571–580 of 1001 posts
You... can't. Even if you want to only consider the individual experience, race is deeply tied up with the individual experience. If you only considered race, that would be even more crazy. But you cannot just ignore race, as much as you want to.
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)
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...
The original usage of the phrase is reasonable enough[0], but that's not what this lawsuit was about.
[0] > On March 6, 1961, shortly after taking office, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, which required all federal contractors to take “affirmative action”—the first use of the phrase in this context—to ensure all job applicants and employees were treated equally, regardless of race, creed, color or national origin. https://www.history.com/topics/us-government-and-politics/af...
if I were a non-white adversarial nation with plenty of high-achieving youth, I would take maximal advantage of this decision and the US's student visa programs by doing everything I could to send as many students from my country to US colleges as absolutely possible, so as to deprive American youth of college education as much as possible.
And that's after you, as an adversarial nation, had already spent tons of resources on growing and educating those kids to the quality level high enough to be accepted into those top US colleges, as well as (presumably) paid for the tuition (which for international students can easily become x4 of in-state tuition and x2 of out-of-state).
Heavily investing into a highly efficient brain-drain program might not be as smart of an idea as you believe it is, if you are funding the side of it that drains those brains away from you.
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)
I don’t love the decision, but I actually like the process. And I don’t think it is legislating. It is interpreting the law. I’d like term limits on Supreme Court justices. But I think the arguments on both sides of this debate are well thought out. Again I don’t love the decision, but Im OK with it. That said I’d love to see universities stop giving weight to legacies. But the money is just too strong.
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)
Indeed, just today, SCOTUS also released a unanimous opinion protecting a person's religious rights against his employer [1]. Sotomayor and Jackson left an addendum pointing out that this man had asked them to overrule a 50-year precedent in interpreting a law, and they explicitly chose not to do so (though they ruled in his favor in a different, narrower way) precisely for the reason I mentioned about Congress having the opportunity to correct the matter if they so choose.
The "liberal" justices usually get the most flack for "legislating from the bench" (although arguments can be made that the "conservative" ones do it too). But here we have the most liberal justice on the Court saying "The Court's respect for Congress's decision not to intervene promotes the separation of powers by requiring interested parties to resort to the legislative rather than the judicial process to achieve their policy goals."
If I could air a very broad-brush opinion, complaints people have about SCOTUS being a partisan institution these days are best levied against Congress (and litigants) for how they treat the Court, not against the Court for its own behavior. When people express low confidence in the Court, I'm always eager to see them aim their low confidence at Congress instead of (not in addition to) the Court.
[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-174_k536.pdf
Earlier quoted context omitted.
European naturalized American here and yes I do agree with you. In the few EU countries where I lived before settling in the US it would be unthinkable to include race in these policies. Just help poor people and that's it. I'll put on my tin foil hat here, but I genuinely believe that "race" (and now "gender") is being weaponized by the American elites/politicians to form nice clear camps/teams for voters. People ne…
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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,…
> 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! Well, that might be a bit disingenuous. The "last chattel slave" was only freed around September 1942. I've seen this reference in several places, but the most direct one is a footnote on a wikipedia page [0]. Regardless, it is probably not worth putting a time limit on…
On the other hand, a great many people today all around the world, and of many skin colours are descended from slaves. I am mostly familiar with this history in Europe and Africa, though I have no doubt it went on to a greater and lesser extent elsewhere. Supposing that the average reader here, who does not consider themselves to be "minority", is a "white" American, how confident are you that your ancestors do not include many slaves? Slavery in Europe still exists, but in the traditional sense with open buying and selling and large-scale enslavement it was openly and widely practiced in England and Germany and Poland and wherever you trace your ancestry no more than a thousand years ago.
You may consider it inappropriate to put a time limit on suffering, but in practice it's implicitly done all the time. The US is exceptional in having so many people who bear clear marks of historically nearby enslavement. Other parts of the world have been more successful in forgetting.
If I proposed to some Ivy League admissions panel that the descendants of biblical Jews should be favoured over those of Egyptians on account of enslavement would anyone listen?
I 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…
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.
Which is directly tied to the above mentjoned issues.