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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

#771

Post by mistrial9 »

amluto wrote: post #710
mistrial9 wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think you are missing my point. The USA itself is not one thing, and the laws are not one thing. Specifically, by design and in fact, people's rights to do a wide variety of things, were and are still, different. The language you are insisting on, is misinformation.

https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/discrimination-on-the-...

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#772

Post by justbored123 »

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…

[dead]

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#773

Post by goatlover »

cdmcmahon wrote: post #427
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…

Equality of opportunity after centuries of slavery and then legal discrimination in a society that allows (and even outright promotes) inherited wealth and opportunity is not possible. Imagine my ancestors stole all of your ancestors stuff and I still get to keep it all and anything I've built using it. We've stopped stealing your stuff now, though, so we have "equality of opportunity."

Now imagine being from neither group, which would be the majority of Americans. Maybe we could limit the debate to descendants of slave owners and slaves? Also imagine that opportunity changes over time as society becomes more equal. the US 2023 is a lot different than the US 1865.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#774

Post by goatlover »

ix-ix wrote: post #746
tester756 wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Generational wealth.

Does generation wealth apply to poor people in general or just descendants of slaves?

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#775

Post by stevenwoo »

pjc50 wrote: post #222
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 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…

I just read The New Jim Crow (I'm late) and it makes a pretty strong case the USA prison industrial complex/drug war is simply an extension of Jim Crow since drug laws are not enforced equally and the Supreme Court through a series of decisions has made it so the prosecutors and law enforcement have to admit to racism to show that anti-racism laws have been broken and they cannot be forced to reveal any evidence that shows this via discovery, overturning much of the post civil war/civil rights reforms. It's a crazy catch-22.

I've heard there is a simpler way that does not consider race that would level the college admissions playing field, make it so there has to be equal admissions based on income level per zip code, but that would kills the grandfather clauses most colleges use to get relatives of graduates entry.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#776

Post by willio58 »

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…

> Why not just.. well, let poor people come first?

I recently listened to an NPR piece on this and it seems like you're right here. Even with affirmative action you're really only affecting those that are going to elite colleges, and a large amount of people who benefited from it actually didn't come from low-income households. Essentially affirmative action benefited a tiny (like We would probably find that this does a better job of helping those who actually need help. And that would likely mean that minorities are still prioritized.

Finally, what we should really be doing if we care about helping those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder is make all community college free. It's already very cheap as-is , we just need to take the leap to make it totally free. This would also help the student loan crisis since those who are going for bachelor degrees would only need a couple more years of education vs. 4

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#777

Post by YetAnotherNick »

rd wrote: post #454
ahtihn wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Poor White and Asian kids still beat out poor Black and Hispanic kids academically on average Why is that the case? For Asians, I don't see what systemic privilege they could have that would need to be compensated away?

It's a zero-sum game. There's no such thing as taking privilege "away" from Asian kids. If you increase the acceptance rate of some race, it has to be decreased from somewhere. There's literally nothing else that can be done.

I don't know what your definition of taking privilege away means, but in my definition giving preference to someone for limited resource means taking privilege away from others.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#779

Post by raincom »

Flatcircle wrote: post #10

What does this mean in practice?

Even though adcoms try to keep the same regime through other proxies, but they have to be very careful: '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.' (p. 39)

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#780

Post by User23 »

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…

Basically the problem is that poor Whites and Asians significantly outperform even affluent Blacks and non-White Hispanics. So simply going based on income would lead to a wildly unrepresentative low proportion of Black and Hispanic students.
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