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

791–800 of 1001 posts

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#791

Post by zacharycohn »

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…

As an analogy:

1. Life jackets are banned for anyone with brown hair.

2. A very large boat hits an iceberg and sinks. There are a lot of people in the water. None of the brown haired people are allowed life jackets.

3. There is a (for the sake of this silly analogy) rapid discussion, people realize this was probably not a good way to do things, and a new law is passed: people with brown hair are now allowed to wear life jackets!

4. No one gives life jackets to the brown haired people currently in the water.

Just because an unjust law is changed does not mean the people who were previously injured by the law are magically no longer injured.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#792

Post by goatlover »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #296
local_crmdgeon wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot solve racism through racism.

But if affirmative action is racism, then you can't solve racism at all.

What kind of reasoning is that? To the extent racism is solvable, that's done on the cultural level. My own view is that continuing to focus on race instead of moving past racial categories keeps it going. Ethnicities are real, but racial categories are social constructs (of varying ethnicities or ancestries over time) that only have cultural currency because we continue to allow them to.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#793

Post by latexr »

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,…

> it's been 150 years!

It’s been 60. “Black People Were Enslaved in the US Until as Recently as 1963”:

https://www.livescience.com/61886-modern-slavery-united-stat...

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#794

Post by Jcowell »

kernal wrote: post #546
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…

>2) It's a pretty random process if you get in or not. The level of noise in admissions is huge. So the person that got into Stanford by writing #BlackLivesMastter 100 times was just a coincidence?

I mean, why wouldn’t you let in a kid that has the balls to try that i’m their college essay?

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#795

Post by chasd00 »

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…

There’s a parenting tactic out there where you spend the money on private elementary and middle school then turn your kid loose on a low performing HS augmented with outside tutoring. They graduate top or very close to top of their class and stand a good chance of getting into the school of their choice + scholarships.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#796

Post by slt2021 »

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…

Affirmative Action is not about social-democratic "lets help poor black people". Nobody is gonna help poor people in America.

Poor people are always told to "pull themselves by the bootstraps (sic!)"

The beneficiaries of AA are:

1. Kids of rich black people (like children of OBAMA)

2. Rich international students from African continent (Nigeria, Ghana etc)

3. Rich white young women (for those colleges that do AA based on gender)

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#797

Post by Krollifi »

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.

Companies and governments can be found guilty of wrong doing.

ChatGPT:

Yes, both companies and governments can be found guilty of wrongdoing. The extent and process of holding them accountable can vary depending on the jurisdiction and the specific circumstances involved. Companies can face legal consequences for actions such as fraud, environmental violations, or antitrust violations, among others. Similarly, governments can be held accountable through legal means, such as investigations, impeachment, or legal proceedings, for acts that are deemed illegal or in violation of their responsibilities. The nature of the wrongdoing and the applicable laws and regulations determine the process and consequences of holding them accountable.

Edit: Havard was ruled against as an organization. Of course organizations can be held responsible for what they do including the government.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#798

Post by JenrHywy »

CrazyStat wrote: post #547
VoodooJuJu wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Create and support plebian race-based factions and pit them against one another so they can't fight the elites. So pretty much the opposite of class warfare? Class warfare would be warfare between classes. What you're describing is racial warfare intentionally engineered to avoid class warfare.

I think the implication is that it's race warfare is a tool used by the "ruling" class to wage class warfare on the poor.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#800

Post by analog31 »

There's a lot of discussion about switching to wealth or income as a criterion for diversifying the student body, rather than race or ethnicity. Adding to the blizzard of proposals, here's mine:

The "elite" colleges can take care of themselves. They will figure out how to curate their student body to maintain whatever image they want to project. And they're swimming in money, so let them spend it.

Instead, let's focus our attention and support on the public universities, community colleges, and tech schools. I'd never say that low income students "belong" there, but it's where they have the best chance of success. And every dollar spent at those schools educates more people.

My kids both attended public colleges, and I know plenty of people who have sent their kids to community colleges and trade schools. Those institutions are the true jewels in the crown of higher education.

Post reply on HN