231–240 of 1001 posts
The concept of affirmative action is foreign to me (quite literally so). I only know it from American media, and I've come understand it to mean "positively discriminate based on race, so long as it's a minority race" - please correct me of I'm wrong. But anyway, my question for the Americans here who grok this stuff: I assume the intent is to help disadvantaged people have opportunities that more priviledged people…
Considering the failure and timing of prop 16 and overall makeup of the California electorate compared to rest of country, official discrimination on the basis of race likely won't return in higher ed. Also consider that prop 16 failed by double digits with the pro-discrimination crowd outspending the opposition 19x What I'm curious about is this: the Harvard decision is wrt a private entity, the court ruled that the…
As someone who is white, and got 100% job offers from every interview, I wonder if I got it out of discrimination, or I'm so elite and they picked me despite being white.
The concept of affirmative action is foreign to me (quite literally so). I only know it from American media, and I've come understand it to mean "positively discriminate based on race, so long as it's a minority race" - please correct me of I'm wrong. But anyway, my question for the Americans here who grok this stuff: I assume the intent is to help disadvantaged people have opportunities that more priviledged people…
More or less, but not precisely. How do you define a "minority race"? Universities in America discriminate against Asian Americans despite them being a minority of the American population generally, ostensibly because they're over-represented in universities.
The concept of affirmative action is foreign to me (quite literally so). I only know it from American media, and I've come understand it to mean "positively discriminate based on race, so long as it's a minority race" - please correct me of I'm wrong. But anyway, my question for the Americans here who grok this stuff: I assume the intent is to help disadvantaged people have opportunities that more priviledged people…
Mostly it was a justice thing. The US spent decades disadvantaging people based on race and this was a step to try and reverse some of that.
I agree that changing it from race to economic class is probably the right move at this point.
That being said, I don't like that the SC is legislating from the bench. They are striking this down for purely political reasons.
It is important to note that Harward’s admission policy that is the subject of this case was designed to favor White students over Jewish ones [1]. Today it is being used to discriminate against Asian Americans. Colleges are already prepared for this ruling. Many, such as the University of Washington have abandoned standardized tests because such tests compell universities to admit the kinds of students universities…
America has long had most of the best universities in the world. Getting rid of all standardized tests and instead relying on (heavily inflated, or not) grades, combined with bullshit essays, is going to significantly undermine that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If affirmative action is what enabled your father to become a doctor, then it almost certainly sounds like the success story that motivates the action. I don’t know percent of the time a similar story is required to justify the means, but it sounds like you should embrace the path that your family’s life has taken. The alternative, presumably, would be effectively unfair knowing what could and then did become.
Something else that isn't really factored into most of these conversations is the level of gatekeeping around professions and schools where a much larger group of people can succeed or even flourish, yet never get the opportunity due to limited class sizes. Around the healthcare debate specifically, there were a lot of people who talked about the restrictive policies that artificially limit the supply of doctors as w…
I've watched the full set of lectures for a few classes at top universities (Yale, MIT, that kind of thing) for a topic area in which I took a lot of classes at a very-cheap low-tier ex-normal-school state university that's completely unknown outside a ~150 mile radius, and only somewhat recognized within it.
From what I could tell, the content, pace, and amount & sort of assigned work were all pretty similar.
What differed? Two main things:
1) The guest lecturers—cheap state school, none, or unremarkable ones; the fancy schools, both more common to have them, and universally very impressive credentials, possibly someone you've heard of even if you don't really follow the topic, basically, their guests were "celebrities", at least within a field.
2) How engaged the students seemed to be—not at all, at the cheap state school; very, at the fancy schools.
This is for undergrad. The ways they differ may not be the same in grad school.
The concept of affirmative action is foreign to me (quite literally so). I only know it from American media, and I've come understand it to mean "positively discriminate based on race, so long as it's a minority race" - please correct me of I'm wrong. But anyway, my question for the Americans here who grok this stuff: I assume the intent is to help disadvantaged people have opportunities that more priviledged people…
As 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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I went to MIT ... I was valedictorian [presumably in high school] and had a perfect score on the SATs > I've always wondered if being Hispanic helped me get into college or into jobs I've been on plenty of hiring committees for engineers and product owners. The fact that you have stellar academics and went to MIT stands out well more than your name or whatever your skin color is. Good for you for your accomplishmen…
> AA had a purpose and place at some moment in time. I think that moment has passed. Given how women and people with disabilities are still largely absent from these discussions and who still face massive challenges in breaking into some industries - let alone leadership roles in those industries - I think AA still had a place. I think it's a mistake to say that absent AA we have a pure meritocracy. Instead the discr…
Throwing out a philosophical question, is the end goal that every industry, workplace, and residential are to have a completely equal proportion of every group label that can be created?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Institutional racism is highly corrosive to society. All we’ve done is create new grievances among poor whites to justify the guilt of upper class whites about things their grandparents did. Those people are rightly upset that the government has been openly racist to them their entire lives. How did that help? — I mean, besides soothing the feelings of elites that they’re not bigots, even though they made 1950s style…
Yeah. There's nobody really fighting for poor white men, except maybe Bernie? But it's all too easy to capitalize on their grief and anger and redirect it into cultural wars instead. That anger is politically more potent left unchecked and weaponized than actually addressed. Some of the most down to earth, hardworking people I knew were poor white men with a dream: teachers, farmers, builders, activists, lawyers. The…
Not because his supporters are racists, but because they’re done with an establishment openly bigoted towards them — and pathologically unwilling to address their needs.