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What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

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Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#151

Post by graemep »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #131
dahart wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, that’s true, it’s one of the available choices. That’s a rather extreme position to take, given the history of slavery, racism, and sexism in the U.S. We know for a fact that outcome discrepancies were caused by racism before 1965. The discrepancies have been on the decline since then. So, when exactly, did equal opportunity start? We didn’t have it in 1966 yet, despite the law. Did we have it in 1980? Outcomes…

> Okay, that’s true, it’s one of the available choices. That’s a rather extreme position to take, given the history of slavery, racism, and sexism in the U.S. Slavery, racism, and sexism have happened in every single human society that has ever existed in some form or another, the US isn't special here. Discrepancies in average outcomes between different ethnic groups as measured by the statistical tools of industria…

> Slavery, racism, and sexism have happened in every single human society that has ever existed in some form or another, the US isn't special here.

Sexism is different as its not a group trait that affects whole families or communities so the disadvantage is not inherited.

The US is not unique with regard to race, but not all societies are the same. The US has a history of race based slavery which had a cultural impact, and it had racist laws and lynch mobs etc. until very recently.

> have relatively little correlation with whether a particular ethnic group was acting racistly towards another one in any given time and place.

There were actual racist laws in the US which is pretty good evidence of people being racist in the 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_Unit...

In most of the world people could legally marry someone of different race. In the UK an author could depict a marriage between people of different races in a children's book in the 1950s - I cannot think of any American examples of the same.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#152

Post by graemep »

rayiner wrote: post #92
dahart wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that’s the very thing we decided is immoral Racism is the thing we decided is immoral, actions based on belief that one group is inferior to another, not any and all notions of groups for any reason. > Objectively, Black Americans are extremely privileged by virtue of being Americans. A redlined community in 1950s America was still better than my dad’s village in Bangladesh. Whoa. They should be happy with what the…

> Racism is the thing we decided is immoral, actions based on belief that one group is inferior to another, not any and all notions of groups for any reason. No, what we decided was wrong was using race as a salient factor to discriminate between people. That’s why all our laws use that word. The laws reflect the moral principle. > They should be happy with what they have, and put up with racism and inequality here b…

> almost any applicant with roots in America has a huge head start over almost any applicant with roots in Asia, Africa, or the Middle East.

I think you are overstating your case. You are right in principle because it is true of some people so race is not a reliable marker of privilege, but most South Asians I know in western countries are from families that were better off than many Americans, and did not face the racist laws that black Americans did.

> None of my grandparents could vote in 1950 because they lived in a colony.

Most former British colonies were independent by then. India and Pakistan became fully independent in 1947 and had a degree of self-rule and elections for decades before that.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#153

Post by graemep »

rayiner wrote: post #139
selimthegrim wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK I see you meant in the US.

No, I meant in Pakistan. Wasn’t it still technically ruled by Britain at that point? Until the 1956 constitution?

No, it was an independent country which shared the same monarch - rather like Canada and Australia still are.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#154

Post by nsvd2 »

dahart wrote: post #38
az226 wrote: post #16

Pretty much the whole thing in a nutshell is the one chart showing the same student as Asian, 25%, White, 36%, Hispanic 77%, and Black 95%. This is institutionalized racism. Perhaps Affirmative Action was needed in the past to kickstart the disproportionate enrollment demographics, but it was past due to get rid of it. The most interesting part following SCOTUS' ruling is that Harvard said it wouldn't change their wa…

> This is institutionalized racism. Perhaps Affirmative Action was needed in the past Affirmative Action is institutionalized discrimination, at least when used to promote some groups over others. (Though it didn’t start that way; it started as a call to be purely race-blind in hiring.) I wouldn’t call it racism though, because it’s not based on any belief that races have different capability, it is purely intended t…

How could race-determined discrimination be anything other than racism?

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#155

Post by lupusyndrby9 »

rayiner wrote: post #85
esafak wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take something from me and the government takes it back that's two wrongs in your book??

If I steal something from you and then you retaliate by stealing something from my cousin, then that’s the definition of two wrongs.

we all work for a company that steals from gamma employees for hundreds of years and share the proceeds with nu employees .to make amends the company gives the descendants of gamma employees a tiny fraction of what they’ve stolen as a bonus and the nu employees descendants ,who continue to profit from the previous theft by an order of magnitude more then gamma employees bonus, complain about gamma employees descendants preferential treatment being unfair

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#156

Post by rayiner »

graemep wrote: post #152
rayiner wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Racism is the thing we decided is immoral, actions based on belief that one group is inferior to another, not any and all notions of groups for any reason. No, what we decided was wrong was using race as a salient factor to discriminate between people. That’s why all our laws use that word. The laws reflect the moral principle. > They should be happy with what they have, and put up with racism and inequality here b…

> almost any applicant with roots in America has a huge head start over almost any applicant with roots in Asia, Africa, or the Middle East. I think you are overstating your case. You are right in principle because it is true of some people so race is not a reliable marker of privilege, but most South Asians I know in western countries are from families that were better off than many Americans, and did not face the r…

> but most South Asians I know in western countries are from families that were better off than many Americans

Affirmative action doesn’t look at a specific individual’s economic history. Virtually everyone who benefits comes from a family that’s better off than most Americans. Don’t forget that there’s lots of affluent black americans. They make up 8-9% of millionaires in the U.S. And don’t forget hispanic people: the Harvard data shows they got a preference nearly as strong as the one for black applicants. There’s a huge population of affluent immigrants from latin america for these programs to draw from.

And remember that, for asians, status is different from financial condition. My family was high status in Bangladesh. But my dad took a boat to school during monsoon season, and the school had no walls.

You mention “racist laws.” But asians faced terrible non-material injustices. My parents lived through a genocide of 300,000 bangladeshis by the pakistani military. Millions of Indians died in famines. Most of my sister in law’s family was killed by communists. This was all in the 20th century. I don’t think we should be weighing these injustices against each other. But that’s exactly what these affirmative action programs are doing when they give a huge preference to a black applicant over an otherwise identical asian applicant.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#157

Post by selimthegrim »

graemep wrote: post #153
rayiner wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I meant in Pakistan. Wasn’t it still technically ruled by Britain at that point? Until the 1956 constitution?

No, it was an independent country which shared the same monarch - rather like Canada and Australia still are.

It was a Dominion, but again who was denying your relatives the franchise?

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#158

Post by UncleMeat »

rayiner wrote: post #129
UncleMeat wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. How does this vibe with your blanket judgement about Bangladeshis?

You shouldn’t make “blanket judgments” that apply to every individual Bangladeshi. In a context where you’re evaluating individuals , you should do so without regard to their ethnicity or nationality. In the context where you’re talking about masses , then it’s permissible to draw inferences about aggregate characteristics. Simple example: at the doctor’s office, I want them to measure my height, without regard to th…

It is very clear that you are not talking about height.

You are also different policy treatment of these groups.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#159

Post by anamax »

BrenBarn wrote: post #48
rayiner wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of problems in society that are hard to fix. But there's nowhere else in society where our solution to a problem is to subject people who had nothing to do with the problem to unfair treatment. "Two wrongs don't make a right" is a good general principle.

It depends how you conceptualize fairness. If you believe that some people have a pre-existing unfair bias in their favor, then applying a countermeasure is indeed fair.

> If you believe that some people have a pre-existing unfair bias in their favor, then applying a countermeasure is indeed fair.

What definition of "some people" and "unfair" are we using?

I ask because I'm pretty sure that Obama's daughters "have a bias in their favor" in comparison with my lily-white nieces. (The parents of said nieces make around $40k/year.)

Is it fair to apply "countermeasures" to benefit said daughters relative to said nieces?

You can argue that said nieces have an unfair bias relative to similarly situated black children, but that's not how these systems tend to work.

And, it's not just Obama's daughters.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#160

Post by rayiner »

lupusyndrby9 wrote: post #155
rayiner wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I steal something from you and then you retaliate by stealing something from my cousin, then that’s the definition of two wrongs.

we all work for a company that steals from gamma employees for hundreds of years and share the proceeds with nu employees .to make amends the company gives the descendants of gamma employees a tiny fraction of what they’ve stolen as a bonus and the nu employees descendants ,who continue to profit from the previous theft by an order of magnitude more then gamma employees bonus, complain about gamma employees descendan…

Your hypothetical fundamentally misrepresents the economics of what happened:

> share the proceeds with nu employees … nu employees descendants ,who continue to profit from the previous theft by an order of magnitude

Slaveholders were feudal lords. They didn’t “share the proceeds” with the serfs. They “privatized the profits and socialized the losses,” as we would say today. The profits flowed to a handful of families who happened to be white. But all the other white people suffered a deadweight loss. And the civil war nuked much of the south’s wealth. The war cost the south $2 billion, more than the south’s GDP and almost as much as the total value of its real and personal assets. The war also cost the union over $3 billion, an amount equal to its entire GDP. After that, there wasn’t some pool of money to generate dividends shared by all white people. Instead, there were taxes to pay for a war over something nearly all over them never benefited from.

If your ancestors were white independent farmers or sharecroppers, they were poorer for having to compete with massive plantations powered by slave labor. German Americans (the largest group of white Americans) never even arguably benefited from slavery. Half of them came here as indentured servants themselves in the 1840s. They scraped out a hard life in the midwest while having to compete with slave plantations in the south. Their biggest involvement with slavery was fighting and dying in disproportionate numbers to end it. And of course Irish, Italians, Asians, etc., came here after slavery ended.

So let’s tweak your example to reflect the reality. The C-suite of the company happened to be nu, and stole from gamma employees. They hired their nu kids as nepo babies and shared the profits with them, while underpaying the other nu employees. Eventually, some of the nu, including a large number who joined the company only recently, overthrow the C-suite and end the theft. Over the next 150 years, more nu employees keep joining the company, so today more than half have no ancestors who were even here during the theft.

Then the company creates a promotion policy where it gives a big preference to gamma employees over employees who happen to be classified as “nu”—regardless of whether the nu employee’s ancestors were even at the company during the time of the theft. Nobody would consider that a fair arrangement.

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