US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions • Hacker News Board

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#191

Post by Ntrails » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 5:14 PM UTC

QuarterReptile wrote: post #112

puffoflogic wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that we get any Black students in under-resourced neighborhoods testing within 100 points of White students, who have been prepping for the test since the eighth grade, that is a miracle of over-performance That is disgustingly, outrageously racist.

Could you elaborate?

Not the poster, but the implication is that all white students are highly privileged in well resourced school districts. It's not technically what was said, but I agree the implication is pretty strong and unreasonable. You can have other readings ofc.

Honestly the boundary between race/money/class/privilege is a pretty rough space to hang around.

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#192

Post by legitster » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC

btown wrote: post #151

legitster wrote: post #34

> Institutions like Harvard say they consider an applicant's race as one of several factors - including economic status and religious belief - in order to build classes that accurately represent the racial and ethnic diversity of the country. I mean, this is all kind of window dressing for elite institutions to be elite, right? There are millions of people qualified to attend these university, Harvard gets to hand se…

Expanding the size of enrollment isn't just something that can flipped like a switch. One cannot simply build a high-rise dormitory without increasing the capacity of all other facilities in lockstep - and a university designed to be fully walkable can only accommodate so much simultaneous construction. And more generally, you have the use of applicants' race backwards - the entire point of affirmative action is to t…

> A university designed to be fully walkable can only accommodate so much simultaneous construction.

Well, your implication here is that accessible, affordable colleges are clearly a second-rate experience. I'm not necessarily disagreeing here, but it's something academia themselves have not admitted.

Your example forgets that they are still allowed to look at financial/hardship data to determine merit. So presuming that someone with identical upbringing must have had a harder life because of the color of their skin only exists to perpetuate bias.

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#193

Post by hot_gril » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC

tonystubblebine wrote: post #125

I look at this through the lens of the San Francisco public schools. When I went to the magnet high school there, Lowell, they had explicit race based standards. We all got scores out of 70 based on our standardized tests and middle school grades. The differences were pretty stark. Chinese kids needed a 68, which could mean they got just one B. White kids needed a 62, black and latino even lower. So I totally get why…

> It's complicated, and you can have your own takeaway, but mine is that merit often defined wrong. I'm on the lookout for people who did more with less, or even did equal or near to it with less. To me, that is more a measure of merit than top line measures like test scores.

I agree with this, and the problem is how many schools look directly at race for that. This reminds me of predictive policing ML models that take race as a factor. Yes it gets more accurate results than if it didn't use that information, but that doesn't make it fair.

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#194

Post by kube-system » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 5:16 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #176

kube-system wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m certainly not defending this court, their motivations, or any tangential effects their opinions might contain. Purely on the merits of the topic: taking an admissions slot from an Asian student and giving it to someone of a different racial background is, plainly, racial discrimination. If we want to help people of a disadvantaged background, we need to find a better way to measure that directly rather than using…

"Taking an admissions slot from an Asian student" is a very opinionated way to describe the situation and strictly speaking it isn't true.

I’m not an expert on these admission practices, so I can’t say whether the claim is true, but that is what is being claimed, no?

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#195

Post by hot_gril » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 5:17 PM UTC

petilon wrote: post #47

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #25

About time. The whole idea behind it is stupid and racist... "if you're a certain skin color, you're too stupid, to compete on merit"... then when people complain, they add the "socioeconomic" factors: "if you're a certain color, you're too poor to compete on merit, but instead of looking at your family income, we'll look at your skin color". I have no idea how something like this gets support in developed western co…

> "if you're a certain skin color, you're too stupid, to compete on merit" Hold on. You realize Harvard's policies have historically been designed to favor Whites, right? The whole "holistic review" process was invented to favor Whites. See https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/histor...

Sounds like they've been excluding Asian students for a long time then.

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#196

Post by naniwaduni » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 5:17 PM UTC

tonystubblebine wrote: post #125

I look at this through the lens of the San Francisco public schools. When I went to the magnet high school there, Lowell, they had explicit race based standards. We all got scores out of 70 based on our standardized tests and middle school grades. The differences were pretty stark. Chinese kids needed a 68, which could mean they got just one B. White kids needed a 62, black and latino even lower. So I totally get why…

> If this level of segregation can happen in San Francisco, I can't imagine how bad it is in the rest of the country.

The forward conclusion is that the rest of the country must be unimaginably worse than SF—which is an easy failure of imagination.

The backward conclusion is that what SF is doing is unhelpful or actively counterproductive—which is not inconsistent with track record.

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#197

Post by legitster » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 5:18 PM UTC

marcusverus wrote: post #155

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Notice that they don't care about diversity of viewpoints or politics Ever talked to someone from Harvard? (they'll usually tell you in the first 4 minutes you meet them telling you they went to school in Boston). They admit quite a number of conservative people if that's what you're worried about, and even their more left people are pretty center-right, as in they really don't want to pay more taxes. > they could…

> They admit quite a number of conservative people... Nope. Fewer than 10% of students are conservative.[0] > and even their more left people are pretty center-right... Nope. ~65% self-identify as "Very Progressive" or "Progressive"! [0] There is no pretending that this is an accident, given that conservatives outnumber liberals by ~40% in the general population! [1] [0] https://features.thecrimson.com/2022/senior-su…

> There is no pretending that this is an accident, given that conservatives outnumber liberals by ~40% in the general population!

Age and conservatism are largely linked, so I would take this with a grain of salt as your average college class is going to be very young.

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#198

Post by hot_gril » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 5:18 PM UTC

Overtonwindow wrote: post #169

kevinsundar wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Race is easy to game too, in fact far easier. I know people who were around 5% Hispanic who would then write Hispanic on college applications. They're technically not lying. There's also just plenty of people that just straight up lie about their race on college applications. It's not like its being verified at all. I went to high school with a lot of White - Asian mixed kids. None of them wrote Asian on their colleg…

There was even a United States senator who claimed to be Native American, was awarded academic positions based on that, but a DNA test proved her native ancestry to be so minuscule as to not even be measurable.

Elizabeth Warren

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#199

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 5:19 PM UTC

adastra22 wrote: post #134

danenania wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It strikes me as naive to think it would ever work otherwise. Justices are political appointees and political actors. I see no reason to expect anything different. Believing they are somehow "above politics" strikes me as similarly fanciful to believing in the divine right of kings.

Judges are NOT political appointees. Within the civil service a political appointee is one that can be and usually is dismissed in a change of government. Heads of agencies and such. Supreme Court justices serve lifetime appointments specifically so that they are not subject to political interference.

> Judges are NOT political appointees.

On the contrary, any officer appointed by the President, Vice President, or an agency head, with or without Senate confirmation, is a “political appointee”.

> Within the civil service a political appointee is one that can be and usually is dismissed in a change of government.

It is true that within the executive branch, political appointees often serve at the pleasure of the President (though even there are a number of exceptions where political appointees have fixed terms and cannot be arbitrarily dismissed.)

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#200

Post by whimsicalism » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 5:19 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #161

whimsicalism wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is opaque. As far as I know, a successful surgical operation is generally pretty cut and dry. No redefining here.

I mean with reference to a sophistry technique to shut down discussion. Were the individual example to be computer scientists instead of surgeons, then the definition of a successful computer scientist can be redefined to a suitable outcome as proof that racial discrimination does not harm consumers of surgeons or computer scientists. Its avoiding the core discussion via wordplay. Furthermore if no individual example…

Sure, I get the phenomenon you are describing. It is unclear how this relates to my comment.

My comment is merely that the criterion you are mentioning is actually not a great one for selecting who to perform surgery on you.