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American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

economist.com

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Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#491

Post by dmix »

okwubodu wrote: post #261

The second order effects of affirmative action's repeal are going to be very entertaining. You can get a sneak peek by taking a look at the student body at a school like UT Austin where, by law, 75% of students must be in-state and automatically admitted according to class rank (GPA). https://admissions.utexas.edu/explore/freshman-profile You'll notice that when comparing Harvard and UT's student bodies to the US and…

I don’t see a problem with more women getting into university if they have better grades. They already dominate humanities and STEM won’t be affected anyway, so job outcomes won’t be heavily affected.

If we want to fix that then we need to help boys in elementary school, not dumbing down the admissions process.

Sometimes reality is exactly what society needs to confront.

I have the same view with censorship. I’d rather let the dummies embarrass themselves in public than hiding them in the shadows and pretend they wont all still believe that crap and never having the opportunity to have their ideas challenged.

Taping over problems often hides the root causes while doing nothing to deal with it.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#492

Post by rr808 »

RigelKentaurus wrote: post #437

Indian-American father here, living in the Bay Area. My wife and I came to this country with a few hundred dollars between us and have worked hard to reach where we’re at. We're far from privileged. I am 100% against affirmative action on the basis of race. I think there should be some measure of AA on the basis of economic status. It's quite personal for me this year. My 17-year old is applying to universities to st…

> Is it fair to penalize my son for working hard and being an excellent student?

No its not fair which is why its controversial. The real problem is that famous schools are too prestigious right now and there aren't enough of them. Perhaps over time the newer schools who accept all the smart, hardworking students will become recognized for having the best grads.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#494

Post by blix »

abeppu wrote: post #417
briHass wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Realistically, however, it is rare to move more than one or two income brackets from where your parents were when they were your age. You state that like it's a bad thing. If you can bump a bracket or two per generation, 2 generations can take you from near-penniless to upper-middle class.

But the stats seem to show that it's substantially less common in the US than in a bunch of other developed countries, including countries that literally still have monarchs. A "Global Social Mobility Index" doesn't even put the US in the top 20. It looks like if you consider fathers in the bottom income quintile in Sweden and the US, the Swedish father's son is roughly 75% more likely to make it to the top quintile…

I don't think this shows the entire picture.

The USA has larger disparaties across quintiles, in large parts due to its history as a country of (sometimes involuntary) immigrants. I think it will be interesting to see how Sweden's favorable metrics here change as a result of their wave of unskilled immigration, which is probably too recent to be fully incoporated in any generational study. I'd also be interested to see mobility in 'absolute' terms, perhaps relative to global percentiles. Moving up 10% in a very disparate country might reflect more social motion than jumping two quintiles in a very flat country.

Also, moving between income quintiles misses other aspects that might be relevant for a broader definition of social mobility: moving into the top 1% or top 0.1% of income and any movement in wealth. I'm not having luck finding a source at this moment, but I recall seeing that the USA performs favorably on this metric compared to europeans with millenial legacies of state-sanctioned hereditary nobility.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#495

Post by RigelKentaurus »

thejman5200 wrote: post #486
RigelKentaurus wrote: post #437

Indian-American father here, living in the Bay Area. My wife and I came to this country with a few hundred dollars between us and have worked hard to reach where we’re at. We're far from privileged. I am 100% against affirmative action on the basis of race. I think there should be some measure of AA on the basis of economic status. It's quite personal for me this year. My 17-year old is applying to universities to st…

I would add that those CollegeVine calculators (and any acceptance rate calculator) are not based on any real data - extracurriculars really make or break applications at top schools when every applicant is in the 95th percentile. You can't really use that as data, although a lot of the data sets for top schools do support those acceptance rates you mention. If your child's school uses Naviance, that is a far more us…

@thejman5200 That used to be the case, but for the last 2 years, CollegeVine's chancing calculator is pretty close (+/- 4%) to the real acceptance rates (https://www.collegevine.com/admissions-calculator)

Our HS uses both CollegeVine and Naviance. FWIW, Naviance shows my kid's chances ~2% higher on average.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#496

Post by nradov »

RigelKentaurus wrote: post #437

Indian-American father here, living in the Bay Area. My wife and I came to this country with a few hundred dollars between us and have worked hard to reach where we’re at. We're far from privileged. I am 100% against affirmative action on the basis of race. I think there should be some measure of AA on the basis of economic status. It's quite personal for me this year. My 17-year old is applying to universities to st…

Since race is a social construct with no objective definition, your son can select whichever value he likes in the race field without legal penalty. Or just leave it blank.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#497

Post by nonethewiser »

gnicholas wrote: post #384
okwubodu wrote: post #261

The second order effects of affirmative action's repeal are going to be very entertaining. You can get a sneak peek by taking a look at the student body at a school like UT Austin where, by law, 75% of students must be in-state and automatically admitted according to class rank (GPA). https://admissions.utexas.edu/explore/freshman-profile You'll notice that when comparing Harvard and UT's student bodies to the US and…

The Supreme Court is not deciding anything with regard to sex-based discrimination right now. I would be surprised if it even mentioned anything in dicta (non-binding comments not necessary to the holding) about this topic. Also, if/when the question comes up, there is a different standard for sex-based discrimination than race-based. The former is subject to intermediate scrutiny, whereas the latter is subject (in g…

The ruling almost certainly would include sex because it's part of the same law that protects against racial discrimination. Title VI of the civil rights act specifically protects these plus religion and nationality. If it applies to race (and it obvious does) it applies to all of them.

It's honestly astounding that anyone finds this racism either moral or legal. It's precisely the same thing that the civil rights act forbids and for good reason.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#498

Post by blix »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #477
abeppu wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the stats seem to show that it's substantially less common in the US than in a bunch of other developed countries, including countries that literally still have monarchs. A "Global Social Mobility Index" doesn't even put the US in the top 20. It looks like if you consider fathers in the bottom income quintile in Sweden and the US, the Swedish father's son is roughly 75% more likely to make it to the top quintile…

Incomes in Sweden are more compressed so comparing quintiles is somewhat biased. I couldn’t find top 20% but top 10% in Sweden seems to be $54,000/yr while in the US it’s $132,000 So you aren’t exactly comparing the same absolute level of success.

A society composed of 99% peasants, who all earn and own about the same amount, and 1% nobles (who dont 'earn wages' and own many times more than all peasants combined) would look very good through many social mobility metrics.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#499

Post by zachrose »

civilized wrote: post #359
Spooky23 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone should read Robert Caro’s biographies of LBJ. The destitution and most importantly shame that he experienced as a boy shaped him, both in the amazing way he was able to seize control of the Senate and defeat the racist reactionaries who mentored him, and in the negative way that he embraced and wielded unbridled power and corruption.

Completely unironically, I've been looking for a few thousand pages of biography worth reading.

The audiobooks are also good.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#500

Post by nonethewiser »

weaksauce wrote: post #276
okwubodu wrote: post #261

The second order effects of affirmative action's repeal are going to be very entertaining. You can get a sneak peek by taking a look at the student body at a school like UT Austin where, by law, 75% of students must be in-state and automatically admitted according to class rank (GPA). https://admissions.utexas.edu/explore/freshman-profile You'll notice that when comparing Harvard and UT's student bodies to the US and…

> I think 50% of the population suddenly realizing they were beneficiaries of affirmative action this whole time—and subsequently understanding the nuances of discrimination in this country—will ultimately be a good thing. I doubt that if they haven't figured out it's a nuanced thing by now that they will figure that out after the second order effects come into play.

Why not take these non-specific, hypothetical people at face value? If they say they want merit based admissions and that's what we get then they should be happy.
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