Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

651–660 of 888 posts

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

#651

Post by int_19h »

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #567
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…

its all about you and your son apparently?

Let's talk numbers, then. How many cases like this would you consider an acceptable price to pay for the sake of remedying other discrimination?

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

#652

Post by JamesianP »

zozbot234 wrote: post #628
Dreako wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You had the momentum generations of high caste privilege and high caste education focused culture in India that let you achieve that. still not a reasonable justification to misdirect talented individuals to mediocre colleges and waste their potential. On a long term, this negatively affects scientific progress, and indirectly the national security.

"Mediocre" colleges are only mediocre because the best prospective students shun them. It's a vicious cycle, and breaking it would be quite beneficial.

They're actually not mediocre in any meaningful way these days. Just perception and therefore places where perception is important. which, ironically, should become increasingly dissuaded to not be fooled by rankings due to outcomes like this where top students end up in 2nd tier schools.

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

#653

Post by int_19h »

ETH_start wrote: post #480
dools wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Involuntary unemployment is the single biggest cause of poverty in developed economies and is a policy choice, not a limitation

Even if we levelled all wealth, life would be limited by the finiteness of resources, and only economic development - which this levelling would inhibit - would alleviate such scarcity. Consider what would have happened if society had followed John Stuart Mills' advice in 1848 and maximized for equal distribution of income, resulting in per capita GDP barely increasing from its $2,000 level over the last 170 years: "…

One possibility is that such an egalitarian society would have produced more brilliant engineers and economists, by providing more opportunity to manifest one's talent to lower economic classes. And they then could, perhaps, figure out the unsustainability of their trajectory earlier, and correct it to produce somewhat slower but steady growth without environmental catastrophes, translating to better long-term outcome.

"What if" is a wonderful game.

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

#654

Post by birdyrooster »

eru wrote: post #552
birdyrooster wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just immigrants from Africa or those who share their racial identity, but its also, and probably more importantly, about the lineages who were kidnapped from Africa as slaves and their families who were stolen from for generations which left very little in their communities to pass to their present day ancestors. It's not good enough to have black faces in high places, because there are people who have been…

Compare also Irish people? Of course, in eg Poland it's even more complicated.

There are many parallels around the globe but the point is that there is a lot of nuance to consider if AA is to be effective at what I think was the original intention was: to increase equity among those marginalized for the sake of creating a system most closely resembling a meritocracy.

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

#655

Post by JamesianP »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #573
pmonks wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that he’ll be surrounded by super smart people giving him real challenges at many schools beyond the ones you’ve listed.

There is a massive gap between top schools and middle schools in terms of the quality of education, the connections you make, and the opportunities you get. The density of smart people is far higher at those top schools he mentioned. Downplaying that doesn't do anything for anyone.

Connections sure, but what advantage is there in quality of education? It's not like winning a nobel prize makes someone better at teaching organic chemistry, during the one class they teach (aided by a team of assistants who actually deal with the students). If anything I'd say the places with the worst students have the best teachers by both necessity and by experience level. What are you defining as "middle schools"?

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

#656

Post by LegitShady »

orthecreedence wrote: post #445
LegitShady wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the problem with the marxists isn't their evaluation of the problem, it's that they can study history and still somehow have picked the 2nd worst solution possible.

Well, 99% of Marxism is "evaluation of the problem." It's highly descriptive, barely prescriptive. The more prescriptive offshoot of Marxism would be Leninism, and I agree that authoritarian command economies are a pretty bad idea.

>99% of Marxism is "evaluation of the problem."

Splitting the hair between marxism and leninism isn't helpful in 2022, and marxism takes you to bad ends anyways.

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

#657

Post by int_19h »

nearbuy wrote: post #136
chrischattin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Nobody wants to think their success was the result of an unfair arbitrary advantage.

Because it seems like the pro-affirmative action camp is strong. If most people are against it, who is supporting it? Last year a geophysicist, Dorian Abbot, was invited to give a lecture at MIT about some new results in climate science. His invitation was rescinded because he had once criticized affirmative action in a magazine article. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/why-latest...

It may be more helpful to look at results of recent referendums on the subject.

https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Referendum_88,_Vote_on_I-...

https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Pr...

On one hand, it is telling that even states as culturally blue as CA and WA don't have majority in support of affirmative action. On the other hand, that is still a lot of people in support.

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

#658

Post by esyir »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #559
Foobar8568 wrote: post #553

As an European, this focus on race, which is basically a social definition is truly crazy. The first aspect, how do you define people whose parents are from different constructs? How would an "Hispanic" father with an "African American" mother kid be declared ? And don't get me started on multigeneration or if it works just on look (let's forget how genes work) or "lineage"? By having to decide or denying mixity, it…

Not that long ago, when my parents were children, there was no such issue denying them the ability to use certain bathrooms or drinking fountains on account of their race, social construct or not, let alone attending the best schools. Thankfully, affirmative action was created by the time they went to college. Your point is not a bad one. Race is not rigorously defined. And yet, there are large groups of people still…

Then perhaps the proper response from opponents of Affirmative Action is to game said honor system. Identify as Black/Native American only for as long is it takes to get in.

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

#659

Post by TomSwirly »

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#660

Post by esyir »

portpecos wrote: post #163
j33zusjuice wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on comments I read on here this morning about how some people think it’s ok to be racist because you’re basing your disdain for them on the way other people who look like them behave, no. (To clarify, the comments said, “I dislike people of X color because of the behaviors I’ve observed in people of X color.” And they argued that it wasn’t the same as just hating people based on color, although that’s exactly w…

Is affirmative action somehow related to “Positive Discrimination”?

Is there any way it can be framed to not be related to Positive Discrimination?
Post reply on HN