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

931–940 of 1001 posts

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#931

Post by ano88888 »

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…

And don't forget the blatant high rejection rate smart asian kids. You get rejected just because there are too many smart asian kids.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#932

Post by nailer »

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…

Loving vs Virginia was decided in 1967

https://www.oyez.org/cases/1966/395

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#933

Post by gnicholas »

Footnote7341 wrote: post #221

The most elite colleges already pre-empted this ruling by rapidly moving towards non-merit based admissions they will just make it so you can't really tell if they are using affirmative action or not instead of having it be explicit.

There will be many lawsuits, especially if these can be litigated via 'section 1983', which appears to be applicable for state schools. [1] In these cases, attorney's fees are granted for plaintiffs that prevail, which significantly incentivizes lawyers to take on cases that have a decent chance of winning.

A plaintiff doesn't have to be able to prove its case in its initial filing: if the initial complaint isn't thrown out (which a good lawyer could likely avoid), then the plaintiff gets to go through 'discovery', where it can compel the defendant to produce relevant documents and data. In the case of affirmative action, this would include potentially damning evidence like notes from admissions meetings (if the school is foolish enough to put illegal considerations in writing), as well as detailed statistical information regarding the makeup of the applicants and admitted students.

1: https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/blog/what-are-the-elements-...

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#934

Post by jowdones »

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 it's similar to the system of "minorities quotas" for admission into Romanian universities in Transylvania. The region has a significant number of Hungarian ethnics and used to have Germans too but now they're rather vanished.

Anyhow, from the total number of seats per year, a larger number is allocated to Hungarians and a smaller one to Germans. The caveat being you don't have to be ethically German, only to speak it. In the wake of the new woke movement I can see a radical version of affirmative action where you don't have to be black as long as you identify as one ;) ;) ;)

So with Hungarian they fill those places with what I estimate to be 100% ethnic Hungarians. With Germans however, they're like 99% Romanians and Hungarians who take the hit of having to learn / speak German for the advantage of having fewer competition. Like mainstream (Romanian, Hungarian) computer science can have 10 candidates per seat, the German line has 1.5 or so: much easier to get in. I know a guy who couldn't code a FOP loop (with the typo of P instead of R) out of a paper bag but completed the German computer science line.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#935

Post by yibg »

mjh2539 wrote: post #921
yibg wrote: post #916

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then haven't Catholics in general? Why limit it to Hispanics?

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#936

Post by ricankng787 »

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 one thing I find that is often lost in this discussion in America is, why aren't we targeting the K-12 system where the majority of these discrepancies occur? We talk about tipping the scales at admission to universities, but never to what I believe is the actual root of the problem.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#937

Post by trogdor »

remarkEon wrote: post #141
justrealist wrote: post #24

> Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina, has been the boldest defender of what she prefers to call “race-sensitive” admission policies and has referred to herself as the “perfect affirmative action child.” That will probably not do a lot to convince those happy with this outcome.

Sotomayor revealed in oral argument for this very case that she does not understand the difference between "de facto" and "de jure". There's plenty of other things to dislike her for beyond one liners in interviews.

Yeah. That was really weird. I don't know what to make of it, since it's hard to believe that she actually doesn't know the difference between the terms.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#938

Post by CorrectHorseBat »

bombcar wrote: post #790
CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tangent question I have, and have asked here before without any satisfactory answer: How does it even work? I can proof I'm poor with for example tax returns, but how does someone proof they are of a certain "race"?

You don’t. And arguing that someone is not the race they claim is extremely taboo.

So why doesn't everyone fill in whatever gives them the highest chance of getting into college?

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#939

Post by systemvoltage »

Aeolun wrote: post #318

This may be the only time ever I’ve ever felt like I agreed with the conservative side of SCOTUS. I just do not know how to politely say any form of affirmative action is bizarre. If your schools suck at teaching worthwhile things to minorities or poor people, the problem is that your school system sucks. Not that some people don’t get into a few highly prestigious universities. You could argue it’s a kind of bandaid…

If you study things beyond the media garbage level / midwit level and if you're a rationalist, you'll find conservative jurisprudence and constitutionalism more appealing. It did for me, start with Scalia.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#940

Post by 111111IIIIIII »

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…

> But then why the entire detour with race? Why not just.. well, let poor people come first?

Capitalist societies literally cannot subsist without a class of people living in poverty. At best, that poverty is exported to other countries but it must be somewhere.

Post reply on HN