Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions • Hacker News Board

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#861

Post by duped » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 2:34 AM UTC

stjohnswarts wrote: post #665

duped wrote: post #158

I admittedly skimmed the opinion, but is this the first case that establishes a private entity like Harvard University is bound by the Equal Protections Clause? I thought existing law and precedent only had it applied to state/state actors (and a few cases where private businesses acted like governments, eg company towns).

Corporations are also private entities and they have to also adhere to the Civil Rights Act and not discriminate based on race/ethnicity, why wouldn't Harvard?

Because the discussion is over Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and not title VI of the Civil Rights Act, but neither is applicable to what you're talking about

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#862

Post by hcnova12 » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 2:35 AM UTC

crackercrews wrote: post #322

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?

Asians spend much more time than others on homework. [1] 1: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07311214221101...

Asian students be grinding three times harder on homework than black students. Can't blame them for crushing it academically!

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#863

Post by lolinder » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 2:36 AM UTC

somewhereoutth wrote: post #835

lolinder wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an extremely simplistic take on a very complicated topic. While race may be a social construct, it has correlations with a number of other, less artificial factors. A random sample of people with the characteristics we associate with Asian race will tend to have more ancestry that traces back to Asia than would a random sample of people with Caucasian characteristics. This ancestry brings with it cultural and…

However, for the class in question - African-Americans - is it not the case that they have been in America for generations, and so these cultural 'characteristics' would have been far more influenced by their experience in America (at the hands of the ruling white population) than anything that they might have brought with them over the Atlantic? Unless you think the 'characteristics' have a strong genetic component,…

African Americans have retained a pretty distinct identity throughout this time. There are a lot of shared cultural artifacts to be sure, but the existence of a completely distinct dialect of English with its own distinctive grammar is solid evidence that the cultural overlap is not complete.

I resent the implication that any claim of genetic differences amounts to racism. We need to be able to have a reasonable discussion about genetics that doesn't come with all the value judgments that people assign to different genotypes. It's a bald fact that there are genetic differences, and that shouldn't be controversial. The inferences we draw from that fact can be racist, but the fact itself is just a fact.

The only conclusion that I'm arguing for is that people are born and raised differently, and we should expect to see different outcomes as a result. It's pretty obvious that we have not yet reached the point where the differences in outcomes are due exclusively to different choices, but we should expect to eventually reach such a point! People prioritize different things in their lives, and sometimes people prioritize things that the majority doesn't believe are important. That doesn't make them flawed people.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#864

Post by LudwigNagasena » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 2:44 AM UTC

morepork wrote: post #859

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…

To add in a slightly different angle, this sort of thing is not exclusive to America. For example, in New Zealand, a couple of weeks ago there was a bit of a kerfuffle due to reporting on those of certain ethnicities being prioritised on surgical wait lists. Those against it were arguing (validly) that prioritisation should only be based on clinical need. However, the data over many years was showing that for people…

> In an ideal world you will dig into the details, and figure out why that was happening, and resolve the underlying issues. But as with a lot of these problems with a human element there's no quick and easy solution.

If they managed to identify that “the data over many years was showing that for people with the same clinical need, those from the minority ethnicities were not getting the same prioritisation”, it means they have done 95% of the required work already. So either the report is bogus, or the solution isn’t as complex as you make it to be.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#865

Post by Groxx » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 2:44 AM UTC

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 tl;dr is: because there exists systemic disadvantage-ous-ness clearly caused by, and maintained along lines of race. It's not just The Past™ that was racist to damaging degrees, Now™ is too.

All people in bad circumstances beyond their control deserve ways out. There are tons and tons and tons of subsidies and whatnot targeting individual reasons, like poverty (people think you're poor? you're less likely to get a good-paying job, and more likely to get one that abuses you). Race is just one more, and it's particularly effective at leveling the field because it has extremely strong correlations with (and very clearly a cause in) tons of them.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#866

Post by dbrowne » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 2:49 AM UTC

Amazed that the people who felt disadvantaged because of the one or two accepted Blacks who were possibly below the cut but had significant systemic societal and economic impediments have no problem with all of the incredibly sub par legacy students who are accepted because of their parent's wealth. I know of a very affluent person who funded two professorial chairs a year before his music school educated son was accepted at a top 3 business school. No one has a problem with that but they act as if the schools are overflowing with nothing but illiterate and unqualified minorities. Maybe 2% if not less are affirmative action acceptances and that is considered too much. I guess their ancestors intentionally became slaves to ensure their descendants could steal admission spots.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#867

Post by vacuity » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 2:50 AM UTC

austin-cheney wrote: post #837

tecoholic wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of replies here and anything that talks about "economic" conditions probably doesn't understand AA. AA is not a poverty alleviation program. It is a social justice program. Poverty alleviation can be done just with money, but social systemic unfair treatment cannot be undone with money. For example, despite owning homes in the same neighbourhood, the appraisal of homes of black people ends up lower th…

> Poverty alleviation can be done just with money, but social systemic unfair treatment cannot be undone with money. That sounds backwards on both points. Poverty impacts how people perceive and interact with the world from building relationships to the use and conservation of assets. For example people in poverty are less likely to save for the future because institutions necessary to safely preserve assets into the…

I agree with what you said about poverty, and I feel as if the same is true of systemic unfairness. Perhaps the African-American (I do not like the term black, but that's for another discussion) neighbors you have really are treated very similarly as the rest, but stereotypes are powerful. I imagine most African-American people can't get others to treat them equally, even if the others truly do believe that they aren't racist. I think the horror around "unconscious racism" or whatever is overblown, though.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#868

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 2:52 AM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #187

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The judicial branch does not make laws. You're implying that the judicial branch legislated in this case. They did no such thing. They interpreted existing laws for a particular case, gave their judgement, and applied the existing law. Indeed, legislating via the judicial branch is a bad idea, and so it's a good thing that they do not and are not able to.

This is a legal fiction. Both abortion and affirmative action were legislated from the bench. That's how they came to be. It's a classic thing. Having come to the conclusion that some thing should be law, the composition of the bench determines whether sufficient justification can be found. Then these decisions have the weight of law. It is a defacto Politburo - a long lived legislative body of ultimate authority tha…

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Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#869

Post by ajsnigrutin » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 2:55 AM UTC

earthboundkid wrote: post #316

purpleblue wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it's not mostly poor, hardworking ADOS (African descendents of slavery) students that benefit. It's rich, Black students that are benefiting, especially those from outside the US and no lineage from slavery. The problem with affirmative action is that everyone is only looking literally at skin color, which is the opposite of what we should be doing.

Yeah, the point should always have been explicitly to be reparations for slavery/Jim Crow and the Native American genocide. But that was never really explicit, and there was a lot of mission drift over the last fifty years.

But people who never owned slaves are now discriminated against so people who never were slaves get priviliges and get accepted to college.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#870

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 2:55 AM UTC

thegjp210 wrote: post #762

twobitshifter wrote: post #524

The elite schools are cartels of opportunity that feed themselves a self-affirming diet of the smartest people to maintain their place. It’s a diversion to look at your race versus somebody else’s race. That’s only a small fraction of the admission. A fraction of the best and brightest across races will gain admission, but the rest are usually the elites. These people pay for college out-of-pocket but the colleges th…

These are good points. I think a compelling argument can be made towards the admixture of the best and brightest with the daughters and sons of the rich and famous. Net net, I think that the opportunities provided to the best and brightest from exposure to, and friendship with the offspring of the spectacularly rich is why schools and network spun out of Harvard have generated such an effective flywheel effect over t…

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