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

Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 1001 posts

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#341

Post by shanecleveland »

kelipso wrote: post #69
forinti wrote: post #28

I would like to see lotteries used for this type of thing, because they would be much easier to accept. You could have 10% or 20% percent of candidates chosen by lottery, or have a lottery for all candidates who have the minimum pre-requisites, etc. Some sort of randomness whould guarantee a diversity of candidates and would even span across dimensions which are not even considered currently.

[flagged]

I don't think a lottery system is a replacement for affirmative action, it would still not be representative of the racial makeup of our population.

And if rewarding hard work were the only criteria for admission, then legacy preferences wouldn't exist, either. That is the sort of thing affirmative action attempts to balance out.

I don't have an answer, and I hope that all who have earned an opportunity are rewarded. But whenever I see that a group is under-represented relative to population, I have to wonder what the reasons are and what can be done to help.

I am OK with having to work harder if it means someone who has had fewer opportunities, resources and support than me – not only in their lifetime, but for generations in their family – gets a boost.

It seems some are afraid of having to work as hard as someone who was not born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#342

Post by flowerlad »

oluwie wrote: post #331
bouncing wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So untrue. The best resource for preparing for standardized tests is Khan Academy. It is free.

High school grades on the other hand are getting inflated now, because of parental pressure, now that colleges are abandoning standardized tests, and relying more on GPAs. High schools don’t even have a standardized curriculum. Comparing GPAs across high schools make no sense. Within the same school it may make sense though.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#343

Post by 0xcafefood »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #246
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…

> I've come understand it to mean "positively discriminate based on race, so long as it's a minority race" Is that true? I have heard that white males benefit most from admission rules to colleges (perhaps primarily in California?). But maybe that's "quota rules" and not affirmative action. Regardless, it appears as though the while male is probably going to take a hit if all admissions become strictly academically b…

https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/57...

Why would White students choose to claim non-White ancestry at these levels if it's going to disadvantage them?

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#344

Post by TheCaptain4815 »

Eumenes wrote: post #138
newacct3 wrote: post #110

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…

> Could racially discriminatory hiring strategies be next? I'm no fan of regulation and government intervention in private business, but its gotten out of control in tech and the corporate world. I've flat out heard hiring managers say they'll only hire a woman, lgbtq, or [certain minority] for certain roles. I've sat in hiring committees where candidates preform horribly, esp compared to others being reviewed at the…

So stop being a coward and record and leak those conversations.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#345

Post by QuarterReptile »

ahtihn wrote: post #298
BobbyJo wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Poor White and Asian kids still beat out poor Black and Hispanic kids academically on average Why is that the case? For Asians, I don't see what systemic privilege they could have that would need to be compensated away?

The 'systemic privilege' you're looking for is culture.

Unfortunately, the treatment is even more complicated than the diagnosis is simple.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#346

Post by khasan222 »

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.

What I believe they’re trying to say is that it already has not been a meritocracy, and because of human nature that stain will always be there somewhat at least this is a attempted washing of the stain

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#347

Post by parineum »

Maxion wrote: post #220
jlawson wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth bearing in mind that if affirmative action helped his father become a doctor, it also prevented someone else's father from becoming a doctor. I wonder what that person could have achieved.

As someone not from the US, this whole Affirmative Actions seems to just be reversed racism. I.e. in the end more-or-less still unfair. Better to just remove race all together, and e.g. require college admissions by law to be judged without knowing the applicants name or ethnicity. To me as an outsider, the US focuses wayyyyy to much on race. Race really does not matter, and no matter how much the US claims to be rac…

When I was growing up ('90s, 00s), that was the "movement" and teaching that was going on. It's colloquially known as being "colorblind". It has radically shifted the opposite direction. It's the difference between equality and equity, equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcome.

I don't know what's right or wrong really but I can say that the rapidness of the shift was definitely shocking to me. There's a lot of disagreement between Gen X, Millenials and Gen Z on the topic because of it.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#348

Post by vxNsr »

einszwei wrote: post #276
hospitalJail wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ends up moving the burden onto individuals. If you have an Asian Medical Doctor, they are AAA. If you have a multiple minority Medical Doctor, they are not necessarily AAA, they could be As. Which one do you want to do brain surgery on you? Without Affirmative action, you'd trust a multiple minority doctor equally to an Asian doctor. I wonder what the cost is on the healthcare system/US citizens when we have wor…

> If you have an Asian Medical Doctor, they are AAA. If you have a multiple minority Medical Doctor, they are not necessarily AAA, they could be As. > Which one do you want to do brain surgery on you? I have no strong opinion on affirmative action but this is a dishonest way to frame this topic. Affirmative action doesn't mean an institution can produce unqualified doctors. Both doctors should've gone through same ex…

Look at grade averages for med schools over time.

Also if the school is willing to bend their standards on admissions, who’s to say they won’t bend their standards on grading? It’s also almost impossible to get fired from a residency program once you get in, graduation rates are near 95%…

I already don’t trust MD’s compared to DO’s because MD schools nearly all got rid of grading and all classes are pass/fail which encourages doing just well enough to pass. DO schools meanwhile continue to grade students which encourages excellence.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#349

Post by pessimizer »

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.

[flagged]

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#350

Post by NoRelToEmber »

paulvnickerson wrote: post #161

Relevant summary from the decision: > Because Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs lack suffi- ciently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereo- typing, and lack meaningful end points, those admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. At the same time, nothing prohibits universi…

> Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin.

This conflates whether racial discrimination is legal, with how much people base their identity on race. Because on the latter question, the universities have concluded correctly - 74% of Blacks, 59% of Hispanics, and 56% of Asians (but only 15% of Whites) say their race is extremely or very important to their identity:

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/04/09/race-in...

Post reply on HN