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Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

latimes.com

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Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#331

Post by oluwie »

bouncing wrote: post #179
flowerlad wrote: post #47

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.

Standardized tests have been known for years as an very unfair way of judging students. People with resources to prepare and study for those tests often end up with inflated scores than for people who don't have the resource to prepare for them. High school grades have been consistently found the be #1 leading indicator of how well a student is going to do in college.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#332

Post by 0xcafefood »

JohnMakin wrote: post #188
skrebbel wrote: post #162

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…

> Shouldn't this just be run-of-the-mill social democratic "lets hand out some extra opportunities/benefits to the poor" program? In a lot of ways, affirmative action is a boogeyman that doesn't exist in the way many people think. In many large states, such as california, they already for a long time do not consider race as a factor in admissions, as per law. And, IMO, california has done a pretty good job of having…

> In a lot of ways, affirmative action is a boogeyman that doesn't exist in the way many people think.

In that case, can you explain why two schools would've fought for the explicit use of race in deciding school admissions all the way to the Supreme Court?

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#333

Post by Fatnino »

93po wrote: post #295
mcv wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, every time the discussion comes up about, for example, reparations for the descendants of slaves, I start out thinking: it's been 150 years! Some of those descendants are very successful now and some descendants of slave owners are probably very poor now. And some people are descendants of both. And then I learn about the Jim Crow period, and then you hear that even the GI bill explicitly excluded black people,…

> Have things been made right by now? I have no idea. Ask any black person and there's your answer.

Ask justice Thomas

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#334

Post by 0xcafefood »

EatingWithForks wrote: post #251
skrebbel wrote: post #162

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…

One of the things of "why not class only" is because in America race matters a lot. I mean it quite literally: studies have shown simply having a black-sounding name makes you equivalent to a white-sounding name of an order of magnitude less qualification. In some cases black people with a college degree have job prospects similar to a white person with a felony record.

> studies have shown simply having a black-sounding name makes you equivalent to a white-sounding name of an order of magnitude less qualification.

Can you link to a study showing this? How did this study define what an "order of magnitude less qualification" means?

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#335

Post by spacephysics »

BobbyJo wrote: post #219
skrebbel wrote: post #162

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…

The intent is to factor in some unknown "racism" value. Poor White and Asian kids still beat out poor Black and Hispanic kids academically on average, so if you naively stratified by income, you'd still wind up with a mostly white and Asian student population. There are a lot of reasons Black and Hispanic kids underperform, and it's just easier for the school to short circuit all that and choose based on race rather…

The underlying important question is what do you define as equality?

Equality of outcomes, or equality of opportunity?

This is a very slippery slope when some definitions are not equal, or stated, as we’ve come into a recent crisis of definitions being rewritten unnaturally (I understand the meaning of words change over time, but there have been recent inorganic changes, I’d argue)

The classic opportunity of outcome is proven to be doomed, and is not aligned with your imperfect world assertion.

I can get behind equality of opportunity, which I’d argue affirmative action’s impact was antithetical to this vision.

We’ve come to a point where the new generation is being held accountable for something they had no hand in.

We shouldn’t be trying to treat these diversity reports as a checkbook that needs to be balanced.

I heard something that resonated with me, and will probably get me downvoted to oblivion (if it hasn’t already happened):

those that want to look for racism, will find it.

Once a certain area is solved so to speak, some groups tend to look even harder, and we get to a point now where we have this ever-widening definition of what racism is, the goal posts ever expanding, and this endless loop is our culture eating itself alive.

I shouldn’t have to say this, but this doesn’t imply racism doesn’t exist. But it does imply that our definitions of it have radically evolved, and perhaps is being used for ulterior motives outside of “equality”

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#336

Post by joshuaissac »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #147
JustBreath wrote: post #8

Whatever your opinion about recent supreme court decisions, this has all underscored what has been true for a long time: Legislating via the judicial branch is a bad idea. If it only takes 5 out of 9 people to make laws for 600 million, it only takes one seat change to revert them. (Edit: sorry, 300 - pre-caffeine posting)

The judicial branch does not make laws. You're implying that the judicial branch legislated in this case. They did no such thing. They interpreted existing laws for a particular case, gave their judgement, and applied the existing law. Indeed, legislating via the judicial branch is a bad idea, and so it's a good thing that they do not and are not able to.

> The judicial branch does not make laws.

> They interpreted existing laws for a particular case, gave their judgement, and applied the existing law.

This is not how it works in common law jurisdictions. Common law judges can and do make law. This is called case law (or common law), in contrast to statute law that is enacted by the legislature. That goes beyond just interpreting statute law but also making new laws where they do not exist. Common law offences, for example, are crimes declared as such by judges even when there is no statute criminalising that conduct. Most of the existing contract law has been made by judges rather than by legislators.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#337

Post by pessimizer »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #307
mcv wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, every time the discussion comes up about, for example, reparations for the descendants of slaves, I start out thinking: it's been 150 years! Some of those descendants are very successful now and some descendants of slave owners are probably very poor now. And some people are descendants of both. And then I learn about the Jim Crow period, and then you hear that even the GI bill explicitly excluded black people,…

> You've got to try to make things right. The issue is this has nothing to do with the goal of educating someone in a certain subject based on their academic proficiencies. Go ahead and give poor people money, but no reason to make other processes and institutions less meritocratic. I know legacy/bribed via donation admissions exist, and those are obviously also a problem too.

You can give poor people money, but that has nothing to do with black people. Black people aren't asking for money because they're poor, they're asking for money because the country was built with their ancestors' uncompensated labor, it was entirely legal, and the descendants of their owners still enjoy the fruits of that uncompensated labor.

You can also give poor people money, but changing the subject to poor people instead of black people is an instant smokescreen.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#338

Post by justinclift »

mcv wrote: post #255
pjc50 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I assume the intent is to help disadvantaged people have opportunities that more priviledged people have already. Right? I mean, I can get behind that. But then why the entire detour with race? Up until about 1971 (possibly later, but that's the date of Loving vs Virginia ), the US had formal, legal discrimination against black people. On finally removing that, there was at various times discussion of whether peopl…

Yeah, every time the discussion comes up about, for example, reparations for the descendants of slaves, I start out thinking: it's been 150 years! Some of those descendants are very successful now and some descendants of slave owners are probably very poor now. And some people are descendants of both. And then I learn about the Jim Crow period, and then you hear that even the GI bill explicitly excluded black people,…

> ... when black people call the police, there's the non-zero chance that they're the ones who end up getting shot.

In the US, isn't that the case regardless of people's skin colour?

This example springs to mind for me anyway:

https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/verdict-in-polic...

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#339

Post by trompetenaccoun »

crooked-v wrote: post #230
skrebbel wrote: post #162

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…

Racial discrimination in the US significant enough that, for example, merely having a "Black" name leads to worse results from job applications, regardless of other factors [1]. Merely focusing on wealth levels won't counteract that kind of effect. [1]: https://www.businessinsider.in/policy/economy/news/distincti...

Or an Asian name maybe?

The ruling is about college, not job applications. It's actually the other way around in universities when it comes to black applicants. As another non-American foreigner it's bizarre to me how many "anti-racists" are shocked by a constitutional court affirming that discriminating based on race is unconstitutional.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#340

Post by hackeraccount »

Flatcircle wrote: post #10

What does this mean in practice?

Just to echo what other people replied. Law is over rated.

If people are really interested in doing something - whether that's discriminating against Black people or discriminating in favor of Black people - they're probably going to find a way to do it. Laws will make a difference on the margins but if there are motivated people then they are going to start trying to work around this ruling today.

The biggest effect of this ruling is that it's a marker to let people know that opposition to affirmative action is serious. That will have more of an impact then the ruling itself.

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