If you are considering race as part of a college admissions, then you are NECESSARILY racist. You’re not picking the best applicants, you’re picking the best applications of a race mix you want.
Now, I’ll be the first to say that certain minorities are under-represented in colleges. But that’s not necessarily the fault of the admissions process. If the admissions process truly is race-blind, as it should be, then we should be asking why fewer people of whatever race are showing up as competitive candidates. And that brings us to the REAL problems- that a lot of minority applicants come from poor neighborhoods with bad primary education, crap high schools full of gangs and drugs, and few resources like books and computers and other opportunities to excel. And THAT is the problem we should be fixing.
We are still playing catch-up to millennia worth of oppression. Rectifying historical disadvantages and creating a more inclusive learning environment are both boons that will benefit us in the long run. I don't think it's fair to call that racism. I agree with the need to fund primary education of these communities, that is very needed. I don't necessarily agree with (maybe I'm reading into your message a bit) that colleges don't heavily weigh all the other factors that they do for white people.
As an added bonus, why diverse teams are smarter
There's a lot of noise that will surround this ruling due to the culture-war nature it lends itself to, but the really sinister thing in my opinion is just how off the rails this supreme court is. There is no rhyme or reason, they're just making shit up to fit whatever political/social outcome they personally want. Our country can survive a shit ruling. We can't survive one coequal branch of government losing all validity.
You don’t have to sell me on the merits of diversity. I agree diversity is important.
I want to rectify those historical issues. But doing that in college admissions is too late. It’s like being on a crashing airplane, and sticking gum on the altimeter to stop it from spinning down. It doesn’t fix the real problem. And the real problem is the cycle of poverty that grips former red-line neighborhoods. And that cycle persists continually because whenever someone gets enough money to afford it they leave the neighborhood so it stays a slum forever.
Fixing that will cost billions. It will need education, job training, family support, social services, drug rehab, and JOBS so the people have some light at the end of the tunnel. If you’re gonna tell a 18yo gang member to hang up his illegal Glock and bust ass in school so he can get a job at Burger King, he’s gonna say fuck that imma keep slinging dope and if I’m dead by 30 at least I ain’t broke.
I call it racist because if you let Harvard dictate a race admissions profile like we want at least 50% minority students, then you necessarily have to let a racist college dictate a race admissions profile like we want at least 97% white students. And if you let colleges favor black people but not white people, that’s literally the definition of racist law (law that favors one race over another).
Racism has done terrible things to our nation. More racism is not the right answer to fix it.
If you are considering race as part of a college admissions, then you are NECESSARILY racist.
But, in reality, AA was there to balance the racial diversity. Living in Asia I'm seeing that university exams are exploited by a rich families here who know how the system works. Rather than evaluating the applicants' academic abilities and potentials, the system usually evaluates the family supports like financial power.
The paper tests are hacked, meaning that too many applicants reach the maximum score practically possible. What then gets to the stage is wealthy participants' personal project to save the society, supported by their rich family. This works effectively because such a project can be bought by money and shows that the kid can follow through with their aim.
I imagine that AA in the US had been a way to contain these hacks and provide education to more diverse people. It was a notorious tool, but I imagine that it helped enroll more Black people into higher education.
If universities did a fair examination, the racial balance should be established anyway. As the balance is heavily skewed by hacks, it makes sense to re-balance the race to what it should be.
And that brings us to the REAL problems- that a lot of minority applicants come from poor neighborhoods with bad primary education, crap high schools full of gangs and drugs, and few resources like books and computers and other opportunities to excel. And THAT is the problem we should be fixing.
Yes, but education is indeed a supreme fix for those problems.
I think that's basically the argument that just puts blinders on and assumes everything is perfect and why pretend otherwise. A comment I've read that I think has some merit is that they didn't put an end to legacy admissions, bias for donors, employee families, and other special recommendations. These are all systems that favor class and are predominantly white. So why did the justices pretend that admissions are all based around merit and achievement when they are not?
If more were being done about the systemic causes, then I think there would be less frustration with this decision. Since we clearly have quite a long way to go on the systemic issues, this ruling is pretty naive in my view.
exactly.
Like I get the logic in the ruling.
The problem is it doesn't acknowledge the reality that systemic systems can't be trusted to be race-blind. and to be honest, neither can individuals (any individual.) Ultimately it's a question of ... how do we advance inclusion without discriminating for minorities (as apposed to the current systemic system discriminating against minorities)?
I don't know the right answer, but I'm pretty sure the SCROTUS hasn't hit anywhere near the mark.
how do we advance inclusion without discriminating for minorities (as apposed to the current systemic system discriminating against minorities)?
Here's a suggestion: invest more money in education and provide economic help to these under represented minorities so that they have a better chance of getting in without a handicap, seems like the obvious choice to me? rather than dumping down the process for their sake, why don't we try to get these minorities to increase their competency levels so that if they got in it was because they actually had the scores to do so and not because of the color of their skins?
Here’s a suggestion: invest more money in education and provide economic help to these under represented minorities so that they have a better chance of getting in without a handicap
It’s always the same crap.
Doing what you say would be effective at fixing the underlying inequality created by redline neighborhoods in the early to mid 1900s.
It would also cost billions and take years to show real results in college admissions.
AA is a cheap fix. It requires little bipartisan buy-in (just a few trustees to be sufficiently anti-racist) and you can say you’re doing your part. But it doesn’t actually fix anything. If anything, IMHO, it makes things worse- now you’ve created animosity between races.
It’s no different with guns.
The lion’s share of gun homicide is gang and drug related, most of it committed with illegal pistols. It’s not in rich white neighborhoods that drive-by shootings happen, it’s in poor black neighborhoods. And so the US Military sends combat medics to Chicago hospitals to learn how to treat bullet wounds. Do we crack down on gangs? Do we give junkies ways to get drugs that don’t fund gangs and cartels? Do we aggressively police those streets to clean up drug gangs?
No of course not. Let the black folk have some guns and step back and they kill each other and who cares.
So instead of focusing on where 100 black teens die every year of gang violence, the politician goes to where 10 white kids died once and gets their picture taken and says ‘NEVER AGAIN’ and passes some gun law like it’s going to do anything. Meanwhile the drug gangs just laugh and keep blasting each other with their already-illegal guns.
I think that’s basically the argument that just puts blinders on and assumes everything is perfect and why pretend otherwise.
Shit is so far from perfect it’s not even funny. You can talk about donor bias, legacy admission, employee families, and whatnot, that’s the tip of the iceberg.
The meat of it- “These are all systems that favor class and are predominately white”.
That right there is the problem. Why are there more high class white people than black people? That’s what we have to fix.
I’ll tell you why- red line neighborhoods. In the early to mid 1900s real estate people would refuse to sell homes to black people and other minorities except in certain ‘red line’ neighborhoods… These neighborhoods of course received poor education and little investment. That started the cycle of poverty, and that cycle continues to this day.
Affirmative action is like being on a crashing airplane, and sticking chewing gum to stop the altimeter from spinning down and saying ‘there I fixed it!’. You didn’t fix shit, you just made yourself feel good for a few more minutes. Same thing here.
Fixing this problem by tipping the scale in favor of a few minority applicants is well-intentioned, but ultimately dangerous. Because if we allow a university’s leadership to set their own desired racial mix, then a racist university could use the exact same policy to say ‘we want to be 97% white’.
No, we have to fix the real problems- poverty and primary education in poor minority neighborhoods. Do that, then those kids will be competitive applicants for Harvard.
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