Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 5:34 PM UTC

dionidium wrote: post #477

whinenot wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the US has systematically disenfranchised ethnic minorities over the course of its history. Any time there was a non-white person or community that was starting to become prosperous, the power of the state could be used to crush them. At times it was overtly murderous[0], but as that became unfashionable, it was relegated to more subtle methods. Some of the most blatant examples include: - Want an interstate…

> - Want an interstate in your city? Run it through a black or brown neighborhood.[1] A lot these debates really come down to just how impressed one is by arguments like this. It so happens that an Interstate was built through the neighborhood my entire family occupied in St. Louis in the 1950s. Some of them were "displaced." I can't for the life of me figure out how this is supposed to be relevant to my life today.…

Post by variadix » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 5:34 PM UTC

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…

Post by bitcurious » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #38

> 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…

Post by akomtu » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 5:36 PM UTC

djur wrote: post #387

spacephysics wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How exactly has equality of outcome been "proven to be doomed"? At the aggregate level, at least?

Post by cloverich » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 5:38 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #490

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,…

> And then I think: you can't just stop doing a bad thing and pretend it didn't happen. You've got to try to make things right. You're implicitly assuming it can be made right. That seems doubtful. The people who had been harmed by those policies are not the ones seeking admission to Harvard. Everyone seeking admission to Harvard has been born into circumstances through no fault of their own, so just help the financi…