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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

#701

Post by orblivion »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #667
orblivion wrote: post #421

I could understand how this applies to state universities, but how does the US Constitution have this kind of jurisdiction over Harvard?

Private college status doesn't override basic rights elucidated by the Constitution which are further spelled out by various civil rights laws.

Civil rights laws sure, but the constitution generally defines the role of and restrictions on the government.

I think the answer must be that Harvard has government contracts or something (as others responded to me).

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#702

Post by gghffguhvc »

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…

As a non-American, I think watching season 4 of The Wire, which has an education and politics focus, was both eye opening and profound. Highlighted the profound gap between US and where I grew up on a number of issues.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#704

Post by e40 »

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…

This smacks of (and I don't mean this in an unkind way) of pulling the ladder up after you use it.

Yeah, maybe you didn't need the extra help, but I'm pretty sure there are still a LOT of people with your background that did/do.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#705

Post by e40 »

tqi wrote: post #694
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 back…

I completely agree. I think these scores were merely a made up metric so they could discriminate against Asians.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#706

Post by paiute »

concordDance wrote: post #594
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. Here's where your thinking goes askew, you can't simply draw a boundary around a subset of people and declare that an agentic thing. Groups of people don't have guilt or automatic responsibility, only individuals do. Thinking of very diverse groups of people as single entities is how you get…

> Groups of people don't have guilt or automatic responsibility, only individuals do.

Humans are a eusocial species, and history is full of group guilt, plight, dominance. I do agree with the direction of your thought though. We should strive at the individual level.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#707

Post by cheekibreeki2 »

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…

It's an idea as obsolete as daylight savings time.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#708

Post by ProllyInfamous »

az226 wrote: post #683
LargeTomato wrote: post #413

I applied to university as African American/Black because I'm 1/4 Egyptian. I am very white. Some people may guess I'm Jewish (I'm not) but no one guesses African American. I got into a nice school and I was enrolled in the "minority engineering excellence program". The program was like 25% white kids with "1/16 native American" or "1/8 Spanish". We got free tutoring and we all took an exclusive class just for the pr…

In America middle eastern counts as white, not black. But nobody is enforcing these things and now they won’t matter because racially discriminating on admissions is illegal.

As today's ruling "proves" (both concurring and dissenting opinions brought this up): these racial background questions are "self-identified" / self-selected.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#709

Post by freeAgent »

az226 wrote: post #683
LargeTomato wrote: post #413

I applied to university as African American/Black because I'm 1/4 Egyptian. I am very white. Some people may guess I'm Jewish (I'm not) but no one guesses African American. I got into a nice school and I was enrolled in the "minority engineering excellence program". The program was like 25% white kids with "1/16 native American" or "1/8 Spanish". We got free tutoring and we all took an exclusive class just for the pr…

In America middle eastern counts as white, not black. But nobody is enforcing these things and now they won’t matter because racially discriminating on admissions is illegal.

Egypt is in Africa, though. It’s literally African.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#710

Post by amluto »

mistrial9 wrote: post #625
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…

> the US had formal, legal discrimination against black people this is misinformation; State laws had complete jurisdiction over certain matters, by design. "The US" is calling Washington State the same as Alabama. So, no.

I think you’re missing the point. The US had state, local and private laws, regulations, and institutions that discriminated against black people with varying degrees of formality. The discrimination in question existed and was widespread in the US.
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