote: | Meritocracy may not be what you think it is, or achieve the | results you assume. See recent books by Markovits and Sandel: | | * https://www.vox.com/policy-and- | politics/2019/10/24/20919030/... | | * | https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/10/21/20897021/meritocra... | | * https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/a-belief-in-meritocracy- | is... | | * https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/01/the-myth- | of-m... | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Criticism | | The word's modern popularity originated in a pejorative meaning | which was then lost: | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy | | Once people 'are in', they get more resources, and that allows | for (e.g.) their children to have more opportunities, and so | they then in turn win. If you have a person who does not 'get | in' and 'win', then they have fewer resources / opportunities | to show or develop what skills they may have: a doom-loop can | become possible. | | As an example of what resources can get you: | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varsity_Blues_scandal | | * https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/rick-singer- | mastermin... | Eumenes wrote: | Okay, but race based admissions for college is bad and I'm | glad its revoked. | ecshafer wrote: | The best method of college entrance is whats done in east asia. | China does the Gaokao (hard SAT), and students list their | university preferences and filters students into colleges based | on their score and their preferences. Japan takes entrance exams | for a university. These seem like infinitely fairer methods than | the US where they try and correct for disadvantage in a variety | ways. | AlanYx wrote: | China practices affirmative action by giving certain ethnic | minorities additional points on the gao kao. There's a good | 2017 paper by Ding et. al. that explores the effect this has. | JKCalhoun wrote: | In the U.S.: go to shitty school, get shitty SAT score, | disallowed from college. Repeat. | w10-1 wrote: | In California: 10% of each shitty school gets in to the top- | tier UC system | alsaaro wrote: | China uses an ethnic quota system for underrepresented | minorities for university admissions, just like India and the | United States (until today). | HDThoreaun wrote: | American schools are not looking to maximize academic success. | They want to maximize career success because that's how | prestige is measured. They're certainly not trying to be fair | either, they're trying to maximize donations. | Georgelemental wrote: | Clarence Thomas's concurrence does not mince words: | | > This, [Justice Jackson] claims, locks blacks into a seemingly | perpetual inferior caste. Such a view is irrational; it is an | insult to individual achievement and cancerous to young minds | seeking to push through barriers, rather than consign themselves | to permanent victimhood. [...] What it cannot do is use the | applicant's skin color as a heuristic, assuming that because the | applicant checks the box for "black" he therefore conforms to the | university's monolithic and reductionist view of an abstract, | average black person. | | > Accordingly, JUSTICE JACKSON's race-infused world view falls | flat at each step. Individuals are the sum of their unique | experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not | the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And | their race is not to blame for everything--good or bad--that | happens in their lives. A contrary, myopic world view based on | individuals' skin color to the total exclusion of their personal | choices is nothing short of racial determinism. | | > JUSTICE JACKSON then builds from her faulty premise to call for | action, arguing that courts should defer to "experts" and allow | institutions to discriminate on the basis of race. Make no | mistake: Her dissent is not a vanguard of the innocent and | helpless. It is instead a call to empower privileged elites, who | will "tell us [what] is required to level the playing field" | among castes and classifications that they alone can divine. | Post, at 26; see also post, at 5-7 (GORSUCH , J., concurring) | (explaining the arbitrariness of these classifications). Then, | after siloing us all into racial castes and pitting those castes | against each other, the dissent somehow believes that we will be | able--at some undefined point--to "march forward together" into | some utopian vision. Post, at 26 (opinion of JACKSON, J.). Social | movements that invoke these sorts of rallying cries, | historically, have ended disastrously. | | > Unsurprisingly, this tried-and-failed system defies both law | and reason. Start with the obvious: If social reorganization in | the name of equality may be justified by the mere fact of | statistical disparities among racial groups, then that | reorganization must continue until these disparities are fully | eliminated, regardless of the reasons for the disparities and the | cost of their elimination. [...] If those measures were to result | in blacks failing at yet higher rates, the only solution would be | to double down. In fact, there would seem to be no logical limit | to what the government may do to level the racial playing field-- | outright wealth transfers, quota systems, and racial preferences | would all seem permissible. In such a system, it would not matter | how many innocents suffer race-based injuries; all that would | matter is reaching the race-based goal. | | [...] | | > The great failure of this country was slavery and its progeny. | And, the tragic failure of this Court was its misinterpretation | of the Reconstruction Amendments, as Justice Harlan predicted in | Plessy. We should not repeat this mistake merely because we | think, as our predecessors thought, that the present arrangements | are superior to the Constitution. | | > The Court's opinion rightly makes clear that Grutter is, for | all intents and purposes, overruled. And, it sees the | universities' admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, | race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix | in their entering classes. Those policies fly in the face of our | colorblind Constitution and our Nation's equality ideal. In | short, they are plainly--and boldly--unconstitutional. See Brown | II, 349 U. S., at 298 (noting that the Brown case one year | earlier had "declare[d] the fundamental principle that racial | discrimination in public education is unconstitutional"). | | > While I am painfully aware of the social and economic ravages | which have befallen my race and all who suffer discrimination, I | hold out enduring hope that this country will live up to its | principles so clearly enunciated in the Declaration of | Independence and the Constitution of the United States: that all | men are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated | equally before the law. | COGlory wrote: | Justice Thomas is (to me) an extremely frustrating figure, but | this a compelling argument for the 14th Amendment. | tdonoghue wrote: | Clarence Thomas is the epitome of what makes America the | greatest country on earth. | l3mure wrote: | His corruption is truly inspiring. | | https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus- | un... | Georgelemental wrote: | What's the scandal here? What law was broken, what rule | violated? I can't tell... | l3mure wrote: | > Thomas didn't report any of the trips ProPublica | identified on his annual financial disclosures. Ethics | experts said the law clearly requires disclosure for | private jet flights and Thomas appears to have violated | it. | | > Justices are generally required to publicly report all | gifts worth more than $415, defined as "anything of | value" that isn't fully reimbursed. There are exceptions: | If someone hosts a justice at their own property, free | food and lodging don't have to be disclosed. That would | exempt dinner at a friend's house. The exemption never | applied to transportation, such as private jet flights, | experts said, a fact that was made explicit in recently | updated filing instructions for the judiciary. | | > How many times Thomas failed to disclose trips remains | unclear. Flight records from the Federal Aviation | Administration and FlightAware suggest he makes regular | use of Crow's plane. The jet often follows a pattern: | from its home base in Dallas to Washington Dulles airport | for a brief stop, then on to a destination Thomas is | visiting and back again. | Georgelemental wrote: | Thomas asked the relevant body (Judicial Conference) | whether he was obligated to report the trips, they told | him no. The rules have since changed, and Thomas is | adapting to follow the new rules. | https://thehill.com/regulation/court- | battles/4038748-clarenc... | imperio59 wrote: | Harvard and UNC are well intentioned but they are trying to fix | inequities which start much earlier. | | They sit at the end of 12 years of schooling for applicants, | where the quality of that schooling and the level of funding for | extra curricular activities will have been vastly different based | on where that student lived and which school they attended. | | Trying to fix this problem at the college admissions level | creates the unintended effect and consequence that Asians and | whites who are objectively better academic candidates get | rejected in favor of non white/Asian candidates with lower | academic scores. That is wrong and it's discrimination on the | sole basis of the color of your skin. | | The real fight needs to be about fixing our education system so | every kid of every race and everywhere gets the same high quality | education. It means giving parents school choice to take their | kids to private school instead of the poorly run public schools | that may be near them. It means raising the standards for | training teachers so they can have real workable educational | tools to make sure their students succeed. | | You can't fix this broken system with more racism, and it was | wrong to try to do so. | SaintSeiya wrote: | Good: race, gender, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, etc | should not be used as an advantage, or disadvantage in totally | unrelated matters (education, work, etc) | [deleted] | onetimeusename wrote: | I got an email about this from my university president expressing | his disappointment with the ruling. He assured everyone the | campus will continue to strive for more racial diversity and that | this ruling is a hindrance to that goal because race based | discrimination is a good thing for achieving diversity. | | The school is already about 25% white in a country that is ~60% | white. Is that sufficiently diverse? What is the optimal amount | of diversity and why? There are a lot of questions I could ask. | But I think it's interesting that schools have announced so | strong a commitment to diversity without really explaining what | diversity is or how having certain racial demographics results in | the best possible outcome. How would you prove that? | | I don't think this ruling will have any effect. The schools are | pretty clearly committed to diversity, whatever that means and | for whatever their reasons may be. | DeathArrow wrote: | [flagged] | [deleted] | [deleted] | 0xbadcafebee wrote: | > In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her | experiences as an individual -- not on the basis of race. | | You... can't. Even if you want to only consider the individual | experience, race is deeply tied up with the individual | experience. If you _only_ considered race, that would be even | more crazy. But you cannot just ignore race, as much as you want | to. | JustBreath wrote: | Whatever your opinion about recent supreme court decisions, this | has all underscored what has been true for a long time: | | Legislating via the judicial branch is a bad idea. | | If it only takes 5 out of 9 people to make laws for 600 million, | it only takes one seat change to revert them. | | (Edit: sorry, 300 - pre-caffeine posting) | [deleted] | andrewprock wrote: | The judicial branch does not legislate. It interprets existing | legislation. In this case they were interpreting the 14th | amendment to the US Constitution. | | Now, they may not have interpreted it the way you or I would, | and they may not have interpreted it correctly. But that is | what they do. | matthewdgreen wrote: | "Interpret" is just a word. In practice the Court has | enormous power in interpreting laws, to the point where it | can completely change the policy that laws implement, or | strike them altogether. | | We afford deference to the Court because we believe it | follows a constrained legal procedure that makes the word | "interpret" meaningful: this involves taking into account | precedent and past case law. This approach tends to prevent | justices from "interpreting" the law in ways that effectively | re-write the law according to their instantaneous political | preferences. This court is receiving criticism (and serious | loss of public approval [1]) because it has abandoned those | constraints, and keeps overturning longstanding precedent in | ways that _happen to correspond_ to the stated political | preferences of the justices (and the politicians that | appointed them.) | | [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/4732/supreme-court.aspx | gotoeleven wrote: | Penumbras and emanations of the 4th amendment to allow us to | have abortions? Not legislating! | | Saying "equal protection of the law" means you have to give | people the equal protection of law? OMG legislating from the | bench! | | The funny thing is that everywhere voters actually have had a | chance to vote on affirmative action, they vote it down (Most | recently prop 16 in california). Every single time. And yet | left wing institutions keep finding a way to worm around | whatever the law is. The legislative intent is clearly in | agreement with this ruling so these "oh no they're legislating | from the bench" arguments are nonsensical. | kindatrue wrote: | This also works in the opposite direction though: | | New York has a right to shelter law because of the judicial | branch of government. Basically, a pro bono lawsuit and a judge | forced NY to have enough shelter space for all people sleeping | in the street. | | Compare and contrast that to San Francisco (and more broadly | California) - where everything can be decided on at the ballot | box (like kidney dialysis staffing levels) - which has more | people sleeping on the street than all of the UK, and has a | wait list of each night of 1000+ for a shelter spot. | | Everything has advantages and drawbacks. | mjh2539 wrote: | There's only approximately 330 million of us, but yes, your | main point is correct. I think that judicial activism has led | to a perversion of both the legislative and the judicial | branches. Why try to pass legislation that requires broad | consent and lots of work when you can just bank on getting your | policies through via the judiciary? At the same time, why | constrain the judiciary's decisions on something as irrelevant | and inflexible as the constitution? | notlegislating wrote: | The legislation in question (the Civil Rights Act) prohibits | all racial discrimination and it was only previous (in my | opinion, misguided) Supreme Court decisions that allowed | affirmative action as an exception to that in the first place. | PM_me_your_math wrote: | SCOTUS rules on the constitutionality of laws. It doesn't write | or institute any laws whatsoever. Now people need to get into | college on merit instead of scoring high in the Victim | Olympics. That's a great thing for our society. | malnourish wrote: | Did all pre-Affirmative Action college applicants matriculate | based on their merits? | splitstud wrote: | [dead] | topposter32 wrote: | I only hear complaints from either side when the tables are | turned against them. When its in their favor it's just the | right thing to do. | ellisv wrote: | Eh. I think we should be complaining about the court all the | time. They're not doing a great job. | JKCalhoun wrote: | Perhaps there are pro-slavery people still complaining about | the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment? | topposter32 wrote: | Those amendments were made by the legislature. | DeathArrow wrote: | But somehow, some people only feel the need to mention it when | they don't like the result. | yanderekko wrote: | Yep. Roe vs. Wade was one of the most egregious examples of | "legislating from the bench" in the latter 20th century? How | many people who would hand-wring over recent SCOTUS decisions | oppose Roe on these grounds? Or is this a convenient | exception? Griswold? How about Lawrence vs. Texas? | mehlmao wrote: | Please explain how Henry Wade could enforce the overturned | Texas Penal Code statutes without violating the | constitutional right to privacy. | Aunche wrote: | In the right to privacy is so broad that it applies to | abortion, it should also apply to self-medicating | yourself with narcotics. I'm not saying that | decriminalization of drugs is a bad thing, but it's | something that obviously shouldn't be decided by the | Supreme Court. | yanderekko wrote: | Yep, and if it applies to abortion, why not third- | trimester abortion? Why is that relevant to a privacy | interest? | | Where is the right to privacy in the Constitution, btw? | Sounds like the whole thing is legislating from the | bench! Maybe we should bring back Lochner-style scrutiny | of minimum wage laws under a newly-discovered "right to | earn a living"? | dragonwriter wrote: | > Where is the right to privacy in the Constitution, btw? | | People inevitably making this argument was actually the | primary argument against adopting a Bill of Rights at | all, and the Ninth Amendment was the compromise solution | to have some enumerated rights while hoping to negate | this exact argument. | ericmay wrote: | Right, like how the SCOTUS rejected the Independent State | Legislature theory case. Some people were like "we really | shouldn't be legislating from the bench", but when the SCOTUS | overturned Roe v Wade they cheered it on. | ellisv wrote: | How was rejecting ISL was legislating from the bench? | JustBreath wrote: | > Some people were like "we really shouldn't be legislating | from the bench", but when the SCOTUS overturned Roe v Wade | they cheered it on. | | That's internally consistent. Roe V. Wade _was_ the bench | legislation in this case. | | The citizenship rights in the constitution were not written | or otherwise intended to provide a right to abortions. | | Even the concept of privacy the decision was based on is | inferred only from the statement "deprive any person of | life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." | mywittyname wrote: | The constitution doesn't enumerate every right a citizen | has. It's a framework for judges (and congress) to | determine what laws can and cannot be applied to | citizens. The right to abortion was ruled to be protected | by the 4th amendment. | | While this case is held up as being the legislating from | the bench case, it's really not. We don't generally pass | laws that make something legal, except as exceptions to | other laws. Saying that government access to a person's | medical records is protected by the constitution is | _exactly_ the function of SCOTUS. | lolinder wrote: | Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have disagreed with you | there, and I think she's more qualified than you to | comment on the function of the Court: | | > Casual observers of the Supreme Court who came to the | Law School to hear Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speak | about Roe v. Wade likely expected a simple message from | the longtime defender of reproductive and women's rights: | Roe was a good decision. | | > Those more acquainted with Ginsburg and her thoughtful, | nuanced approach to difficult legal questions were not | surprised, however, to hear her say just the opposite, | that Roe was a faulty decision. For Ginsburg, the | landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that affirmed a | woman's right to an abortion was too far-reaching and too | sweeping, and it gave anti-abortion rights activists a | very tangible target to rally against in the four decades | since. | | > "My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped | the momentum on the side of change," Ginsburg said. She | would've preferred that abortion rights be secured more | gradually, in a process that included state legislatures | and the courts, she added. Ginsburg also was troubled | that the focus on Roe was on a right to privacy, rather | than women's rights. | | https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/justice-ruth-bader- | ginsbur... | selimthegrim wrote: | Ginsburg wanted to reopen the privileges or immunities | clause. | xienze wrote: | > The right to abortion was ruled to be protected by the | 4th amendment. | | The right to abortion is guaranteed by the right to be | free from "unreasonable search and seizure." That is | literally the best ever example of squinting REALLY hard | at the constitution and trying to make something fit. Roe | was 100% making a legal argument for abortion to be | regulated at the federal level using the most twisted | pretzel logic imaginable. | dragonwriter wrote: | > The right to abortion is guaranteed by the right to be | free from "unreasonable search and seizure." That is | literally the best ever example of squinting REALLY hard | at the constitution and trying to make something fit. | | No, its just a typo, _Roe_ rested on the Due Process | Clause of the 14th Amendment, not any provision of the | 4th. "A state criminal abortion statute of the current | Texas type, that excepts from criminality only a | lifesaving procedure on behalf of the mother, without | regard to pregnancy stage and without recognition of the | other interests involved, is violative of the Due Process | Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment." (It in passing | mentions _other_ previous cases relating to privacy | rights which found aspects of them other places in the | Constitution, including, among many others, the | combination of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments in _Terry | v. Ohio_ , but no part of the rule articulated in _Roe_ | purported to be interpreting the Fourth Amendment, only | the 14th.) | gjsman-1000 wrote: | The Judicial branch also has the job of ensuring whatever | misguided ideas the Legislative branch may come up with, | regardless of what they are (Communications Decency Act, anyone | here?) are compliant with the US Constitution and other | applicable laws. | devoutsalsa wrote: | Laws aren't (and can't) be written to cover all current and | future use cases. The judicial branch is meant to provide | interpretation of the law. | | _Federal courts enjoy the sole power to interpret the law, | determine the constitutionality of the law, and apply it to | individual cases. The courts, like Congress, can compel the | production of evidence and testimony through the use of a | subpoena._ | | https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/our-governm... | JustBreath wrote: | It's true laws don't account for the future. It's also true | that laws can be created and updated by other means and quite | often the judicial branch is used as a fast pass extension of | the legislative branch. | | The problem when you do this - especially on questionable | legal arguments - is you're essentially setting up the future | to have to fight for that right all over again, as we've seen | with Roe v. Wade. | | You can't take a section of the constitution that's about | citizenship, infer a right to privacy and then extend that to | abortion and not expect that flimsy foundation to be | challenged later when the right 5 people happen to be | present. | damnesian wrote: | >Legislating via the judicial branch is a bad idea. | | If the Citizens United decision didn't teach us that, nothing | will. | kjfarm wrote: | I completely agree with legislation via judicial branch being a | bad idea. However, affirmative action isn't legislation. This | is judicial review striking down policy (executive branch | interpretation and implementation of legislation) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action | https://www.history.com/topics/us-government-and-politics/af... | alsaaro wrote: | Judicial review has upheld the constitutionality of | affirmative action policies for 40+ years, what changed is | the composition of the Supreme Court and its related | willingness to legislate from the bench -- abandoning stare | decisis and judicial restraint. | | We saw this with Roe last year. | newacct3 wrote: | What also changed was the timing of the decision, see | O'Connor's "25 years" comment | alsaaro wrote: | Remember the Supreme Court upheld the legality of | affirmative action in 2016 in Fisher v. UT-Austin, and | two lower courts upheld the legality of affirmative | action in this particular decision. | | What changed is the make-up of the court; otherwise, | apparently affirmative action's unconstitutionality was | just realized like a revelation from God and every | previous court (federal and Supreme) was wrong. | | Racial rancor, and racism in general -- anti black racism | in particular -- has probably increased since 2003; at | least in the public sphere - hopefully this ruling is not | a part of that milieu. | MichaelZuo wrote: | Regardless of whatever the political currents are, it's | sensible policy to strike down every pseudo law that | doesn't have legislative backing of some kind. | | If they only selectively struck them down in favor of one | group or another, then that would be a different matter. | engineer_22 wrote: | The greater corpus of American law is based on case law, | meaning it is based on court decisions. It is a common | law system. | | This is in juxtaposition to civil law systems that are | based on codified legislation, for example in France or | Germany. | MichaelZuo wrote: | Most case law is based on some kind of legislative output | directly or indirectly via other case law. That's well | known. | JustBreath wrote: | Agree except for the "willingness to legislate" changing. | | That's been in place for a LONG time, it dates all the way | back to the separation of church and state decision being | based on a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote. | | Hell Roe v. Wade itself is an example. | [deleted] | COGlory wrote: | Some of the original Supreme Court cases upholding these | policies went so far as to say that in the future, these | exact things should be revisited because they were trying | to bandage over decades of institutional racism. | | https://gspp.berkeley.edu/research-and- | impact/publications/w... | | > In her opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra | Day O'Connor concluded that affirmative action in college | admissions is justifiable, but not in perpetuity: "We | expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial | preferences will no longer be necessary to further the | interest [in student body diversity] approved today." | | There are lots of criticisms of the SC, but I don't see why | everything they rule should be absolute ground truth | forever. They can (and do) revisit cases for good reason. | lost_tourist wrote: | I think it's mostly about the current MAGA heavy SCOTUS | though that got there mostly by duplicity and | hamstringing Senate procedures and pure luck. The judges | weren't selected for talent, they were selected for an | agenda. | Clubber wrote: | >I think it's mostly about the current MAGA heavy SCOTUS | | That's modern liberal opinion news talking. It's about | law. AA is a direct contradiction to the 14th amendment | and it dilutes it. I'm sure just about everyone, | including previously and currently oppressed minorities | would prefer the protections of 14th amendment over the | protections of AA. | localplume wrote: | [dead] | paulvnickerson wrote: | Striking down Roa v Wade was an example of undoing such | "legislating from the branch." The original Roe v Wade | created in effect a new federal law, and last year's | decision struck that down. | AYBABTME wrote: | I'm on the more liberal side of the spectrum, yet it's | unfair to say that _this_ SCOTUS has been legislating from | the bench. The prior Democratic balance of SCOTUS did | exactly the same and stretched very widely the definition | of things to fit modern progressive ideals. In my opinion, | politicians should have made Roe v. Wade into law instead | of relying on SCOTUS to legis-interpret in their favor | indefinitely. | | I don't like many recent rulings from SCOTUS, but | intellectual honesty forces me to admit that when the | pendulum was on the other side, the same thing happened | with different allegiances. | NeRF_ornothing wrote: | As far as I can tell, the last time the supreme court of | the united states had a majority of members appointed by | a democratic president was in 1969. | alsaaro wrote: | There was hasn't been a "prior Democratic balance of | SCOTUS" the SCOTUS has been firmly conservative since | Rehnquist (1986) and probably before that. What is | notable about this Robert's Court, is that they have | overturned rulings affirmed by other conservative courts | and even their own recent rulings! | | Almost as if the Robert's court concluded there is no | point in being powerful if you can't rule, even though | ruling is beyond the scope of all courts. | | As for Roe V. Wade being codified, this was a moot point | at the time because you had a Constitutional right to an | abortion -- your right to an abortion was codified in the | Constitution, a law would have been redundant. | GloomyBoots wrote: | No it wasn't. You had a constitutional right to privacy, | not to abortion. It was obviously tenuous reasoning at | the time, and its shaky footing hasn't exactly been a | secret ever since. Roe should have been codified into law | if we really wanted to keep it around long term. | AYBABTME wrote: | Alright, prior SCOTUS had a more democratic balance, and | at a minimum ruled more often than now in fairly tenuous | ways in favor of progressive ideals. The end result was | stuff I liked more than what they rule today, but them | having voted in my camp doesn't mean I believe it was the | right thing. | | I think when the status quo requires on someone's | stretched interpretation of a series of things, and this | status quo is very important to people, it's on lawmakers | to make the rules unambiguous. | legitster wrote: | Well, in both cases, the decisions at the time implied that | they were temporary. | | A lot of the logic of Roe v Wade was based on viability | outside of a womb based on medical science of the time. | | Right in the decision of affirmative action there is | admission that it will need to be revisited. | mcpackieh wrote: | Roe v Wade's trimester system, like virtually all | abortion cutoffs, was essentially arbitrary. Calibrated | to fit what their gut felt was right. For evidence of | this, look at the abortion cutoffs in Europe, nearly | every European country has a different cutoff from the | others. In Germany it's 12 weeks and in the UK it's 24. | It's all over the place. If these cutoffs were based on | science there shouldn't be this much spread. | DonsDiscountGas wrote: | Racial discrimination has been explicitly illegal, and | affirmative action - as currently practiced - is racial | discrimination. You're right that it's not legislation, it's | straight up illegal. The courts have been tying themselves in | knots around this but somebody finally just read the law. If | Congress wants to make some kinds of racial discrimination | legal, they need to actually pass a law saying so. | | The original usage of the phrase is reasonable enough[0], but | that's not what this lawsuit was about. | | [0] > On March 6, 1961, shortly after taking office, | President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, which | required all federal contractors to take "affirmative action" | --the first use of the phrase in this context--to ensure all | job applicants and employees were treated equally, regardless | of race, creed, color or national origin. | https://www.history.com/topics/us-government-and- | politics/af... | eli wrote: | Yes, exactly: it's a policy decision. Congress could pass a | law altering what affirmative action is allowed if they | wanted a different policy. | gnicholas wrote: | Often this is true, but this case was decided based on | constitutional interpretation of the 14th Amendment. | | Congress cannot override this with a law. It would require | an amendment to the Constitution, which is more involved. | Considering that not even CA could pass a law to allow | affirmative action in higher education, it would be | impossible for such an amendment to be passed and ratified | by the states. | dragonwriter wrote: | > Often this is true, but this case was decided based on | constitutional interpretation of the 14th Amendment. | | The main opinion was actually following a line of cases | using 14th Amendment jurisprudence to guide the | interpetation of similar text in Title VI of the the | Civil Rights Act of 1964, so, yes, Congress can override | it by changing the text of the statute, which is in | principal what is actually being applied. | | The portion of the 14th Amendment whose interprtation was | imported doesn't bind either private actors or the | federal government, so isn't directly applicable on its | own. | gnicholas wrote: | Hm, that's not my reading of the case, in particular this | sentence from page 2 (the Syllabus): | | > _Held: Harvard's and UNC's admissions programs violate | the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment._ | | The concurrence by Gorsuch also makes clear that the | majority opinion was based on the Constitution, not Title | VI. | | > _Today, the Court holds that the Equal Protection | Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not tolerate this | practice. I write to emphasize that Title VI of the Civil | Rights Act of 1964 does not either._ | | What are you seeing that indicates that the majority | opinion was based on Title VI? | VoodooJuJu wrote: | The judicial branch does not make laws. | | You're implying that the judicial branch legislated in this | case. | | They did no such thing. | | They interpreted existing laws for a particular case, gave | their judgement, and applied the existing law. | | Indeed, legislating via the judicial branch is a bad idea, and | so it's a good thing that they do not and are not able to. | joshuaissac wrote: | > The judicial branch does not make laws. | | > They interpreted existing laws for a particular case, gave | their judgement, and applied the existing law. | | This is not how it works in common law jurisdictions. Common | law judges can and do make law. This is called case law (or | common law), in contrast to statute law that is enacted by | the legislature. That goes beyond just interpreting statute | law but also making new laws where they do not exist. Common | law offences, for example, are crimes declared as such by | judges even when there is no statute criminalising that | conduct. Most of the existing contract law has been made by | judges rather than by legislators. | cvoss wrote: | This is just a dispute of semantics over what the word | "law" means. The fact remains that the United States | government has been designed from the start to have | legislative bodies that pass statutes, and judicial bodies | which do not pass statutes. If judicial bodies effectively | pass or amend statutes by exercising too much control, then | we have a fundamental breakdown occurring with respect to | the design of the system. | mywittyname wrote: | They kind of do. Federal judges have a great deal of latitude | in what they are allowed to accomplish with a ruling. They | have the power to effectively change the text of a law to | mean what the judge says it should mean (granted, it must | also pass appeal). | | It has been a problem for decades now that Congress will pass | laws that aren't well thought out, then leave it to the | judiciary to iron out the specifics. It's only recently that | members of the judiciary began pushing back and ruling on the | text of the law and saying the legislators should "fix" the | obvious problems with the law. | | The term for this is colloquially, "legislating from the | bench." | theratattack wrote: | > They interpreted existing laws | | In the dissent at least, the court is very much interpreting | court precedent and almost entirely ignoring the law itself | polski-g wrote: | Liberal SCOTUS opinions talk a lot about morality and | societal harm, rarely about the legality of the subject at | hand. It is Congress' job to deal with morality and harm, | not the judicial branch. | koolba wrote: | The Jackson dissent opener is a great example of this: | | > Gulf-sized race-based gaps exist with respect to the | health, wealth, and well-being of American citizens. They | were created in the distant past, but have indisputably | been passed down to the present day through the genera- | tions. Every moment these gaps persist is a moment in | which this great country falls short of actualizing one | of its foundational principles--the "self-evident" truth | that all of us are created equal. | | Apparently anything that doesn't further a final state of | equality of outcome is inherently racist and it's the | governments job to make that happen. | eli wrote: | Conservatives also care deeply about morality and | society, but their opinions often hide behind whatever | legal interpretation gives them the policy outcome they | desire. | | Thomas is a textualist when the text is favorable. If | it's not, suddenly historical context and the founder's | intent becomes crucial. | renewiltord wrote: | This is a legal fiction. Both abortion and affirmative action | were legislated from the bench. That's how they came to be. | It's a classic thing. Having come to the conclusion that some | thing should be law, the composition of the bench determines | whether sufficient justification can be found. Then these | decisions have the weight of law. | | It is a defacto Politburo - a long lived legislative body of | ultimate authority that has a rolling composition not | determined by direct electoral results. | | We can point to the legal fiction that the judiciary is not | the legislature all we want but it walks like a duck and | quacks like a duck. | Supermancho wrote: | > the composition of the bench determines whether | sufficient justification can be found. | | You're under the mistaken impression that justifications | are a prerequisite. Any court can find justification for | any ruling in whatever way they see fit. Yes, lower judges | have been remove for questionable decisions. SCOTUS is | above that, as a lifetime appointment. Sometimes rulings | come with no justification at all. SCOTUS has been trying | to explain itself via these public "opinions", but is not | required to do so. | jl6 wrote: | 600 million? | DeathArrow wrote: | Not yet. | kickout wrote: | The population of the US is roughly ~330M | PopAlongKid wrote: | But don't forget to add corporations to the total, because | they are people too according to SCOTUS. | ketzu wrote: | I see multiple ways of interpreting what you said: | | 1. SCOTUS considers corporations 'natural persons' in their | decisions | | 2. SCOTUS considers 'corporate personhood' to encompass too | many rights, you believe should be exclusive for 'natural | persons' | | 3. Possible misunderstanding around the term 'corporate | personhood' | | Could you clarify a bit? I've seen a lot of (3.) on | discussions around this, while claiming essentially (1.) | happens or (2.) is what peopel try to complain about. | ghaff wrote: | IMO, a lot of people who didn't like the decision | (whether because of which justices decided it or for some | other reason) latched onto the "SCOTUS decided that | corporations are people" shorthand because it seems | absurd taken literally. Corporations are clearly not | people (natural persons) the way you and I are. | | But saying that corporate personhood shouldn't include | political donations as part of their free speech rights, | while a perfectly reasonable position and I might even | agree, doesn't make as good a soundbite. | OkayPhysicist wrote: | When you really think about it, Citizen's United makes a | lot of sense as a decision. It seems self evident to me | that a non-profit trying to, say, save the local wetlands, | should be able to make political statements like "Don't | vote for Dave, Dave wants to pave our wetlands". Likewise, | labor unions should be able to campaign against politicians | trying to attack their ability to exist. Okay, so, only | non-profit enterprises can engage in political speech. That | still leaves you with the whole PAC thing, but maybe it's | an improvement. What about Creedance Clearwater Revival? Or | Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth? Their art was certainly | political, does that mean they should be barred from | selling it? | ghaff wrote: | Corporations have had certain characteristics of people as | long as they've existed. Do you want a corporation to be | able to enter a contract that isn't with a specific person | within the corporation, for example? Corporations also have | freedom of the press/freedom of speech. The question in | that decision was whether political spending by | corporations was part of the free speech right. There's no | question more broadly that corporations can put out a press | release saying more or less anything (truthful) that they | want. | | This is a really lazy trope whatever you think of the | specific decision's result (or the reasoning). | mcpackieh wrote: | > _The question in that decision was whether political | spending by corporations was part of the free speech | right. There 's no question more broadly that | corporations can put out a press release saying more or | less anything (truthful) that they want._ | | The "political spending" in the case of Citizens United | was the production and dissemination of a propaganda | film. If the release of a film can be restricted, why not | a press release as well? | | From wikipedia: _" Broadcasting the film would have been | a violation of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, | which prohibited any corporation, non-profit | organization, or labor union from making an | "electioneering communication" within 30 days of a | primary or 60 days of an election, or making any | expenditure advocating the election or defeat of a | candidate at any time."_ | | If the law bans "electioneering communication", could not | an electioneering press release be considered such a | banned communication as well? | ghaff wrote: | You're probably right. Most of the attention has focused | on the financial angle. That said, organizations do have | pretty broad latitude to advocate for laws and other | outcomes. Conservation organizations do it all the time | for example. | sproketboy wrote: | [dead] | baron816 wrote: | > 600 million | | You mean 330 million? | kenjackson wrote: | I don't love the decision, but I actually like the process. And | I don't think it is legislating. It is interpreting the law. | | I'd like term limits on Supreme Court justices. But I think the | arguments on both sides of this debate are well thought out. | | Again I don't love the decision, but Im OK with it. That said | I'd love to see universities stop giving weight to legacies. | But the money is just too strong. | zapataband1 wrote: | When a neoconservative spends his life petitioning courts for | this exact result instead of petitioning anyone in | congress... it feels like dirty legislating. Part of it is | because our congress is dreadfully inept. | zoklet-enjoyer wrote: | Congress has more important issues to deal with, such as | making it illegal to participate in any programs involving | extraterrestrial craft without notifying Congress | malnourish wrote: | Our federal congress was dragged into ineptitude by a group | of people who refuse to legislate or collaborate and would | rather confirm judges. | | Some states are getting legislation done. Minnesota, for | example, but same too with states that rapidly passed | abortion curbs. | NoRelToEmber wrote: | He didn't petition congress because congress already | legislated on this issue: neither the 14th amendment nor | the civil rights act contain exceptions allowing racial | discrimination, as long as it's for the right cause (and | the courts get to pick which causes are right). | ellisv wrote: | > I don't love the decision, but I actually like the process. | And I don't think it is legislating. It is interpreting the | law. | | I think this is naive. Roberts is not "calling balls and | strikes" despite what he would have you believe. The | conservative wing of the court has been willing to adopt a | range of interpretations to accommodate their outcome. | | It's not just setting aside precedent but their increased use | of emergency motions (shadow docket) to issue orders without | explanation. | lordloki wrote: | Legacies aren't just about money. They are the "connections" | that make elite universities beneficial to undergrads. | ralusek wrote: | They aren't legislating from the bench. Legislating from the | bench is the opposite of what is being done here. The role of | the judicial is to look at laws and actions and determine if | they're legal within the meta framework. That is what was done | here. | londons_explore wrote: | > Legislating via the judicial branch is a bad idea. | | Perhaps, if there is no 75% majority of opinions at the supreme | court, then the case is just put on hold indefinitely until new | clarifying laws are passed? | solardev wrote: | Even if 100% of the court agreed, 9 people can't possibly | represent 300 million in any representative way. | | Even Congress with 535 representatives isn't many. One | representative for each 600,000 citizens? When was the last | time a thousand Americans agreed on anything, much less half | a million? | | We have one of the worst ratios in the world: https://en.wiki | pedia.org/wiki/List_of_legislatures_by_number... | | Edit: And the SC isn't representative anyway. They're | appointed by the elites for the benefit of the ruling party, | and there's a lot of politicking for those seats. Way too | much power and corruption -- for life. The institution itself | is a problem. | londons_explore wrote: | > 9 people can't possibly represent 300 million in any | representative way. | | If they were 9 randomly selected citizens, then the | majority vote of the 9 matches the result of a majority | vote of the 300 million nearly always, particularly for | decisive issues. | | For example, if 90% of the population think something, then | there is a 0.089% chance that a majority of the 9 citizens | disagree. | | Obviously judge selection isn't random, and thats probably | your main concern. | OkayPhysicist wrote: | The SC is, by design, a little undemocratic. They're a | check against the more democratic parts of the government, | with the limitation that they basically can only make | things legal. Since the default is that people are free to | do whatever, laws can only restrict people's abilities to | do stuff. The Supreme Court gets to shoot down laws, so | they can only let us do more stuff. | catiopatio wrote: | They're not supposed to be representative. | | Democracy isn't perfect, and they're a check against some | of the failings of the system. | | Frankly, I'm shocked at how upset some of you are over | racial discrimination being banned. | fzeroracer wrote: | The court is perfectly fine with discrimination as long | as it fits their neocon views (see: Cakeshop vs | Colorado), or as long as their donors pay them enough | favors. | catiopatio wrote: | That's a reductive view of the laws and cases involved. | | The cakeshop case was about compelled speech, and the | conservative justices' politics are not "neocon". | fzeroracer wrote: | Discrimination is discrimination, no matter how you try | to slice it. The compelled speech argument was a line of | bullshit to discriminate against customers because it all | hinged on their religious right to discriminate against | people they did not like. That's the crux of it all. | solardev wrote: | There's not really checks and balances when all three | branches are in cahoots for the benefit of party over | people, primarily won through electoral shenanigans and | political games. We literally have a system that | continously overrules the will of the majority with a | small group of electoral elites, justified using some | byzantine algorithm of electoral boundaries. That isn't a | democracy, it's a farce. | | I don't really care about affirmative action much one way | or the other. I care about the lack of representation in | my so called democracy, and the Supremes are a huge part | of that problem. | catiopatio wrote: | > We literally have a system that continously overrules | the will of the majority ... That isn't a democracy, it's | a farce. | | Avoiding the tyranny of the majority is a major reason we | _intentionally_ don't have direct democracy. | solardev wrote: | Through a legal framework enumerating basic inalienable | rights, perhaps. But substituting a tyranny of the | majority for a tyranny of the minority isn't an | improvement. | JustBreath wrote: | I'm agree in essence, some kind of stipulation needs to be | applied to supreme court decisions that incentivizes or | outright requires the other houses to apply a more permanent | solution. | cvoss wrote: | Whether to a sufficient degree or not, SCOTUS agrees with you | on this point and exercises a strong reluctance to second-guess | past generations of itself, especially on statutory (as opposed | to constitutional) matters, since it is theoretically easy for | Congress to amend its own statutes if ever Congress should | disagree with how the Court has interpreted them. | | Indeed, just today, SCOTUS also released a unanimous opinion | protecting a person's religious rights against his employer | [1]. Sotomayor and Jackson left an addendum pointing out that | this man had asked them to overrule a 50-year precedent in | interpreting a law, and they explicitly chose not to do so | (though they ruled in his favor in a different, narrower way) | precisely for the reason I mentioned about Congress having the | opportunity to correct the matter if they so choose. | | The "liberal" justices usually get the most flack for | "legislating from the bench" (although arguments can be made | that the "conservative" ones do it too). But here we have the | most liberal justice on the Court saying "The Court's respect | for Congress's decision not to intervene promotes the | separation of powers by requiring interested parties to resort | to the legislative rather than the judicial process to achieve | their policy goals." | | If I could air a very broad-brush opinion, complaints people | have about SCOTUS being a partisan institution these days are | best levied against Congress (and litigants) for how they treat | the Court, not against the Court for its own behavior. When | people express low confidence in the Court, I'm always eager to | see them aim their low confidence at Congress instead of (not | in addition to) the Court. | | [1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-174_k536.pdf | sebow wrote: | Took them long enough to rule against this >actual< | racist(/discriminatory) policy masked under the pretense of | "helping" marginalized people through identity politics. It's | never too late, but you have to wonder how much damage american | meritocracy has already taken under this. | pjc50 wrote: | That won't stop people complaining about it. | mahdi7d1 wrote: | I never understood why are people against standardized testing. I | would rather fail test than be judged by someone then deemed not | worthy. | accra4rx wrote: | exactly. I have a kid in 4th grade . He got bad grades all year | in his internal assessments. All the teacher would do is circle | out the mistakes for silly mistakes. My kid scored a 96 | percentile , toping all the 4th grader in his school My kid | knows how to solve and understand the concepts just lack in | describing it. I completely favor standardize test as there was | no person involved to judge (who can also be biased). | fullshark wrote: | I'm against building an entire education system around having | children excel at standardized tests. Which is basically what | will happen if it's the sole determinant of ability for | universities. | lost_tourist wrote: | I'm confused, isn't that what SAT and ACT are? | psychphysic wrote: | Good. I'd be sickened to hear I got a lucrative opportunity | because of the colour of my skin (which incidentally is not white | and I'm not oriental so I'd guess I'd have benefitted from | affirmative action if it was present where I grew up). | xyzelement wrote: | If you read some of the comments here, you'd see that colleges | have been discriminating _against_ Asians. | | As a group asian Americans have had no trouble being over | represented in colleges based on purely merit. | psychphysic wrote: | I think there is likely differences in how we use phrases | like Asian and oriental. | | Basically as far as I know AA was intended to give places to | people like me. | | But I would not have accepted if I had any idea I was not | admitted on achievement alone. | dahwolf wrote: | Which weakens the systemic racism thesis, hence we don't talk | about it. | mucle6 wrote: | I can see the social good of admitting disadvantaged groups, but | how does it help the individual colleges? | | I can't come up with a clear path from increased diversity to | increased profitability. | | I must be missing something because for profit entities don't do | things out of the kindness of their heart. | ketchupdebugger wrote: | yes but Harvard is not a for profit entity. | mucle6 wrote: | I still find it hard to believe Harvard, with a 50 Billion | dollar endowment decided to do something good for society if | they though it would hurt them. I feel like colleges must | have data to show bottom line benefits for affirmative action | cod1r wrote: | High quality education and resources being gate-kept makes less | sense moving forward. Easiest solution is to let a LOT more | people in regardless of background. Letting more people in means | you get more money anyways. Who cares if letting in more people | makes things less "elite". Elitism is cringe. | Flatcircle wrote: | What does this mean in practice? | mchannon wrote: | Double-digit increases of Asian students at top tier | universities, primarily coming from decreases of nonwhite | students. | | Probably a modest reverse version of that at the lower tier | universities. | | Love the policy change or hate it, that's what's likely to | happen. | local_crmdgeon wrote: | >primarily coming from decreases of nonwhite students. | | Asians aren't White. | tekla wrote: | They are when trying to prove that minorities on the whole | are discriminated against. | legutierr wrote: | > primarily coming from decreases of nonwhite students | | Given the actual numbers, its more likely that the largest | number of applicants negatively affected by this will be | white, in absolute terms. | mchannon wrote: | To the contrary, Stanford, for instance, has ~22% of its | student body "White or Caucasian", when it used to be 40% | in 2016. This swing didn't occur simply because white | students stopped applying. | | https://stanfordreview.org/stanfords-racial-engineering/ | | Stanford might be an outlier, but I don't see white | applicants being negatively affected by this decision. | Quite the opposite. | csa wrote: | > Double-digit increases of Asian students at top tier | universities, primarily coming from decreases of nonwhite | students. | | I will gladly bet the under on double digits for Ivies, MIT, | and Stanford. | | 5% max, possibly as little as 2% -- that is, 26% might | increase to 31%, but more likely 28%-29%. | | Whatever the number is, the increase for whites will probably | be greater in both percentage and absolute number. | | That said, I agree that the demographics that will lose these | spots are non-white, non-Asian groups. | AuryGlenz wrote: | Universities will come up with other justifications to keep | their racial diversity high. If you're from a certain area, | single parent household, went to certain schools, etc. | | Eventually some university will get sued for that, and we'll | see how the Supreme Court rules. I imagine it'll depend on how | egregious it is, and if there are any internal emails where | admissions are openly talking about it. | john013 wrote: | [dead] | hackeraccount wrote: | Just to echo what other people replied. Law is over rated. | | If people are really interested in doing something - whether | that's discriminating against Black people or discriminating in | favor of Black people - they're probably going to find a way to | do it. Laws will make a difference on the margins but if there | are motivated people then they are going to start trying to | work around this ruling today. | | The biggest effect of this ruling is that it's a marker to let | people know that opposition to affirmative action is serious. | That will have more of an impact then the ruling itself. | kenjackson wrote: | At top elite schools fewer blacks, fewer Latinos. Slightly | fewer whites. More Asians. | | In relative numbers it probably impacts less than .1% of all | students one way or another. | asianavenyc wrote: | Historically: Colleges were mostly establishment (liberal or | otherwise) | | 1990s and 2000s: Asians do well on exams (and in workplace), | take ever greater % of sets from establishment, competitively | | 2010s: Establishment realize that "BLM" and aim to give Asian | seats to PoC, while also conveniently setting proportionately | lower quotas for Asians so establishment retains seats they | were losing | | 2020s: New ways found to prevent Asians from competitively | winning seats (e.g., roadblocks on registration, etc) | HDThoreaun wrote: | more asians, less blacks and a bit less latinos at top schools, | especially private ones. Will be interesting to see if they | move toward an income based affirmative action. | zephyrus1985 wrote: | [flagged] | breakingrules wrote: | [dead] | purpleblue wrote: | Asians are the poorest demographic in NYC, and yet score the | highest in testing. So, activists will probably eschew this | method as well because it will give Asians preferential | treatment which they are loathe to do. | pc86 wrote: | When you say "income based affirmative action" do you mean an | increase in need-base grants and scholarships, which already | exists, or giving someone preferential admissions treatment | _because_ their parents make less money regardless of | academic ability? | geraldwhen wrote: | Admissions departments will find proxies for race. The next | year of Harvard freshmen will not be majority Asian. The | admissions department won't allow that to happen. | DeathArrow wrote: | > Admissions departments will find proxies for race. | | And that would be the same thing. If someone can prove it, | it's illegal. | onychomys wrote: | A proxy of zip code, maybe. That would be racially blind, a | poor white kid in the midst of a poor black neighborhood | would be just as likely to get in as their black neighbors | would be. | slibhb wrote: | If colleges stop considering standardized tests in order to | keep the number of Asians down, is that illegal? Could | courts force colleges to keep using the SAT? | local_crmdgeon wrote: | Yes to point one, no to point 2 | kllrnohj wrote: | From the SCOTUS opinion: | | > "Nothing in this opinion should be construed as | prohibiting universities from considering an applicant's | discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it | through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise," Roberts | wrote. | | Sure seems like proxies for race are if anything explicitly | called out as being OK by SCOTUS rather than illegal. | Levitz wrote: | Far from it, the point is that the lived experience of | the individual matters, just not their race explicitly. | | The court recognizes the effects of race and recognizes | them as valuable when considering a candidate, just not | their race per se. If you allow me to be a bit cheeky, it | values the content of their character over the color of | their skin. | supportengineer wrote: | What if they required a GPA of less than 4.0? | mchannon wrote: | If true, an in-person English fluency and personality | interviewing process, even a supposedly race-blind one, tends | to skew heavily against a majority of, but not all, Asian | college applicants. | | That's probably what your theoretical proxy will look like, | if you're correct. | ryandrake wrote: | Sounds like the equally-ridiculous "cultural fit" part of | company interviews. Even if candidates pass all the | measurable, competence-based criteria for the job, | companies have the cultural fit card to play against those | candidates for whatever unsavory reason the company wants | to exclude them. | sct202 wrote: | This is something that actually got Harvard in trouble as | alumni interviews rated Asians roughly similar to Whites, | but the personality scores that the admissions offices gave | Asians were lower even though they never met the | candidates. | | "Alumni interviewers give Asian-Americans personal ratings | comparable to those of whites. But the admissions office | gives them the worst scores of any racial group, often | without even meeting them, according to Professor | Arcidiacono." | | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian- | enrollme... | reducesuffering wrote: | It is sad that most comments to this continually focus on the | racial identity outcomes. | | What this really means is that some students who had better | grades and test scores will get into their more preferred | university, and some students who had worse grades and scores | will have to settle for a more fitting less-preferred | university. | DeathArrow wrote: | That discrimination is discouraged in any form or shape. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | << Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. | | Yep. | local_crmdgeon wrote: | You cannot solve racism through racism. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | But if affirmative action is racism, then you can't solve | racism at all. | DeathArrow wrote: | Please unflag this. | TradingPlaces wrote: | 1. The largest beneficiaries of admissions policies at elite | institutions are legacy admissions of wealth alumni's kids. If | SCOTUS wants to interfere with the admissions policies of private | institutions based on the equal protections clause, maybe that's | a better place to start. | | 2. The vast majority of students attend colleges that accept | almost everyone. | mattmg wrote: | In Brazil, public universities were dominated by the rich, mainly | whites, since the entrance exams required high grades that only | those who could pay for expensive exam prep courses would have. | | Since 2012, with the Law of Social Quotas, that reality has | changed, since 50% of the new admission spots are destined for | students coming from public high schools, with further | subdivisions for racial minorities based on the demographic | makeup of each Brazilian state. Those racial minorities quotas | are as high as 30% at some universities. | | I could personally see that change, since I did undergrad in | engineering 10 years ago, and my colleagues were mainly white. | I'm doing another undergrad and my new colleagues come from truly | different backgrounds, some are black, poor, from indigenous | origin... and that matters because if we don't share the same | spaces as universities students, we probably won't share latter | on, when occupying spaces of power | exabrial wrote: | The LA Times I feel like is 0 for 2 recently on accurately | reporting on the Supreme Court: | | > In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her | experiences as an individual -- not on the basis of race. | | I don't understand why people are freaking out about this? | newacct3 wrote: | Considering the failure and timing of prop 16 and overall makeup | of the California electorate compared to rest of country, | official discrimination on the basis of race likely won't return | in higher ed. Also consider that prop 16 failed by double digits | with the pro-discrimination crowd outspending the opposition 19x | | What I'm curious about is this: the Harvard decision is wrt a | private entity, the court ruled that they discriminated against | whites and asians | | Could racially discriminatory hiring strategies be next? Could | this trigger a wave of litigation? | danielrhodes wrote: | Companies are not allowed to discriminate in their hiring. In | other words, it is not legal to have affirmative action in a | hiring decision (e.g. only hiring female candidates or only | hiring black candidates). | | To get around this, companies do a couple things to increase | the likelihood of hiring an underrepresented person into a | role: | | 1) They will quietly try to fill up their candidate pipelines | with people who match the criteria they are looking for to | increase the likelihood they wind up hiring a candidate who | matches. | | 2) They will apply the "Rooney Rule" which says at least one | person from an underrepresented minority group must be | interviewed for a position before a hiring decision can be | made. | hospitalJail wrote: | >Could racially discriminatory hiring strategies be next? | | As someone who is white, and got 100% job offers from every | interview, I wonder if I got it out of discrimination, or I'm | so elite and they picked me despite being white. | adamrezich wrote: | I would imagine that the other white candidates for the | positions that you got the offer for feel quite differently | ajonnav wrote: | The decision affects private entities that accept some form of | federal financial assistance (this is language from Title VI of | the 1964 Civil Rights Act), not private entities writ large. | Granted, that is still a big bucket. | newacct3 wrote: | There's apparently a bit of overlap between Title VI and | Title VII. But will likely have a separate case | | > "many of the thought processes and the basic legal | principles" are the same, says Daniel Pyne III, an employment | specialist at law firm Hopkins & Carley. If the court strikes | down race-conscious admissions in education, "that is a | strong hint that the same decision might be made" in | employment cases | | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-06-22/suprem. | .. | Eumenes wrote: | > Could racially discriminatory hiring strategies be next? | | I'm no fan of regulation and government intervention in private | business, but its gotten out of control in tech and the | corporate world. I've flat out heard hiring managers say | they'll only hire a woman, lgbtq, or [certain minority] for | certain roles. I've sat in hiring committees where candidates | preform horribly, esp compared to others being reviewed at the | same time, and get pushed through to offer stage just because | of their inalienable characteristics. If these meetings were | recorded and leaked to the press, there'd be outrage. These | managers talk of human beings like people collect coins or | action figures. And HR/Recruiting/C-suite is super complicit in | all this, if not actively encouraging it. | foofoo4u wrote: | My employer has stated on company-wide broadcasts that they | will use race as a factor for raises and promotions. This | blatant racism has to come to an end. | TheCaptain4815 wrote: | So stop being a coward and record and leak those | conversations. | Eumenes wrote: | Maybe in 10 years once I've gotten enough to retire. Dont | wanna get James Damore'd. | nsajko wrote: | Damore did nothing of the sort. | crackercrews wrote: | You're right, he merely shared his opinion, and look what | happened to him! If someone leaked info they would | probably face even harsher treatment. | sbuttgereit wrote: | While I agree with your assessment of the situation, even | then I wouldn't have a government policy which forces the DEI | policies out. If the management, board, and ultimately | shareholders of business want to run the most | "progressive"/"woke" hiring and HR policies imaginable: they | have the right to do so. Mind you I probably wouldn't want to | even be a customer of such a company let alone work for it, | but a private entity should be able to act as they see their | best interest dictates. | newacct3 wrote: | > If the management, board, and ultimately shareholders of | business want to run the most "progressive"/"woke" hiring | and HR policies imaginable: they have the right to do so | | What about title VII banning discrimination on the basis of | race (among other factors)? That's outright illegal | | There's likely enough ammunition on social media rn for | plenty of litigation wrt this | stcroixx wrote: | Oh yeah, it surely will. Time to say goodbye to DIE statements | when applying to jobs and forced indoctrination in the | workplace. This junk is on borrowed time. | prottog wrote: | Very dystopian, and reminiscent of countless other "social | revolutions" that happened in the not-so-distant history, all | with terrifying results. | roody15 wrote: | The issue has changed in my lifetime. Originally affirmative | action was used to help people who had been systematically | discriminated against get into higher learning institutions in an | attempt to make up for some of these wrongs. | | Although a difficult process I believe most people genuinely | believed in the concept. | | Fast forward to today and we have a much different framework. | Equity. | | There is a belief that any group, race, subset of people should | have the same outcomes everywhere. This premise is much more | controversial and not universally supported. | | Should women have the exact same percentage acceptance into | computer scientist or welding programs? Or should it be a 50/50 | split and anything short of that screams discrimination. | | It boils down to equal opportunity vs equalized outcomes. They | are not same ... one has almost universal support the other seems | to be taken directly out of a dystopian novel. | crackercrews wrote: | > There is a belief that any group, race, subset of people | should have the same outcomes everywhere. | | Of course we need to be more specific than just "percent of | population". For example, the average age of whites is older | than for minorities. So we shouldn't expect the total | population percentage for whites college students to line up | with their percent enrollment in college, not in the total | adult population. | | But considering age is just one factor. Of course we need to | consider others in order to be equitable. If Harvard admits | students with 1500+ SATs, then shouldn't we be looking at that | population? It turns out that population is 43% Asian and 45% | white. [1] | | Interestingly this lines up with Caltech's percentages almost | exactly. UC Berkeley, where affirmative action is banned, has | roughly the same percentage of Asian students, but many fewer | white students. | | 1: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/sat-math-scores-mirror- | an... | dmix wrote: | Why is this flagged? Previous discussions were at the top of HN. | Jun8 wrote: | Excellent analysis from Matthew Yglesias: | https://www.slowboring.com/p/19-thoughts-on-affirmative-acti... | TheRealDunkirk wrote: | So, legally, does this apply to corporate quotas by extension? | stjohnswarts wrote: | I don't think so, I believe this strictly for college | admissions. However, there is no reason it couldn't be cited in | future cases along those lines because they're in the same | realm of judicial logic. | endisneigh wrote: | I'll need to read the opinion but why not eliminate consideration | using all protected statuses (race, color, religion, sex | (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), | national origin, age (40 or older), disability and genetic | information)? | | Affirmative action is not just about race. It doesn't make sense | that you can discriminate on any protected status to begin with. | | In any case I doubt this will change the makeup of schools at | all: | | > "Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting | universities from considering an applicant's discussion of how | race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, | inspiration, or otherwise," Roberts wrote. | kenjackson wrote: | The court tends to rule narrowly. If no one takes the case to | the Supreme Court then they won't decide on it. | | I'm curious how this case would play out if some males applying | to CalTech did this against female applicants. That said I'm | not sure how much gender based affirmitive action there is in | science/engineering today. | s1artibartfast wrote: | It's not a matter of ruling narrowly. Gender and sex based | discrimination is already illegal in admissions. | gnicholas wrote: | Really? Gender-based discrimination is subject to | intermediate scrutiny, not strict scrutiny (which is used | for race). I thought it was well-known that some schools | give boys a leg up because otherwise they would be 60/40 | girls/boys. | | This article [1] indicates that state schools cannot | discriminate, but private schools can. It's a decade old, | but I can't think of any intervening laws/cases that would | have changed this analysis (IAAL). | | 1: https://fedsoc.org/commentary/publications/affirmative- | actio... | sowbug wrote: | Narrow rulings are central to the process. It's the | difference between a "holding" and "dictum." A court can | express an opinion about something, but if that opinion | wasn't essential to resolve the case before the court, it's | nothing more than an opinion, and later/lower courts can | ignore that part. | | http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/legal- | miscell... | gchallen wrote: | > That said I'm not sure how much gender based affirmitive | action there is in science/engineering today. | | Potentially quite a bit. Here's some recent data about | admissions into the highly-competitive Illinois CS program: h | ttps://www.reddit.com/r/UIUC/comments/12kwc4a/uiuc_cs_admis.. | . | | Note that admissions rates for female applicants are higher | across all categories--international, out-of-state, and in- | state. Obviously you can't fully tell what's going on here | without more of an understanding of the strengths of the | different pools, but a 10-30% spread (for in-state) suggests | that gender is being directly considered. | | IANAL, but I'm also concerned about the degree to which this | decision affects the use of other factors during college | admissions. Fundamentally admissions is a complex balance | between prior performance and future potential, and only | admitting based on prior performance means that we're stuck | perpetuating existing societal inequities. | kenjackson wrote: | I do know that 25 years ago or so there considerable weight | given to gender in sciences and engineering. I do feel like | all talk of it has disappeared, and wasn't sure if it was | because it was no longer a factor or because race became | the dominant talking point. | | From the data you present I suspect that there is weight | still given to gender. I wonder how much energy there would | be to investigating this? I wonder how many guys who get | rejected from MIT CS will now do Tik Toks about how a girl | took his spot, since he can no longer say it was a black | kid? | peterfirefly wrote: | Harvey Mudd seems to discriminate heavily in favour of | women. | s1artibartfast wrote: | It is already illegial to consider all of the characteristics | you mentioned. | | Historically, there was a specific legal exemption 14th | ammendementment allowing racial discrimination. | | This ruling closes the exemption for racial consideration. | Discrimination based on other protected statuses remain closed | | >Any exceptions to the Equal Protection Clause's guarantee must | survive a daunting two-step examination known as "strict | scrutiny," first whether the racial classification is used to | "further compelling governmental interests," and second whether | the government's use of race is "narrowly tailored," i.e., | "necessary," to achieve that interest. Acceptance of race-based | state action is rare for a reason. | endisneigh wrote: | This is not true and is more nuanced than you're making it | seem. See title 9 and the continued existence of schools like | Wellesley college. | s1artibartfast wrote: | I agree that there is nuance, but I think this is still | accurate in terms of the ruling. Protected class | discrimination is illegal in the absence of the compelling | interest. | | There are still tons of exemptions and hypocrisy, but in | general you typical public university can not discriminate | admissions based on sex, gender identity, national origin, | age, disability, genetic information, ect. | | If a public university instituted a no-gays or no- | immigrants admission policy it would be quickly struck down | under the status quo, so there is no need to discuss that. | | Im not sure how single gender schools fit into the whole | scheme. is there a specific case about Wellesley I should | look up? I didnt see anything about title 9 challenges on | Wikipedia. | gnicholas wrote: | The tests for discrimination based on race and sex are | different, and the bar is lower for sex-based discrimination. | bouncing wrote: | > "Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting | universities from considering an applicant's discussion of how | race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, | inspiration, or otherwise," Roberts wrote. | | That's occurred to me too. Or put more bluntly, the admissions | boards who strongly disagree with this ruling will find a way | around it by simply putting their own personal bias into essay | anecdotes about race. | wnc3141 wrote: | I think it's worth considering how much economic mobility is tied | to economic status prior to college. I find a purely race based | admission system fails to identify that, and in place gives an | easier solution to building diversity compared to giving | discounted education to those who can not afford it. | | Of course there remains issues of opportunity for students of | color, who are more likely than white students from disadvantaged | backgrounds. However economic status, or rural/urban based | admissions would capture many of these inequalities. | | Of course this all comes from a conversation that supposes | college should be as scarce as it is, and that the earnings | benefit from college should be as large as it is. | ldehaan wrote: | [dead] | Eumenes wrote: | Good - lets do the workplace next. | local_crmdgeon wrote: | Please God, please end the DEI Industrial Complex | LargeTomato wrote: | I applied to university as African American/Black because I'm 1/4 | Egyptian. I am very white. Some people may guess I'm Jewish (I'm | not) but no one guesses African American. | | I got into a nice school and I was enrolled in the "minority | engineering excellence program". The program was like 25% white | kids with "1/16 native American" or "1/8 Spanish". We got free | tutoring and we all took an exclusive class just for the program | and 100% of us got an A. It was definitely unfair. | | Half of the minority engineers just left the program. They were | clearly capable of passing engineering school and the minority | program was culty and a bit weird. The kids who stayed were | dragged through the system with copious free tutoring and paid | staff helping them stay on top of their course work. These kids | dropped out at Juniors when they would have probably otherwise | dropped out as Freshman. | az226 wrote: | In America middle eastern counts as white, not black. But | nobody is enforcing these things and now they won't matter | because racially discriminating on admissions is illegal. | selimthegrim wrote: | They just broke it out on the census (protip: that was a | relic from the time Middle Eastern immigration was mostly | Christian) | ProllyInfamous wrote: | As today's ruling "proves" (both concurring and dissenting | opinions brought this up): these racial background questions | are "self-identified" / self-selected. | freeAgent wrote: | Egypt is in Africa, though. It's literally African. | az226 wrote: | Elon Musk is African American. | rbrown wrote: | why was this flagged? | ldehaan wrote: | [dead] | kaitai wrote: | A white legacy applicant at Harvard is 5 times as likely to be | admitted as a non-legacy white applicant. "Our model of | admissions shows that roughly three-quarters of white ALDC admits | would have been rejected if they had been treated as typical | white applicants." | | All of you writing that if a Black kid gets admitted then some | white or Asian kid gets bumped off are scrapping for the little | bits the rich have left to you, while misunderstanding the | fundamental mathematics at work. You're pawns. This is the genius | of racism -- sow manufactured division among the "little people" | so that those on top (of whatever color) can continue comfortably | while no one else can rise. | | http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/legacyathlete.pdf | Georgelemental wrote: | Preferences for wealthy legacy elites are bad. Preferences for | people of certain skin colors are also bad. | verteu wrote: | And "over 43%" of white admits are legacy ("ADLC"). I had no | idea the proportion was so high! | Georgelemental wrote: | An important nuance from the majority opinion: | | > At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion | should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering | an applicant's discussion of how race affected his or her life, | be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. See, | e.g., 4 App. in No. 21-707, at 1725-1726, 1741; Tr. of Oral Arg. | in No. 20-1199, at 10. But, despite the dissent's assertion to | the contrary, universities may not simply establish through | application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful | today. (A dissenting opinion is generally not the best source of | legal advice on how to comply with the majority opinion.) "[W]hat | cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. The | Constitution deals with substance, not shadows," and the | prohibition against racial discrimination is "levelled at the | thing, not the name." Cummings v. Missouri, 4 Wall. 277, 325 | (1867). A benefit to a student who overcame racial | discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student's | courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose | heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership | role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student's | unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, | the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an | individual--not on the basis of race. | adamrezich wrote: | if I were a non-white adversarial nation with plenty of high- | achieving youth, I would take maximal advantage of this decision | and the US's student visa programs by doing everything I could to | send as many students from my country to US colleges as | absolutely possible, so as to deprive American youth of college | education as much as possible. | filoleg wrote: | You better make sure your plan won't backfire and won't lead to | a large number of those highly educated youths staying in the | US afterwards and contributing to the US economy. | | And that's after you, as an adversarial nation, had already | spent tons of resources on growing and educating those kids to | the quality level high enough to be accepted into those top US | colleges, as well as (presumably) paid for the tuition (which | for international students can easily become x4 of in-state | tuition and x2 of out-of-state). | | Heavily investing into a highly efficient brain-drain program | might not be as smart of an idea as you believe it is, if you | are funding the side of it that drains those brains away from | you. | justrealist wrote: | > Sotomayor, the court's first Latina, has been the boldest | defender of what she prefers to call "race-sensitive" admission | policies and has referred to herself as the "perfect affirmative | action child." | | That will probably not do a lot to convince those happy with this | outcome. | Levitz wrote: | Im really not so sure. I've seen plenty of support for | "affirmative action", just not based on race. Most people are | more than ok with giving those in need an edge, given their | situation, but many are against promoting a rich black person | over a poor white one. | | And sure, race can serve as a proxy, the black population in | the United States is impoverished compared to the mean, but in | the same way that it's not acceptable to take race as proxy | when it comes to crime, it's not acceptable to do it when it | comes to livelihood, in my opinion. | remarkEon wrote: | Sotomayor revealed in oral argument for this very case that she | does not understand the difference between "de facto" and "de | jure". There's plenty of other things to dislike her for beyond | one liners in interviews. | [deleted] | pe0x40 wrote: | There are different opinions on affirmative action, and I have to | admit assessing people based on what group they are member of, | even if your intentions are good, really doesn't sound that good | to me. | | I can recommend Thomas Sowell book on the subject: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_Action_Around_the_... | PKop wrote: | Good thread summarizing and highlighting key points of the | majority opinion: | | https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/167442708751463629... | raincom wrote: | Harvard used "personality score" to sort out applicants. Now, | they got rid of "personality score", SAT/ACT/LSAT/MCAT, etc., | scores. They can tell their feeder schools even four years | earlier, how to prepare admission packets for prospective | students. Schools like Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Stanford can | pick whatever students they want. | newacct3 wrote: | At the risk of getting sued and having it go back up to the | same court that gave us this decision | hotpotamus wrote: | I'd sort of imagine that if anyone has the legal minds to | bend the system towards their will, it's Harvard. | raincom wrote: | Adcoms (admission committees) have learned their hard | lessons. Williams R. Fitzsimmons and Rakesh Khurana of | Harvard might have told everyone to not put everything in | writing, just as CEOs tell underlings to not put in writing | in order to not be found in the discovery process. And these | professors and deans we ordinary mortals should emulate for | ethical exemplars. Maybe, they should follow what they preach | to students. | anthk wrote: | This is good. The criteria should be based on income, not the | race. | kneebonian wrote: | A very interesting quote from the ruling: | | 'These classifications rest on incoherent stereotypes. Take the | "Asian" category. It sweeps into one pile East Asians (e.g., | Chinese, Korean, Japanese) and South Asians (e.g., Indian, | Pakistani, Bangladeshi), even though together they constitute | about 60% of the world's population. Bernstein Amicus Brief 2, 5. | This agglomeration of so many peoples paves over countless | differences in "language," "culture," and historical experience. | Id., at 5-6. It does so even though few would suggest that all | such persons share "similar backgrounds and similar ideas and | experiences." Fisher v. University of Tex. at Austin, 579 U. S. | 365, 414 (2016) (ALITO, J., dissenting). Consider, as well, the | development of a separate category for "Native Hawaiian or Other | Pacific Islander." It seems federal officials disaggregated these | groups from the "Asian" category only in the 1990s and only "in | response to political lobbying." Bernstein Amicus Brief 9-10. And | even that category contains its curiosities. It appears, for | example, that Filipino Americans remain classified as "Asian" | rather than "Other Pacific Islander." See 4 App. in No. 21-707, | at 1732. The remaining classifications depend just as much on | irrational stereotypes. The "Hispanic" category covers those | whose ancestral language is Spanish, Basque, or Catalan-- but it | also covers individuals of Mayan, Mixtec, or Zapotec descent who | do not speak any of those languages and whose ancestry does not | trace to the Iberian Peninsula but bears deep ties to the | Americas. See Bernstein Amicus Brief 10- | | The "White" category sweeps in anyone from "Europe, Asia west of | India, and North Africa." Id., at 14. That includes those of | Welsh, Norwegian, Greek, Italian, Moroccan, Lebanese, Turkish, or | Iranian descent. It embraces an Iraqi or Ukrainian refugee as | much as a member of the British royal family. Meanwhile, "Black | or African American" covers everyone from a descendant of | enslaved persons who grew up poor in the rural South, to a first- | generation child of wealthy Nigerian immigrants, to a Black- | identifying applicant with multiracial ancestry whose family | lives in a typical American suburb. See id., at 15-16. If | anything, attempts to divide us all up into a handful of groups | have become only more incoherent with time. American families | have become increasingly multicultural, a fact that has led to | unseemly disputes about whether someone is really a member of a | certain racial or ethnic group. There are decisions denying | Hispanic status to someone of ItalianArgentine descent, Marinelli | Constr. Corp. v. New York, 200 App. Div. 2d 294, 296-297, 613 N. | Y. S. 2d 1000, 1002 (1994), as well as someone with one Mexican | grandparent, Major Concrete Constr., Inc. v. Erie County, 134 | App. Div. 2d 872, 873, 521 N. Y. S. 2d 959, 960 (1987). Yet there | are also decisions granting Hispanic status to a Sephardic Jew | whose ancestors fled Spain centuries ago, In re RothschildLynn | Legal & Fin. Servs., SBA No. 499, 1995 WL 542398, 2-4 (Apr. 12, | 1995), and bestowing a "sort of Hispanic" status on a person with | one Cuban grandparent, Bernstein, 94 S. Cal. L. Rev., at 232 | (discussing In re Kist Corp., 99 F. C. C. 2d 173, 193 (1984)).' | pknomad wrote: | FWIW, I always thought using ethnicity as a factor was a | misguided approach. | | 1. It lumps all ethnic groups into one without any regard for | culture or sub-ethnicity, which matters. I think Nigerian | immigrants tend to do really really well compared to say their | black American counterparts. There's also different measured | outcome for different groups of Asians (say Vietnamese vs | Chinese). | | 2. I understand the desire to correct the past wrong... but going | about that via reverse-racism seems also wrong. I think Gandhi | said it best when he said "eye for an eye makes the whole world | blind." | | 3. It feels more egalitarian and less discriminatory to fix the | past wrong by providing programs/support for disadvantaged | Americans, regardless of race. | purpleblue wrote: | I'm happy this happened because Asians are the only ethnicity | that suffers true systemic racism when it comes to education. | | However, my fear is that the universities are working hard to | figure out ways to continue this practice against Asian Americans | by skirting around the rules. | TheCaptain4815 wrote: | The only way affirmative action makes 'logical' sense to me is if | people believe in biological differences of intelligence between | races. Not saying I believe this, but it's the only way I could | think of to logically allow for AA. | | Because now you have "Race A" paying the same tax rates for | public university as "Race B", yet their children could be | biologically limited (on average) in comparison. | dahwolf wrote: | We'll never know because it's a taboo topic. So we'll just | pretend that almost every aspect of our body has racial | differences due to populations being exposed to different | environments/conditions and evolving to adapt, yet magically | this one organ, the brain, is perfectly steady across time and | location. | | Regardless, it's probably a "close enough" call and culture | might be a larger factor. Which one can also only selectively | talk about. | | For example, everybody knows why Asians outperform whites: | performance culture and work ethic. | peterfirefly wrote: | In which case the Race B children would be paying | disproportionately -- one might even surmise that the Race A | children (and their parents) would be net beneficiaries of the | taxes paid by the Race B children (and their parents). | Aeolun wrote: | This may be the only time ever I've ever felt like I agreed with | the conservative side of SCOTUS. | | I just do not know how to politely say any form of affirmative | action is bizarre. | | If your schools suck at teaching worthwhile things to minorities | or poor people, the problem is that your school system sucks. Not | that some people don't get into a few highly prestigious | universities. | | You could argue it's a kind of bandaid, but at the cost of | introducing discrimination yet again and hiding the true problem. | Which is that your system sucks at creating opportunity for | everyone. | Capricorn2481 wrote: | Because we can't raise taxes on the very people getting legacy | admissions into these universities. | forinti wrote: | I would like to see lotteries used for this type of thing, | because they would be much easier to accept. You could have 10% | or 20% percent of candidates chosen by lottery, or have a lottery | for all candidates who have the minimum pre-requisites, etc. Some | sort of randomness whould guarantee a diversity of candidates and | would even span across dimensions which are not even considered | currently. | fzeroracer wrote: | A lottery doesn't guarantee randomness at all because the | population is not evenly distributed. If you have 99 people | apply who are white and 1 person apply who is black, the | lottery is going to naturally favor white candidates by virtue | of # of applicants. | [deleted] | UncleMeat wrote: | > I would like to see lotteries used for this type of thing, | because they would be much easier to accept. | | Advocates for a new admissions system at TJHSST proposed a | merit lottery. Conservative advocates called it racist and the | proponents "enemies of excellence" in precisely the same way | that they did for the eventually implemented system. A similar | response would happen if applied to universities. | | I think that merit lotteries are _excellent_ and work much more | effectively than the ordinary things people to do increase | diversity (which often focuses on aesthetics rather than | actually changing things). But we are kidding ourselves if we | think that they won 't face precisely the same resistance. | rahimnathwani wrote: | Advocates for a new admissions system at TJHSST proposed a | merit lottery. Conservative advocates called it racist | | This is an uncharitable interpretation. AIUI part of the | motivation for overhauling the admissions system was | precisely to reduce the proportion of Asian Americans | admitted, in order to satisfy some diversity goal set at the | state level. | | So, even if the new admissions system wasn't racist on its | face, it was introduced for the purpose of racial balancing. | UncleMeat wrote: | This is exactly what I mean when I say that merit lotteries | will get exactly the same reaction where people just say | "this is racist, you want to oppress Asian Americans." | rahimnathwani wrote: | I'll say it again: in the TJ case, there was significant | evidence that the motivation for abandoning the old | system was racial balancing. | | You can read about in the ruling here: | | https://pacificlegal.org/wp- | content/uploads/2021/03/Coalitio... | | I suggest you read pages 11 and 12 for context, but I'd | like to specifically draw your attention to the first | full sentence on page 14: | | "Here, no dispute of material fact exists regarding any | of the Arlington Heights factors, nor as to the ultimate | question that the Board acted with discriminatory | intent." | | For specific evidence of that discriminatory intent, | start at page 17. | | For more evidence, see pages 53-56 in the appeal dissent: | https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23821588/tjca4opn0 | 523... | UncleMeat wrote: | Again, I don't understand how this is relevant. | | People will oppose merit lotteries, like I said. | | And the system that is part of the suit isn't the merit | lottery, btw. | rahimnathwani wrote: | You said "Advocates for a new admissions system at TJHSST | proposed a merit lottery. Conservative advocates called | it racist". | | I responded by explaining why the 'Conservative | advocates' were correct. | | Do you deny that the changes were racially motivated? | UncleMeat wrote: | I'm not interesting in talking about whether or not they | were correct. | | I'm saying that conservatives aren't going to get on | board with merit lotteries any more than other proposals. | kelipso wrote: | [flagged] | gedy wrote: | There's a lot of "blank slate" thinking and "meritocracy" is | now bad. | AlexandrB wrote: | Meritocracy is not "bad". It doesn't exist. Or, more | precisely, "merit" cannot be measured objectively and can | also be bought if you have the money. | shanecleveland wrote: | I don't think a lottery system is a replacement for | affirmative action, it would still not be representative of | the racial makeup of our population. | | And if rewarding hard work were the only criteria for | admission, then legacy preferences wouldn't exist, either. | That is the sort of thing affirmative action attempts to | balance out. | | I don't have an answer, and I hope that all who have earned | an opportunity are rewarded. But whenever I see that a group | is under-represented relative to population, I have to wonder | what the reasons are and what can be done to help. | | I am OK with having to work harder if it means someone who | has had fewer opportunities, resources and support than me - | not only in their lifetime, but for generations in their | family - gets a boost. | | It seems some are afraid of having to work as hard as someone | who was not born with a silver spoon in their mouth. | parineum wrote: | > it would still not be representative of the racial makeup | of our population. | | I think the point is that it doesn't need to. College | admission is 18 years late for trying to correct racial and | social disadvantages. | shanecleveland wrote: | Early intervention is absolutely best. I have four | children and we have about as much opportunity, support | and resources as you could ask for, and it is still a | huge undertaking to raise a family. | | Affordable/free preschool, childcare, school lunches, | summer programs, etc., would all be helpful. Perhaps | universities can (are?) getting involved in that. But | until we do a better job as a country/society funding | these programs for all, then disparities will persist. | | In the absence of that, the _need_ remains. | parineum wrote: | > Perhaps universities can (are?) getting involved in | that. But until we do a better job as a country/society | funding these programs for all, then disparities will | persist. | | This is actually something I was thinking about reading | through these comments. These universities should focus | on "giving back" type programs, I think. Something like | sending their professors to underprivileged schools to | speak to or involve themselves in students lives. | Mentorship programs that start much earlier in a child's | life could make a massive difference. | | The problem with programs like that is they don't provide | tangible results fast enough for administrator and | politicians to justify themselves. | ketchupdebugger wrote: | its basically a lottery today when admission rate for top | tier colleges is like 5%. | dmix wrote: | A lottery for the top percentile is very different than a | general lottery | brewdad wrote: | Nobody was suggesting throwing the 2.5 GPA kids in with | the 4.5 GPA kids and sending them wherever. If MIT has a | 4% acceptance rate, I can guarantee that more than 4% of | those applicants could have succeeded there if a spot was | available to them. Applicants already largely self-select | whether to bother applying in the first place. | | The suggestion is that MIT or Northeastern State A&M for | that matter set a minimum standard bar that they will | consider. Then, all of those applicants that meet the | standard are entered into a lottery to determine who gets | the spots. | | It's not all that different from today except it | eliminates the problems from whether Reader A or Reader B | looks at your application and whether Reader A had a good | night's sleep or a fight with their partner that morning. | splendor_spoon wrote: | Why assume this is a 'leftists' idea? | | > ...leftism is appealing to many who want to avoid work, so | they won't be familiar with the concept of having their hard | work pay off | | You seem unfamiliar with the values of those you classify as | 'leftist'. | kenjackson wrote: | The idea is that there are more kids who could succeed at the | college than there are spots. So find the right bar and do | lottery. | | A lot of this comes down to what you think the mission of | college is. Is it to educate the highest achieving kids who | apply? Or to graduate a certain type of student? Or something | else? | | For me I know it's not just to educate the highest achieving | kids. If the top college in the world ended up accepting all | terrorists who were trained to be exceptional students that | wouldn't sit right with me. Even if I could acknowledge they | had the best academic records. That seems like such a shallow | goal for university. | judge2020 wrote: | The way I see it, this is only a problem if you _must_ go | to one of the top schools in the nation, such as MIT, | _because_ you want to be able to graduate and secure an | extremely competitive job at the best companies with no | questions asked. | | If you aren't actively trying to achieve stardom in the | professional world, there are tons of good universities | that will provide a great education and will look good on | your resume, you just might not be hired right out of the | gate at Apple with only one or two rounds of interviews. | kenjackson wrote: | I wonder if there's also a difference between engineering | and non-engineering schools. I tend to agree that at MIT | you mostly just want the very best engineers and the more | objective the metric, maybe the better. | | But if I'm looking to educate the best politicians, | judges, business people, activists -- I think that I | really do care about a lot more than SATs and | transcripts. | | It's funny because I feel like no one has this argument | about Cal Tech. They might have affirmative action, but | if they didn't everyone seemed to be OK with it. | kelipso wrote: | Going to ignore your ridiculous analogy but yes, the best | universities are meant educate the highest achieving kids. | That's how they keep being the best universities. The | middle achieving kids can go to the middle universities; | there are plenty and there is a whole gradient of them. Do | we live in a meritocracy or not? Success is not 0/1, there | is a whole spectrum from bum to whatever ideal you have, | and appropriate motivations and rewards should be given to | kids to succeed; otherwise you end up with a society that | doesn't have anything to look forward to. | kenjackson wrote: | Why is the analogy ridiculous? You should read The | Chosen, by Karabel, which is probably the best history of | elite college admissions. Much of what we do in college | admissions today are remnants to reduce the number of | Jewish people at Ivy League schools -- and then later a | focus on meritocracy. Colleges have historically taken | stock of the "type" of people they accept and adjust to | their liking. | kelipso wrote: | I'm ignoring analogies containing terrorists in it lol. | It's true that colleges are historically and currently | biased. But that does not mean that you just drop the | idea of meritocracy and just say fuck it have a lottery. | Instead you move towards the ideal and crack down on | college biases, e.g, you can assign students to colleges | based on prospective student's college preferences and | SAT scores; that's how it works in plenty of countries. | kenjackson wrote: | I choose terrorists because everyone dislikes them. | Seemed non-offensive. But you can make them whatever | group you think is harmful in your mind (maybe | progressives for you). | | The question is what is the ends meant to achieve by the | meritocracy? The goal of most institutions in our world | is to make the world a better place for us to live in. If | the meritocracy seems to run counter to that then it may | not be achieving its goal. And the point I was trying to | make with the terrorists is that if you blindly treat | meritocracy as its own ends then you can end up making | the world a worse place for it. | kelipso wrote: | The thing about putting terrorists in an analogy is it | distorts the intent of the analogy in unexpected ways, so | you lose what you're trying to convey. | | The framework that I'm coming from is that | work/talent/etc must be rewarded in a predictable manner | in order for kids to have the motivation to perform and | succeed. If the system gets unpredictable, kids will be | demotivated and not compete in the system anymore. As in, | if it's a lottery and my classmate who does worse than me | gets into a better college than me, this isn't a fair | competition so why try studying, I'll go into sports or | something where the best person under the competitive | framework wins. | | You argue that if the system is too predictable then too | many undesirable people might succeed. Which might or | might not be true, it's pure speculation. We're talking | about high achieving students who want to get into good | colleges; no need to compare them to terrorists. Purely | test based systems work in plenty of other countries | without the college graduates collapsing society. | kenjackson wrote: | What you point out is maybe partially true. There was an | episode on the Hidden Brain podcast recently about the | famous marshmallow test that speaks to what you're | stating. On this show they point out that the discipline | to eat or not eat the marshmallow is also a function of | if you believe that the person will actually give you the | second marshmallow when they return. The predictability. | | But most Black students face this level of | unpredictability moreso every day leading up to college | admissions. Another, unrelated study, asked teachers to | watch for misbehaving kids -- with a mixed race group of | kids. The thing was that none of the kids were | misbehaving -- but the teachers still pointed to the | Black kids. Black kids live with this level of | predictability all throughout schooling where they'll be | called out for doing the same thing as white students who | aren't called out. Eventually you learn to just eat the | marshmallow, because the second one isn't coming even if | you have the discipline to not eat the first. | | So then this ties back to the lottery. It turns out that | little in life has 100% predictability. There's no | guarantee that my startup will make me billions, even if | I seemingly do everything that Steve Jobs did. But I | increase my chances and the lottery works the same way. | But it also does something else -- it also provides a | marshmallow for the kids who know that in their current | environment they face steep odds to ever take 16 AP | classes or work with their dad's research lab to win the | Westinghouse/Intel Science Fair. | | It turns out that fairness isn't so easy to determine. | woeirua wrote: | You need to learn about legacy admissions. The best | universities _are not_ educating the best students today. | malnourish wrote: | Do you believe we live in a meritocracy? | s1artibartfast wrote: | Not a perfect meritocracy, but yes, I believe Merritt and | performance has a significant impact on outcomes. | | If you don't try, don't go to school, or don't go to your | job, your average outcome will be much worse than someone | that does | orthecreedence wrote: | > best universities are meant educate the highest | achieving kids. That's how they keep being the best | universities. The middle achieving kids can go to the | middle universities; there are plenty and there is a | whole gradient of them. | | How is what you described in any way incompatible with | lottery systems? Did you not catch the phrase "So find | the right bar and do lottery?" The best colleges set the | higher bars, middle schools set a middle bar, etc etc. | | > Do we live in a meritocracy or not? | | Absolutely not. That's the lie we've been told all our | lives by the haves. But either way, the lottery is _more_ | meritocratic: you have one seat, two people who are both | qualified, how do you choose? Merit has already been | established! After that, the lottery doesn 't care about | race, age, etc etc. | BlueTemplar wrote: | Etymologically, meritocracy is equivalent to | aristocracy... also how did the meaning of meritocracy | drift to become positive ?? | [deleted] | commandlinefan wrote: | > just to join a lottery | | I don't think he means a purely random lottery (at least I | hope he doesn't). My son was a high achiever (valedictorian, | top 1% SAT, honor society, etc. etc.) but still didn't get | admitted to MIT because he was competing with 30,000 other | similar high achievers for 1000 spots. That's where the | lottery concept comes in - you have to compete to qualify for | the lottery. It's already in place after all, they just try | to make it less lottery-ish. | solatic wrote: | Acceptance into anything, beyond a table-stakes requirement | of merit, is essentially a lottery. You work your ass off, | you get an interview, your luck of the draw is someone having | a bad day, is otherwise biased against you, or any number of | other issues. It's naive to think that the people | interviewing you are doing so solely on the grounds of your | achievements on paper. This is true regardless of whether | you're interviewing for an academic program, for a job, for a | sale, for an investment... | | Society can either do the healthy thing and accept this and | embrace it (won't happen, because it's not "fair"), or not, | and make the inherent lottery explicit. | bubblethink wrote: | The issue is that the lottery is never enough. Effectively, the | lottery percentage is removed from discussions and the fight | moves on to the non-lottery percentage where the same arguments | of diversity come back to the non-lottery percentage. This is | not hypothetical, this is how the US immigration system is | currently. There is a diversity lottery, which is a mostly | foregone conclusion right now. And yet, there is race/country | based quota in the skill based categories and proponents want | quotas despite it being a skill being category. Once you create | a lottery, you can't say, "Go do your thing in the lottery, | this lane is for merit". So the lottery is a waste. Several | attempts to phase out caps/quotas from skill based categories | through legislature have failed so far. In the most recent | case, the congressional black caucus opposed it as it would | disadvantage the currently advantaged immigrants from African | countries. | AlexB138 wrote: | Here's the opinion: | https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf | tekla wrote: | Its the first link in the article | orblivion wrote: | I could understand how this applies to state universities, but | how does the US Constitution have this kind of jurisdiction over | Harvard? | stjohnswarts wrote: | Private college status doesn't override basic rights elucidated | by the Constitution which are further spelled out by various | civil rights laws. | orblivion wrote: | Civil rights laws sure, but the constitution generally | defines the role of and restrictions on the government. | | I think the answer must be that Harvard has government | contracts or something (as others responded to me). | ru552 wrote: | Harvard receives public funds from the government. Assumingly, | if Harvard chose to no longer receive those funds, they | wouldn't have to comply. | COGlory wrote: | If this can't apply to Harvard, then presumably it's legal to | have private schools that only allow white people? | [deleted] | orblivion wrote: | I don't see how it would be unconstitutional, but it would | probably be illegal per the civil rights act. | | Though now that you mention it, I looked at the article a bit | more closely. It says that conservatives "...argued that the | Constitution and the civil rights law prohibited | discrimination based on race...". The civil rights law part | makes more sense than the constitution part. But, the article | says that the SCOTUS based this on the 14th amendment. | | It's probably more complicated than this article makes it out | to be. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-06-29 23:01 UTC)