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

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#921

Post by mjh2539 » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 4:29 AM UTC

yibg wrote: post #916

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?

Hispanics have historically been discriminated against in the United States. They are (or were) predominately Catholic in a country that is (or was) predominately not Catholic.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#922

Post by gnicholas » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 4:30 AM UTC

bluepod4 wrote: post #563

Can someone explain why the military academies were explicitly exempt from this ruling when their policies are similar to those of UNC and Harvard?

There are unique considerations related to military academies, which I believe were raised at oral arguments. The concern is that if the military academies do not enroll enough non-white students, then the officer population would be mostly white, and that could cause friction with a plurality/majority(?) group of enlisted soldiers.

The majority wanted to make clear that they are not opining on the analysis that would apply to the military academies.

EDIT: here's a discussion of such special considerations, from a prior affirmative action case: https://volokh.com/2012/10/11/the-military-rationale-for-aff...

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#923

Post by ironcurtain » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 4:30 AM UTC

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,…

If that’s your summary of knowledge, it’s misleading and lacks nuance. GI Bill did not exclude blacks, it’s educational institutions that chose either accept or decline those funds for black applicants. Still in South there was about a hundred of colleges accepting black paying with GI bills. Majority those lynched was white. You’re propagating victimization narrative. There are historic black colleges that would and should gladly fill in gaps left by historical white institutions like Ivies. Same with neighborhoods. Both have the same problem that none is willing to talk about in polite non-Southern society.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#924

Post by claytongulick » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 4:37 AM UTC

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,…

> when black people call the police, there's the non-zero chance that they're the ones who end up getting shot.

As an absolute number, more white people are shot by police than black. [1]

As a percentage of population, the rate is higher in the black population, however that's a very complex analysis when you break it down by homicides by region and the populations (many urban areas are majority black, or Hispanic).

> You've got to try to make things right.

Discrimination based on race doesn't strike me as a very good strategy for making things right. It seems to me like it will just foster increased racial tensions, resentment and problems without solving anything.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#925

Post by dudeinjapan » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 4:39 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…

Amen. AA benefits middle and upper-class black kids far more than it does kids in the inner city. You can't convince me that Ivy Blue Carter (Beyonce and Jay-Z's daughter) has faced more hardship and prejudice in her life than a white kid who grew up in a trailer park.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#926

Post by josephg » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 4:39 AM UTC

foogazi wrote: post #903

CuriouslyC wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we need race based affirmative action though? Couldn't we have needs based discrimination? What makes a poor hispanic immigrant more deserving of a hand up than a poor ukranian immigrant?

You could have that too

Not really. Selection is a zero sum game. If you add more Ukrainian refugees, you need to remove some other kids from the running. Needs based discrimination makes different choices than race based discrimination. More of one means less of the other.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#927

Post by zmgsabst » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 4:47 AM UTC

twobitshifter wrote: post #883

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…

It’s really about handicaps starting out, or if you’re into maths, initial conditions.

If you’re into maths, you’d know convergence behavior dominates initial conditions:

A system which fails to converge because of purposeful injustice with lagging feedback is worse than a system that converges toward an equal outcome — no matter the initial conditions.

That’s the problem with racial programs: you’re institutionalizing racism with no end, which causes the system to “ring” between modes of racism rather than converge on an equal outcome. So-called “systems thinking” consistently fails to account for control lag, convergence, and stability of the system — revealing that it’s a shallow pretense.

But you’re not the first bigot to pretend science justifies their racism.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#928

Post by vuciv1 » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 4:48 AM UTC

I don’t have anything formal to add.

Both my parents were drug addicts, lived separately, beat me, and didn’t pay for my college. Dad was in jail.

I am Hispanic and was lucky enough to go to the University of Chicago. I did do very well in school, nearly perfect scores with tons of extracurriculars, but I never knew if I belonged.

By the end of my college experience, I did just as well as anyone else in my university, and I have a good job and met lovely and supportive people.

I don’t know if I got in because of affirmative action, but if I did, it has forever changed my life

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#929

Post by notjoemama » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 4:56 AM UTC

least wrote: post #919

willio58 wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Certa…

I'm married to an primary school educator and you are bang on. Not that I'm implying zero sum, but if effort is to be prioritized, this whole college discussion is moot. An emphasis on education needs to start in the home with some behavioral training by the parents to ready the kids for an educational setting. It's been a growing problem for years and if it keeps getting worse, we might as well enroll everyone in Harvard for free, because it eventually won't matter.

EDIT: What I mean by that is partially to say, dealing with motivation and behavior occurs at lower grade levels and schools are fighting an uphill battle. Affirmative action politics at the collegiate level feels like putting the cart before the horse.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#930

Post by vxNsr » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 4:58 AM UTC

cvoss wrote: post #576

JustBreath wrote: post #8

Whatever your opinion about recent supreme court decisions, this has all underscored what has been true for a long time: Legislating via the judicial branch is a bad idea. If it only takes 5 out of 9 people to make laws for 600 million, it only takes one seat change to revert them. (Edit: sorry, 300 - pre-caffeine posting)

Whether to a sufficient degree or not, SCOTUS agrees with you on this point and exercises a strong reluctance to second-guess past generations of itself, especially on statutory (as opposed to constitutional) matters, since it is theoretically easy for Congress to amend its own statutes if ever Congress should disagree with how the Court has interpreted them. Indeed, just today, SCOTUS also released a unanimous opini…

This one is interesting because ever since the Native American case, they’ve been carefully sidestepping this issue every time it came before the court, they’d rule very narrowly usually in favor of religious freedom, but would never establish any precedent, looks like they took the same tack here.