Asking prospective students for their skin color when they apply to your school should be unthinkable.
Honestly, asking anyone for race on any application for anything shouldn’t be a thing. With the exception of medical things specific to race, it’s completely unnecessary. Unless I’m missing something glaring, other than perpetuating systematic disenfranchisement.
“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.
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.
Racism is now the law.
So we need laws to not be racist? This is an insanely pessimistic take that nothing has improved the issue of racism in the US.
It’s not pessimistic - it’s simply an honest understanding of how white supremacism is fundamental to the US. To be clear, things like affirmative action didn’t really improve things all that much - it was a band-aid on a traumatic amputation - but it was at least something.
You are correct here, why would we not celebrate this just because there are more issues that need corrected?
Wait is this actually a thing?
Legacy is a much more weighted merit than affirmative action was.
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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.
Congress could’ve made affirmative action illegal if they wanted to?
But only one side works as the majority’s dog whistle.
Yes. Even noted red state California (/s) voted in a referendum to make the practice illegal.
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.
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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Our entire society is plain wrong, doing things to address those injustices is good actually.
P.s you can’t be “racist” against white people, in a white supremacists nation.
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It’s very difficult. Discriminating against white people in a fundamentally white supremacist society (which the US is) is a bit like farting in a hurricane. I mean… do you see footage of black cops casually murdering white people at least once every week?
That’s not how it’s going to play out in reality, unfortunately. I truly wish it were.
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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.
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.
Rule 10
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.
my understanding was that affirmative action is about creating a diverse student body
I see it as compensating for disadvantages people have. So, if one student has lower test scores, but achieved them despite going to an underfunded school and having a part-time job, then that student scores are actually more impressive than someone else who scored better, but had private tutors throughout high school. Once you account for people’s disadvantages, you should naturally get more diverse student body.
And of course minority students have disadvantages that should be accounted for. But they don’t affect everyone the same, and racial quotas is a very lazy way to do this. Instead, admissions should look at the individual circumstances of each student.
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 banning abortions etc.
They are there to interpret laws, not go along with what’s socially acceptable at any given time
They are not the group of people you should look to for social progress and it’s by design
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.
The unfortunate reality is that left unattended these organizations revert to extreme bias for white and rich. Getting rid of AA in favor of something better is fine - but getting rid of any guideline full stop is a much, much worse answer to the problem.
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?
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.
It’s such a small weight in the overall judgement (according to the selection metrics published by universities) that I’m doubtful much will change. And another dog whistle becomes obsolete for the right wing.
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
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 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.
Almost like anti-Caucasian and anti-Asian racism is still racism.
What “anti-Caucasian” racism?
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?
Those were rightfully outlawed. And now AA goes with them.
Man you moved the goalposts fast.
Slavery was codified into the Constitution. It was never outlawed. You should take 5 minutes to actually read on the subject.
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.
So racism is still okay but only when it is against certain groups? That sounds pretty racist
You must be joking. Have you ever looked at history in your lifetime?
