A little unrelated context that sort of lends a bit of background to this will make things equal claim.
I was at one time an international non-white student at a US institution. After joining, during orientation I find out that the test scores and metrics required for international students is insanely high compared to US citizens. Like in a subject based international test, I had to score above 95th percentile while most of the students from the US did not even write the test or if they had, scored on average around 75th.
To add more context, I come from a country with far weaker education system and it cost me around half an year of savings to pay for this test.
So, I find it hilarious ridiculous when people think that any of these institutions are remotely fair. I understand how for these institutions citizens > aliens. Now try transplanting this context on to different race groups within the country.
I'm not a huge fan of affirmative action or its local equivalent, but I understand why it is needed and it is the responsibility of the government and judiciary to assess it's impact before deciding to do away with it.
I also wish they would focus more on things like, nutrition, good school environment, truancy, access to healthcare and so on for disadvantaged groups instead of trying to act at a level where most of the disadvantaged people cannot reach. Still something is better than nothing.
I often wondered if it is something that should be explored to have a double blind test to admit students to school and have them judged on meritocracy, not from their skin, location, culture, or anything else that isn't relevant to academic overall.
It's extremely naive to think that those traits don't have impacts on academic performance and capability. Not to say that black people are biologically more than white people, but their experience living as a black person in this country has direct impacts on their academic experience, both historical and future. A pure meritocracy ignores the benefits of diversity, both to society and at the individual level.
We just had to lock a thread in politics over this, I suspect we may have to lock this one as well. If your only take is "affirmative action bad" you might as well just leave now.
School is better for everyone if it includes a diversity of experiences. It enrichens and deepens out culture to know each other and to have professionals from all backgrounds learning from one another.
This is a loss for every single person that actually wants our schools to be the best that they can be.
I'm going to copy over parts of my response from another thread on this topic. I don't think it's a loss for every single person, and the topic of equity is much more complex than just race.
As someone who went to an “elite institution,” coming from a low-income, first-generation college student, and immigrant background, and used it as a vehicle for massive social mobility, I am quite ambivalent (not in apathetic, but strong feelings about it on both sides) about the elimination of race-based admissions at these institutions.
The people who truly benefit from the current state of race-based affirmative action are not real “underprivileged people”. 99.999% of those will never even reach the academic qualification needed to get past the first round of screening at these schools. The overwhelming number of people who “benefit” from this are under-represented minorities from extremely elite backgrounds - the black of latino kid who went to top-tier private schools. If you have two applicants: 1 White/Asian kid from a poor background, vs 1 black/latino kid from Philip Exeter, who do you think these schools will take?
These schools are institutions with the goal of perpetuating elitism. period. Legacy, athletes, and “extracurriculars” are all just forms of gatekeeping for people without the knowledge, or social economic freedoms to partake in these activities. (I’m very confident about this from my years of helping underprivileged kids get into universities)
Now I do think race-based affirmative action does 2 things very well:
It broadens the racial and international perspectives of the new “wave” of elites, and there are numerous studies on how that improves the performance (mostly from a capitalistic point of view) of those students in the new international world. This flows into your argument about how allowing race-based affirmative action actually makes schools better. However, this could be a dangerous justification. What if segregation makes schools better? That same logic can be used to justify private school admissions metrics that we can agree are objectively unjust.
It makes it so that there is some semblance of race diversity (at the cost of economic class diversity) within the new wave of “elites” coming out of these schools. I think this is actually quite a good thing, which is one of the reasons that I am quite ambivalent about race-based affirmative action at these private schools.
In many ways, the current race-based admissions system in the elite schools actually sacrifices economic affirmative action, for race-based affirmative action. Again, we can debate how intersectional the two topics are, but that's just the reality of how these systems work.
IMO, the path to more social equality isn’t by changing the skin color of people who become elite, but by opening the gate for more people from non-traditional backgrounds in the form of community colleges and an easy path to transfer to universities (a la California university system, though the current pace of UCs is also aiming to join the ranks of these “elite” institutions). There needs to be a non-"luxury" path, a non-rarified path, towards quality higher education.
This is an interesting perspective, thank you. I wouldn't have considered that AA optimizing for race may simply select for already-privileged PoC more strongly than white students and may also give a false sense of equity based on improved racial demographics, but it makes sense. Is there no selection for the less advantaged at all? Even if it's not as efficient as it could be, surely opening the floodgates for privileged PoC which circumstantially lets in a trickle of less privileged people is still better than nothing? I need to look into the stats on this.
The alternative is what the UC system does, which takes into account social economic background but is race blind.
But the outcome of that is much less “sexy” from a diversity perspective. You end up with a bunch of Asian kids. (I’d argue disproportionally pushed out by these other top private universities, so the demographics is even more distorted) But if you peel back a layer, the portion of the UC student body that was previously on free and reduced lunch, that portion is much higher than that of Stanford or any of the Ivy leagues.
There is definitely some consideration for economic backgrounds at these top schools, I was part of the low income first generation student group at my school. But it’s very very tough for many of these kids because they have a tough time keeping up with their peers, especially in STEM fields. (Imagine coming into school ready to take calculus, because that’s all your school offered, when some of your peers have already finished linear algebra, that really does a number on your confidence to pursue STEM fields)
Jumping into a thread on such an important issue and leaving a potentially inflammatory response strikes me as bad faith. Would you like to expand your comment?
Like yeah I understand congressional gridlock can really hamper shit, so we need to often rely on the SCOTUS to permit actions. Try getting Congress to pass a bill for gay marriage when "Obergefell v. Hodges" was ruled.
But it's incredibly frustrating how Democrats refuse to push for bills when they have the change to actually have them pass.
When republicans control congress, with a democratic president: "If we get enough people in, we'll make abortion and weed legal!"
When democrats control congress, with a republican president: "If we get him out, we'll make minimum wage higher and help fix immigration!"
When democrats control congress and the president: "We gotta work on compromise, we shouldn't be too mean, we need to secure votes for next election cycle! Maybe we can start a small test on if maybe lowering cannabis from schedule 1 to schedule 2! Anything else is too unrealistic!"
When republicans control congress and the president: "Fuck you, we're pushing for as many things to hurt as many people as possible. We don't give two shits otherwise. We'll never stop."
If the democrats had half the effort of republicans, but actually helping people and pushing for bills, we'd probably actually have something change in the last 10 years.
Republicans being the party of (intensely misanthropic) action may be the reason Democrats are so ineffective - they don't need to push any policy to be elected, they need only abstain from literal genocide and they're already the better option.
As someone from a country that’s not America but does use common law, the scariest thing to my foreign eyes is the politically-appointed judges in general. How on Earth is that not seen as a massive conflict of interest in a system that emphasises the separation of powers? We have a lot of politically appointed roles too with the House of Lords but their powers are weak (they can only delay legislation) and parliamentary systems don’t emphasise separation of powers strongly in the first place.
Ah, well I don't know the specific details. So I'll have to go off of just your one sentence summary... But what you describe is good in general. It should in theory help to address the oppressed groups, which largely overlap with minorities so will indirectly benefit them. It seems to be making a good target on groups that need it, while avoiding the counterproductive targeting, though it still could be used by bad actors to only let poor whites in. I don't know how to resolve that level.
It's another type of drop in the bucket thing that is needed, and it seems evident that more things are still needed.
Edit to add: And if the UC program are admitting very unqualified students from those groups at the cost of accepting other more qualified students, they might lead to similar problems as AA too. So hopefully they've found an amicable balance. And also btw it doesn't have to be a zero-sum after all, filling one slot doesn't have to remove another, slots can be added in various ways.
The supreme court can't make policy they can only declare policy actions made by others as unconstitutional. There would need to be a bill from congress with solutions...
This is perhaps the most significant indicator of bad faith decisions by conservatives.
It's like gun regulation. A functioning, pro gun, political party would propose gun control regulations which achieve and addresses concerns, while maintaining and satisfying the fundamentals of gun ownership. Advocacy groups, like the NRA, would then have involvement and assurance. They shouldn't instead advocate for no solution whatsoever: The only possible result of which will be an eventual critical anti gun majority with following blanket fire arm bans. Or occasional, disruptive bans on specific weapons.
It's a little early to be piecing together the details and impact. The Post is being more cautious with their initial full story in terms of definitive statements.
But, as it stands, the hed of "Supreme Court restricts use of race in college admissions" directly conflicts with Sotomayor's dissent quote in graf 7: " ... It holds that race can no longer be used in a limited way in college admissions to achieve such critical benefits," which more closely matches the breaking-news stream hed.
I'm not saying there's no reason for concern; rather, the things to be concerned about have yet to come into specific relief.
I’m not American but I feel this isn’t a million miles away from what we’re having to do after the Boris Johnson years having alienated all our allies and done a lot of political and economic harm to various institutions. I’m much more concerned for the US than the UK to be honest, your evangelicals absolutely terrify me for example! The Tories have adopted Republican-style culture war tactics here not because of a sinister plan but literally because they’re an electoral sinking ship with a Liz Truss shaped hole in the bottom and it’s the only ammunition they have left, and there’s less appetite for it when inflation is eating everyone alive and basically every service or institution in the country is broken in some way.
My parents were alive and in schools when segregation in education was ending. Decades of Jim Crow laws holding people down isn't simply remedied by saying "We're all equal now." and doing nothing to redress the damage inflicted through the abuse of governmental power. Especially not when "We're all equal now." is largely lip service and systemic racism is still prevalent.
It's about undoing the damage that has been done by the cruel policies of the past that led to the systematic differences we see today. Disadvantaged groups need help to be able to catch up to the rest. Affirmative action is a temporary measure to bridge the gap. Because these things change very slowly and over generational time frames it will be a long time this is needed, however.
Let's say you have two infinitely large pitchers, and an infinite amount of water to pour into them.
Every day, you pour some water into the pitchers: one gallon into the left pitcher, and one ounce into the right pitcher. After doing this every day for over a hundred years, there's quite a discrepancy in the amount of water in these pitchers.
Then, one day, you decide you're no longer going to pour different amounts. From now on, you'll pour one gallon into each pitcher every day. Exactly equal and perfectly fair, right?
Except, if your goal is to get the same amount of water into each pitcher, you're never going to accomplish that this way. And then someone points out that the right pitcher is still a hundred years behind the left pitcher, and you reply with "well what do you want me to do about it? I'm pouring the same amount into both now."
to call it a cycle is wildly disingenuous. on the one hand, black people were enslaved, separated from their familes, prevented from building wealth, murdered, and then enslaved again through targeted laws. but for black people to get preferential admission to college (and still be underrepresented), that's comparable to doing all of the above to white people?
If I only work out my right arm for 2 years straight and then suddenly say "oh I'm going to now start doing the same, equal work out on my left" they don't just suddenly become the same. You'd have to put more time and focus into the left for it to become equal to the right.
However if you're honestly claiming that affirmative action = "doing the same thing again to a different race", no analogy in the world is going to help you. Your ignorance is untreatable I'm afraid.
It's the same level of understanding the solution as spez thinking editing the karma DB values makes him look good.
If the fix didn't start at the ground, then it wasn't a fix
We can't solve the hiring/acceptance discrimination by forcing it, they first need to be at a competitive disadvantage by doing it, and then we target the discrimination that exists after that.
With the way it is right now it's encouraging the stereotypes of minorities being lesser/incompetent because it expects them to compete with people who received much better training and practice. It's downright cruel to expect them to succeed in that situation.
Saying "oh we'll let some blacks in" isn't a helpful solution
AA had done more harm than good
Now, i do wish we had better solutions that actually address the issues of individuals and communities suffering from poverty and discrimination, but AA does not solve that.
I'd much rather we provide an actual solution, than a solution that looks like one while still being racist and in many ways making the situation worse, in particular by being a target to point to when talking about real solutions as "we already addressed that"
It was an example mean to illustrate the flippancy of the implementation, it applies to all affirmative action targets
Edit: and to answer your comment about calling blacks black, even though i certainly don't have to answer, it's because that's what my black friends told me to call them, and not use african american. So back the fuck off that one maybe?
my point is more where are you hanging out that it's routine to refer to black people as "blacks" like this, and it's a little concerning you didn't pick up on that point
Would love to see a source on this, especially after I left a mod comment explicitly asking for people to be cautious about jumping in with a simplistic take of 'AA bad'.
Literature is extremely mixed on this topic because, perhaps unsurprisingly, it's almost impossible to control for all factors and implementation of AA varies so greatly (explicit diversity goals vs. some kind of equity boost vs. mandatory spots, etc.).
Ok, but if a solution can be found that has the same effect without codifying a groups race into law, isn't that better?
And a lot of my experience comes from friends who qualify for these systems telling me it feeds quite a bit of imposter syndrome and distrust, because whenever something happens they ask themselves "did i earn this, or is this because of how i look?" and i don't find that to be a helpful condition to be dumping on people who will likely already be behind coming in, due to the issues the AA was meant so solve in the first place.
I'm really not against solving the problem's AA was meant to solve, but the AA solution looks like a racist go ahold of the project and made it cause more of the problem it's meant to address.
first of all, white women have benefited from affirmative action more than any other group. are your female white friends experiencing that same imposter syndrome and distrust? did you even know that that was the case? did they? most POC snap back at the white people that question their credentials, not take our hurt feelings out on one of the most effective social justice policies in American history.
second of all, as an actual person of color who was one of 5 POC out of 478 people to get their masters degree in my program, i'd love to learn more about how AA caused more of the problem it's meant to address. hard to get imposter syndrome when you're still too disadvantaged to get actual opportunities, lmfao.
also I'm not gonna lie, you saying "blacks" makes me highly doubt you have friends of color regardless. if you do I'm surprised they haven't told you that using that as a term is uh. I'm gonna go with "eyebrow-raising"
white women have benefited from affirmative action more than any other group.
yeah, but lets be honest, they really shouldn't be
which is another part of why it isn't useful
you doubting the "color" of my friends means nothing, it's an example and certainly the most prominent one historically used in regards to research and implementation of affirmative action, at least historically
If that offends you, that's very much a you problem
so just to be clear, you're going to ignore every other part of my very long and detailed comment to tell me that I'm just "offended"? that's the level of "good faith" that's going to be applied in this convo? just wanna make sure
This reply will almost certainly be lost, but I do understand where you're coming from since it is literally true, but fails to account for context. Consider a marathon in which half the participants were given 10 pound weights on each leg. Halfway through the race, the judges ruled those participants shouldn't have weights on. Is the race now fair, since everyone is being treated equally? Of course not - they were immensely disadvantaged from the outset, so the only way to try to approach some level of fairness is to give them advantages to make up for their initial handicap. In theory, AA is meant to be corrective action to restore equity, at which point it can be dropped because it's no longer necessary, but a simple glance at census data demonstrates we're nowhere near that point.
Incidentally, this is also why "race blindness" is considered a bad thing in social justice. In theory it would be ideal that you don't treat people differently, but in practice it means ignoring their disadvantages.
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