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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

#691

Post by exhilaration »

nradov wrote: post #308
brightball wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something else that isn't really factored into most of these conversations is the level of gatekeeping around professions and schools where a much larger group of people can succeed or even flourish, yet never get the opportunity due to limited class sizes. Around the healthcare debate specifically, there were a lot of people who talked about the restrictive policies that artificially limit the supply of doctors as w…

The supply of physicians is artificially limited by Medicare funding for residency programs at teaching hospitals. This shortage will only get worse as the population ages. https://www.ama-assn.org/education/gme-funding/save-graduate...

The corporations running America's hospitals and health systems are fully aware of this problem and have lobbied state governments to give physician's assistants, nurse practitioners, and in some cases even pharmacists the same powers as doctors. Depending on your state, you'll find an NP or PA where you might have expected a doctor 10 years ago -- places like urgent care clinics and standalone ERs.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#692

Post by caditinpiscinam »

Izikiel43 wrote: post #688
caditinpiscinam wrote: post #685

For people who are against affirmative action, what is your preferred course of action, given the racial disparities that exist in academia? I see three options: 1) say that these disparities are inevitable 2) wait for the disparities disappear on their own 3) address the disparities through some other policy or initiative

4) which race you are doesn’t matter, it’s your skills that matter and what should be judged on

How do you measure skill? And if your measure of skill over/under-represents races, does that mean that your metrics are flawed, or that skill is distributed unevenly across races?

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#693

Post by tester756 »

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…

Why would it take hundreds of years instead of e.g 80?

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#694

Post by tqi »

losvedir wrote: post #41

As someone of Hispanic descent this is very interesting to me. Affirmative Action probably helped my father, whose father was a construction worker and mother a homemaker both of whom dropped out of high school, get into college and ultimately become a doctor. But because my father was a doctor, I had a fairly privileged upbringing. I'm a generation removed, but growing up in California always had to indicate my back…

I think the idea that anyone "deserves" to what they get is misguided at best. None of us got to where we are on our own, so I think all that we can really judge ourselves on is how we use the opportunities that we are given.

For me the most hurtful revelation from the Harvard case was their use of "personality scores" which were systematically lower for Asian applicants[1]. I don't mind that students from other backgrounds might be given a leg up in admissions. What I do mind is the implication it is because who I am is somehow less than - less interesting, less personable, less "deserving" - rather than merely a mechanism to create diversity. The latter is an attempt to rectify historical injustices, while the former an attempt to fuck up someone's sense of self worth.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollme...

Harvard consistently rated Asian-American applicants lower than others on traits like “positive personality,” likability, courage, kindness and being “widely respected,” according to an analysis of more than 160,000 student records filed Friday by a group representing Asian-American students in a lawsuit against the university.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#695

Post by Georgelemental »

An important nuance from the majority opinion:

> At the same time, as all parties agree, 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. See, e.g., 4 App. in No. 21–707, at 1725–1726, 1741; Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 20–1199, at 10. But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today. (A dissenting opinion is generally not the best source of legal advice on how to comply with the majority opinion.) “[W]hat cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows,” and the prohibition against racial discrimination is “levelled at the thing, not the name.” Cummings v. Missouri, 4 Wall. 277, 325 (1867). A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#696

Post by Supermancho »

goatlover wrote: post #467
chimeracoder wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Claiming it's a myth and has been debunked is not the same thing as actually debunking.

Making someone else do a simple google search, because you simply want to reply "nuh uh" is uncharitable.

https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/selectivebias/

https://www.city-journal.org/article/college-admissions-bias...

As I understand it, there was some evidence: Asians applications were being suppressed, due to volume to maintain...a more diverse student body (or maybe just every elite school was racist?). https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherrim/2023/02/27/what-...

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#697

Post by dahwolf »

dudul wrote: post #244
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…

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…

Finally somebody who gets it.

The poor black urbanite and poor white trumpist are arch enemies but should be close allies.

The world is governed by international capitalist classism. It gives no shit about race or gender. It just cares about having lots of disposables that have few options. There being more disposables in a particular race is a historical artifact, not a goal in itself.

Likewise, you could diversify the captains of industry but the system remains exactly the same. Because it isn't governed by race.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#698

Post by orangepurple »

earthboundkid wrote: post #654
goatlover wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's we and how do you delineate those groups?

The United States is a legal entity. It's the one responsible for the harms, and it's the one responsible for the reparations. Or we could just dissolve the country every 4 years and start over from scratch if you prefer. I don't see how that could go wrong. :-)

[flagged]

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#699

Post by e40 »

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,…

[flagged]

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#700

Post by googhopeful000 »

sanderjd wrote: post #504
blagie wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had no impostor syndrome. Many of my peers didn't either; it's certainly not the case that almost everyone feels it. There seemed to be little correlation between ability and impostor syndrome too, so it's not a question of ability. But I digress. Decades out, and understanding university admissions in-and-out: 1) At least an order of magnitude more people "belong" at MIT than there's space for. Elitist universitie…

> 1) At least an order of magnitude more people "belong" at MIT than there's space for. Elitist universities manufacture scarcity. This is how I've always felt when I'm involved in hiring (especially when I was at Google). I don't relate to the whole "nobody can do fizzbuzz" thing at all. There are so many ridiculously smart and talented people out there, and so many bottlenecks letting fewer of them through than wou…

as someone who's going through the Google hiring pipeline right now (as a candidate), I just wanted to say thanks for these nice words of encouragement / rational thinking about all of this.

the process (this isn't Google's fault) feels quite a bit like a semi-objective judgement about my competency and worth (both as a professional... and individual). sure, I know I "shouldn't" think like that, but it's overall very very tough.

thanks for a clear headed view on it all.

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