Why is this flagged? Previous discussions were at the top of HN.
Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
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Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
#112> Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. But this is affirmative action. What did they strike down? Also god damn I hate this supreme court for overruling their own decisions. Even the ones I would personally benefit from. This is going to ruin the…
The court changing their mind feels like a feature not a bug. The court represents people, and those people change their mind from generation to generation. I don't want to live in a world where we can't overturn bad decisions. Would America be better off if we legalized slavery 300 years ago, and could never undo it?
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Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
#113Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
#114Harvard used "personality score" to sort out applicants. Now, they got rid of "personality score", SAT/ACT/LSAT/MCAT, etc., scores. They can tell their feeder schools even four years earlier, how to prepare admission packets for prospective students. Schools like Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Stanford can pick whatever students they want.
At the risk of getting sued and having it go back up to the same court that gave us this decision
Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
#115As someone of Hispanic descent this is very interesting to me. Affirmative Action probably helped my father, whose father was a construction worker and mother a homemaker both of whom dropped out of high school, get into college and ultimately become a doctor. But because my father was a doctor, I had a fairly privileged upbringing. I'm a generation removed, but growing up in California always had to indicate my back…
Why do you think you didn’t belong? I know a lot of white and Asian MIT grads and only one had perfect SAT scores. And several were valedictorian, but I’m not sure it was the majority.
Curious how often you wonder if the white people you work with had an advantage by not being historically discriminated against? Probably never. And rightfully so. If people do wonder then that’s on them. There’s a lot of dumb stuff people can wonder about.
Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I think he might be talking about "Racism in US college admission has been banned" which sounds like a good thing. Do you argue that Asian and Indian students should be rejected because of their race in favor of less qualified black or Hispanic students? I would love to hear your case for why that is ok.
I think an economic based affirmative action makes more sense, so don't put words in my mouth. Let's just celebrate rule by 5 people in a country of 330M dumbocracy
Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
#117As someone of Hispanic descent this is very interesting to me. Affirmative Action probably helped my father, whose father was a construction worker and mother a homemaker both of whom dropped out of high school, get into college and ultimately become a doctor. But because my father was a doctor, I had a fairly privileged upbringing. I'm a generation removed, but growing up in California always had to indicate my back…
Why do you think you didn’t belong? I know a lot of white and Asian MIT grads and only one had perfect SAT scores. And several were valedictorian, but I’m not sure it was the majority. Curious how often you wonder if the white people you work with had an advantage by not being historically discriminated against? Probably never. And rightfully so. If people do wonder then that’s on them. There’s a lot of dumb stuff pe…
He wonders because there’s been systemic sustained racial discrimination for the benefit of people of his race.
It’s one of the insidious and corrosive ways affirmative action undermines the accomplishments of its potential beneficiaries.
Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
#118I think universities can probably come up with a different set of non-protected criteria to lift underrepresented communities out of social/financial oppression. This might even provide greater access to some equally needing students that are looked over by racially-based criteria. In a perfect world, everyone would have equal opportunity and support throughout their primary education, and college admission could be much more merit-based. Unfortunately, that is not the country we live in and there is little appetite to invest in ensuring all Americans have access to high-quality primary education.
Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely agree with legislation via judicial branch being a bad idea. However, affirmative action isn't legislation. This is judicial review striking down policy (executive branch interpretation and implementation of legislation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action https://www.history.com/topics/us-government-and-politics/af...
Judicial review has upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action policies for 40+ years, what changed is the composition of the Supreme Court and its related willingness to legislate from the bench -- abandoning stare decisis and judicial restraint. We saw this with Roe last year.
What also changed was the timing of the decision, see O'Connor's "25 years" comment
Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
#120I often wished universities (and other organizations) would use a scoresheet-like "matrix of oppression" to determine someone's background difficulties.
Like okay, you get X points if you're this race, Y points for that. Z points if your parents were poor. Or if you grew up in these bad zip codes. Or if your dad was gone and mom was an addict. Whatever.
As an Asian American of relatively privileged (middle class) upbringing who went to a state college, I often found it unfair that many of my desperately poor white peers worked their asses off their whole lives, despite minimal support from their parents, to get into college on merit alone. Meanwhile for me, my admissions counselor handwaved away all the entrance requirements (my GPA was low, I didn't have the pre reqs done, etc.) and admitted me on the spot. Years later I'd find out that I was part of their zip code based recruiting program designed to get non whites into the school for the benefit of their diversity quotas. In California they already weren't allowed to use affirmative action due to Prop 209, so they just used a geographical proxy for race (finding zip codes with high non white ratios to recruit from).
I didn't deserve that spot at all. I never worked for it, I never suffered for it, my parents didn't much either. I just happened to benefit from policies meant to protect Black and Hispanic people, at their expense, while simultaneously throwing white people under the bus. It was pretty unfair all around.
I get that as a society we want to help give people a chance to escape the circumstances of their birth. But skin color alone is an awfully broad brush that paints only a vague picture of who that person is and what kind of adversity they may or may not have overcome. I wish we looked at it with more nuance is all I'm saying.