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Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

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Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#81

Post by Miner49er »

yucca_plant wrote: post #3

The entire problem is that we categorize people into different buckets. "White", "Black", "Asian", etc. Admissions must be race blind. In general our society must be race blind. "White" people were once Polish, Italian, German, etc. Yet these identities have melted away over generations in large part because society did not and does not actively reinforce these identities. By forcing people into these buckets we rein…

But people in the Black bucket are way behind economically because people in the White bucket have been stealing from them for 100s of years, and the people in the White bucket created the buckets in the first place to do the stealing.

So how do you make that right without continuing to use the buckets? The only way is to either completely dismantle Capitalism, and start over with it or something else again from scratch were everyone starts on even ground again, and it never mattered what bucket people were in. The simpler option is to use the buckets and say that people in the Black bucket get special benefits at the cost of people in the White bucket to right the wrong that happened, and this needs to continue until they're close to even again.

It's like if a friend steals money from you. The only way you're likely ever going to fix that friendship is if the friend at the very least gives the money back and apologizes. Pretending like it never happened isn't going to work.

An additional thing is that you still have people using the buckets for their benefit, or just because they don't know better. In order to counteract the actions of those people, and recognize who's hurt by them, you have to also use the idea of the "buckets".

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#82

Post by crazypyro »

throwawaysea wrote: post #70
crazypyro wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard has a 25%+ Asian American undergrad class, (edit)~~2.5x (Harvard's is ~60% of UC's) more than the latest number listed on that wiki page, so your final statement is factually incorrect`~. I quoted wrong number. It's 25% vs 40%. https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics

The wiki says the UC system has about 40% Asian American students. This suggests race conscious admissions do indeed (as the name suggests) discriminate based on race, at institutions like Harvard.

I quoted wrong number. Sorry.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#83

Post by munchbunny »

javagram wrote: post #18
munchbunny wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that? Discriminating by race for hiring is explicitly illegal, so wherever it's happening, it's already happening despite the law.

Discriminating by race for college admissions is also explicitly illegal. (Edit: see https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/hq43e4.html ) The law only matters inasmuch as it can be enforced. If judges decline to enforce the law when they believe it’s in the interest of diversity to discriminate against a specific race like Asians, it could equally apply to employment where similar diversity initiatives are t…

That's not true the way you claim it to be.

I just read the full decision, and there's a pretty decent number of citations of existing case law discussing what does and doesn't count as discriminating by race, specifically within the context of college admissions. It's in the last 1/3 of the document after the findings of fact and discussions of statistical analyses.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mzqBPL57yCRWHZGE7A6U6re3cGX...

You might disagree with the reasoning of the decision, but there's already case law separating education from employment. Past that we get into slippery slope territory that this decision specifically avoids.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#84

Post by deogeo »

tareqak wrote: post #65
deogeo wrote: post #37

For perspective, here are the Harvard vs US demographics, sorted by most to least represented [1,2,3,4]: Jewish: 14.0% vs 2.6% (5.38x) Asian American: 25.3% vs 5.3% (4.77x) Native Hawaiian: 0.6% vs 0.2% (3.00x) Native American: 1.8% vs 0.7% (2.57x) African American: 14.3% vs 12.7% (1.13x) Hispanic or Latino: 12.2% vs 17.6% (0.69x) non-Jewish white: 33.0% vs 58.9% (0.56x) [1] https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/adm…

Do the admission statistics also have the representation further broken down by how they were admitted (affirmative-action, scholarship, legacy-admission, normal, etc.)?

There was an article about legacy admissions, discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21037400

Tables start at page 40.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#85

Post by umeshunni »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #41
umvi wrote: post #19

It's like we have these two irreconcilable ideas: - Diversity is good - Discrimination is bad When 50% of the world's population is from China/India, how do you both promote diversity and not discriminate?

50% of the world and admission at Harvard in USA are different groups, so the comparison is flawed. If you would use USA population structure, that is a relevant argument.

This might come as a shock to you, but people from outside the US also attend/apply to US universities.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#87

Post by AdrianB1 »

Miner49er wrote: post #81
yucca_plant wrote: post #3

The entire problem is that we categorize people into different buckets. "White", "Black", "Asian", etc. Admissions must be race blind. In general our society must be race blind. "White" people were once Polish, Italian, German, etc. Yet these identities have melted away over generations in large part because society did not and does not actively reinforce these identities. By forcing people into these buckets we rein…

But people in the Black bucket are way behind economically because people in the White bucket have been stealing from them for 100s of years, and the people in the White bucket created the buckets in the first place to do the stealing. So how do you make that right without continuing to use the buckets? The only way is to either completely dismantle Capitalism, and start over with it or something else again from scra…

"So how do you make that right without continuing to use the buckets? "

2 wrongs don't make it right.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#88

Post by [deleted] »

magic_beans wrote: post #78
charliesharding wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't feel helpful to be viewed as an individual as opposed to simply a member of a group? Not every person with x skin color has the same experiences... You're taking racism and running the other way with it instead of just rejecting the premise of viewing people as tribe members as flawed. You shouldn't judge people by the groups they happen to belong to. Individuals should be judged on a case-by-base basis.

I gather you're not a minority.

[deleted]

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#89

Post by rr-geil-j »

This feels reminiscent of 'diversity hires' where females and/or members of the LGBT+ community are preferred not because of competency/merit but to improve a company's diversity metrics. Disclaimer: I haven't experienced this myself. I only read/heard of these complaints from other people.
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