Notably, the comments section of the article is overwhelmingly in favor of schools not discriminating based on the color of the applicant's skin.
How about not discriminating at all ?
Basing it on academic achievement might seem reasonable.
Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
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Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
#52This argument, while important, is the low hanging fruit of the affirmative action debate in my opinion. We would not need affirmative action if legacy based admissions wasn't so prevalent in top schools. We would not need affirmative action if every school district in America recieved proper funding to support teachers and enable smaller class sizes, test prep for students to take specialized exams, and after school…
Your assumption is wrong. Even if there is no legacy based admissions, even if every school district in America received proper funding for everything, Black students will still have significantly low educational attainment and achievement. It is because the extremely high percentage of Black kids living under single parenthood family [1], and there is no educational / societal intervention can reverse its impact on Black kids' education and many many other aspects in their lifes.
[1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_102.20.a...
Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
#53This argument, while important, is the low hanging fruit of the affirmative action debate in my opinion. We would not need affirmative action if legacy based admissions wasn't so prevalent in top schools. We would not need affirmative action if every school district in America recieved proper funding to support teachers and enable smaller class sizes, test prep for students to take specialized exams, and after school…
Throwing money at education doesn't fix anything. Washington, DC is a fine example. The worst performing school districts with the most money spent.
Corralation/causation.
Assume the underlying cause of the discrepency is external to the school (eg. parents' income) (yes, this is an assumption that may not be universally true). It is possible that throwing money at the schools still helps, but just not enough to counter the original difference (either because we aren't throughing enough money at the problem, or we are out of productive places to through money).
For instance, consider providing 3 free hot meals a day to students. This helps poor students far more then wealthy ones, and is something we can "just through money at" (nothing in large orgs is actually that simple, doubly so in goverment). But it will not close the gap entirely.
Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
#54This argument, while important, is the low hanging fruit of the affirmative action debate in my opinion. We would not need affirmative action if legacy based admissions wasn't so prevalent in top schools. We would not need affirmative action if every school district in America recieved proper funding to support teachers and enable smaller class sizes, test prep for students to take specialized exams, and after school…
The other problem is that affirmative action (as currently practiced), is a very blunt instrument to mitigate the problems you describe. If your concern is fairness to people from underfunded schools, then discrimanate in favor of students from such schools. Currently, colleges do the opposite, since they use their historicall records to favor students that come from schools which have a history of producing students…
How is affirmative action currently practiced? Not sure what you’re alluding to.
Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
#55A lot of commenters here are demonstrating that they do not understand the difference between racism and racial discrimination. Racsim is the systematic oppression of people. It's carried out in instutions, culture, and processes: individual people do not perform racsim. (Individuals can discriminate.) Racism depends on country / region. In the US, racism exits against black and brown people. It is a system set up fo…
I'm not sure copy-pasting this argument 5 times in the thread has made it any more convincing.
Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
#56This argument, while important, is the low hanging fruit of the affirmative action debate in my opinion. We would not need affirmative action if legacy based admissions wasn't so prevalent in top schools. We would not need affirmative action if every school district in America recieved proper funding to support teachers and enable smaller class sizes, test prep for students to take specialized exams, and after school…
> We would not need affirmative action if every school district in America recieved proper funding
I'd like this to be true, but unfortunately, it just isn't.
Many of the worst performing schools in America are actually reasonably well funded. Take a look at DC or Chicago and you will find individual schools within those districts that perform very poorly despite being similarly (or better) funded compared to their peers.
More funding isn't always the answer. Something else is going on.
Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
#57Setting the racial aspect to one side, is there anything of value in "admissions readers" in a gargantuan administrative bureaucracy rating young kids on their "likability"?
Plausible deniability for illegal/unpopular admissions practices.
Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
#58Asian-Americans should be fighting the Chinese natives not the schools because that's where all the spots have been going to for the past decade.
That's not the point. Let's fight the schools with BS vague "personality" tests.
Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Throwing money at education doesn't fix anything. Washington, DC is a fine example. The worst performing school districts with the most money spent.
Have you considered the possibility that these school districts have financial needs that are different from better districts, and that they would do even worse if there was less money spent on them?
Do you have examples of what some of these special needs would be?
Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support
#60This argument, while important, is the low hanging fruit of the affirmative action debate in my opinion. We would not need affirmative action if legacy based admissions wasn't so prevalent in top schools. We would not need affirmative action if every school district in America recieved proper funding to support teachers and enable smaller class sizes, test prep for students to take specialized exams, and after school…
Your assumption is wrong. Even if there is no legacy based admissions, even if every school district in America received proper funding for everything, Black students will still have significantly low educational attainment and achievement. It is because the extremely high percentage of Black kids living under single parenthood family [1], and there is no educational / societal intervention can reverse its impact on…
> Your assumption is wrong
Perhaps...
> It is because the extremely high percentage of Black kids living under single parenthood family [1]
This is wildly unsourced - what data do you have (ideally across nations/racial categories) for this?