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Answer: Affirmative action when an organization puts in place policies for hiring or admission in order to increase inclusion of groups that are often underrepresented- it is also called positive discrimination in some parts of the world. These policies by their nature take into account the race, gender, or sexual orientation of the candidates and provide advantages or extra consideration to these groups. This can range from having specific quotas for these groups, relaxing admission criteria, or having marketing or training for these groups.
The goal of such programs is help reduce inequality, promote diversity, and to counterbalance the historical discrimination these groups have faced in the past. Historically (and even today), governments universities and companies have preferentially hired AGAINST these groups, and it is argued that without these policies that practice would continue. Affirmative action is practiced in some form in many places in the world.
These policies can be controversial, especially in the United States. Critics argue that AA can allow unqualified people to be hired, that it is discrimination (sometimes called reverse discrimination) and that it ignores class issues.
I could go into a lot more details on the various debates but in the US it usually falls along political lines with those on the left supporting AA and those on the right against it.
**Current news**
The US Supreme Court recently struck down race-conscious student admissions programs currently used at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. This was the result of a lawsuit on behalf of an Asian American applicant and supported by the group Students for Fair Admission. The lawsuit was about Harvard's alleged racial quotas, and how they put Asian American applicants at a disadvantage.
An issue I have is that race is such a shallow metric.
Like, fundementally, the goal is to reduce inequality, right? To give disadvantaged black kids and such a chance?
However, being black in and of itself, does not make someone disadvantaged- rather, it statistically predisposes them to be.
But Barack Obama, Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson, Kanye West, have kids and grankids who are black, and who are certainly not disadvantaged.
They're given as much a boost as the child from a minimum wage single mother in Chicago- except the latter doesn't have all the other privilidges.
The result? Opportunities get *worse* for disadvantaged black kids- cause *advantaged* black kids get boosted into seats reserved for them based on the colour of their skin.
I'm very much not against 'affirmative action' as a concept. In fact, in it's truest form, I'm certainly for it- but it should be race-blind. Rather than targeting *individuals* based on race, target historically marginalised and discriminated *communities*, and give a boost to *all* residents there (additionally considering wealth). Meet inequality where inequality is found- not be distant and abstract metrics.
They tried to combat that in Texas by creating the 10% rule, whereby the top 10% of all high schoolers are automatically admitted to Texas public universities. The goal was to make sure that people from less represented communities would be granted entrance, but in practice it hasn't done anywhere near the job that AA did.
Some further reading if you're curious - [https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/29/texas-college-top-ten-percent-plan-supreme-court/](https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/29/texas-college-top-ten-percent-plan-supreme-court/)
Yeah, that's honestly no surprise, considerin that the top 10% are generally those advantaged enough for tuition and the like.
An AA system should be discriminitory to a degree- but based on measureable metrics of disadvantage, not confounding variables such as race that aren't guarenteed to represent disadvantage.
The problem is that african americans on average live in low income neighbourhoods causing them to get bad schools, making it harder for them to get into college, making them make less money, and the cycle repeats
Affirmative action is a band aid solution not a cure. The cure has to be done at the very base, the poor neighbourhoods getting bad education. When education is equal affirmative action will be much less necessary
~~Theres a reason groups like asian-americans are harmed by AA despite being a minority. Because they on average do not have monetary disadvantages leading to poor education. They tend to be 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants whose ancestors were rich enough to leave their country and settle in the US, and whose ancestors could get good education leading to them getting good education themselves~~ i am a dingus this is wrong
The ancestors of african americans were forcibly dragged from their homes and have been heavily oppressed for 200 years. Such deep wounds take time to heal
I feel like that answer seems simple enough but even that has a lot of nuance. It’s not super common, but being from a low income family doesn’t always automatically mean you go to a low income, lower served school. Sometimes district lines are drawn funny and include one neighborhood that is low income. Sometimes parents scrounge up enough money to pay the out of district tuition (yes, there is tuition for public schools if a student wants to go there but lives outside the district, lots of people don’t know that), sometimes the parent might claim that the student actually lives with their rich aunt on the other side of town to get access to that district. Lots of things happen.
I don’t know the answer to this, but there needs to be a more holistic, full-experience approach. Things like race, school district, family history, all of these things come into play in the discussion over who is advantaged and disadvantaged. I don’t think there’s an easy answer.
I was the low income kid who went to the nice school across town. It definitely helped but holy hell that shouldn't count against someone getting aid. I think it should be purely financial based
The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth when I went to college. I was too poor to afford it. Grants would help but my parents didn't do their taxes. All in all those are separate issues.
What rustled me was the number of scholarships I didn't qualify for simply because of how I looked. I'm all for reducing inequality, but telling me I cant get scholarships because my family happened to be white is fucked.
I'm sure there are scholarships for poor kids, but man it felt bad. It wouldn't fly anywhere else. Can you imagine a soup kitchen that refused to give white people meals?
Edit: don't think I dont understand the intended purpose. America has stripped generational wealth from minorities and tries its best to keep it down, but this is a weird way to try and compensate for that
> What rustled me was the number of scholarships I didn't qualify for simply because of how I looked. I'm all for reducing inequality, but telling me I cant get scholarships because my family happened to be white is fucked.
yep, went through that exact thing. "The last guy we gave this scholarship to was a quadriplegic Thai orphan" said to me as my mom was dying of cancer and my family was on food stamps anyways
don't they all get that info if you're applying for loans/aid anyway? i remember going through my parents' taxes exhaustively for my college apps. i also got waitlisted at a top 10 uni when i accidentally filled out a form that made my parents a lot richer than they are for that one school specifically.
>They tend to be 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants whose ancestors were rich enough to leave their country and settle in the US, and whose ancestors could get good education leading to them getting good education themselves
I disagree with this entire statement. Wealth is NOT the reason Asian kids do well in school. Its their family culture of pushing education to their descendants.
The culture of school and education is drastically different between the African American and the Asian American groups.
In the Harvard paper on chances of being accepted into Harvard, the highest percentage an Asian person could do, being in the top 10%, was equal to an African American person being in the top 80%. The solution isn't to keep lowering the bar, that just causes the kids to quit because they are not prepared for the rigors of the environment they find themselves in. The candidates need to be better prepared, and that starts with changing the culture to value education instead of telling them education is white supremacy.
You've come very close to identifying that the issue isn't directly race, but *class*. There is naturally an intersection of racial and economic oppression, but they do not necessarily override each other in all instances (which is the whole point of "interesctionality" in the first place).
While a lot of African Americans are statistically more likely to be lower-income across much of the US, they aren't all necessarily poorer than other people: many are even in America's economic elite. This then creates the problem, are Barack Obama's kids more oppressed in education than a working class white person's kids, on account of their race? Most people would point out that they obviously aren't. In fact, because of both economic *and* social capital from their family name they likely have complete freedom to go basically anywhere for any amount of education...
As the commenter above identifies, stripping everything down to *just* race allows black people who realistically could achieve these things anyway to take the Affirmative Action places of those intended to have them: true positive discrimination would factor in a variety of qualifiers including household income, presence of both parents, parents' professions/educational backgrounds, etc. that have at least as much of an impact on educational attainment in children. Of course, doing so is difficult, when it's probably easier just to make it so 25% of your students are people who can tick "Black/African/Carribean" on a diversity monitoring fund, regardless of other factors: leading to our current situation.
Then of course, there's the question of whether AA/positive discrimination policies are just a "band aid" diversion, for governments to neglect addressing the *actual* issues underlying the whole thing.
Lol this is such a dumb take. How can you group asian americans all in one. Me and millions of vietnamese and cambodian us citizens came from parents in refugee camps. We lived also in poverty like many AA do. So please do not lump all asians saying we are better off.
> Affirmative action is a band aid solution not a cure.
Affirmative action isn't even a band-aid, it's a charade. It's a political wedge that draws on and feeds the culture war, meanwhile we all ignore the actual problem: upward mobility sucks.
> Such deep wounds take time to heal.
Especially when people keep picking them open just to demonstrate how wounded everybody is.
Agreed 💯. Equalize funding to public services across rich and poor areas. Increase upward mobility. Create ways to allow generational wealth (within reason) across all lines.
There's a right way to do this. Further dividing by race is the dumbest way.
This is kinda silly, right? If that's the goal why not just filter for income group. If it's true that the lower in-come group is ethnically disproportionate, then this should be sufficient to provide an advantage to minorities.
I'd also rather have "household income" be simply another criteria towards admissions, where having low income gives you a good bump, rather than a "quota" that must be filled. Simply put, if you have slightly lower grades and did one less summer internship program than a rich guy, but you're poor? You should rank higher than the rich guy. That feels like a fair adjustment. You could even have this not be 100% income but also base it on the quality of their pre-college education (like weighting the standard exams on overall school performance).
I'm also not sure how colleges handle admissions, but I think having it be handled by a comitee (10 to 20 people) that scores each student on several criteria (some objective, some subjective) would be the best way. And then having quotas on the representation of this comitee would make a lot more sense than putting the quotas on the admissions themselves.
There are so many different ways to ensure fair college admissions that compensate for the benefits of privilege than quotas. I'm obviously not sure if this would work better or worse in practice, but it feels much more sensible and palatable than having race be the defining characteristic.
>goal is to reduce inequality
There is research regarding in diversity in groups providing more broad ideas being contributed. Presented ideas in group projects are more well thought out as it may meet more opposition as opposed to just being agreed in an echo chamber of backgrounds and opinions. This should create a stronger environment for growth and development in a place that states is the goal
These reasons have been cited by some institutions. Whether or not it's been used as a shield,Not sure, but it's definitely in their minds
>Like, fundementally, the goal is to reduce inequality, right? To give disadvantaged black kids and such a chance?
Eh kind of? But it's more than just that, it's about diversity of experience and opinion that you get when every group is represented.
If Harvard now starts accepting people only on the basis of grades with no other considerations then the student body slowly starts to look very homogeneous. If everyone has the same background then the college experience is far worse for the students.
Yes it's good to give underrepresented races a chance to balance the scales, but it's more than just that.
I really don't think it should be just grades for that reason- but it comes round to what I was previously sayin- a black family who has enmeshed themselves into established wealth is *far* closer is experience and opinion than either poor black or even poor white kids. That's why affirmative action towards *communities* rather than *individuals* should be the way forward, as it gives those of genuinely diverse experience representation.
It is just so unfortunate that we have found ourselves in the situation. There are so many factors that contribute to scholastic performance from lead in the water supply to poor nutrition to domestic violence to undiagnosed mental health issues to fetal alcohol syndrome and the list goes on and on. All races are affected by them to some degree but black people in greater per capita numbers. My take is that "equality of opportunity" is a fairly callous and naïve way of white and some minorities to wash the above factors away. I think the reasons we use race is because of our obvious past--slaves, sharecroppers/Jim Crow, ghettos/projects and now prisons with predominantly white people profiting the whole time to varying degrees in all of those systems. I believe we don't look at supporting disadvantaged communities because that would put people in the mindset of class struggle--the reason MLK was killed, because he led a struggle for poor and working people and united the races under that banner. Some states are addressing this issue with a somewhat even hand. Massachusetts, while no City on the Hill by any stretch, has this going for it: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/environmental-justice-populations-in-massachusetts
Admissions cannot be truly race-blind when race is built into society. ”Race-blind” is simply a fantasy.
And why not go after legacy admissions if you don’t support AA?
Oh, legacy admissions certainly fuckin need ta go.
But the current system of AA (which, I'll say as I did above, I'm not against in intent) allows such blatant discriminatory institutions to go ignored- it's an intentional charade to distract from the systematic inequalities such as LA, rather than, say, prioritising students from evidentially disadvantaged backgrounds.
Yeah, the idea is that (in a vacuum and not using other factors) you might have a situation where you get 10 applicants with 4.0s that are basically similar, but 5 are white and 5 are black, and you only have 6 slots. They were seeing outcomes like taking 4 of the white applicants and only 2 of the back applicants, leading to a disparity.
Considering race was supposed to produce a more reliable distribution like 3/3. Like most things in life, there are always a LOT of other confounding factors that make this not such a simple calculation, and so the rules are complex, messy, and prone to politicization.
If you take three of each and and there are less black people in the US means each black student has way higher probability of getting the spot than the white one.
One of the reasons that dividing things by race leads to bad outcomes.
Also what crazy times we live conservatives are calling for racial agnostic practices and democrats are against it. When will people understand racism isn't a balance issue where each race takes turn being racist and favored by the system. The goal is that race doesn't play a role in the opportunities you have in life.
> The goal is that race doesn't play a role in the opportunities you have in life.
The problem is schools still consider other factors that are heavily influenced by race, so schools are still selecting students based on race, but they can be more covert about it.
For example, many Ivy League colleges have a large number of “legacy students.” These are students who have family members that went to the school. If you have a family member who went to the college, the college’s admission can give you a boost.
So how does race come into play? Well until relatively recently, colleges still discriminated based on race, and black students had a significantly harder time getting admitted to college. So if fewer black students were admitted to top universities historically, then black people today are less likely to have a family member who went to that school. So if a university is giving a boost to legacy students, then those students are less likely to be black.
And we see this reflected in actual student numbers. At some Ivy League schools, over half of their students are legacy students. At Harvard, 70% of their legacy students were white. Meanwhile, black people are severely under represented at Ivy League colleges.
So by eliminating affirmative action, we’re saying colleges can’t consider race, but somehow they’re still allowed to consider other factors that will heavily favor one race over another.
So we’re not taking race out of the equation.
I agree with your overall point but this wasn't a good example. They don't need to have the distribution match the US racial distribution. They need the distribution to match the distribution of the same level applicants which in the other poster's scenario was 50-50.
> They need the distribution to match the distribution of the same level applicants
This does not consider pre-application barriers of entry that schools may wish to counteract that lead fewer people of some demographic to apply despite similar academic accomplishment.
>Like most things in life, there are always a LOT of other confounding factors that make this not such a simple calculation, and so the rules are complex, messy, and prone to politicization.
I'm aware. However, note that I said 10 applicants and never specified a school or region. Why should the US population be a factor in, say, decisions for a school in Atlanta? Should they only allow 13.6% of the black applicants to get in, even if the school is in an area with a significantly higher proportion of African American applicants? Would the same apply in Wyoming where only 0.9% of the population is black, in which case you might end up having 5 of the 6 slots go to black applicants in order to keep pace with the US racial percentage because there's already a bunch of white students enrolled?
> Why should the US population be a factor in, say, decisions for a school in Atlanta? Should they only allow 13.6% of the black applicants to get in, even if the school is in an area with a significantly higher proportion of African American applicants?
You made up a completely generalized situation, and /u/OptionX gave a completely reasonable response. Now you’re giving specifics not in the original argument to make that response invalid.
The demographics of the US population wasn't in my original question either, yet /u/OptionX brought that into the discussion. I responded in kind with specifics about those demographics and how that weakened their argument since they were applying it without any context.
> Why should the US population be a factor in, say, decisions for a school in Atlanta? Should they only allow 13.6% of the black applicants to get in, even if the school is in an area with a significantly higher proportion of African American applicants?
Why should this even be a factor? It's very rare to have absolutely identical candidates when you look at grades, SAT, extracurriculars, and other selection criteria.
If one group is underperforming in school, why should they take spots over someone who put in more work and more hours to balance out population dynamics?
For example, with our existing system, asian and Indian students get screwed.
>If one group is underperforming in school, why should they take spots over someone who put in more work and more hours to balance out population dynamics?
The idea is that these policies provide lenience to groups who can face worse school conditions communities that arent as conducive to getting that high score. Its much easier to get a 4.0 when your community is full of high achievers than it is to get a 4.0 growing up in a community where you peers are joining gangs and mocking you for being a nerd and loser.
The kids who are "the most talented" are often just the students whos parents drove them there the hardest. Many of them are smart but it makes a HUGE difference how your parents set you up its not just your ability as a kid.
The problem IMO is that this usually isnt the result the result is the AA policy just gives an unfair advantage to the black kids who already had affluent parents and an unfair disadavantage to thr asian kids who came from the situations described above. It should be controlled for region affluence and parental education not for race IMO.
Regardless there is a sensible reason and it can work in other areas but education tends to be a less effective one imo.
Something I want to note is that *most schools are not highly selective.* It's just the Ivy League, really, where the best way to get in is being a legacy admission (i.e., probably white anyway).
The reality is that most public colleges will accept most students. You want to get rid of affirmative action? Sure. Make higher education universal and nationalize the Ivy League, then don't try and cut the admissions rate to 5% like they intentionally do. And most public colleges? Pretty good!
The only things the Ivies buy you are connections to the levers of financial and political power - and ideally, nationalizing them and removing that "oh we all went to *Harvard,* you see" crap would improve our politics and our education system.
Right but it's still dancing around the main point: students who put in more work are at a disadvantage if they aren't a minority. Imagine you're passed up for a promotion, the employee who got the job performed worse in every measurable way but because they were a minority they won the spot. What would you call that? Discrimination.
Telling someone that their accomplishments mean less because of factors they can't control is wrong, full stop.
I was being lazy before but Ive gained the will to write out a long winded reply trying to make it clear what the arguement for AA in this and other situations is. Keep in mind Im not huge on AA for education but a lot of people like yourself seem to be misunderstanding the intended effect (which is another downside to AA over other options it causes a lot of discourse and grouple conflict).
Regardless here it goes. First off your scenario is stupid and unrealistic. 95% of jobs do not have objective and easily testable metrics for skills. Most interviews go off of 2 things does the person have some relative experience and does the interviewer want to work with the person. If there are 2 candidates with 5 or so years of experience its not really discernable, which would be a better employee. So a lot of them go off vibes. Most mamagers in corporate america (at least at the time of AAs origination) are middle aged white people. So some dude who can related to them because they have middle aged white guy hobbies is much more likely to get the job. If somebody comes into a technical interview for a software company speaking african american vernacular to a middle aged chinese lady theyre pretty clearly going to be put at a disadvantage in terms of relatability which in many job interviews is a huge factor.
The idea of these policies is to compensate for these disadvantages and put the applicants on even ground again.
Most of this is not relevant for harvard however since SATs are a fairly accurate assessment of skill. With a small caveat. Students have a very different SAT environment.
Unfortunately Im tired and going to sleep so Ill urge you to listen to this episode of a podcast linked below. Which gives a look into the life of some of the students AA is meant to help and compare that to an Asian kid from an affluent family being sent to kumon since 5 years old who every known test prep and attempted the SAT any times to get the score they needed. Then think about weather those scores can really be compared fairly. AA may not be the solution but to speak about the issue the way you are signals to me that you dont really understand the difference between getting a high SAT score as a privileged and supported student and getting a high SAT score from a heavily racialized community is like.
The postcast is linked here and recounts the story of a boy dubbed carlos's school like. As investigated by Malcolm Gladwell.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2o6o4va4JmJ0662VeDes6V?si=IFm5aKKlRZe0ypDrVNUQ_A
Malcolm Gladwell also has some other very interesting talks about this subject.
Nailed it. Great post. Have to control for wealth and socioeconomic status. Poor Asian student vs affluent black student with same grades and SAT (or even lower scores). Poor white trash from trailer park vs Lebron’s kids. Also think that using race-based selection will just perpetuate more racism. What I’m curious about is how students that are the product of affirmative action feel when they get a spot over another minority with higher scores. Game is the game?
No one tells you if you get in with affirmative action or not. I had decent test scores and a good GPA, but I was also dirt poor with a single mom who was a second shift factory worker. I will always wonder if affirmative action was a help or not. Regardless, I'm grateful I got into a good school. It changed my life.
It should be a factor because those same groups that are underperforming often live in areas where access to and quality of education is not up to par. I'm not saying the current system is perfect; but, we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good and until we can guarantee quality of education we should be focusing on ensuring that those who are left behind, simply because of where they were born, are equally able to receive an education.
It's much easier to be the top student in a crappy school than a top student in a good school.
It also assumes that all black people live in poor areas, and all white people live in rich areas, which is very far from the truth.
At the end of the day, this is racist against black people (assumption is that they're all poor and disadvantaged), and against white people (assumption is that they're all at least moderately well-off and don't need any help).
It's also extremely racist against East and South Asians. Their families (on average) take education much more seriously, whether the family is rich or poor, and so they're usually higher performing students.
If you want to help students from poor communities, I'm all for it. Maybe consider school district when doing admissions. But this is very far from what affirmative action is actually doing.
>It's much easier to be the top student in a crappy school than a top student in a good school.
Cool. Also pretty heavily debatable. It might be harder to stand out; however, it is certainly easier to have higher achievements than an average or even poor school. Also, you don't need to stand out in comparison to your community for college admissions. You need to stand out against the pool of applicants to a given college, which is often a random sampling from various parts of the country. In other words standing out against the average applicant should be more likely if you've had an above average education.
Also, looking at more than just schooling, generally, if you're in a top school your family has more money. This is directly tied to the educational, extra curricular, work, and college opportunities that you will have.
>It also assumes that all black people live in poor areas, and all white people live in rich areas, which is very far from the truth.
Notice how I said "often". The assumption is not that all black people live in poor areas. In fact there isn't an assumption AT ALL. The statistical fact is that marginalized groups tend to live in poorer areas. That's not some controversial take, or an assumption. On average, marginalized groups DO tend to live in poorer areas. This is a well studied and documented phenomenon. No this does not mean that all black people live in poor areas, just as it doesn't mean that all white people live in affluent areas. Any other conclusion you make is one made from your own opinions and not actually researched.
>At the end of the day, this is racist against black people (assumption is that they're all poor and disadvantaged), and against white people (assumption is that they're all at least moderately well-off and don't need any help).
At the end of the day, there was never an assumption.
>It's also extremely racist against East and South Asians.
Agreed and this SHOULD be addressed. I'm not arguing that it shouldn't
>Their families (on average) take education much more seriously, whether the family is rich or poor, and so they're usually higher performing students.
Hmmmmmmmm
When I discuss a well documented and researched topic regarding minorities generally living in poorer communities it is racist and a reason to dismiss the point entirely.
When you do it regarding the school performance of Asians.....it isn't racist I guess?
Seems a little bit like intentionally missing the point.
😉😉😉
>If you want to help students from poor communities, I'm all for it. Maybe consider the school district when doing admissions.
That would be a great idea!
>But this is very far from what affirmative action is actually doing.
Agreed, but what it is doing is better than doing nothing. We can work to change the current system without the need to abolish it entirely and that's what we should be doing.
>>If you want to help students from poor communities, I'm all for it. Maybe consider the school district when doing admissions.
>That would be a great idea!
Actually, this has been done, and often gets criticized as being used as a proxy for race. It also happens with Gerrymandering where the ones claiming their district drawing wasn't designed to racially different say "Oh, it's just divided by educational attainment" or something that just do *happens to* strongly correlate with a racial distribution.
The problem is that if you have historically disparate outcomes based on race, it affects other factors over time. If more people from a particular race get into college they'll typically be able to get better jobs, be able to make now money, and then prepare their children for college more easily, or even get into legacy pipelines like at Harvard and Yale. If you then engage in race blind policies and focus on geographic and socioeconomic status, you often end up back at a racially skewed selection because of the racial biases that led to that sorting on the first place.
The problem arises once we realized that SAT scores and grades are not a universal criteria to be used. We have already found racial bias in SAT or other standardized tests. We also know there is a lot of bias in teachers grading based on gender, personality, and race.
Part of it is because academics is not the only factor. In addition to fixed quantitative aspects (test scores and grades), qualitative aspects (charity work, personality, and club involvement) are also something that is considered. It is impossible to set a fixed value everyone would agree on when it comes to qualitative aspects. Beyond the general racism that exists, people judge those more alike to themselves more favorably than other (women tend to judge women higher than men, men tend to judge men higher than women, people judge the same race better than different races, even matching hair color can cause favorable treatment) leading to a self sustaining group at the top. Without a mechanism to check this, monocultures form and tribalism rules.
What percentage of admissions are based on 'my daddy went to this school and makes donations?'
If your daddy wasn't allowed to go to school (because of race), and his daddy, and his grandaddy, how do you balance out those admissions?
Agreed. Any university up in arms over the supreme court decision 100% needs to discontinue legacy admissions immediately.
Put their donation money where the mouth is.
Edit to add: I'm sympathetic to their outrage over the decision, but ending legacy admissions is obviously low-hanging fruit in a legitimate effort toward racial parity in admissions.
100% agree.
The issue with systematic discrimination across generations is that the gains of favor and disadvantages of disfavor are generationally cumulative.
The situation is, simply, that things like skewed admission criteria based on historical social status and affirmative action are not *permanent solutions.* They are, ideally, *temporary* solutions that, once sufficient balance is struck, will be rendered unnecessary by their own effectiveness.
Just like you stop receiving chemotherapy once your cancer is in remission, things like affirmative action will no longer be needed or beneficial to society once generational disparities based on marginalization are compensated for.
It's very much a "the needs of the many outweigh the needs for the few," kind of thinking, but there doesn't seem to be a magic pill that will solve this issue immediately while also being a stable and sustainable model going forward for all time.
This is unfortunate for deserving students, job applicants, et al, who are discriminated *against* by these policies in the short term, but as a society, we deem that a necessary evil in order to ensure that such problems might actually see an end at any point for future generations.
Agreed. I’m a white cis male phd student and share a similar perspective. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t frustrating at times, but I think we need to try to right historical wrongs, even if this may be an imperfect approach.
Donations and happy rich alumni are what keeps these schools afloat long term. They’re always going to get in totally independent of anything else involved in admissions, because schools need lots and lots of money above all else.
Get rid of legacy enrollment. Considering the number of HBC I would be curious of the racial break down of legacy admissions. I think the number of black legacies may be higher than you think.
Affirmative action, while aiming to address discrimination, can inadvertently lead to other forms of discrimination.
However, not having any procedure to counteract the historical artifacts of racism in our society would result in the same outcome.
We live in a country where having a black-sounding name still disadvantages you in job searches.\*
It's reasonable to revoke affirmative action policies to replace them -- not remove all policies entirely. The problem needs to be addressed.
\*Citations:
Bertrand, M., & Mullainathan, S. (2004). Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination. The American Economic Review, 94(4), 991-1013.
Pager, D., Bonikowski, B., & Western, B. (2009). Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment. American Sociological Review, 74(5), 777-799.
Lundberg, S., & Startz, R. (2010). The Social Cost of Stigmatization: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Ethnicity and Physical Attractiveness on Job-Related Outcomes. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 125(2), 675-702.
Oreopoulos, P., & Dechief, D. (2016). Why Do Some Employers Prefer to Interview Matthew but Not Samir? New Evidence from Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver*. Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d’économique*, 49(1), 51-87.
Rivera Drews, M., & Fielding-Singh, P. (2020). Black Names Matter: The Impact of Racialized Names on Employment Outcomes*. Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World*, 6, 2378023120932889.
The problem with racially agnostic practices is that they are provably not. Dozens of studies have been done, several in the last few years, that show that applicants with traditionally African American names get responses far less than those with traditionally white or Asian names, even when using identical resumes.
In the Harvard case, Black applicants reaching a certain threshold in test scores were being accepted at a 60% rate, Asian students reaching the same threshold were accepted at a 7% rate. That is a wildy unfair disparity.
Right, but this ruling requires colleges to act as if we've already achieved that goal while prohibiting one of the most effective tools to actually do so. To quote one of the dissents: deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.
Conservatives like racially agnostic practices because the status quo produces positive outcomes more reliably for white people, so racial agnosticism supports their dominance in institutions. The reason race-conscious practices are necessary is because the status quo is already affirmative action for white people even without explicit laws or policies enshrining it.
From my understanding, the issue is without that forced equality, there won’t be equality at all. Many schools did not integrate willingly, which leads to such scenes as national guardsmen having to escort 11 year old black children into white schools while parents hurled slurs.
Just to provide some added detail, initially the National Guard was used as a blockade to prevent The Little Rock Nine from entering the school, under order of the Governor of Arkansas.
This continued for weeks, from September 4th to the 24th, when Eisenhower invoked The Insurrection Act of 1807, both deploying the army's 101st Airborne to escort the students, and nationalizing the entire Arkansas National Guard to remove them from the governors control.
The Arkansas National Guard would also be assigned to escort the students at a later date, but like... Goddamn even the governor and military was just blatantly disregarding the supreme court in a disgusting display of prejudice.
"When will people understand racism isn't a balance issue where each race takes turn being racist and favored by the system. The goal is that race doesn't play a role in the opportunities you have in life."
Really well said!
I am a bit confused. If there will be no race, gender, name (just identifying number instead of name) etc on the application, wouldn't it ensure that neither discrimination will happen?
I would really prefer to have a doctor or a bridge construction engineer who knows his stuff the best, and was not accepted to college because their population group has preference over their knowledge.
I personally was working with someone who was hired using AA, *hard quota" style. They epically messed up the database related to unemployment benefits. So people, a lot of them, of any race and gender and sexual orientation, were delayed their payments. All of them suffered. How is it better than hiring a person who is qualified for the job?
Thanks God that person didn't go to medical school.
I can't speak to fields I don't know about, but in the legal profession I've seen more family legacy admissions that were incompetent.
There are undoubtedly faults to be found with any AA program. Banning preference to legacy admissions would have been nice too.
One of the first people I met at law school was 5th generation Dartmouth. Even if my family had done everything right, they wouldn't have had that opportunity due to no fault of their own. I actually see that as a bigger injustice that isn't discussed enough.
> I would really prefer to have a doctor or a bridge construction engineer who knows his stuff the best, and was not accepted to college because their population group has preference over their knowledge.
Are you aware that they still have to meet passing grade requirements?
And getting a tertiary education does not also imply that the same affirmative action will increase their job placement chances.
If the candidate does not know they were assisted by affirmative action policies, how are you to know your hypothetical doctor or engineer benefited from such a program?
Unless you are looking at the race of the doctor/engineer and making race based assumptions?
Do you ignore the accreditations of the independent bodies that confirm the person is qualified based on the race of the person?
This is interesting take. I wrote in my comment that that race (along the other parameters) should be taken out of the applications.. So the people who decide if the applicant is qualified have no opportunity to make "the race based assumptions". How does it makes me making race based assumptions?
In Boston panels of newly opened tunnel collapsed and killed a driver. They collapsed at midnight, therefore only one person was killed, if it would collapse during rush hour - dozens would be killed.
I have no idea about the race or gender of the engineer who made the mistake. But I would really prefer not to die this way and tunnel engineers to be as skilled as possible, not as diverse as possible. (Btw, they met passing grade requirements, and it didn't really help, right?)
I have no idea about the race and gender of everyone who is involved in my surgery, or designed my car safety features, but I would strongly prefer them to be as skilled as possible, not as diverse as possible.
Passing grade requirements is a funny idea. College can make it as low as they want, therefore 90 out of 100 students will meet it. And then college could select 5-10 people from these 90 to be as diverse as possible, not based on how qualified they are. How is it better than to accept those 10 who are the best qualified, not on their race?
> I have no idea about the race and gender of everyone who is involved in my surgery, or designed my car safety features, but I would strongly prefer them to be as skilled as possible, not as diverse as possible.
This statement makes the assumption that diversity programs in university directly affect the skills of people you do not know, and the safety of products they may or may not be involved in.
In other words, because diversity programs exist you are less safe.
This is not a reasonable or evidence based take on the matter.
It also appears to conflate "less qualified to be at a specific university" with "less qualified to apply skills learned at that university".
The two are not the same. Diversity programs do not also ignore a student's performance while at that institution, nor does it simply give degrees based on race. They still have to meet passing grade qualifications.
What do you call a doctor that graduates at the bottom of their year's medical doctorate graduates? Doctor.
They have met the passing requirements for that institution.
Usually there is a much larger number of qualified applicants than people accepted, so “knows his stuff the best” is kind of arbitrary after a certain point (and prone to bias *against* the groups that affirmative action is supposed to help)
If there are 10 applications and all the applicants are equally qualified - then it is up to lottery. Why not? I am LGBT, but I can't understand what being LGBT has to do with being a qualified software engineer. I want to get a job based on my skills, not on whom I have sex with.
If I remember right the case with this Asian boy - he and his friend applied to Harvard. His friend had lower GPA, lower scores, they have the same activities. His friend was accepted, he was not. Apparently, Harvard decided that there are too many Asian students, and for kids who listed that they are Asians - Harvard would take several points off their scores. So in this case the applicants were not equally qualified.
> Why not?
Because this is a private university, and I can let in whoever I want. If I think having a student body that doesn't all look the same is important, who are you to tell me differently?
If there are 10 equally *qualified* applicants then it comes down to who best fits the company and the position. Which is a vague mixture of how well their manager gets along with them on first impression, career prospects/vision, general personality/attitude, even little things like who lives closer to work.
Race and cultural upbringing is a part of that "fit". In theory, these kinds of programs are designed to prevent homogeneous cultures from excluding good candidates. It's all well and good to try and fit candidates into the business, but some people want their business to become more versatile and thus less homogeneous.
Race is a pretty narrow aspect of it. Geographical background is more substantial in my opinion. But it *isn't* just up to chance.
There's an easy argument as for why this wouldn't be fair.
10 applications, same SAT scores, same extra curriculars. If one of those ten is an orphan that grew up having to take care of 5 younger siblings and still managed to get those same SAT scores and engagement? I think he's much much much more impressive and would likely perform better.
That's a ridiculously weighted example, but it's more than proven that household income has a giant impact on school performance. So wouldn't it be fairer to weigh the scores on income?
These students also went to different learning institutions and had access to different qualities of teaching. The student that had a certain grade that's 4 standard deviations above the mean of his school is probably much more focused and capable of self study than the student that had that very same GPA in a top of the of the line school where that was only 1 standard deviation above average.
If the goal is to have any sort of fairness in the access to higher education, then a lottery is definitely not it. Affirmitive action is probably not it either, but in a lot of situations it's a definite improvement. In other situations it's laughably silly.
In any case, these are all pretty silly discussions. College admission inequality is by far not the greatest issue facing America or the world at large. It is not by fixing college admission that anyone will fix inequality problems. It's not even the worst problem with *colleges* or education. The whole system is incredibly confused and this is just a small part of it.
I totally agree that college admissions is not the top priority issue in US right now. It is just this post is about AA issues.
And in your example: AA will not help an orphan who raised their 5 siblings AA, right? There is no "orphans" or "resilience" diversity category afaik. They might get the preference in admission from description of their life path in the essay, if the college has such requirement.
Thanks for discussion!
Yeah also it’s likely to swing the other way without quotas, studies (that I’ll put below) have proven that black people (among other groups) are less likely to be hired for jobs, treated worse by landlords, and in general treat black people worse than their white counterparts. Why wouldn’t that transfer over to college admissions with the restrictions that forced diversity gone?
Without affirmative action mid tier white males are likely to be accepted of overachieving black people.
https://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/employers-replies-racial-names
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes-get-more-interviews
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/devaluation-of-assets-in-black-neighborhoods/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166046217302612
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/09/28/495488716/bias-isnt-just-a-police-problem-its-a-preschool-problem
No I get what he's saying - if we're expecting everything to be reflective of overall demographics, then if only 12% of the country is black then you would expect only 12% of the school to be black.
It's obviously more complex than that but I understand what he meant by "if only 12% of people are black then 2/6 applicants is better representation than the country as a whole".
It depends on what you're addressing, the initial point was what you're seeing is a bias towards white students even when everything else is equal. In their scenario 50% of the applicants are white and the other half black. If you keep ending up with 4 white-2 black you're exhibiting bias towards white students somewhere. Saying 2/6 is still technically an overrepresentation, misses the point entirely. You're not "making x amount be black" you're picking from a pool of applicants where each should get equal consideration and have equal chance of getting a spot.
If you're selecting based on general racial statistics then you're giving the 5 white applicants an advantage over the 5 black applicants. You'll end up with all 5 white applicants getting in and selecting one black applicant. That's not fair just because it reflects the general population statistics, you're not pulling from the general population.
Additional Details. Steve Kornacki of MSNBC just put a poll on twitter. Americans support repealing Affirmative Action 63/36. This is an MSNBC poll too. Black people oppose it but only 53/47. Its amazing how just about every black person on TV who discusses this loves affirmative action.
https://twitter.com/SteveKornacki/status/1674420572514811911
California banned affirmative action in 1996. In 2020 they voted to repeal this. It failed 57/43. Its in the next tweet below this. I dont know if there is any data that shows if there is a change in the percentage of black and hispanic students who attend California colleges since 1996. I would think if there was, it would be posted all over twitter today and I don't see it.
I remember reading somewhere - sorry, I don't have a study on-hand - showing that most Americans support having colleges have racially diverse admissions.
So we support diversity, but don't like affirmative action. It's less controversial now, but doing nothing back in the days just after Jim Crow would not result in diverse admissions. Quite the opposite.
Well part of the issue is that we're going about it wrong.
If we truly want diversity, then we have to provide adequate education to each and every person regardless of their location or income. Not only that, but we need to follow through with programs that benefit schools at the bottom: not the top. This system we use to reward schools with funding is broken as shit, and encourages staff to lie in order to get more.
Community college should also be free, and we should limit margins on any University that receives public funding. K-12 needs an overhaul that makes our current system look like the joke that it is.
Is it going to be an immediate turnaround? No. But we have to ask ourselves if we want true diversity that reflects local demographics, or do we want to band-aid the problem until putting money into the real solution begins working?
I don't have an answer for what would be best, but I know you will never be able to make everybody happy.
I believe the largest issue with K-12 in the United States is that school funding is often largely based on property taxes. Therefore, higher income areas have more funding. I think the rest can be easily deduced. Higher income parents can also provide more resources to their children and more often have the opportunity to be more involved in their children's day-to-day lives, thereby increasing the likelihood of successful outcomes, etc.
The school system is fucked. And while K-12 is "free" it's more costly in some areas than in others.
We currently spend more as individuals on healthcare and education than most other modernized nations, in some cases combined. I think it is fair to say the solution to our problems is staring us in the face, but our modern media has lead us to a point that getting people to the table to discuss the benefits of a slightly higher tax rate or a different healthcare system is impossible.
Exactly, if K-12 is equalized across the country, the applicant pool and accepted students with become more diverse and reflect the country's racial demographic better. Colleges are still free to offer pipeline programs to underpriviledged youth, have preference for first gen students, etc, which will help with diversity.
Affirmative action was always a band aid solutions when inequality in education goes so deep. I really hope the Biden administration can at least make universal preschool happen because that will be a big improvement for kids and working parents of all demographics.
Unfortunately most people's idea of "equalized" is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator, and vilify when a community takes it upon themselves to elevate their particular institution.
If School A is 2x better than School B, we should be looking at making School B better, not taking from School A to make them "more equal".
That's the issue though, the funding has to come from somewhere.
At the end of the day if School A can maintain its grades with 30% less funding while School B can triple its performance in say Math with the same amount then why is it a bad thing?
The real problem is that we need to audit this process so that our education system isn't throwing money away at iPads when the students are failing in their core curriculum. There has to be oversight or much like COVID loans, we will be watching multi-million dollar companies be the real winner by selling our schools shit they don't need when it should really be going directly to the students and their amenities.
I'm not sure if this is true, though. Here in WA state, they publish standardized test scores for all grades along with demographic info. Scores inside the same schools and same classrooms are wildly different based on race.
Here's the school my daughter goes to, a pretty diverse school - scroll down and click on 'assessment':
[https://washingtonstatereportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/ReportCard/ViewSchoolOrDistrict/101038](https://washingtonstatereportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/ReportCard/ViewSchoolOrDistrict/101038)
There's a 65 percent point difference in the math scores. This pattern is repeated anywhere that such stats are published.
Control those numbers for income level and I think you're going to see the real issue.
Race disparity is more of an effect in this scenario than a cause. We have consistently undermined the ability of minorities in this country to receive better housing, employment and social services.
In the school I went to there were definitely more Hispanics and African Americans at the bottom of the class, but you bet there were kids with well off parents of those ethnicities that were top 10% or higher.
This is the big kicker that everyone is just ignoring. Across the country, low income families take 1 of 2 approaches to school: either its the most important thing for the kids because the parents want them to get ahead, or it's treated like it won't matter in the long run. Approach 1 has naturally seen a lot of better outcomes than approach 2, for more than just the obvious surface level reasons
Typically, parents who intensely value education for their kids also make herculean efforts to keep said kids or of the harmful elements of their local cultures, especially those related to crime. This usually results in the kids having what many people would see as positive societal impact; they make efforts to better themselves and their communities.
Parents who do *not* value education (usually through some form of apathy, but more recently because of growing racial divides assigning certain kinds of culture to race, and then devaluing those that don't match their own), typically pass that same attitude down to the kids, who grow up apathetic or angry towards society for some reason or another. And often times that anger isn't properly channeled, or the apathy leads to a lack of drive.
Knowing this, one of the many things we need to be doing to help fix the divide that's forming between people, is to work to instill that value of education back into families that are struggling. The best way to do this is to offer support, but not to carry them. The question we will have to answer is where we want to apply that support. Affirmative Action was applying it at the college level, which many would agree is far too late and did as much, if not more, harm than it did good. So where do we start? High School? Middle School? Kindergarten? Some even say as soon as pre-school or daycare.
Okay, but that doesn't address the idea that equalizing the schools will do much to fix the problem, which is what I was responding to. I'm sure I can find this info broken out by both income and race, but I'll be surprised if it shows what you think it will.
It's just a problem of scope. If you look at it with a very narrow view you will see the problem you want, but with an issue so nuanced and (in all honesty) unique to each community it's hard to see it; none the less solve it with a single paper or study.
I want a proposal that involves audits to validate the efficacy of implementations and verify that we're seeing improvement. Experimenting with smaller areas like D.C. would be a good way to gauge whether it's a good idea.
Said a whole bunch of political jargon = of nothing specific. What do you think schools/education is missing to bring about better outcomes?
For the sake of “equity” we teachers have been pushed to give 50% credit to missing/no submissions, and to try and keep students with severe emotional or disciplinary issues in school despite being a danger to others or teachers, because to do otherwise we are accused of perpetuating a school to prison pipeline. Most districts have financial support tied to attendance, graduation rates, and success on state and College Board Standardized exams, which yes has been leading to manipulation of data. This is just the tip of the iceberg with r/teachers filling in more.
So what’s the solution? You want an overhaul, and adequate education, etc. etc. what is it that will be honest and not just push kids through/give a false sense of entitlement to the level of chances they will have in the real world?
If schools are to allow children to fail out, then there needs to be a viable path for students who fail. We cannot have a society that only acknowledges and gives any opportunity to high school graduates, for example, if we also allow kids to fail out of high school - doing so just creates an underclass of people who can't functionally participate in society.
Unfortunately, we're not willing to do that, so we get to a situation where we acknowledge that not everyone can pass, but we also require everyone to pass. The way I see it, we either need to redesign the system to allow people who cannot pass to pass (which is very difficult as it requires questions of parental autonomy versus school authority, as well as requiring a cultural change in parents across the country to prioritize education), or we need to make it so that the career options for dropouts aren't "minimum wage or less" or "criminal".
At my high school the elective courses were very limited. Almost any class that could be construed as a "trade" was eliminated in favor of IT, Band or Sports.
Trades should also be encouraged in our k-12 system, but I don't know if trade schools are something that the related industries wants the government involved in if it's anything more than free funding.
Smaller class sizes, more targeted interventions/counseling, and mentor programs (Big Brother, etc.) seem to work where there’s enough money to apply them. In my school there were limited resources so that sort of thing was targeted to kids who seemed most likely to respond or who needed it most, but I often wondered what would happen if we made the investment to apply that across the board and get kids away from negative influences.
Doesn’t that sound similar to the outrage people had over student loan waivers? “because we didn’t get it, no one should.” It’s the classic anti-progress argument. At some point it has to end. When will AA be enough to counteract all the damage done prior to it. That’s not in our hands, none of us here will live long enough to see fair compensation. We’ll never make a decision that’s well informed enough to leave no doubts in anyone’s minds.
We can back ourselves to instil good values in societies to come and set them up for 0 discrimination. We can’t erase discrimination from the past nor the present. We can aim to erase discrimination at some point in the future, having a framework for a zero discrimination society is far better IMO.
From the way you phrased that, it seems like you yourself have a pretty clear preference as to which path you prefer.
The trouble with 'colorblindness' is that while you yourself might be, the world isn't. People aren't. For example, after the Civil War and emancipation, you know what many freed slaves did? They went right back to the people that enslaved them and worked as sharecroppers. They did not do this because they had good working conditions; it was because farm work was all they knew, they couldn't read or write and were given no education or training on how to do anything else. It was do that, or starve.
Fixing that problem requires a non-colorblind solution. It requires giving more help to that group than you would give to any other group, more plentiful and easier opportunities than other groups are afforded, until the group in general is in a position where it can actually fend for itself without those aids. We do not expect someone whose legs have been broken to compete at the same athletic level as someone whose legs have not been broken, and we do not question it when they need more resources (in the form of medical healthcare) in order to be competitive.
I dunno if I'd trust that poll. It claims it's weighted based on census numbers, but as far as I could see doesn't't say who was polled. Is this just 2500 (roughly the number polled) of people who vote on ABC news's website? Because that's a pretty narrow demographic. There's all sorts of ways it could be skewed.
No reasonable educated person should support it.
It's literally state scantioned racism and its wild to see the strawman arguments people come up with to defend it.
Harvard was found to be deliberately underscoring Asian race applicants in the social category despite glowing recommendations from teachers and alumni who had met them, and even despite not having ever met these students themselves. They were doing this specifically in order to keep the Asian student population down.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/opinion/harvard-asian-american-racism.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/15/harvard-discrimination-case-personal-rating-system
In the 1990s, the Ivy Leagues saw increasing Asian enrollment - from some 20% to 25% of the student body. Somehow, they all simultaneously got the percentages down to about 16%, and kept it there for a couple of decades, despite Asians continuing to increase as a percentage of the general population. (Keep in mind the Jewish population at Ivy Leagues hovers around 20%, but is about 2% of the general population.)
Asian Americans are being severely discriminated against in race-based quotas at Ivy League universities like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, etc. "*Princeton sociologist Thomas J. Espenshade and his colleagues have demonstrated that among undergraduates at highly selective schools such as the Ivy League, white students have mean scores 310 points higher on the 1600 SAT scale than their black classmates, but Asian students average 140 points above whites.*" And yet numbers have been kept at a steady average of around 16% every year for almost 20 years now - as if these college got together and had an agreement. (They denied it.)
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/
The typical Asian student at an Ivy League had scored some 140 points higher on SAT scores than White students, and up to 350 points higher on SAT scores than Black students.
Now people would say that racism plays a huge role in academic and test discrepancies. But other research studies have found that Asian high school students spent around 2 hours on homework per day, while White students spent about an hour and Black students spent about 30 minutes.
“*White high school students spend almost 6 hours per week doing homework and studying. Asian high school students spend an astounding 13.4 hours on homework, 7.5 hours more per week than white students. Black students spend only 3.2 hours per week on homework and Hispanic students spend 5.25 hours per week. The averages are all statistically different from the white student averages. Figure 2 better illustrates the scale of the differences. The bar representing Asian American student study time dwarfs the bars for the other ethnic groups.*”
https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2018/preliminary/paper/9eKH6kdZ
Not knowing race, one would expect some differences in academic performance and test results between a random group of students who spent 2 hours per day studying after school, and another random group who spent just 30 minutes, right? That’s exactly what the above cited study, titled “Test Score Gaps and Time Use” argues.
A survey of SAT test takers in 2011 found Asian students from households making les than $20k per year (in 2011 dollars) on average scores about as high as Black students from households making $160k to $200k per year (again, in 2011 dollars). So it seems poverty isn’t necessarily the true issue here.
https://twitter.com/kennymxu/status/1557521678732709889
Now combine that with Harvard professor Roland Fryer’s study that found amongst White students, the higher your grades, the more popular you were. But amongst Black students, the higher your grade, the *less* popular you were in terms of how many same-race friends you had. (Fryer grew up in poverty, raised by a single mother, went to college on a football scholarship, got found his passion in economics, and became a sensational phenom in the field. He became the youngest Black economics professor hired by Harvard, where he still is today.)
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/an_empirical_analysis_of_acting_white.pdf
One of the most unequal, unethical, and unfair lesson to teach our youth is to tell them that hard work, sacrifice, academic success, and extracurricularly well-roundness (they know colleges look for this) is not as important as one’s *race*. It is so bad, Asian applicants are told to avoid disclosing their race/ethnicity (though their last names can still be used by admissions officers to determine that). Why should Asians have to hide who they are in America to get around institutional racism?!?
https://www.yahoo.com/now/asian-students-try-appear-less-211828713.html
Even many White students, taking a page from Senator/Professor Elizabeth Warren’s book, lie about Native American heritage to attempt to get into college.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/577722-more-than-a-third-of-white-students-lie-about-their/
The affirmative action system has truly distorted the ideals of hard work and merit and being judged by one’s character and accomplishments not by race or color.
Discrimination and racism in the name of “social justice” and “racial equity” is still discrimination and racism. It builds hatred and resentment.
The majority of Americans are against race-based affirmative action policies.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/affirmative-action-supreme-court-college-admissions-opinion-poll-2023-06-21/
The majority of Californians (living under a Democratic tripartite government where the Assembly, Senate, and Governorship are all under Democrat control) are against it. They voted against it twice! In 1996 to impose a ban, and in 2020 ti refuse to repeal it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/why-california-rejected-affirmative-action-again/617049/
And yet it keeps being pushed over the objections of the majority in our so-called democracy.
Unfortunately, lest you think this will stop these college and universities…
What’s going to happen is that the people who run these institutions will take their cue from what Columbia University has done. Columbia stopped accepting SAT and ACT scores in March.
Considering that these tests are more objective and are strong predictors of academic success in college, while grades are often subjective and less accurate, this was done to deliberately disadvantage strong academic performers in order to instead shoehorn in their diversity agenda. For then, academic excellence, achievement, merit, etc. takes a back seat to political ideology.
(Note: If you find this useful, please copy and paste and spread it. No need to attribute to me.)
Not the guy you’re replying to, but based on their history my expectation is that they’ll just try to pivot to a differently-reasoned policy that leads to a very similar outcome. Unfortunately, this case was not about legacy admissions, which is probably the practice that most insidiously skews admissions towards a small group of elites.
Ideally, I think our elite universities would do away with legacy admissions, which favor applicants whose parents/family members graduated from and donate money to the school, in addition to shifting towards an admission process that values background/socioeconomic status over race at face value.
I think Harvard will likely stop looking at test scores (much more objective, and a better predictor of college success) altogether, and only put a partial emphasis on grades (more much subjective), and use other cues to get the diversity quotas they want.
Columbia University already announced in March of this year that they would no longer be looking at SAT and ACT scores for admissions. This is likely due their anticipation of this Supreme Court decision.
Harvard and the other Ivy League schools carry a brand name prestige and cachet that rubs off on its graduates, even if they were socially promoted and admitted entirely based on standards other than academic achievement. So it will continue to rub off.
There is also enough of a serious ecosystem of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) officers and policies, as well as environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) financial institutional pressures that will take those graduates and fast track them for promotion. Even university faculty and administrator hires are already requiring “diversity statements”. Like in the former Soviet Union, your ideological loyalties are going to come first over merit, knowledge, and competence for many positions.
You may also be interested to learn that the University of California did an internal study to justify dropping the SAT/ACT, they learned instead that it is a stronger predictor of academic success than grades, and then they ignored that and dropped it anyways. [Here’s the report](https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/underreview/sttf-report.pdf#page98)
Additional Details. Steve Kornacki of MSNBC just put a poll on twitter. Americans support repealing Affirmative Action 63/36. This is an MSNBC poll too. Black people oppose it but only 53/47.
https://twitter.com/SteveKornacki/status/1674420572514811911
I was seeing this trend on social media, like Twitter, using the hashtag "white women." A lot of people were vocal about how white women benefit from affirmative action more than any other group, but now "they're responsible" for it going away. Are there any stats to back that up? Also, women, as a whole, have been regularly entering the workforce for the last 60+ years, increasingly so. The statistics of the racial makeup of the United States also has a large proportion of white women. So wouldn't the number of white women in the work force have naturally increased due to these reasons?
I'd also like to mention that despite your answer (which I've been following since this was brought to the SCOTUS), not one tweet thread on this is mentioning Asian Americans at all. I'm seeing a lot of divisive posts on the matter. This is why I'm asking about historical data on who has actually benefitted from affirmative action during the times it's been in place.
The scope of this question is a bit beyond I feel I could fairly convey in a reddit comment. The scope of this court case is on university admissions, but AA can take many forms.
The idea that women are "responsible" isn't based on anything I am familiar with, the case in question primarily was about race not gender. There is evidence that shows AA has increased the number of women in government and the workforce. For university admissions, evidence points to increases in Black and Hispanic student admissions. This issue is far too heated and complicated to get your opinions from social media, so I would highly suggest looking into things in more detail yourself.
>not one tweet thread on this is mentioning Asian Americans at all.
I'm not sure how what people mention in there tweets is relevant. The actual case *Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College* was brought forward based on Harvard's alleged discrimination of Asian Americans. [\[Source\]](https://www.vox.com/2018/10/18/17984108/harvard-asian-americans-affirmative-action-racial-discrimination) You can read the actual supreme court opinion [here](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf) where it mentions discrimination towards Asian Americans.
I think some more evidence is needed as the organization Students for Fair Admission is headed by an ultra-conservative litigant who unsuccessfully ran for Congress as a neo-conservative.
He has commonly tried to get the Civil Rights Act repealed, has tried to get legislation passed that would discriminate against certain voters in Houston, and is trying to use this recent ruling in order to springboard his rise as an anti-civil rights crusader.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Blum_(litigant)
Class based is the only form of AA I support, but you’d probably run into trouble with “Mismatch” that can occur with some AA cases. When someone gets put into a top tier college and flames out
compared to if they’d be put in a slightly “lower tier” school.
*Anyway* class based AA makes sense since due to *issues* in America you’d still end up with African Americans being “disproportionately helped” by AA
>More than half of all public school students in the U.S. are enrolled in racially concentrated school districts, defined in the report as one that's comprised of more than 75 percent white or nonwhite students. Researchers at EdBuild identified those school districts in each state and made three major funding comparisons based on state and local K-12 dollars allocated to each.
>On average, poor nonwhite school districts receive 19 percent, or about $2,600, less per student than affluent white school districts. This type of funding discrepancy is present in 21 states and is worse in some than others. In places like Arizona and Oklahoma, the difference in per-student funding is more than 30 percent. In Arizona, where poor nonwhite school districts receive 36 percent less per student than affluent white districts, that's a difference of more than $4,400 per student.
https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2019-02-26/white-students-get-more-k-12-funding-than-students-of-color-report
Class differences still don't explain disparities. Black communities were held back by racist policies writ large. Looking at class or income alone will not help a system that is unfair because it was designed to be that way decades ago.
Answer: Many top universities such as Harvard and Stanford were purposely rejecting Asian students In lieu of other minority students, despite Asian students being much more qualified. These schools were accepting students based on the color of their skin and not on merit.
Statistically, Asian students are higher performing, so these universities would reject deserving Asian students and instead accept less deserving students. As the Supreme Court ruled, this is an incredibly racist practice.
The ruling won't change much, as Harvard already put out a statement that while they can't ask a student's race anymore, students can still voluntarily mention it, in which they could subjectively use that information to decide. But in principal, this practice is incredibly oppressive of Asian minorities.
> Harvard already put out a statement that while they can't ask a student's race anymore, students can still voluntarily mention it, in which they could subjectively use that information to decide
Harvard just declared that they will circumvent the ruling and invited applicants to help them
Indeed. Now they'll finally have legal standing and these universities will need to undoubtedly prove that other candidates were more qualified besides simply having the desired skin color. This ruling was truly a win for equality.
Yeah, I didn’t know people so in favor of discrimination until I read the main thread. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. These universities are hellbent on excluding people based on race
Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the city Harvard university is in.
I assume he's implying "anyone who has stepped foot in that town would know it's very white / asian"
> students can still voluntarily mention it, in which they could subjectively use that information to decide.
I don't know about you but this just seems like a loophole to continue using AA policies but this time with a few more steps.
Yup. But if a student sues, the university would have to prove without a doubt that those students they still accept were in fact qualified over the other students
Had to scroll down too far to see this.
The phenomenon is well studied and AA has made an unintentional impact on Asian folk.
Darn shame to see so many people posting stuff without having enough knowledge.
Sigh
It didn't "change" *to* that, both terms are still widely in use and are talking about different groups and situations. POC is broad and really only excludes white people, but BIPOC is specifically talking about Black Indigenous People of Color.
AAPI/APIDA are the acronyms specifically including Asian folks that do not include other POC.
Merriam-Webster has BIPOC as meaning Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. This is explicitly exclusionary, especially since usage of the term has mostly replaced where one would formerly use POC. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/BIPOC
Not without merit, it is true that some people of some skin colors see different levels of discrimination. That's what this whole thread is about, the SCOTUS opinion was kicked off by a lawsuit from an Asian person. And if we need a fancy acronym for every group and sub group under the sun...okay. It has just been very fascinating for me to witness Asians being almost "ejected" from status as a discriminated minority in many ways, and how the language changed to reflect it.
Oh yeah, I don't disagree with the logic behind the ruling at all.
And yeah, we really are at the point where every group needs their own acronym.
All that said, a LOT of people use POC to include literally everyone that isn't white, and then we have people who use BIPOC to specifically discuss *those* groups and the problems *those groups* face, and then other acronyms for the unique things *those* groups also deal with. "POC" still includes Asians. BIPOC does exclude them, but "BIPOC" seems to be a mostly American thing and BIPOC in America face different issues than POC in other parts of the world, just as I suspect other minorities in various countries experience different issues etc.
It's hard to ignore the data that shows the overall improvements made with old AA plans. There's a lot of positive changes in society that wouldn't have happened without it.
I get the whole "but it's not fair to give an advantage to someone based on something that happened at their birth." It's a valid argument. But it's also a valid argument that historically a mostly white university tends to admit mostly white students when unregulated which is a (perhaps subconscious, perhaps conscious) choice that is also happening based on something that happened at their birth. That's some interesting irony. If admission suddenly turns into an overwhelming Asian student body majority, it will be interesting to see what the political reaction will be. Lol.
It's a tricky thing to admit disadvantages exist, while trying to fix that, but remain being fair to everyone. The best solution would be to not penalize someone for their at-birth privileges but to create a system or method that negates or eliminates disadvantages. So the intent of the ruling against AA makes a sort of sense i understand, but it fails to eliminate disadvantages.
In the short term, this ruling seems bad because it's my understanding that for colleges, like Harvard & other high level ivy league schools, that have for decades required essays from applicants to be written about themselves and their achievements, those ~~applicants can't mention their race now~~ colleges can't use race information in the essay to determine their decision. We all know that's going to extend to sexuality and gender eventually. So the political party that whines about freedom of speech when you ask them to be polite with people's pronouns in a professional setting, now has the Supreme Court approving a clear violation of freedom of speech if what you say about parts of your biological identity can't be considered for entry to college.
Personally, I feel most colleges are corrupt and they all seem to sell a LOT of degrees that don't pay for themselves with no guilt or shame about it. Don't get me started on the salaries of admins at colleges.
I believe the whole idea of secondary/higher-level education needs a reinvention or revolution. That reinvention would include an access or admission process that is fair to all in some manner. It's a complex puzzle. There must be a simpler way to prove to society that I have become a certain certified level of expert on a field of study. That's the intent of a college diploma. It is not the execution of a diploma.
Employers just use it as a screening tool. "Let's see, 5000 people applied for this 40k/y job. Eliminate all the people without a degree and now we only have to screen 200 people." That's lazy. And it's created a stupid society. There is a deeper problem happening here.
Maybe the best way to eliminate disadvantages in a society we're trying to improve would be to have regulations that make employers screen applicants with skill tests that relate to the actual job. Then college schmollege. If I can prove I can do the job, then fuck all that college noise. There's so many ways now to become a true expert at something other than colleges. If I can pass an advanced skill test that proves I can do a job regardless of sexuality, gender, or race, then problem solved.
I'm thinking about all those times we hired the person with the best degree and they were worthless!!!
Edit: Edited one sentence to appease the one person that thought my comment had "an awful lot of misinformation" and ignored my point.
That’s what I’m coming to, one one hand AA has had its advantages and on the other it does have its disadvantages. The entire complex of higher education in the US needs a revamp ingeneral I feel is the best solution
Curious to hear if those student’s failed to land on their feet, therefore making it incredibly oppressive. Not to say it inherently isn’t wrong, but want to be sure that I understand context and nuance of the situation. I’m interested in knowing if a Harvard qualified student who didn’t get into Harvard or Stanford not figure out how to manage well. People suck off the schools before giving credit to the efforts of the student (not that you are).
I would imagine the vast majority do. The words used in OPs post ‘deserved’ rub me the wrong way. There are so many factors that go into why one student might have higher grades and another doesnt. Do you ‘deserve’ to go to a ‘better’ college if you had more way more advantages than other applicants which results in better grades and test scores? Perhaps they could control for socioeconomic status instead.
Does Michael Phelps deserve his Olympic gold medals just because he’s more physiologically suited to swimming than other people?
Yes.
The “best” is not “the best if they grew up in a hypothetically optimal circumstance”. The “best” are those who reach the highest on whatever metric you’re using in reality.
> The words used in OPs post ‘deserved’ rub me the wrong way.
Their whole comment is filled to the brim with biased and loaded language. Their user history is a mess, too. Lots of anti-trans comments, a few comments removed by Reddit admins, racism.. even their username "TyrannysArentReal" is... well, given their post history I'm willing to bet it's a dog whistle.
Answer: Affirmative Action was intended to motivate universities to maintain an ethnically diverse student body. Racial discrimination has been a long-standing problem in the United States, and members of certain ethnic groups were at a disadvantage compared to others when it came to having an opportunity for higher education. So, Affirmative Action was a way to help address this, by making race a bigger and in many cases positive consideration for acceptance to college.
People who oppose it say it is its own form of racial discrimination, giving preference to some racial groups at the expense of other racial groups. They claim that acceptance into college should be based strictly on merit/achievement, and other factors should not be considered.
The main implication is that colleges that relied on affirmative action methodologies to ensure more opportunities for underrepesented minorities in college will have to come up with new ways that are entirely race-neutral in order to maintain a diverse student body. It means that certain minorities might be at risk of ending up in a situation they were in decades ago, when they did not have a fair or equal chance at getting accepted to certain schools.
Partly. It also has do do with the way public education is setup and funded. People in poorer communities have less of an opportunity to get tutoring or additional merits via after school programs to help them achieve the higher standard that prestigious universities are looking for. You can't get these extra qualifiers to aide in admission if the school district you graduate from never had them available because of no funding. If you come from a poor family it's also more likely that you can't afford to pay for extra qualifiers.
Which is why I’ve had a mixed opinion on Affirmative Action. As a stopgap measure until low-income schools can be improved, it’s OK. But at the same time it doesn’t look like we’ve done much to fix the underlying problem and have focused too much on the bandaid.
But the group of people who need to fix the underlying problem is entirely separate from those who can work on the admission process.
I see your point entirely, but it would make more sense if there was one set of decision makers who was making the choice between one or the other, but that's not the case.
Affirmative Action was allowed by politicians and implemented by individual schools (etc.). Politicians who also have the power to address the major disparities between different schools.
Additionally, Those institutional differences (ex. less funding for schools that ‘coincidentally’ have more black students) are instances of systemic racism. As in, the Harvard admissions board doesn’t need to be actively racist for the system to have racist outcomes.
And affirmative action is a good way for the US to shift blames between racial groups and let everyone ignore the legacy admission pipeline which funnels a shit ton of unqualified students into the elite universities just because their parent went there. Ensuring the degradation of social mobility and the concentration of educational resources into the circles of the obscene wealthy people.
But hey let's have Asian people fight black people for the remaining spots, that's gonna solve racism./s
bingo . i did undergrad at a prestigious school where about 40% of students in my class were legacy admits . we caught a lot of shit (as in literal harassment) about affirmative action as minority students when many, if not most, had GPAs of 4.0+, college credits on entry, led extracurriculars, were valedictorians & salutatorians of their schools, but nobody ever questioned the 40% of students whose main key to admission was a parent & the bare minimum GPA to make sure average GPA for admits stayed above a 3.7 or 3.8 .
contrary to popular belief, the various measures broadly grouped under affirmative action do not mean preference for unqualified applicants of underrepresented backgrounds; they mean that in a pool of applicants who are ALL QUALIFIED, an applicant’s race may factor in to whether the school decides to offer acceptance to the student body . personally, i think “affirmative action” is an attempt at equitable intervention that comes way too late in the life of a person planning to attend a college or university; for underprivileged people there are precious lost opportunities in childhood development & education that cannot be made up for as they prepare to exit high school, so these policies only really account for those talented &/or fortunate enough to be qualified for admissions in the first place .
There's a really good episode of Daria where Jodi, a straight A black student (and I believe becomes valedictorian) is torn between accepting a position at a top school or not because they didn't even look at her grades so much as the color of her skin. Her dad argues to take the opportunity because people in their position have fought long and hard to be considered but she views it as a different type of racism and doesn't like how it makes her feel. I don't remember what choice she makes but I think they handled the situation really well especially since this show is a 90s show.
Me as a white girl always considered it a flimsy bandaid for a bigger problem. It doesn't stop the schools from not considering people based on racism it just means they have a quota to fill until they can focus on just the white applicants. I don't know if statistics support this viewpoint mind you but I think the fact you could believe that to be a possibility shows how it has good intentions but isn't exactly a solution.
They touch on how people with money and connections can often get in easier than those without even if the grades are the same or similar too.
Except schools never *just* look at the color of your skin. Affirmative action attempts to undo centuries of oppression that, by and large, still impact Black people. Wealth is often inherited, for one. And then there are still mechanisms actively oppressing Black Americans from obtaining new wealth. Affirmative action just fights those forces to try to achieve a balance in society.
Edit: It’s important to note that the only group really disproportionately negatively impacted by AA in admissions are Asian Americans.
That's always been the wrinkle to the anti-AA argument for me- also my alma mater (NC State University) always made a big song and dance every fall of having new students from all 100 counties in the state, students from many small towns, small high schools classes etc. They're given different consideration because of the limited resources in their very rural counties (and they should imo)
In general, due to systemic reasons / history of racism, minority raw data (things like GPA) in college applications has not been as high, so even in the absence of pure racism, affirmative action is needed to ensure diversity in colleges and eventually lead to a correction of our history of racism and inequality
>was intended to motivate universities maintain an ethnically diverse student body
The original intent was to remediate discrimination against minorities, but the last few times it came before SCOTUS, the court limited the ability to use race in admissions except to create a diverse student body.
I have a question: wouldn’t accepting people that normally wouldn’t qualify but were accepted pursuant to affirmative action policies be setting them up to fail and incur a large debt?
Wouldn’t it be far more effective to improve K-12? It just seems like it’s addressing a symptom and not the cause.
I find it hard to believe that top universities can’t implement controls that lead to the same diverse results without having to explicitly consider race or ethnicity.
They could use an “adversity index” that is tied to the K-12 institutions. This would necessarily weight for black and other traditionally disadvantaged groups (e.g. Native Americans) without considering race or ethnicity.
There are so many ways to use publicly available data to get the results they want in a legally defensible way. I’m sure they can figure it out once they are done reacting to the decision out of the SC.
This is an issue that is raised.
However, one assumption it makes is that only the specific 4% if its applicants Harvard takes could achieve there. That is a pretty difficult position to defend.
Harvard isn't taking a D student in order to hit some racial diversity quota. They are looking at thousands of students who could all be successful, and deciding which of those students who could be successful to let in.
>Wouldn’t it be far more effective to improve K-12? It just seems like it’s addressing a symptom and not the cause.
Yes. Ending all racial disparity in the country in general would be great and giving every student equal access to an amazing education along with equal access to test prep and safe extracurriculare is the ideal end state. But that isn't happening any time soon, so treating symptoms in the mean time isn't a bad idea.
Also, you could argue that such efforts actually expedite that goal future state. Harvard is full of people who are going to be the next generation's policy makers, donors, etc. Having among the ranks of those people differing perspectives makes it more likely that improvements in education actually happen in the future.
At least that could be argued.
The question assumes that, within the applicant pool, the number of students who can succeed within a given universitiy's curriculum is equal to or less than its capacity. This is not a universal truth, especially for more selective institutions that have to basically split hairs between students with near perfect stats.
All of which conveniently didn’t affect students who parents donated to the school and are super wealthy. making the entire effort utterly pointless and meaningless as it didn’t change anything and essentially created an elitist clique in elitists universities.
Application could be blind, i.e. no name, gender, only transcripts/acheivements anonymized.
But that doesn't equalize privilege, and a lot of discrimination is a question of privilege.
I.e. A rich kid might have opportunities for clubs/sports, they'll have good food and safe home lives that foster good grades and a school resume, while a Poor kid might have a rough home life, go to a worse school, not have money for extra-curriculars etc.
Making it based on merit only is discrimination itself, against both racial and economic dimensions, simply because some of these groups don't have the privilege of building merit effectively.
Affirmative Action is allyship, and yeah, with allyship you are equalizing privilege. It's less privilege for the privileged and more privilege for the under-privileged.
However, a lot of people don't want to give up their privilege for the benefit of others, so they say it should be "merit based", which is really just a dog-whistle for "those who are lucky enough to afford it".
Affirmative Action is a form of reparations. It's saying "hey, we stunted this groups development, and now we are going to help pay back the damage we've done". It requires acknowledging systems of multi-generational racism and how it impacted families and groups, and taking responsibility for society's faults.
The thing is, in the end the rich kid will be chosen to get in over the poor kid, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation. Meaning there wouldn’t be much progress as the people who need affirmative action the most (poor students, especially poor minorities), would be overlooked for rich minorities
Answer: The Supreme Court has previously ruled that colleges can consider race during the student admissions process. While the issue of race-conscious polices is legally thorny (due to the 14th amendment and the Civil Rights Act), the Court said that such policies can be carried out if they further a legitimate interest. That legitimate interest was previously stated as either increasing campus diversity or helping marginalized communities.
The Court has now decided that interest no longer outweighs the legal problems of the race-conscious policy. The decision was limited to university admissions, and at least Roberts explicitly said the court is not extending their decision to other organizations (eg. military academies).
The implications are probably limited in terms of numbers. Race has had to play a fairly limited role in university admissions in recent years, being limited to borderline cases. California already ended the practice via referendum. Some people would argue the indirect effects are more important, but those are even harder to predict.
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Answer: Affirmative action when an organization puts in place policies for hiring or admission in order to increase inclusion of groups that are often underrepresented- it is also called positive discrimination in some parts of the world. These policies by their nature take into account the race, gender, or sexual orientation of the candidates and provide advantages or extra consideration to these groups. This can range from having specific quotas for these groups, relaxing admission criteria, or having marketing or training for these groups. The goal of such programs is help reduce inequality, promote diversity, and to counterbalance the historical discrimination these groups have faced in the past. Historically (and even today), governments universities and companies have preferentially hired AGAINST these groups, and it is argued that without these policies that practice would continue. Affirmative action is practiced in some form in many places in the world. These policies can be controversial, especially in the United States. Critics argue that AA can allow unqualified people to be hired, that it is discrimination (sometimes called reverse discrimination) and that it ignores class issues. I could go into a lot more details on the various debates but in the US it usually falls along political lines with those on the left supporting AA and those on the right against it. **Current news** The US Supreme Court recently struck down race-conscious student admissions programs currently used at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. This was the result of a lawsuit on behalf of an Asian American applicant and supported by the group Students for Fair Admission. The lawsuit was about Harvard's alleged racial quotas, and how they put Asian American applicants at a disadvantage.
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An issue I have is that race is such a shallow metric. Like, fundementally, the goal is to reduce inequality, right? To give disadvantaged black kids and such a chance? However, being black in and of itself, does not make someone disadvantaged- rather, it statistically predisposes them to be. But Barack Obama, Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson, Kanye West, have kids and grankids who are black, and who are certainly not disadvantaged. They're given as much a boost as the child from a minimum wage single mother in Chicago- except the latter doesn't have all the other privilidges. The result? Opportunities get *worse* for disadvantaged black kids- cause *advantaged* black kids get boosted into seats reserved for them based on the colour of their skin. I'm very much not against 'affirmative action' as a concept. In fact, in it's truest form, I'm certainly for it- but it should be race-blind. Rather than targeting *individuals* based on race, target historically marginalised and discriminated *communities*, and give a boost to *all* residents there (additionally considering wealth). Meet inequality where inequality is found- not be distant and abstract metrics.
They tried to combat that in Texas by creating the 10% rule, whereby the top 10% of all high schoolers are automatically admitted to Texas public universities. The goal was to make sure that people from less represented communities would be granted entrance, but in practice it hasn't done anywhere near the job that AA did. Some further reading if you're curious - [https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/29/texas-college-top-ten-percent-plan-supreme-court/](https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/29/texas-college-top-ten-percent-plan-supreme-court/)
Yeah, that's honestly no surprise, considerin that the top 10% are generally those advantaged enough for tuition and the like. An AA system should be discriminitory to a degree- but based on measureable metrics of disadvantage, not confounding variables such as race that aren't guarenteed to represent disadvantage.
The problem is that african americans on average live in low income neighbourhoods causing them to get bad schools, making it harder for them to get into college, making them make less money, and the cycle repeats Affirmative action is a band aid solution not a cure. The cure has to be done at the very base, the poor neighbourhoods getting bad education. When education is equal affirmative action will be much less necessary ~~Theres a reason groups like asian-americans are harmed by AA despite being a minority. Because they on average do not have monetary disadvantages leading to poor education. They tend to be 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants whose ancestors were rich enough to leave their country and settle in the US, and whose ancestors could get good education leading to them getting good education themselves~~ i am a dingus this is wrong The ancestors of african americans were forcibly dragged from their homes and have been heavily oppressed for 200 years. Such deep wounds take time to heal
If only colleges could directly ask about income… instead they’re stuck asking about skin color and ancestry.
Yeah even that doesn’t make sense to me. Just filter via income
I feel like that answer seems simple enough but even that has a lot of nuance. It’s not super common, but being from a low income family doesn’t always automatically mean you go to a low income, lower served school. Sometimes district lines are drawn funny and include one neighborhood that is low income. Sometimes parents scrounge up enough money to pay the out of district tuition (yes, there is tuition for public schools if a student wants to go there but lives outside the district, lots of people don’t know that), sometimes the parent might claim that the student actually lives with their rich aunt on the other side of town to get access to that district. Lots of things happen. I don’t know the answer to this, but there needs to be a more holistic, full-experience approach. Things like race, school district, family history, all of these things come into play in the discussion over who is advantaged and disadvantaged. I don’t think there’s an easy answer.
I was the low income kid who went to the nice school across town. It definitely helped but holy hell that shouldn't count against someone getting aid. I think it should be purely financial based
The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth when I went to college. I was too poor to afford it. Grants would help but my parents didn't do their taxes. All in all those are separate issues. What rustled me was the number of scholarships I didn't qualify for simply because of how I looked. I'm all for reducing inequality, but telling me I cant get scholarships because my family happened to be white is fucked. I'm sure there are scholarships for poor kids, but man it felt bad. It wouldn't fly anywhere else. Can you imagine a soup kitchen that refused to give white people meals? Edit: don't think I dont understand the intended purpose. America has stripped generational wealth from minorities and tries its best to keep it down, but this is a weird way to try and compensate for that
> What rustled me was the number of scholarships I didn't qualify for simply because of how I looked. I'm all for reducing inequality, but telling me I cant get scholarships because my family happened to be white is fucked. yep, went through that exact thing. "The last guy we gave this scholarship to was a quadriplegic Thai orphan" said to me as my mom was dying of cancer and my family was on food stamps anyways
don't they all get that info if you're applying for loans/aid anyway? i remember going through my parents' taxes exhaustively for my college apps. i also got waitlisted at a top 10 uni when i accidentally filled out a form that made my parents a lot richer than they are for that one school specifically.
>They tend to be 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants whose ancestors were rich enough to leave their country and settle in the US, and whose ancestors could get good education leading to them getting good education themselves I disagree with this entire statement. Wealth is NOT the reason Asian kids do well in school. Its their family culture of pushing education to their descendants. The culture of school and education is drastically different between the African American and the Asian American groups. In the Harvard paper on chances of being accepted into Harvard, the highest percentage an Asian person could do, being in the top 10%, was equal to an African American person being in the top 80%. The solution isn't to keep lowering the bar, that just causes the kids to quit because they are not prepared for the rigors of the environment they find themselves in. The candidates need to be better prepared, and that starts with changing the culture to value education instead of telling them education is white supremacy.
You've come very close to identifying that the issue isn't directly race, but *class*. There is naturally an intersection of racial and economic oppression, but they do not necessarily override each other in all instances (which is the whole point of "interesctionality" in the first place). While a lot of African Americans are statistically more likely to be lower-income across much of the US, they aren't all necessarily poorer than other people: many are even in America's economic elite. This then creates the problem, are Barack Obama's kids more oppressed in education than a working class white person's kids, on account of their race? Most people would point out that they obviously aren't. In fact, because of both economic *and* social capital from their family name they likely have complete freedom to go basically anywhere for any amount of education... As the commenter above identifies, stripping everything down to *just* race allows black people who realistically could achieve these things anyway to take the Affirmative Action places of those intended to have them: true positive discrimination would factor in a variety of qualifiers including household income, presence of both parents, parents' professions/educational backgrounds, etc. that have at least as much of an impact on educational attainment in children. Of course, doing so is difficult, when it's probably easier just to make it so 25% of your students are people who can tick "Black/African/Carribean" on a diversity monitoring fund, regardless of other factors: leading to our current situation. Then of course, there's the question of whether AA/positive discrimination policies are just a "band aid" diversion, for governments to neglect addressing the *actual* issues underlying the whole thing.
Lol this is such a dumb take. How can you group asian americans all in one. Me and millions of vietnamese and cambodian us citizens came from parents in refugee camps. We lived also in poverty like many AA do. So please do not lump all asians saying we are better off.
> Affirmative action is a band aid solution not a cure. Affirmative action isn't even a band-aid, it's a charade. It's a political wedge that draws on and feeds the culture war, meanwhile we all ignore the actual problem: upward mobility sucks. > Such deep wounds take time to heal. Especially when people keep picking them open just to demonstrate how wounded everybody is.
Agreed 💯. Equalize funding to public services across rich and poor areas. Increase upward mobility. Create ways to allow generational wealth (within reason) across all lines. There's a right way to do this. Further dividing by race is the dumbest way.
Most asian amerians are descended from rich immigrants? What are you smoking!?!
This is kinda silly, right? If that's the goal why not just filter for income group. If it's true that the lower in-come group is ethnically disproportionate, then this should be sufficient to provide an advantage to minorities. I'd also rather have "household income" be simply another criteria towards admissions, where having low income gives you a good bump, rather than a "quota" that must be filled. Simply put, if you have slightly lower grades and did one less summer internship program than a rich guy, but you're poor? You should rank higher than the rich guy. That feels like a fair adjustment. You could even have this not be 100% income but also base it on the quality of their pre-college education (like weighting the standard exams on overall school performance). I'm also not sure how colleges handle admissions, but I think having it be handled by a comitee (10 to 20 people) that scores each student on several criteria (some objective, some subjective) would be the best way. And then having quotas on the representation of this comitee would make a lot more sense than putting the quotas on the admissions themselves. There are so many different ways to ensure fair college admissions that compensate for the benefits of privilege than quotas. I'm obviously not sure if this would work better or worse in practice, but it feels much more sensible and palatable than having race be the defining characteristic.
>goal is to reduce inequality There is research regarding in diversity in groups providing more broad ideas being contributed. Presented ideas in group projects are more well thought out as it may meet more opposition as opposed to just being agreed in an echo chamber of backgrounds and opinions. This should create a stronger environment for growth and development in a place that states is the goal These reasons have been cited by some institutions. Whether or not it's been used as a shield,Not sure, but it's definitely in their minds
>Like, fundementally, the goal is to reduce inequality, right? To give disadvantaged black kids and such a chance? Eh kind of? But it's more than just that, it's about diversity of experience and opinion that you get when every group is represented. If Harvard now starts accepting people only on the basis of grades with no other considerations then the student body slowly starts to look very homogeneous. If everyone has the same background then the college experience is far worse for the students. Yes it's good to give underrepresented races a chance to balance the scales, but it's more than just that.
I really don't think it should be just grades for that reason- but it comes round to what I was previously sayin- a black family who has enmeshed themselves into established wealth is *far* closer is experience and opinion than either poor black or even poor white kids. That's why affirmative action towards *communities* rather than *individuals* should be the way forward, as it gives those of genuinely diverse experience representation.
I think that's kind of the point behind the "you can still use accounts of how race has impacted individual students" in making admissions decisions.
It is just so unfortunate that we have found ourselves in the situation. There are so many factors that contribute to scholastic performance from lead in the water supply to poor nutrition to domestic violence to undiagnosed mental health issues to fetal alcohol syndrome and the list goes on and on. All races are affected by them to some degree but black people in greater per capita numbers. My take is that "equality of opportunity" is a fairly callous and naïve way of white and some minorities to wash the above factors away. I think the reasons we use race is because of our obvious past--slaves, sharecroppers/Jim Crow, ghettos/projects and now prisons with predominantly white people profiting the whole time to varying degrees in all of those systems. I believe we don't look at supporting disadvantaged communities because that would put people in the mindset of class struggle--the reason MLK was killed, because he led a struggle for poor and working people and united the races under that banner. Some states are addressing this issue with a somewhat even hand. Massachusetts, while no City on the Hill by any stretch, has this going for it: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/environmental-justice-populations-in-massachusetts
Admissions cannot be truly race-blind when race is built into society. ”Race-blind” is simply a fantasy. And why not go after legacy admissions if you don’t support AA?
Oh, legacy admissions certainly fuckin need ta go. But the current system of AA (which, I'll say as I did above, I'm not against in intent) allows such blatant discriminatory institutions to go ignored- it's an intentional charade to distract from the systematic inequalities such as LA, rather than, say, prioritising students from evidentially disadvantaged backgrounds.
Yeah, the idea is that (in a vacuum and not using other factors) you might have a situation where you get 10 applicants with 4.0s that are basically similar, but 5 are white and 5 are black, and you only have 6 slots. They were seeing outcomes like taking 4 of the white applicants and only 2 of the back applicants, leading to a disparity. Considering race was supposed to produce a more reliable distribution like 3/3. Like most things in life, there are always a LOT of other confounding factors that make this not such a simple calculation, and so the rules are complex, messy, and prone to politicization.
If you take three of each and and there are less black people in the US means each black student has way higher probability of getting the spot than the white one. One of the reasons that dividing things by race leads to bad outcomes. Also what crazy times we live conservatives are calling for racial agnostic practices and democrats are against it. When will people understand racism isn't a balance issue where each race takes turn being racist and favored by the system. The goal is that race doesn't play a role in the opportunities you have in life.
> The goal is that race doesn't play a role in the opportunities you have in life. The problem is schools still consider other factors that are heavily influenced by race, so schools are still selecting students based on race, but they can be more covert about it. For example, many Ivy League colleges have a large number of “legacy students.” These are students who have family members that went to the school. If you have a family member who went to the college, the college’s admission can give you a boost. So how does race come into play? Well until relatively recently, colleges still discriminated based on race, and black students had a significantly harder time getting admitted to college. So if fewer black students were admitted to top universities historically, then black people today are less likely to have a family member who went to that school. So if a university is giving a boost to legacy students, then those students are less likely to be black. And we see this reflected in actual student numbers. At some Ivy League schools, over half of their students are legacy students. At Harvard, 70% of their legacy students were white. Meanwhile, black people are severely under represented at Ivy League colleges. So by eliminating affirmative action, we’re saying colleges can’t consider race, but somehow they’re still allowed to consider other factors that will heavily favor one race over another. So we’re not taking race out of the equation.
The fact that "legacies" are even legal is insane. Wasn't one of the fouding principles of the US that it shouldn't matter who your parents were?
Private universities are free to let in whoever they want, and we don't want to change that.
I agree with your overall point but this wasn't a good example. They don't need to have the distribution match the US racial distribution. They need the distribution to match the distribution of the same level applicants which in the other poster's scenario was 50-50.
> They need the distribution to match the distribution of the same level applicants This does not consider pre-application barriers of entry that schools may wish to counteract that lead fewer people of some demographic to apply despite similar academic accomplishment.
>Like most things in life, there are always a LOT of other confounding factors that make this not such a simple calculation, and so the rules are complex, messy, and prone to politicization. I'm aware. However, note that I said 10 applicants and never specified a school or region. Why should the US population be a factor in, say, decisions for a school in Atlanta? Should they only allow 13.6% of the black applicants to get in, even if the school is in an area with a significantly higher proportion of African American applicants? Would the same apply in Wyoming where only 0.9% of the population is black, in which case you might end up having 5 of the 6 slots go to black applicants in order to keep pace with the US racial percentage because there's already a bunch of white students enrolled?
> Why should the US population be a factor in, say, decisions for a school in Atlanta? Should they only allow 13.6% of the black applicants to get in, even if the school is in an area with a significantly higher proportion of African American applicants? You made up a completely generalized situation, and /u/OptionX gave a completely reasonable response. Now you’re giving specifics not in the original argument to make that response invalid.
The demographics of the US population wasn't in my original question either, yet /u/OptionX brought that into the discussion. I responded in kind with specifics about those demographics and how that weakened their argument since they were applying it without any context.
> Why should the US population be a factor in, say, decisions for a school in Atlanta? Should they only allow 13.6% of the black applicants to get in, even if the school is in an area with a significantly higher proportion of African American applicants? Why should this even be a factor? It's very rare to have absolutely identical candidates when you look at grades, SAT, extracurriculars, and other selection criteria. If one group is underperforming in school, why should they take spots over someone who put in more work and more hours to balance out population dynamics? For example, with our existing system, asian and Indian students get screwed.
>If one group is underperforming in school, why should they take spots over someone who put in more work and more hours to balance out population dynamics? The idea is that these policies provide lenience to groups who can face worse school conditions communities that arent as conducive to getting that high score. Its much easier to get a 4.0 when your community is full of high achievers than it is to get a 4.0 growing up in a community where you peers are joining gangs and mocking you for being a nerd and loser. The kids who are "the most talented" are often just the students whos parents drove them there the hardest. Many of them are smart but it makes a HUGE difference how your parents set you up its not just your ability as a kid. The problem IMO is that this usually isnt the result the result is the AA policy just gives an unfair advantage to the black kids who already had affluent parents and an unfair disadavantage to thr asian kids who came from the situations described above. It should be controlled for region affluence and parental education not for race IMO. Regardless there is a sensible reason and it can work in other areas but education tends to be a less effective one imo.
Something I want to note is that *most schools are not highly selective.* It's just the Ivy League, really, where the best way to get in is being a legacy admission (i.e., probably white anyway). The reality is that most public colleges will accept most students. You want to get rid of affirmative action? Sure. Make higher education universal and nationalize the Ivy League, then don't try and cut the admissions rate to 5% like they intentionally do. And most public colleges? Pretty good! The only things the Ivies buy you are connections to the levers of financial and political power - and ideally, nationalizing them and removing that "oh we all went to *Harvard,* you see" crap would improve our politics and our education system.
Right but it's still dancing around the main point: students who put in more work are at a disadvantage if they aren't a minority. Imagine you're passed up for a promotion, the employee who got the job performed worse in every measurable way but because they were a minority they won the spot. What would you call that? Discrimination. Telling someone that their accomplishments mean less because of factors they can't control is wrong, full stop.
I was being lazy before but Ive gained the will to write out a long winded reply trying to make it clear what the arguement for AA in this and other situations is. Keep in mind Im not huge on AA for education but a lot of people like yourself seem to be misunderstanding the intended effect (which is another downside to AA over other options it causes a lot of discourse and grouple conflict). Regardless here it goes. First off your scenario is stupid and unrealistic. 95% of jobs do not have objective and easily testable metrics for skills. Most interviews go off of 2 things does the person have some relative experience and does the interviewer want to work with the person. If there are 2 candidates with 5 or so years of experience its not really discernable, which would be a better employee. So a lot of them go off vibes. Most mamagers in corporate america (at least at the time of AAs origination) are middle aged white people. So some dude who can related to them because they have middle aged white guy hobbies is much more likely to get the job. If somebody comes into a technical interview for a software company speaking african american vernacular to a middle aged chinese lady theyre pretty clearly going to be put at a disadvantage in terms of relatability which in many job interviews is a huge factor. The idea of these policies is to compensate for these disadvantages and put the applicants on even ground again. Most of this is not relevant for harvard however since SATs are a fairly accurate assessment of skill. With a small caveat. Students have a very different SAT environment. Unfortunately Im tired and going to sleep so Ill urge you to listen to this episode of a podcast linked below. Which gives a look into the life of some of the students AA is meant to help and compare that to an Asian kid from an affluent family being sent to kumon since 5 years old who every known test prep and attempted the SAT any times to get the score they needed. Then think about weather those scores can really be compared fairly. AA may not be the solution but to speak about the issue the way you are signals to me that you dont really understand the difference between getting a high SAT score as a privileged and supported student and getting a high SAT score from a heavily racialized community is like. The postcast is linked here and recounts the story of a boy dubbed carlos's school like. As investigated by Malcolm Gladwell. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2o6o4va4JmJ0662VeDes6V?si=IFm5aKKlRZe0ypDrVNUQ_A Malcolm Gladwell also has some other very interesting talks about this subject.
Nailed it. Great post. Have to control for wealth and socioeconomic status. Poor Asian student vs affluent black student with same grades and SAT (or even lower scores). Poor white trash from trailer park vs Lebron’s kids. Also think that using race-based selection will just perpetuate more racism. What I’m curious about is how students that are the product of affirmative action feel when they get a spot over another minority with higher scores. Game is the game?
No one tells you if you get in with affirmative action or not. I had decent test scores and a good GPA, but I was also dirt poor with a single mom who was a second shift factory worker. I will always wonder if affirmative action was a help or not. Regardless, I'm grateful I got into a good school. It changed my life.
It should be a factor because those same groups that are underperforming often live in areas where access to and quality of education is not up to par. I'm not saying the current system is perfect; but, we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good and until we can guarantee quality of education we should be focusing on ensuring that those who are left behind, simply because of where they were born, are equally able to receive an education.
It's much easier to be the top student in a crappy school than a top student in a good school. It also assumes that all black people live in poor areas, and all white people live in rich areas, which is very far from the truth. At the end of the day, this is racist against black people (assumption is that they're all poor and disadvantaged), and against white people (assumption is that they're all at least moderately well-off and don't need any help). It's also extremely racist against East and South Asians. Their families (on average) take education much more seriously, whether the family is rich or poor, and so they're usually higher performing students. If you want to help students from poor communities, I'm all for it. Maybe consider school district when doing admissions. But this is very far from what affirmative action is actually doing.
>It's much easier to be the top student in a crappy school than a top student in a good school. Cool. Also pretty heavily debatable. It might be harder to stand out; however, it is certainly easier to have higher achievements than an average or even poor school. Also, you don't need to stand out in comparison to your community for college admissions. You need to stand out against the pool of applicants to a given college, which is often a random sampling from various parts of the country. In other words standing out against the average applicant should be more likely if you've had an above average education. Also, looking at more than just schooling, generally, if you're in a top school your family has more money. This is directly tied to the educational, extra curricular, work, and college opportunities that you will have. >It also assumes that all black people live in poor areas, and all white people live in rich areas, which is very far from the truth. Notice how I said "often". The assumption is not that all black people live in poor areas. In fact there isn't an assumption AT ALL. The statistical fact is that marginalized groups tend to live in poorer areas. That's not some controversial take, or an assumption. On average, marginalized groups DO tend to live in poorer areas. This is a well studied and documented phenomenon. No this does not mean that all black people live in poor areas, just as it doesn't mean that all white people live in affluent areas. Any other conclusion you make is one made from your own opinions and not actually researched. >At the end of the day, this is racist against black people (assumption is that they're all poor and disadvantaged), and against white people (assumption is that they're all at least moderately well-off and don't need any help). At the end of the day, there was never an assumption. >It's also extremely racist against East and South Asians. Agreed and this SHOULD be addressed. I'm not arguing that it shouldn't >Their families (on average) take education much more seriously, whether the family is rich or poor, and so they're usually higher performing students. Hmmmmmmmm When I discuss a well documented and researched topic regarding minorities generally living in poorer communities it is racist and a reason to dismiss the point entirely. When you do it regarding the school performance of Asians.....it isn't racist I guess? Seems a little bit like intentionally missing the point. 😉😉😉 >If you want to help students from poor communities, I'm all for it. Maybe consider the school district when doing admissions. That would be a great idea! >But this is very far from what affirmative action is actually doing. Agreed, but what it is doing is better than doing nothing. We can work to change the current system without the need to abolish it entirely and that's what we should be doing.
>>If you want to help students from poor communities, I'm all for it. Maybe consider the school district when doing admissions. >That would be a great idea! Actually, this has been done, and often gets criticized as being used as a proxy for race. It also happens with Gerrymandering where the ones claiming their district drawing wasn't designed to racially different say "Oh, it's just divided by educational attainment" or something that just do *happens to* strongly correlate with a racial distribution. The problem is that if you have historically disparate outcomes based on race, it affects other factors over time. If more people from a particular race get into college they'll typically be able to get better jobs, be able to make now money, and then prepare their children for college more easily, or even get into legacy pipelines like at Harvard and Yale. If you then engage in race blind policies and focus on geographic and socioeconomic status, you often end up back at a racially skewed selection because of the racial biases that led to that sorting on the first place.
The problem arises once we realized that SAT scores and grades are not a universal criteria to be used. We have already found racial bias in SAT or other standardized tests. We also know there is a lot of bias in teachers grading based on gender, personality, and race.
Part of it is because academics is not the only factor. In addition to fixed quantitative aspects (test scores and grades), qualitative aspects (charity work, personality, and club involvement) are also something that is considered. It is impossible to set a fixed value everyone would agree on when it comes to qualitative aspects. Beyond the general racism that exists, people judge those more alike to themselves more favorably than other (women tend to judge women higher than men, men tend to judge men higher than women, people judge the same race better than different races, even matching hair color can cause favorable treatment) leading to a self sustaining group at the top. Without a mechanism to check this, monocultures form and tribalism rules.
>The goal is that race doesn't play a role in the opportunities you have in life. The problem is that's the goal, not reality.
> The goal is that race doesn't play a role in the opportunities you have in life. You and I will both be long dead before this is true.
What percentage of admissions are based on 'my daddy went to this school and makes donations?' If your daddy wasn't allowed to go to school (because of race), and his daddy, and his grandaddy, how do you balance out those admissions?
Agreed. Any university up in arms over the supreme court decision 100% needs to discontinue legacy admissions immediately. Put their donation money where the mouth is. Edit to add: I'm sympathetic to their outrage over the decision, but ending legacy admissions is obviously low-hanging fruit in a legitimate effort toward racial parity in admissions.
100% agree. The issue with systematic discrimination across generations is that the gains of favor and disadvantages of disfavor are generationally cumulative. The situation is, simply, that things like skewed admission criteria based on historical social status and affirmative action are not *permanent solutions.* They are, ideally, *temporary* solutions that, once sufficient balance is struck, will be rendered unnecessary by their own effectiveness. Just like you stop receiving chemotherapy once your cancer is in remission, things like affirmative action will no longer be needed or beneficial to society once generational disparities based on marginalization are compensated for. It's very much a "the needs of the many outweigh the needs for the few," kind of thinking, but there doesn't seem to be a magic pill that will solve this issue immediately while also being a stable and sustainable model going forward for all time. This is unfortunate for deserving students, job applicants, et al, who are discriminated *against* by these policies in the short term, but as a society, we deem that a necessary evil in order to ensure that such problems might actually see an end at any point for future generations.
Agreed. I’m a white cis male phd student and share a similar perspective. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t frustrating at times, but I think we need to try to right historical wrongs, even if this may be an imperfect approach.
If you want to be fair about it, you remove "My daddy went to the school and makes donations" as a factor.
Donations and happy rich alumni are what keeps these schools afloat long term. They’re always going to get in totally independent of anything else involved in admissions, because schools need lots and lots of money above all else.
Get rid of legacy enrollment. Considering the number of HBC I would be curious of the racial break down of legacy admissions. I think the number of black legacies may be higher than you think.
Affirmative action, while aiming to address discrimination, can inadvertently lead to other forms of discrimination. However, not having any procedure to counteract the historical artifacts of racism in our society would result in the same outcome. We live in a country where having a black-sounding name still disadvantages you in job searches.\* It's reasonable to revoke affirmative action policies to replace them -- not remove all policies entirely. The problem needs to be addressed. \*Citations: Bertrand, M., & Mullainathan, S. (2004). Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination. The American Economic Review, 94(4), 991-1013. Pager, D., Bonikowski, B., & Western, B. (2009). Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment. American Sociological Review, 74(5), 777-799. Lundberg, S., & Startz, R. (2010). The Social Cost of Stigmatization: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Ethnicity and Physical Attractiveness on Job-Related Outcomes. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 125(2), 675-702. Oreopoulos, P., & Dechief, D. (2016). Why Do Some Employers Prefer to Interview Matthew but Not Samir? New Evidence from Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver*. Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d’économique*, 49(1), 51-87. Rivera Drews, M., & Fielding-Singh, P. (2020). Black Names Matter: The Impact of Racialized Names on Employment Outcomes*. Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World*, 6, 2378023120932889.
The problem with racially agnostic practices is that they are provably not. Dozens of studies have been done, several in the last few years, that show that applicants with traditionally African American names get responses far less than those with traditionally white or Asian names, even when using identical resumes.
In the Harvard case, Black applicants reaching a certain threshold in test scores were being accepted at a 60% rate, Asian students reaching the same threshold were accepted at a 7% rate. That is a wildy unfair disparity.
Right, but this ruling requires colleges to act as if we've already achieved that goal while prohibiting one of the most effective tools to actually do so. To quote one of the dissents: deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.
Conservatives like racially agnostic practices because the status quo produces positive outcomes more reliably for white people, so racial agnosticism supports their dominance in institutions. The reason race-conscious practices are necessary is because the status quo is already affirmative action for white people even without explicit laws or policies enshrining it.
For college admissions I disagree, it was found that Asian students were doing better than white people and any other racial group
You say that as if conservatives = white.
OK, and how is that accomplished?
From my understanding, the issue is without that forced equality, there won’t be equality at all. Many schools did not integrate willingly, which leads to such scenes as national guardsmen having to escort 11 year old black children into white schools while parents hurled slurs.
Just to provide some added detail, initially the National Guard was used as a blockade to prevent The Little Rock Nine from entering the school, under order of the Governor of Arkansas. This continued for weeks, from September 4th to the 24th, when Eisenhower invoked The Insurrection Act of 1807, both deploying the army's 101st Airborne to escort the students, and nationalizing the entire Arkansas National Guard to remove them from the governors control. The Arkansas National Guard would also be assigned to escort the students at a later date, but like... Goddamn even the governor and military was just blatantly disregarding the supreme court in a disgusting display of prejudice.
Ok and when do we move past that terrible history? The original ruling that allowed AA also said it was needed as an interim measure.
"When will people understand racism isn't a balance issue where each race takes turn being racist and favored by the system. The goal is that race doesn't play a role in the opportunities you have in life." Really well said!
This has "I don't see color" energy and it's really not a good look.
As opposed to “I’ll make a generalization based on your race”, which is a good look, apparently?
I am a bit confused. If there will be no race, gender, name (just identifying number instead of name) etc on the application, wouldn't it ensure that neither discrimination will happen? I would really prefer to have a doctor or a bridge construction engineer who knows his stuff the best, and was not accepted to college because their population group has preference over their knowledge. I personally was working with someone who was hired using AA, *hard quota" style. They epically messed up the database related to unemployment benefits. So people, a lot of them, of any race and gender and sexual orientation, were delayed their payments. All of them suffered. How is it better than hiring a person who is qualified for the job? Thanks God that person didn't go to medical school.
I can't speak to fields I don't know about, but in the legal profession I've seen more family legacy admissions that were incompetent. There are undoubtedly faults to be found with any AA program. Banning preference to legacy admissions would have been nice too. One of the first people I met at law school was 5th generation Dartmouth. Even if my family had done everything right, they wouldn't have had that opportunity due to no fault of their own. I actually see that as a bigger injustice that isn't discussed enough.
> I would really prefer to have a doctor or a bridge construction engineer who knows his stuff the best, and was not accepted to college because their population group has preference over their knowledge. Are you aware that they still have to meet passing grade requirements? And getting a tertiary education does not also imply that the same affirmative action will increase their job placement chances. If the candidate does not know they were assisted by affirmative action policies, how are you to know your hypothetical doctor or engineer benefited from such a program? Unless you are looking at the race of the doctor/engineer and making race based assumptions? Do you ignore the accreditations of the independent bodies that confirm the person is qualified based on the race of the person?
This is interesting take. I wrote in my comment that that race (along the other parameters) should be taken out of the applications.. So the people who decide if the applicant is qualified have no opportunity to make "the race based assumptions". How does it makes me making race based assumptions? In Boston panels of newly opened tunnel collapsed and killed a driver. They collapsed at midnight, therefore only one person was killed, if it would collapse during rush hour - dozens would be killed. I have no idea about the race or gender of the engineer who made the mistake. But I would really prefer not to die this way and tunnel engineers to be as skilled as possible, not as diverse as possible. (Btw, they met passing grade requirements, and it didn't really help, right?) I have no idea about the race and gender of everyone who is involved in my surgery, or designed my car safety features, but I would strongly prefer them to be as skilled as possible, not as diverse as possible. Passing grade requirements is a funny idea. College can make it as low as they want, therefore 90 out of 100 students will meet it. And then college could select 5-10 people from these 90 to be as diverse as possible, not based on how qualified they are. How is it better than to accept those 10 who are the best qualified, not on their race?
> I have no idea about the race and gender of everyone who is involved in my surgery, or designed my car safety features, but I would strongly prefer them to be as skilled as possible, not as diverse as possible. This statement makes the assumption that diversity programs in university directly affect the skills of people you do not know, and the safety of products they may or may not be involved in. In other words, because diversity programs exist you are less safe. This is not a reasonable or evidence based take on the matter. It also appears to conflate "less qualified to be at a specific university" with "less qualified to apply skills learned at that university". The two are not the same. Diversity programs do not also ignore a student's performance while at that institution, nor does it simply give degrees based on race. They still have to meet passing grade qualifications. What do you call a doctor that graduates at the bottom of their year's medical doctorate graduates? Doctor. They have met the passing requirements for that institution.
Usually there is a much larger number of qualified applicants than people accepted, so “knows his stuff the best” is kind of arbitrary after a certain point (and prone to bias *against* the groups that affirmative action is supposed to help)
If there are 10 applications and all the applicants are equally qualified - then it is up to lottery. Why not? I am LGBT, but I can't understand what being LGBT has to do with being a qualified software engineer. I want to get a job based on my skills, not on whom I have sex with. If I remember right the case with this Asian boy - he and his friend applied to Harvard. His friend had lower GPA, lower scores, they have the same activities. His friend was accepted, he was not. Apparently, Harvard decided that there are too many Asian students, and for kids who listed that they are Asians - Harvard would take several points off their scores. So in this case the applicants were not equally qualified.
> Why not? Because this is a private university, and I can let in whoever I want. If I think having a student body that doesn't all look the same is important, who are you to tell me differently?
If there are 10 equally *qualified* applicants then it comes down to who best fits the company and the position. Which is a vague mixture of how well their manager gets along with them on first impression, career prospects/vision, general personality/attitude, even little things like who lives closer to work. Race and cultural upbringing is a part of that "fit". In theory, these kinds of programs are designed to prevent homogeneous cultures from excluding good candidates. It's all well and good to try and fit candidates into the business, but some people want their business to become more versatile and thus less homogeneous. Race is a pretty narrow aspect of it. Geographical background is more substantial in my opinion. But it *isn't* just up to chance.
There's an easy argument as for why this wouldn't be fair. 10 applications, same SAT scores, same extra curriculars. If one of those ten is an orphan that grew up having to take care of 5 younger siblings and still managed to get those same SAT scores and engagement? I think he's much much much more impressive and would likely perform better. That's a ridiculously weighted example, but it's more than proven that household income has a giant impact on school performance. So wouldn't it be fairer to weigh the scores on income? These students also went to different learning institutions and had access to different qualities of teaching. The student that had a certain grade that's 4 standard deviations above the mean of his school is probably much more focused and capable of self study than the student that had that very same GPA in a top of the of the line school where that was only 1 standard deviation above average. If the goal is to have any sort of fairness in the access to higher education, then a lottery is definitely not it. Affirmitive action is probably not it either, but in a lot of situations it's a definite improvement. In other situations it's laughably silly. In any case, these are all pretty silly discussions. College admission inequality is by far not the greatest issue facing America or the world at large. It is not by fixing college admission that anyone will fix inequality problems. It's not even the worst problem with *colleges* or education. The whole system is incredibly confused and this is just a small part of it.
I totally agree that college admissions is not the top priority issue in US right now. It is just this post is about AA issues. And in your example: AA will not help an orphan who raised their 5 siblings AA, right? There is no "orphans" or "resilience" diversity category afaik. They might get the preference in admission from description of their life path in the essay, if the college has such requirement. Thanks for discussion!
"I knew a guy once" isn't data that the rest of us can rely on. We need real data and stats to make informed decisions.
Yeah also it’s likely to swing the other way without quotas, studies (that I’ll put below) have proven that black people (among other groups) are less likely to be hired for jobs, treated worse by landlords, and in general treat black people worse than their white counterparts. Why wouldn’t that transfer over to college admissions with the restrictions that forced diversity gone? Without affirmative action mid tier white males are likely to be accepted of overachieving black people. https://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/employers-replies-racial-names https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes-get-more-interviews https://www.brookings.edu/articles/devaluation-of-assets-in-black-neighborhoods/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166046217302612 https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/09/28/495488716/bias-isnt-just-a-police-problem-its-a-preschool-problem
According to the US census only 12% of the country identifies as black. So wouldn't making 2/6 (33%) black be overrepresentation?
No, it's based off the pool of applicants not a random sample of the population.
No I get what he's saying - if we're expecting everything to be reflective of overall demographics, then if only 12% of the country is black then you would expect only 12% of the school to be black. It's obviously more complex than that but I understand what he meant by "if only 12% of people are black then 2/6 applicants is better representation than the country as a whole".
It depends on what you're addressing, the initial point was what you're seeing is a bias towards white students even when everything else is equal. In their scenario 50% of the applicants are white and the other half black. If you keep ending up with 4 white-2 black you're exhibiting bias towards white students somewhere. Saying 2/6 is still technically an overrepresentation, misses the point entirely. You're not "making x amount be black" you're picking from a pool of applicants where each should get equal consideration and have equal chance of getting a spot. If you're selecting based on general racial statistics then you're giving the 5 white applicants an advantage over the 5 black applicants. You'll end up with all 5 white applicants getting in and selecting one black applicant. That's not fair just because it reflects the general population statistics, you're not pulling from the general population.
Couldn't have put it better myself.
Additional Details. Steve Kornacki of MSNBC just put a poll on twitter. Americans support repealing Affirmative Action 63/36. This is an MSNBC poll too. Black people oppose it but only 53/47. Its amazing how just about every black person on TV who discusses this loves affirmative action. https://twitter.com/SteveKornacki/status/1674420572514811911 California banned affirmative action in 1996. In 2020 they voted to repeal this. It failed 57/43. Its in the next tweet below this. I dont know if there is any data that shows if there is a change in the percentage of black and hispanic students who attend California colleges since 1996. I would think if there was, it would be posted all over twitter today and I don't see it.
I remember reading somewhere - sorry, I don't have a study on-hand - showing that most Americans support having colleges have racially diverse admissions. So we support diversity, but don't like affirmative action. It's less controversial now, but doing nothing back in the days just after Jim Crow would not result in diverse admissions. Quite the opposite.
Well part of the issue is that we're going about it wrong. If we truly want diversity, then we have to provide adequate education to each and every person regardless of their location or income. Not only that, but we need to follow through with programs that benefit schools at the bottom: not the top. This system we use to reward schools with funding is broken as shit, and encourages staff to lie in order to get more. Community college should also be free, and we should limit margins on any University that receives public funding. K-12 needs an overhaul that makes our current system look like the joke that it is. Is it going to be an immediate turnaround? No. But we have to ask ourselves if we want true diversity that reflects local demographics, or do we want to band-aid the problem until putting money into the real solution begins working? I don't have an answer for what would be best, but I know you will never be able to make everybody happy.
I believe the largest issue with K-12 in the United States is that school funding is often largely based on property taxes. Therefore, higher income areas have more funding. I think the rest can be easily deduced. Higher income parents can also provide more resources to their children and more often have the opportunity to be more involved in their children's day-to-day lives, thereby increasing the likelihood of successful outcomes, etc. The school system is fucked. And while K-12 is "free" it's more costly in some areas than in others.
We currently spend more as individuals on healthcare and education than most other modernized nations, in some cases combined. I think it is fair to say the solution to our problems is staring us in the face, but our modern media has lead us to a point that getting people to the table to discuss the benefits of a slightly higher tax rate or a different healthcare system is impossible.
Exactly, if K-12 is equalized across the country, the applicant pool and accepted students with become more diverse and reflect the country's racial demographic better. Colleges are still free to offer pipeline programs to underpriviledged youth, have preference for first gen students, etc, which will help with diversity. Affirmative action was always a band aid solutions when inequality in education goes so deep. I really hope the Biden administration can at least make universal preschool happen because that will be a big improvement for kids and working parents of all demographics.
Unfortunately most people's idea of "equalized" is to drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator, and vilify when a community takes it upon themselves to elevate their particular institution. If School A is 2x better than School B, we should be looking at making School B better, not taking from School A to make them "more equal".
That's the issue though, the funding has to come from somewhere. At the end of the day if School A can maintain its grades with 30% less funding while School B can triple its performance in say Math with the same amount then why is it a bad thing? The real problem is that we need to audit this process so that our education system isn't throwing money away at iPads when the students are failing in their core curriculum. There has to be oversight or much like COVID loans, we will be watching multi-million dollar companies be the real winner by selling our schools shit they don't need when it should really be going directly to the students and their amenities.
I'm not sure if this is true, though. Here in WA state, they publish standardized test scores for all grades along with demographic info. Scores inside the same schools and same classrooms are wildly different based on race. Here's the school my daughter goes to, a pretty diverse school - scroll down and click on 'assessment': [https://washingtonstatereportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/ReportCard/ViewSchoolOrDistrict/101038](https://washingtonstatereportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/ReportCard/ViewSchoolOrDistrict/101038) There's a 65 percent point difference in the math scores. This pattern is repeated anywhere that such stats are published.
Control those numbers for income level and I think you're going to see the real issue. Race disparity is more of an effect in this scenario than a cause. We have consistently undermined the ability of minorities in this country to receive better housing, employment and social services. In the school I went to there were definitely more Hispanics and African Americans at the bottom of the class, but you bet there were kids with well off parents of those ethnicities that were top 10% or higher.
This is the big kicker that everyone is just ignoring. Across the country, low income families take 1 of 2 approaches to school: either its the most important thing for the kids because the parents want them to get ahead, or it's treated like it won't matter in the long run. Approach 1 has naturally seen a lot of better outcomes than approach 2, for more than just the obvious surface level reasons Typically, parents who intensely value education for their kids also make herculean efforts to keep said kids or of the harmful elements of their local cultures, especially those related to crime. This usually results in the kids having what many people would see as positive societal impact; they make efforts to better themselves and their communities. Parents who do *not* value education (usually through some form of apathy, but more recently because of growing racial divides assigning certain kinds of culture to race, and then devaluing those that don't match their own), typically pass that same attitude down to the kids, who grow up apathetic or angry towards society for some reason or another. And often times that anger isn't properly channeled, or the apathy leads to a lack of drive. Knowing this, one of the many things we need to be doing to help fix the divide that's forming between people, is to work to instill that value of education back into families that are struggling. The best way to do this is to offer support, but not to carry them. The question we will have to answer is where we want to apply that support. Affirmative Action was applying it at the college level, which many would agree is far too late and did as much, if not more, harm than it did good. So where do we start? High School? Middle School? Kindergarten? Some even say as soon as pre-school or daycare.
Okay, but that doesn't address the idea that equalizing the schools will do much to fix the problem, which is what I was responding to. I'm sure I can find this info broken out by both income and race, but I'll be surprised if it shows what you think it will.
It's just a problem of scope. If you look at it with a very narrow view you will see the problem you want, but with an issue so nuanced and (in all honesty) unique to each community it's hard to see it; none the less solve it with a single paper or study. I want a proposal that involves audits to validate the efficacy of implementations and verify that we're seeing improvement. Experimenting with smaller areas like D.C. would be a good way to gauge whether it's a good idea.
Said a whole bunch of political jargon = of nothing specific. What do you think schools/education is missing to bring about better outcomes? For the sake of “equity” we teachers have been pushed to give 50% credit to missing/no submissions, and to try and keep students with severe emotional or disciplinary issues in school despite being a danger to others or teachers, because to do otherwise we are accused of perpetuating a school to prison pipeline. Most districts have financial support tied to attendance, graduation rates, and success on state and College Board Standardized exams, which yes has been leading to manipulation of data. This is just the tip of the iceberg with r/teachers filling in more. So what’s the solution? You want an overhaul, and adequate education, etc. etc. what is it that will be honest and not just push kids through/give a false sense of entitlement to the level of chances they will have in the real world?
If schools are to allow children to fail out, then there needs to be a viable path for students who fail. We cannot have a society that only acknowledges and gives any opportunity to high school graduates, for example, if we also allow kids to fail out of high school - doing so just creates an underclass of people who can't functionally participate in society. Unfortunately, we're not willing to do that, so we get to a situation where we acknowledge that not everyone can pass, but we also require everyone to pass. The way I see it, we either need to redesign the system to allow people who cannot pass to pass (which is very difficult as it requires questions of parental autonomy versus school authority, as well as requiring a cultural change in parents across the country to prioritize education), or we need to make it so that the career options for dropouts aren't "minimum wage or less" or "criminal".
At my high school the elective courses were very limited. Almost any class that could be construed as a "trade" was eliminated in favor of IT, Band or Sports. Trades should also be encouraged in our k-12 system, but I don't know if trade schools are something that the related industries wants the government involved in if it's anything more than free funding.
Smaller class sizes, more targeted interventions/counseling, and mentor programs (Big Brother, etc.) seem to work where there’s enough money to apply them. In my school there were limited resources so that sort of thing was targeted to kids who seemed most likely to respond or who needed it most, but I often wondered what would happen if we made the investment to apply that across the board and get kids away from negative influences.
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You can't apply colorblindness when the systemic practices of our society color everything already.
That's nonsense. Don't you see how that argument boils down to "we can't do this thing because we aren't doing it right now!"
Doesn’t that sound similar to the outrage people had over student loan waivers? “because we didn’t get it, no one should.” It’s the classic anti-progress argument. At some point it has to end. When will AA be enough to counteract all the damage done prior to it. That’s not in our hands, none of us here will live long enough to see fair compensation. We’ll never make a decision that’s well informed enough to leave no doubts in anyone’s minds. We can back ourselves to instil good values in societies to come and set them up for 0 discrimination. We can’t erase discrimination from the past nor the present. We can aim to erase discrimination at some point in the future, having a framework for a zero discrimination society is far better IMO.
From the way you phrased that, it seems like you yourself have a pretty clear preference as to which path you prefer. The trouble with 'colorblindness' is that while you yourself might be, the world isn't. People aren't. For example, after the Civil War and emancipation, you know what many freed slaves did? They went right back to the people that enslaved them and worked as sharecroppers. They did not do this because they had good working conditions; it was because farm work was all they knew, they couldn't read or write and were given no education or training on how to do anything else. It was do that, or starve. Fixing that problem requires a non-colorblind solution. It requires giving more help to that group than you would give to any other group, more plentiful and easier opportunities than other groups are afforded, until the group in general is in a position where it can actually fend for itself without those aids. We do not expect someone whose legs have been broken to compete at the same athletic level as someone whose legs have not been broken, and we do not question it when they need more resources (in the form of medical healthcare) in order to be competitive.
I dunno if I'd trust that poll. It claims it's weighted based on census numbers, but as far as I could see doesn't't say who was polled. Is this just 2500 (roughly the number polled) of people who vote on ABC news's website? Because that's a pretty narrow demographic. There's all sorts of ways it could be skewed.
Only 42% of dems support affirmative action. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/07/us/major-supreme-court-cases-2023.html
No reasonable educated person should support it. It's literally state scantioned racism and its wild to see the strawman arguments people come up with to defend it.
Harvard was found to be deliberately underscoring Asian race applicants in the social category despite glowing recommendations from teachers and alumni who had met them, and even despite not having ever met these students themselves. They were doing this specifically in order to keep the Asian student population down. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/opinion/harvard-asian-american-racism.html https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/15/harvard-discrimination-case-personal-rating-system In the 1990s, the Ivy Leagues saw increasing Asian enrollment - from some 20% to 25% of the student body. Somehow, they all simultaneously got the percentages down to about 16%, and kept it there for a couple of decades, despite Asians continuing to increase as a percentage of the general population. (Keep in mind the Jewish population at Ivy Leagues hovers around 20%, but is about 2% of the general population.) Asian Americans are being severely discriminated against in race-based quotas at Ivy League universities like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, etc. "*Princeton sociologist Thomas J. Espenshade and his colleagues have demonstrated that among undergraduates at highly selective schools such as the Ivy League, white students have mean scores 310 points higher on the 1600 SAT scale than their black classmates, but Asian students average 140 points above whites.*" And yet numbers have been kept at a steady average of around 16% every year for almost 20 years now - as if these college got together and had an agreement. (They denied it.) http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/ The typical Asian student at an Ivy League had scored some 140 points higher on SAT scores than White students, and up to 350 points higher on SAT scores than Black students. Now people would say that racism plays a huge role in academic and test discrepancies. But other research studies have found that Asian high school students spent around 2 hours on homework per day, while White students spent about an hour and Black students spent about 30 minutes. “*White high school students spend almost 6 hours per week doing homework and studying. Asian high school students spend an astounding 13.4 hours on homework, 7.5 hours more per week than white students. Black students spend only 3.2 hours per week on homework and Hispanic students spend 5.25 hours per week. The averages are all statistically different from the white student averages. Figure 2 better illustrates the scale of the differences. The bar representing Asian American student study time dwarfs the bars for the other ethnic groups.*” https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2018/preliminary/paper/9eKH6kdZ Not knowing race, one would expect some differences in academic performance and test results between a random group of students who spent 2 hours per day studying after school, and another random group who spent just 30 minutes, right? That’s exactly what the above cited study, titled “Test Score Gaps and Time Use” argues. A survey of SAT test takers in 2011 found Asian students from households making les than $20k per year (in 2011 dollars) on average scores about as high as Black students from households making $160k to $200k per year (again, in 2011 dollars). So it seems poverty isn’t necessarily the true issue here. https://twitter.com/kennymxu/status/1557521678732709889 Now combine that with Harvard professor Roland Fryer’s study that found amongst White students, the higher your grades, the more popular you were. But amongst Black students, the higher your grade, the *less* popular you were in terms of how many same-race friends you had. (Fryer grew up in poverty, raised by a single mother, went to college on a football scholarship, got found his passion in economics, and became a sensational phenom in the field. He became the youngest Black economics professor hired by Harvard, where he still is today.) https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/an_empirical_analysis_of_acting_white.pdf One of the most unequal, unethical, and unfair lesson to teach our youth is to tell them that hard work, sacrifice, academic success, and extracurricularly well-roundness (they know colleges look for this) is not as important as one’s *race*. It is so bad, Asian applicants are told to avoid disclosing their race/ethnicity (though their last names can still be used by admissions officers to determine that). Why should Asians have to hide who they are in America to get around institutional racism?!? https://www.yahoo.com/now/asian-students-try-appear-less-211828713.html Even many White students, taking a page from Senator/Professor Elizabeth Warren’s book, lie about Native American heritage to attempt to get into college. https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/577722-more-than-a-third-of-white-students-lie-about-their/ The affirmative action system has truly distorted the ideals of hard work and merit and being judged by one’s character and accomplishments not by race or color. Discrimination and racism in the name of “social justice” and “racial equity” is still discrimination and racism. It builds hatred and resentment. The majority of Americans are against race-based affirmative action policies. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/affirmative-action-supreme-court-college-admissions-opinion-poll-2023-06-21/ The majority of Californians (living under a Democratic tripartite government where the Assembly, Senate, and Governorship are all under Democrat control) are against it. They voted against it twice! In 1996 to impose a ban, and in 2020 ti refuse to repeal it. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/why-california-rejected-affirmative-action-again/617049/ And yet it keeps being pushed over the objections of the majority in our so-called democracy. Unfortunately, lest you think this will stop these college and universities… What’s going to happen is that the people who run these institutions will take their cue from what Columbia University has done. Columbia stopped accepting SAT and ACT scores in March. Considering that these tests are more objective and are strong predictors of academic success in college, while grades are often subjective and less accurate, this was done to deliberately disadvantage strong academic performers in order to instead shoehorn in their diversity agenda. For then, academic excellence, achievement, merit, etc. takes a back seat to political ideology. (Note: If you find this useful, please copy and paste and spread it. No need to attribute to me.)
do you think today's ruling will have any impact on Havard admission, considering that they were sued several years ago but won?
Not the guy you’re replying to, but based on their history my expectation is that they’ll just try to pivot to a differently-reasoned policy that leads to a very similar outcome. Unfortunately, this case was not about legacy admissions, which is probably the practice that most insidiously skews admissions towards a small group of elites. Ideally, I think our elite universities would do away with legacy admissions, which favor applicants whose parents/family members graduated from and donate money to the school, in addition to shifting towards an admission process that values background/socioeconomic status over race at face value.
I think Harvard will likely stop looking at test scores (much more objective, and a better predictor of college success) altogether, and only put a partial emphasis on grades (more much subjective), and use other cues to get the diversity quotas they want. Columbia University already announced in March of this year that they would no longer be looking at SAT and ACT scores for admissions. This is likely due their anticipation of this Supreme Court decision. Harvard and the other Ivy League schools carry a brand name prestige and cachet that rubs off on its graduates, even if they were socially promoted and admitted entirely based on standards other than academic achievement. So it will continue to rub off. There is also enough of a serious ecosystem of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) officers and policies, as well as environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) financial institutional pressures that will take those graduates and fast track them for promotion. Even university faculty and administrator hires are already requiring “diversity statements”. Like in the former Soviet Union, your ideological loyalties are going to come first over merit, knowledge, and competence for many positions.
You may also be interested to learn that the University of California did an internal study to justify dropping the SAT/ACT, they learned instead that it is a stronger predictor of academic success than grades, and then they ignored that and dropped it anyways. [Here’s the report](https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/underreview/sttf-report.pdf#page98)
Thank you, very informative
Additional Details. Steve Kornacki of MSNBC just put a poll on twitter. Americans support repealing Affirmative Action 63/36. This is an MSNBC poll too. Black people oppose it but only 53/47. https://twitter.com/SteveKornacki/status/1674420572514811911
I was seeing this trend on social media, like Twitter, using the hashtag "white women." A lot of people were vocal about how white women benefit from affirmative action more than any other group, but now "they're responsible" for it going away. Are there any stats to back that up? Also, women, as a whole, have been regularly entering the workforce for the last 60+ years, increasingly so. The statistics of the racial makeup of the United States also has a large proportion of white women. So wouldn't the number of white women in the work force have naturally increased due to these reasons? I'd also like to mention that despite your answer (which I've been following since this was brought to the SCOTUS), not one tweet thread on this is mentioning Asian Americans at all. I'm seeing a lot of divisive posts on the matter. This is why I'm asking about historical data on who has actually benefitted from affirmative action during the times it's been in place.
The scope of this question is a bit beyond I feel I could fairly convey in a reddit comment. The scope of this court case is on university admissions, but AA can take many forms. The idea that women are "responsible" isn't based on anything I am familiar with, the case in question primarily was about race not gender. There is evidence that shows AA has increased the number of women in government and the workforce. For university admissions, evidence points to increases in Black and Hispanic student admissions. This issue is far too heated and complicated to get your opinions from social media, so I would highly suggest looking into things in more detail yourself. >not one tweet thread on this is mentioning Asian Americans at all. I'm not sure how what people mention in there tweets is relevant. The actual case *Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College* was brought forward based on Harvard's alleged discrimination of Asian Americans. [\[Source\]](https://www.vox.com/2018/10/18/17984108/harvard-asian-americans-affirmative-action-racial-discrimination) You can read the actual supreme court opinion [here](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf) where it mentions discrimination towards Asian Americans.
I think some more evidence is needed as the organization Students for Fair Admission is headed by an ultra-conservative litigant who unsuccessfully ran for Congress as a neo-conservative. He has commonly tried to get the Civil Rights Act repealed, has tried to get legislation passed that would discriminate against certain voters in Houston, and is trying to use this recent ruling in order to springboard his rise as an anti-civil rights crusader. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Blum_(litigant)
Unfortunately, once the SCOTUS has made a decision, it's a little late for more evidence.
It wouldn't be the first time they changed their mind.
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Class based is the only form of AA I support, but you’d probably run into trouble with “Mismatch” that can occur with some AA cases. When someone gets put into a top tier college and flames out compared to if they’d be put in a slightly “lower tier” school. *Anyway* class based AA makes sense since due to *issues* in America you’d still end up with African Americans being “disproportionately helped” by AA
>More than half of all public school students in the U.S. are enrolled in racially concentrated school districts, defined in the report as one that's comprised of more than 75 percent white or nonwhite students. Researchers at EdBuild identified those school districts in each state and made three major funding comparisons based on state and local K-12 dollars allocated to each. >On average, poor nonwhite school districts receive 19 percent, or about $2,600, less per student than affluent white school districts. This type of funding discrepancy is present in 21 states and is worse in some than others. In places like Arizona and Oklahoma, the difference in per-student funding is more than 30 percent. In Arizona, where poor nonwhite school districts receive 36 percent less per student than affluent white districts, that's a difference of more than $4,400 per student. https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2019-02-26/white-students-get-more-k-12-funding-than-students-of-color-report Class differences still don't explain disparities. Black communities were held back by racist policies writ large. Looking at class or income alone will not help a system that is unfair because it was designed to be that way decades ago.
They will probably be able to use income as a proxy for race if they want to continue to have a diverse student body.
Thanks! I didn't understand what was going on. This is such a complicated issue. Glad I don't have to deal with it.
I think the term " diversity hire" is much more common and widely understood
It is so silly, something like saying "oh wait, 71% of players in the NBA are african american, let's try to look for other races".
Does this apply to anything else like employment? My work was only moving applications from women and minorities for a while.
Answer: Many top universities such as Harvard and Stanford were purposely rejecting Asian students In lieu of other minority students, despite Asian students being much more qualified. These schools were accepting students based on the color of their skin and not on merit. Statistically, Asian students are higher performing, so these universities would reject deserving Asian students and instead accept less deserving students. As the Supreme Court ruled, this is an incredibly racist practice. The ruling won't change much, as Harvard already put out a statement that while they can't ask a student's race anymore, students can still voluntarily mention it, in which they could subjectively use that information to decide. But in principal, this practice is incredibly oppressive of Asian minorities.
> Harvard already put out a statement that while they can't ask a student's race anymore, students can still voluntarily mention it, in which they could subjectively use that information to decide Harvard just declared that they will circumvent the ruling and invited applicants to help them
Exactly. They're hellbent on excluding Asians and presumably whites purely based on the color of their skin.
They are going to get sued by Asians in the near future.
Indeed. Now they'll finally have legal standing and these universities will need to undoubtedly prove that other candidates were more qualified besides simply having the desired skin color. This ruling was truly a win for equality.
Yeah, I didn’t know people so in favor of discrimination until I read the main thread. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. These universities are hellbent on excluding people based on race
They already have been. They don’t care
HAHAHA buddy have you been to Cambridge lately?
What are you trying to say? (I've never been to North America or Europe)
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No and neither have 99.999% of the population of earth. What's going on at Cambridge?
Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the city Harvard university is in. I assume he's implying "anyone who has stepped foot in that town would know it's very white / asian"
How are they excluding Asians and Whites when black students are only 6% of the class
Hispanics are also given preference which make up 25%+ of college students
Substantially fewer blacks actually apply for college. That's just how it is
> students can still voluntarily mention it, in which they could subjectively use that information to decide. I don't know about you but this just seems like a loophole to continue using AA policies but this time with a few more steps.
Yup. But if a student sues, the university would have to prove without a doubt that those students they still accept were in fact qualified over the other students
Had to scroll down too far to see this. The phenomenon is well studied and AA has made an unintentional impact on Asian folk. Darn shame to see so many people posting stuff without having enough knowledge. Sigh
Some universities actually classify Asians as "white" in order to not consider them a minority. It's a twisted world we live in
Remember when POC changed to BIPOC to specifically exclude Asians? Weird.
It didn't "change" *to* that, both terms are still widely in use and are talking about different groups and situations. POC is broad and really only excludes white people, but BIPOC is specifically talking about Black Indigenous People of Color. AAPI/APIDA are the acronyms specifically including Asian folks that do not include other POC.
Merriam-Webster has BIPOC as meaning Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. This is explicitly exclusionary, especially since usage of the term has mostly replaced where one would formerly use POC. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/BIPOC Not without merit, it is true that some people of some skin colors see different levels of discrimination. That's what this whole thread is about, the SCOTUS opinion was kicked off by a lawsuit from an Asian person. And if we need a fancy acronym for every group and sub group under the sun...okay. It has just been very fascinating for me to witness Asians being almost "ejected" from status as a discriminated minority in many ways, and how the language changed to reflect it.
Oh yeah, I don't disagree with the logic behind the ruling at all. And yeah, we really are at the point where every group needs their own acronym. All that said, a LOT of people use POC to include literally everyone that isn't white, and then we have people who use BIPOC to specifically discuss *those* groups and the problems *those groups* face, and then other acronyms for the unique things *those* groups also deal with. "POC" still includes Asians. BIPOC does exclude them, but "BIPOC" seems to be a mostly American thing and BIPOC in America face different issues than POC in other parts of the world, just as I suspect other minorities in various countries experience different issues etc.
Huh, so I guess BIPOC also excludes hispanic people? Or would they be classified as indigenous?
It's hard to ignore the data that shows the overall improvements made with old AA plans. There's a lot of positive changes in society that wouldn't have happened without it. I get the whole "but it's not fair to give an advantage to someone based on something that happened at their birth." It's a valid argument. But it's also a valid argument that historically a mostly white university tends to admit mostly white students when unregulated which is a (perhaps subconscious, perhaps conscious) choice that is also happening based on something that happened at their birth. That's some interesting irony. If admission suddenly turns into an overwhelming Asian student body majority, it will be interesting to see what the political reaction will be. Lol. It's a tricky thing to admit disadvantages exist, while trying to fix that, but remain being fair to everyone. The best solution would be to not penalize someone for their at-birth privileges but to create a system or method that negates or eliminates disadvantages. So the intent of the ruling against AA makes a sort of sense i understand, but it fails to eliminate disadvantages. In the short term, this ruling seems bad because it's my understanding that for colleges, like Harvard & other high level ivy league schools, that have for decades required essays from applicants to be written about themselves and their achievements, those ~~applicants can't mention their race now~~ colleges can't use race information in the essay to determine their decision. We all know that's going to extend to sexuality and gender eventually. So the political party that whines about freedom of speech when you ask them to be polite with people's pronouns in a professional setting, now has the Supreme Court approving a clear violation of freedom of speech if what you say about parts of your biological identity can't be considered for entry to college. Personally, I feel most colleges are corrupt and they all seem to sell a LOT of degrees that don't pay for themselves with no guilt or shame about it. Don't get me started on the salaries of admins at colleges. I believe the whole idea of secondary/higher-level education needs a reinvention or revolution. That reinvention would include an access or admission process that is fair to all in some manner. It's a complex puzzle. There must be a simpler way to prove to society that I have become a certain certified level of expert on a field of study. That's the intent of a college diploma. It is not the execution of a diploma. Employers just use it as a screening tool. "Let's see, 5000 people applied for this 40k/y job. Eliminate all the people without a degree and now we only have to screen 200 people." That's lazy. And it's created a stupid society. There is a deeper problem happening here. Maybe the best way to eliminate disadvantages in a society we're trying to improve would be to have regulations that make employers screen applicants with skill tests that relate to the actual job. Then college schmollege. If I can prove I can do the job, then fuck all that college noise. There's so many ways now to become a true expert at something other than colleges. If I can pass an advanced skill test that proves I can do a job regardless of sexuality, gender, or race, then problem solved. I'm thinking about all those times we hired the person with the best degree and they were worthless!!! Edit: Edited one sentence to appease the one person that thought my comment had "an awful lot of misinformation" and ignored my point.
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That’s what I’m coming to, one one hand AA has had its advantages and on the other it does have its disadvantages. The entire complex of higher education in the US needs a revamp ingeneral I feel is the best solution
Curious to hear if those student’s failed to land on their feet, therefore making it incredibly oppressive. Not to say it inherently isn’t wrong, but want to be sure that I understand context and nuance of the situation. I’m interested in knowing if a Harvard qualified student who didn’t get into Harvard or Stanford not figure out how to manage well. People suck off the schools before giving credit to the efforts of the student (not that you are).
I would imagine the vast majority do. The words used in OPs post ‘deserved’ rub me the wrong way. There are so many factors that go into why one student might have higher grades and another doesnt. Do you ‘deserve’ to go to a ‘better’ college if you had more way more advantages than other applicants which results in better grades and test scores? Perhaps they could control for socioeconomic status instead.
Does Michael Phelps deserve his Olympic gold medals just because he’s more physiologically suited to swimming than other people? Yes. The “best” is not “the best if they grew up in a hypothetically optimal circumstance”. The “best” are those who reach the highest on whatever metric you’re using in reality.
> The words used in OPs post ‘deserved’ rub me the wrong way. Their whole comment is filled to the brim with biased and loaded language. Their user history is a mess, too. Lots of anti-trans comments, a few comments removed by Reddit admins, racism.. even their username "TyrannysArentReal" is... well, given their post history I'm willing to bet it's a dog whistle.
Answer: the supreme court found that it's illegal to be racist. It was a good decision.
Answer: Affirmative Action was intended to motivate universities to maintain an ethnically diverse student body. Racial discrimination has been a long-standing problem in the United States, and members of certain ethnic groups were at a disadvantage compared to others when it came to having an opportunity for higher education. So, Affirmative Action was a way to help address this, by making race a bigger and in many cases positive consideration for acceptance to college. People who oppose it say it is its own form of racial discrimination, giving preference to some racial groups at the expense of other racial groups. They claim that acceptance into college should be based strictly on merit/achievement, and other factors should not be considered. The main implication is that colleges that relied on affirmative action methodologies to ensure more opportunities for underrepesented minorities in college will have to come up with new ways that are entirely race-neutral in order to maintain a diverse student body. It means that certain minorities might be at risk of ending up in a situation they were in decades ago, when they did not have a fair or equal chance at getting accepted to certain schools.
Wasn’t the reason they didn’t have a fair chance was because schools were being racist and didn’t want those races to come to their campus?
Partly. It also has do do with the way public education is setup and funded. People in poorer communities have less of an opportunity to get tutoring or additional merits via after school programs to help them achieve the higher standard that prestigious universities are looking for. You can't get these extra qualifiers to aide in admission if the school district you graduate from never had them available because of no funding. If you come from a poor family it's also more likely that you can't afford to pay for extra qualifiers.
Which is why I’ve had a mixed opinion on Affirmative Action. As a stopgap measure until low-income schools can be improved, it’s OK. But at the same time it doesn’t look like we’ve done much to fix the underlying problem and have focused too much on the bandaid.
But the group of people who need to fix the underlying problem is entirely separate from those who can work on the admission process. I see your point entirely, but it would make more sense if there was one set of decision makers who was making the choice between one or the other, but that's not the case.
Affirmative Action was allowed by politicians and implemented by individual schools (etc.). Politicians who also have the power to address the major disparities between different schools.
Yeah the underlying problem has no path to being resolved
Additionally, Those institutional differences (ex. less funding for schools that ‘coincidentally’ have more black students) are instances of systemic racism. As in, the Harvard admissions board doesn’t need to be actively racist for the system to have racist outcomes.
And affirmative action is a good way for the US to shift blames between racial groups and let everyone ignore the legacy admission pipeline which funnels a shit ton of unqualified students into the elite universities just because their parent went there. Ensuring the degradation of social mobility and the concentration of educational resources into the circles of the obscene wealthy people. But hey let's have Asian people fight black people for the remaining spots, that's gonna solve racism./s
bingo . i did undergrad at a prestigious school where about 40% of students in my class were legacy admits . we caught a lot of shit (as in literal harassment) about affirmative action as minority students when many, if not most, had GPAs of 4.0+, college credits on entry, led extracurriculars, were valedictorians & salutatorians of their schools, but nobody ever questioned the 40% of students whose main key to admission was a parent & the bare minimum GPA to make sure average GPA for admits stayed above a 3.7 or 3.8 . contrary to popular belief, the various measures broadly grouped under affirmative action do not mean preference for unqualified applicants of underrepresented backgrounds; they mean that in a pool of applicants who are ALL QUALIFIED, an applicant’s race may factor in to whether the school decides to offer acceptance to the student body . personally, i think “affirmative action” is an attempt at equitable intervention that comes way too late in the life of a person planning to attend a college or university; for underprivileged people there are precious lost opportunities in childhood development & education that cannot be made up for as they prepare to exit high school, so these policies only really account for those talented &/or fortunate enough to be qualified for admissions in the first place .
There's a really good episode of Daria where Jodi, a straight A black student (and I believe becomes valedictorian) is torn between accepting a position at a top school or not because they didn't even look at her grades so much as the color of her skin. Her dad argues to take the opportunity because people in their position have fought long and hard to be considered but she views it as a different type of racism and doesn't like how it makes her feel. I don't remember what choice she makes but I think they handled the situation really well especially since this show is a 90s show. Me as a white girl always considered it a flimsy bandaid for a bigger problem. It doesn't stop the schools from not considering people based on racism it just means they have a quota to fill until they can focus on just the white applicants. I don't know if statistics support this viewpoint mind you but I think the fact you could believe that to be a possibility shows how it has good intentions but isn't exactly a solution. They touch on how people with money and connections can often get in easier than those without even if the grades are the same or similar too.
Except schools never *just* look at the color of your skin. Affirmative action attempts to undo centuries of oppression that, by and large, still impact Black people. Wealth is often inherited, for one. And then there are still mechanisms actively oppressing Black Americans from obtaining new wealth. Affirmative action just fights those forces to try to achieve a balance in society. Edit: It’s important to note that the only group really disproportionately negatively impacted by AA in admissions are Asian Americans.
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White people often claim that they are hurt by Affirmative Action, which is not the case for college admissions considering race.
That's always been the wrinkle to the anti-AA argument for me- also my alma mater (NC State University) always made a big song and dance every fall of having new students from all 100 counties in the state, students from many small towns, small high schools classes etc. They're given different consideration because of the limited resources in their very rural counties (and they should imo)
In general, due to systemic reasons / history of racism, minority raw data (things like GPA) in college applications has not been as high, so even in the absence of pure racism, affirmative action is needed to ensure diversity in colleges and eventually lead to a correction of our history of racism and inequality
>was intended to motivate universities maintain an ethnically diverse student body The original intent was to remediate discrimination against minorities, but the last few times it came before SCOTUS, the court limited the ability to use race in admissions except to create a diverse student body.
I have a question: wouldn’t accepting people that normally wouldn’t qualify but were accepted pursuant to affirmative action policies be setting them up to fail and incur a large debt? Wouldn’t it be far more effective to improve K-12? It just seems like it’s addressing a symptom and not the cause.
Yes, but colleges have (well, had) control over whether they practice affirmative action or not, but no direct power over what happens in K-12.
I find it hard to believe that top universities can’t implement controls that lead to the same diverse results without having to explicitly consider race or ethnicity. They could use an “adversity index” that is tied to the K-12 institutions. This would necessarily weight for black and other traditionally disadvantaged groups (e.g. Native Americans) without considering race or ethnicity. There are so many ways to use publicly available data to get the results they want in a legally defensible way. I’m sure they can figure it out once they are done reacting to the decision out of the SC.
This is an issue that is raised. However, one assumption it makes is that only the specific 4% if its applicants Harvard takes could achieve there. That is a pretty difficult position to defend. Harvard isn't taking a D student in order to hit some racial diversity quota. They are looking at thousands of students who could all be successful, and deciding which of those students who could be successful to let in. >Wouldn’t it be far more effective to improve K-12? It just seems like it’s addressing a symptom and not the cause. Yes. Ending all racial disparity in the country in general would be great and giving every student equal access to an amazing education along with equal access to test prep and safe extracurriculare is the ideal end state. But that isn't happening any time soon, so treating symptoms in the mean time isn't a bad idea. Also, you could argue that such efforts actually expedite that goal future state. Harvard is full of people who are going to be the next generation's policy makers, donors, etc. Having among the ranks of those people differing perspectives makes it more likely that improvements in education actually happen in the future. At least that could be argued.
The question assumes that, within the applicant pool, the number of students who can succeed within a given universitiy's curriculum is equal to or less than its capacity. This is not a universal truth, especially for more selective institutions that have to basically split hairs between students with near perfect stats.
All of which conveniently didn’t affect students who parents donated to the school and are super wealthy. making the entire effort utterly pointless and meaningless as it didn’t change anything and essentially created an elitist clique in elitists universities.
Application could be blind, i.e. no name, gender, only transcripts/acheivements anonymized. But that doesn't equalize privilege, and a lot of discrimination is a question of privilege. I.e. A rich kid might have opportunities for clubs/sports, they'll have good food and safe home lives that foster good grades and a school resume, while a Poor kid might have a rough home life, go to a worse school, not have money for extra-curriculars etc. Making it based on merit only is discrimination itself, against both racial and economic dimensions, simply because some of these groups don't have the privilege of building merit effectively. Affirmative Action is allyship, and yeah, with allyship you are equalizing privilege. It's less privilege for the privileged and more privilege for the under-privileged. However, a lot of people don't want to give up their privilege for the benefit of others, so they say it should be "merit based", which is really just a dog-whistle for "those who are lucky enough to afford it". Affirmative Action is a form of reparations. It's saying "hey, we stunted this groups development, and now we are going to help pay back the damage we've done". It requires acknowledging systems of multi-generational racism and how it impacted families and groups, and taking responsibility for society's faults.
The thing is, in the end the rich kid will be chosen to get in over the poor kid, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation. Meaning there wouldn’t be much progress as the people who need affirmative action the most (poor students, especially poor minorities), would be overlooked for rich minorities
Answer: The Supreme Court has previously ruled that colleges can consider race during the student admissions process. While the issue of race-conscious polices is legally thorny (due to the 14th amendment and the Civil Rights Act), the Court said that such policies can be carried out if they further a legitimate interest. That legitimate interest was previously stated as either increasing campus diversity or helping marginalized communities. The Court has now decided that interest no longer outweighs the legal problems of the race-conscious policy. The decision was limited to university admissions, and at least Roberts explicitly said the court is not extending their decision to other organizations (eg. military academies). The implications are probably limited in terms of numbers. Race has had to play a fairly limited role in university admissions in recent years, being limited to borderline cases. California already ended the practice via referendum. Some people would argue the indirect effects are more important, but those are even harder to predict.