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

641–650 of 1001 posts

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#641

Post by stu2b50 »

whinenot wrote: post #439
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…

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…

Then it should be explicitly a penalty to white people, no? This is the same country that passed a law called the "Chinese Exclusion Act".

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#642

Post by crackercrews »

hospitalJail wrote: post #223
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…

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…

UPenn Med School lets in minorities through a side door, no MCAT required. [1]

This will increase discrimination against minority doctors. It most hurts the ones who could have gotten in through the front door but will be assumed not to have.

1: https://dailycaller.com/2022/08/26/some-underrepresented-stu...

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#643

Post by Georgelemental »

l3mure wrote: post #607
tdonoghue wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clarence Thomas is the epitome of what makes America the greatest country on earth.

[flagged]

What's the scandal here? What law was broken, what rule violated? I can't tell...

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#644

Post by rendang »

HeavenFox wrote: post #384

One thing I never understood is why colleges themselves fight so hard for affirmative action? Wouldn't admitting the most qualified students, regardless of race, be in their own interest? If they are afraid of the political pushback for having too few Black and Hispanics, doesn't this decision give them cover?

One explanation is that the officials involved are "true believers", not acting out of fear of pushback but out of their own values.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#645

Post by s1artibartfast »

endisneigh wrote: post #631
s1artibartfast wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is already illegial to consider all of the characteristics you mentioned. Historically, there was a specific legal exemption 14th ammendementment allowing racial discrimination. This ruling closes the exemption for racial consideration. Discrimination based on other protected statuses remain closed >Any exceptions to the Equal Protection Clause’s guarantee must survive a daunting two-step examination known as “str…

This is not true and is more nuanced than you’re making it seem. See title 9 and the continued existence of schools like Wellesley college.

I agree that there is nuance, but I think this is still accurate in terms of the ruling. Protected class discrimination is illegal in the absence of the compelling interest.

There are still tons of exemptions and hypocrisy, but in general you typical public university can not discriminate admissions based on sex, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, ect.

If a public university instituted a no-gays or no-immigrants admission policy it would be quickly struck down under the status quo, so there is no need to discuss that.

Im not sure how single gender schools fit into the whole scheme. is there a specific case about Wellesley I should look up? I didnt see anything about title 9 challenges on Wikipedia.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#646

Post by rawgabbit »

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 genuinely don't get why the race thing is part of the equation.

In the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, the US fought a civil war to end racial discrimination. In his opinion, he argued that affirmative action which is a race based policy is logically incompatible with the Equal Protection clause.

Affirmative Action was always about race. The US historically and systematically discriminated, disenfranchised, and disadvantaged slaves and children of slaves. The problem with race based policies like Affirmative Action is (a) like Roberts argues it is illogical to fix historical racial discrimination with modern racial affirmation (b) you have unintended consequences like discrimination against Asians (c) how do you even define race in today's hyper connected world? e.g., Is Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa, an African-American? Are recent immigrants from West Africa also African-American? Race conscious policies are generally distasteful because you then dwell into how many generations of your ancestors were from X continent and what percentage you are of Y race.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#647

Post by elishah »

ekam wrote: post #294
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…

I just saw the stats from a medical school— I believe it was UCSF but correct me if I’m wrong— where the average Asian reject had higher scores than the average Black/Hispanic accepted applicant

> I just saw the stats from a medical school— I believe it was UCSF but correct me if I’m wrong—

Given that affirmative action was banned at UC schools in 1996, I suspect that you're mistaken about at least the school in question.

Which, it should be noted, means that we've accrued ~25 years of data about the results of such a ban. And the answer is that it's bad: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-31/californ...

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#648

Post by OkayPhysicist »

solardev wrote: post #53
londons_explore wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Legislating via the judicial branch is a bad idea. Perhaps, if there is no 75% majority of opinions at the supreme court, then the case is just put on hold indefinitely until new clarifying laws are passed?

Even if 100% of the court agreed, 9 people can't possibly represent 300 million in any representative way. Even Congress with 535 representatives isn't many. One representative for each 600,000 citizens? When was the last time a thousand Americans agreed on anything, much less half a million? We have one of the worst ratios in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legislatures_by_number... Edit: And the SC…

The SC is, by design, a little undemocratic. They're a check against the more democratic parts of the government, with the limitation that they basically can only make things legal. Since the default is that people are free to do whatever, laws can only restrict people's abilities to do stuff. The Supreme Court gets to shoot down laws, so they can only let us do more stuff.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#649

Post by pknomad »

asimpletune wrote: post #452
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 think it's a mistake to think the intent is to benefit individuals of specific races. This has very much been something where the intended benefactor is American society in general. As an example, I went to a good public school that had a policy where the top 5% of high school students were automatically given admission to the university. While this was technically race blind, it was de facto affirmative action, be…

Guessing UT Austin?

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#650

Post by onetimeusename »

I got an email about this from my university president expressing his disappointment with the ruling. He assured everyone the campus will continue to strive for more racial diversity and that this ruling is a hindrance to that goal because race based discrimination is a good thing for achieving diversity.

The school is already about 25% white in a country that is ~60% white. Is that sufficiently diverse? What is the optimal amount of diversity and why? There are a lot of questions I could ask. But I think it's interesting that schools have announced so strong a commitment to diversity without really explaining what diversity is or how having certain racial demographics results in the best possible outcome. How would you prove that?

I don't think this ruling will have any effect. The schools are pretty clearly committed to diversity, whatever that means and for whatever their reasons may be.

Post reply on HN