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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

#911

Post by yibg »

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."

Not like Chinese Americans had it easy in the past, why aren't they adjusted upwards instead of downwards?

Fundamental issues I have with aiming for basically equal outcome by artificially tipping the scale until some metric evens out:

- Which dimensions do we make adjustments based on? is it just race or do we consider wealth etc?

- How much do we adjust? Black Americans had it tougher, boost by 10, Hispanics by 7? Chinese by -5 because they somehow succeeded without tipping the scales?

- Where does it end? We tip the scale for 200 years and if things are still out balanced keep adjusting?

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#912

Post by sneed_chucker »

netheril96 wrote: post #888

As an Asian, all I care about is that we should not atone for the crimes committed by someone else (e.g. the white slave owners). That AA disadvantages Asians the most is quite contrary to the whole "atonement" argument of AA.

You're not being punished for the crimes of white slaveowners.

You're being punished for performing well compared to other demographic groups despite being a minority and experiencing discrimination.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#913

Post by foogazi »

solardev wrote: post #120

I often wished universities (and other organizations) would use a scoresheet-like "matrix of oppression" to determine someone's background difficulties. Like okay, you get X points if you're this race, Y points for that. Z points if your parents were poor. Or if you grew up in these bad zip codes. Or if your dad was gone and mom was an addict. Whatever. As an Asian American of relatively privileged (middle class) upb…

> I often wished universities (and other organizations) would use a scoresheet-like "matrix of oppression" to determine someone's background difficulties.

Why make it so hard ? Why not just let everyone in and end discrimination

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#914

Post by crackercrews »

forinti wrote: post #28

I would like to see lotteries used for this type of thing, because they would be much easier to accept. You could have 10% or 20% percent of candidates chosen by lottery, or have a lottery for all candidates who have the minimum pre-requisites, etc. Some sort of randomness whould guarantee a diversity of candidates and would even span across dimensions which are not even considered currently.

> Some sort of randomness would guarantee a diversity of candidates and would even span across dimensions which are not even considered currently.

It wouldn't create as much randomness as you think. For example, nearly 90% of student who score 1500+ on the SATs are Asian or white. [1] It's nearly the same for 1400+. If an Ivy set its lottery cutoff to be at a level that kept its average and interquartile range the same as it currently is, their admitted class would follow this pattern.

1: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/sat-math-scores-mirror-an...

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#915

Post by doktorhladnjak »

willio58 wrote: post #776
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 doe…

I listened to that same episode of Throughline. It was a great discussion that touched on aspects I’d not considered.

One the key takeaways for me was the question of “what is it trying to achieve?” and “is it working?” To which the answers are nobody can agree but it’s not achieving any of the possible goals.

The effects of affirmative action having been banned from California public universities since 1996, including Berkeley and UCLA, was also quite telling. This happened nearly 30 years ago, so the effects are very clear to see.

Diversity was rocky for a few years, but they eventually figured out other ways to have it without using affirmative action.

The part about community colleges being a huge lever at getting more students into higher education was interesting. It’s not talked about much but has proved to be very successful.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#916

Post by yibg »

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…

Not American and not familiar with American history so apologies if this is a stupid question. The reason as I understand it for AA for black Americans is the history of slavery. What is the reason for applying AA to hispanics?

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#917

Post by d2049 »

rkagerer wrote: post #805

When I grew up one of the values instilled in me (moreso by society and personal interactions rather than passed on by my parents) was to see human beings as human beings, without cognitive overhead to their race. i.e. To me it was akin to hair color - neat, but not something by which I'd make judgements. Theoretically a world which doesn't distinguish, seems most equitable (and sane, at least to me). I'm genuinely t…

The world you propose sounds good in theory, but we are starting at a point where certain groups of people have been discriminated against (or enslaved) for the better part of two centuries. So some argue that we cannot simply treat everyone "equitably" when our society has been decidedly inequitable up to this point.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#918

Post by foogazi »

chmod600 wrote: post #603

“ I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” —- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-spee...

Beautiful quote - hope we get to see it in our lifetime

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#919

Post by least »

willio58 wrote: post #776
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 doe…

No, we don’t need to be making community college free. Why do people always place so much emphasis on college when it’s clear that the entire system before that point is failing kids? All you’re doing is making it marginally easier for the people already sufficiently motivated to succeed in college to have a little easier time.

Elementary and Secondary education is what desperately needs attention, not college. Certainly not with public funding.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#920

Post by yibg »

azinman2 wrote: post #93
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…

If affirmative action is what enabled your father to become a doctor, then it almost certainly sounds like the success story that motivates the action. I don’t know percent of the time a similar story is required to justify the means, but it sounds like you should embrace the path that your family’s life has taken. The alternative, presumably, would be effectively unfair knowing what could and then did become.

Not to diminish OP's accomplishments at all. His father benefited from AA which enabled him to level the playing field. Or perhaps more than level the playing field. Given that, is OP still starting from behind and need help to catch up? Or is OP now part of the privileged group and should take a few steps back?
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