The elite are at it again. Got to keep them colored folks down.
Treating people equally regardless of their skin color is hardly ‘keeping the colored folks down’.
People of color have never been treated equally in America. That is the reason they need priority in education to allow them to start to balance out some of that inequality.
The issue comes when you are applying skin color adjustments to people who aren’t at a disadvantage. A rich black person has significantly more opportunity than a poor asian person. However, Harvard was saying the rich black person should get extra preference over the poor asian student, purely because of their skin colors. Why should the asian student from a poor family with hardly any opportunity be held down?
Were they held down though? In California when they eliminated AA at their public universities there wasn’t much change in the economic outcomes for asian and white students. Sure, before maybe they didn’t get to go to the ‘best’ school but on average still had similar outcomes.
This isn’t true for black/Hispanic/native American students whose economic outcome depreciated. These students benefited from being able to break into the social networks provided by elite universities. Something that white/Asian students might already have access to.
So if all that matters is going to elite schools then sure, but there are externalities that are important and not everyone benefits equally from the top echelon of schools. It’s not a perfect system but it’s better than not having it.
Were they held down though?
Harvard specifically suppressed asian applicants based on their race, not via some secondary effect, but as a core aspect of their race-based admissions. In the court case, this was demonstrably proven and is why the race-based admissions were struck down under the Equal Protections clause.
“The First Circuit found that Harvard’s consideration of race has resulted in fewer admissions of Asian-American students. Respondents’ assertion that race is never a negative factor in their admissions programs cannot withstand scrutiny.”
Yes, if all that matters in your life is where you go to school then yes they were held back from achieving that.
For a lot of people higher education is seen as the mantle to climb the socioeconomic ladder and on average the Asian or white kid who was competitive but didn’t get to go to harvard will achieve similar outcomes regardless.
Asking prospective students for their skin color when they apply to your school should be unthinkable.
“I want to attend your school just like my grandfather” = This is fine
“I want to attend your school because my grandfather wasn’t allowed to” = This is not
Think about that for a second.
Legacy admissions shouldn’t be a thing either, imo. It should be 100% about merit.
Wait is this actually a thing?
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Absolutely.
And until that’s the case, there’s a clear double standard that benefits white people.
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This is a bad take.
Racial admissions existed to counter the other injustice - an imperfect solution to the inherent racism of legacy admissions.
Now that affirmative action has ended, the injustice of legacy admissions has been made even worse. Racism is now the law.
And it will never end.
But asking them who their father is is fine?
If people gave a shit about fairness they’d care about legacy admission more than affirmative action.
Neither is ok. But only one likely violates the constitution. Congress could make legacy admissions illegal if they wanted to.
No, that’s not fine either and should also be outlawed due to a history of systemic racism giving some people an advantage over others.
It should be 100% merit based, plain and simple. It’s the only fair way.
That’s not how it’s going to play out in reality, unfortunately. I truly wish it were.
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Funny how we addressed the tool that helped black kids first, rather than the one that hurt them.
Maybe it’s because this is being pushed by bad people, that you seem to agree with under some fantasy of “100% merit based” reality.
Systemic biases exist, AA compensated for them banking AA is basically pretending this nation isn’t racist AF.
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You can never change who your parents are, that’s some real mental gymnastics to justify how hereditary acceptance criteria is good actually, but using race to identify those underservered by k-12 education, lacking in family connections, not having knowledge of college specific tricks to getting accepted & generally having less resources available to do the extra-ciricular activity to get in, and compensate for that bias is bad.
Affirmative action is only silly if you don’t accept that systemic racism exists.
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Fine the mental gymnastics is to justify why hereditary admission criteria are more acceptable to you not “good”
Yes the white kid does.
- The racial biases of whoever runs the admission system
- The racial biases of teachers at the school
- The white kid is still more likely to benefit from hereditary admission and insider information on how to do well in admission tests/letter.
To pretend a white kid in a predominantly black school doesn’t have an advantage in “colorblind” admissions is to deny the existence of systemic racism.
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Without AA, racism in admissions is illegal.
No positive measure to counteract systemic biases are illegal.
Hereditary admissions when 80% of previous students were not black, is pretty explicitly racist and still very much legal
All the implicit systemic biases in the admission system are very much legal
The only thing you can’t do is ensure black kids get admitted.
If you have a system and you know its giving you biases results you can compensate for the bias, without understanding every single component bias, that’s what AA was, banning it, is sticking your head in the sand and going back to faux/real Naïvity about how system racism works.
We might as well start asking “why do black people prefer renting?”, because as a nation we are commited to pretending to not understand that there are systemic reasons for things.
Almost like anti-Caucasian and anti-Asian racism is still racism.
What “anti-Caucasian” racism?
I think he means anti-white? Racism is any kind of prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by a group, individual, or institution against a person or group on the basis of their race or ethnicity. The group being discriminated against does not necessarily have to be the minority group.
Racism is any kind of prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by a group, individual, or institution against a person or group on the basis of their race or ethnicity.
Absolutely not. Racism is inherent to the pseudo-science of scientific racism invented by European “intellectuals” to justify the brutality of colonialist exploitation - which, of course, is still ongoing. It is a fundamental classification of “race” as defined by scientific racists - ie, white supremacists. White goes on top, black at the bottom, some other people go in between. There is no other kind of “racism” - if it doesn’t work according to that specific race hierarchy, it’s not racism.
This is the reason why it’s not technically true that black people cannot be racist - they can, but they can only be racist insofar as the tenets of white supremacism allows. White supremacism never allows black people to discriminate against white people - which is why you don’t see black cops murdering white folk once a week in front of cameras and getting away with it (they would if they could - cops are cops).
Han supremacism (for instance) is not racism - it is not based on the same race classification system that forms the core tenet of white supremacist ideology. It simply does not view the world through the lens of race that westerners (ie, white people) do. It is an entirely different form of institutionalized bigotry and discrimination.
Not sure what you’re trying to say here. Historically minority groups (specifically black and Hispanic) have been underrepresented in higher education. Affirmative action was supposed to help make higher education racially represent the population at large. Many minority groups are disadvantaged from a young age in terms of education in the USA so collecting data on race of applicants was supposed to help normalize people’s racial background. If I grew up in a predominantly well funded schools my exam scores will likely be higher than a student who grew up in a poor school district. The effects of segregation, racism, and xenophobia in the USA have led to a racial divide between many local school districts in the USA. The whites who have historocally had more money have better funded schools. Without knowing where someone came from it is harder to judge how good their respective scores are. Odviously there are still ways to do this but the supreme court removed a legally required one.
So racism now should be okay because racism in the past was okay? Racism is still racism, and racism is still bad.
I think we can all agree racism is bad. The point of affirmative action was to help those who are victims of past racism. As I said, minority groups tend to live in localized areas and have historocally had less financial resources and because of this suffer from worse education and less connections to people who have gone to college before. Collecting racial data was a way to normalize test results and make up for lack of college prep knowledge for disadvantaged students. Collecting this data also forces schools to be aware of thier unconscious bias. AA was introduced to combat racism in college selections, I don’t think we will slip back to as bad as it was, but i think a new program should have been implemented before rejecting this one.
And now it’s time to get rid of it, because racism shouldn’t justify racism. Racism in the past shouldn’t justify racism today. Racism towards one group shouldn’t justify racism towards a different group. “Reverse” or “positive” racism doesn’t exist, it is just plain old racism you try to justify to yourself.
I’m not sure how affirmative action is racist.
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
Prejudice - why do people of certain color need more handholding? Are you saying they are not as capable because of their race?
Discrimination - if you prop up one group over others, you are discriminating others. If you do it solely based on their skin color, that is racist.
Prejudice - (preconceived opinions not based on reason or actual experience) students with better SAT scores will perform better in college. There’s no evidence to support this and it is still a major deciding factor in college admissions.
Discrimination - (unjust treatment of different categories of people) the argument over what is “just” treatment will likely never end. I believe it is unjust that primary school districts in the USA can vary wildly in quality.
This is honestly great to hear. I have heard calls for this for years, and have repeatedly seen stats that show how Affirmative Action can end up hurting lots of people’s chances at acceptance to universities. See: https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/med1.jpg?x91208
I just wish that, based on their recent track record, I knew that the Supreme Court had passed this ruling with good intentions.
This is really great to hear. College admissions should be a fair process.
You know how many people on a certain other social media site have issues with the idea of equality? How is equality bad? Isn’t the ultimate goal of a society not to discriminate based on things such as race? So if an admission process is blind to race, how is that bad?
People in favor of affirmative action in college admissions see things very specifically.
They see that an identifiable group is under represented and they want to ‘fix’ it. Without any idea what the ramifications of their ‘fix’ is.
All they care about is the demographics of whatever it is they are looking at. All they think about is race.
The idea that racism is the way out of racism is simply crazy.
Of course, you have to realize that the definition of racism can change from an outlook of superiority to power + privilege on a whim too
The whole progressive mindset is just fucking evil
The idea that racism is the way out of racism is simply crazy.
See, I find this statement to perfectly summarize the situation, and I do plan on using it myself. I could totally agree with you on your entire post actually except for that last statement which is woefully out of line. I don’t understand how you can get the first part of your post so right, but then get the last line of your post so wrong.
I guess considering the last part out of line depends on what your (or my) understanding of the progressive way of thinking and what it’s based on and what it’s goals are.
They’ve done a great job marketing it as ‘just be a nice person’ but that’s not at all what it really is.
I’m sure there are hundreds of millions of well-meaning progressives who believe that. And I’m not trying to insult them.
But people get sold on one thing and end up getting something entirely different all of the time. It’s sad, but that’s the way things are, unfortunately.
I’m not saying the opposite of progressivism is the answer here either, what I would advocate is common sense.
If you need a PhD and peer reviewed sociology papers to try to convince someone that something as egregious as race-based college admissions is a good thing, you’re pretty obviously the baddie and common sense should tell us that you’re trying to convince us of something for a different reason.
Of course, you have to realize that the definition of racism can change from an outlook of superiority to power + privilege on a whim too
I’m in my 50s, I don’t recall the definition of racism changing at all, much less “on a whim”. What are some of the other definitions you have seen arbitrarily assigned to the term racism?
When you were taught the definition of racism, or when it’s spoken about today (sometimes) it’s a hateful word and a hateful way of thinking about a group of people.
: a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
Progressives have since changed that definition to sometimes mean power + privilege = racism. Which is a wildly different thing and is not based on hate at all, but on socio-issues
Prejudice plus power, also known as R = P + P, is a stipulative definition of racism used in the United States, often by white anti-racism activists.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice_plus_power
The problems in discussing these things or calling someone ‘racist’ is that these definitions (amongst others) can be used interchangeably, because they are both wildly different definitions of the same word
The most egregious example of institutional racism is finally undone.
In a country built by slave labor this is the most egregious example of institutionalize racism? Not the slavery? Or the time we took Japanese people and put them in camps?
So racism is still okay but only when it is against certain groups? That sounds pretty racist
Those were rightfully outlawed. And now AA goes with them.
Yeah man, black people going to college is right up there with chattel slavery and putting people in concentration camps. The great injustice of our times.
Man you moved the goalposts fast.
This is gross. Why are these people allowed to be in charge of anything?
Why? Colleges can still give preference to students who live in poor neighborhoods or bad school districts. What’s the problem with that approach?
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Exactly. Class is more important than race anyways, but the rich and powerful prefer us to be squabbling over race instead.
And in the real world it goes against them. What prevents someone from thinking “why should I trust your degree when you had easier time getting in?”, same with all diversity quotas
my understanding was that affirmative action is about creating a diverse student body
Well with the supreme court it isn’t because we elect them. They are appointed so I’d say it’s to protect the interests of the elite like bannimg abortions etc.
Not at all. Why should wealthy black students get consideration denied to a poor white student? Why should Asian students be straight up discriminated against?
Use economic status, not skin color.
This is gross.
Treating people equally, regardless of their skin color, is gross?
The problem is that people were NOT being treated equally and so we had to try to force institutions to accept people they’d otherwise discriminate against. This isn’t going to bring any equality, we’re going to go back to marginalized groups and historically discriminated groups being left out again and rich white people will be back “on top.”
I say this as a white guy with all the advantages society gives me so I’m not some rando asking for a leg up on anyone. It’s not about me.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. If it was wrong to exclude people based on race before, it’s still wrong now.
Agreed. But if in this context, the harmful impacts of race aren’t addressed, only the beneficial impacts, then it’s just engaging in further harm.
Say Population A is constantly having their things stolen from Population B. The government steps in and says, “Ok, we will give Population A a certain amount of money to make up for what is constantly stolen.” While it isn’t enough to make up for their loss, it helps Population A mitigate the impact of the theft. Population B then says, “That’s not fair. They shouldn’t get anything just because they’re Population A. That’s populationist.” Meanwhile, Population A is still getting their things stolen by the same population that are claiming the policy is unfair, and now the policy that was implace to help mitigate that is being removed. The real immediate solution would be for Population B to stop stealing from Population A, and ultimately stop dividing the entire population into A & B. However, the latter isn’t going to happen until the former stops.
But if in this context, the harmful impacts of race aren’t addressed, only the beneficial impacts, then it’s just engaging in further harm.
Affirmative action actively and deliberately keeps asians down purely due to the race of the asian individual applying. It isn’t some secondary effect, but a primary facet of Harvard’s race-based admissions. Why are you defending a system that keeps a minority down by specifically targeting their race? How is that not active harm?
Core finding from the document:
Held: Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
