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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?

#161

Post by dahart »

nec4b wrote: post #112
alistairSH wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re also deliberately ignoring the point that there might be no such thing as innocent third parties, but only people who aren’t aware they’re part of the problem, even if it’s subtle and unintended. I was about to post the same and that's 100% my take... sure, I didn't own slaves and I don't intentionally do anything racist... but I can absolutely acknowledge that by virtue of genetic lottery (white, with educate…

What about white kids on the other side of the town with drug addicted parents?

What about them? Being white doesn’t make people immune to drugs, nor guarantee anything, right? So what’s your point? Race advantage is something you can’t always see by looking at individuals, especially cherry picked examples. Bias is a statistical effect, so you may need to look at everyone in order to see it, unless we are talking about clear cases of oppression, inability to vote or slavery or violence or things like that. Most of that has been resolved, but subtle bias is still around.

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

#162

Post by dahart »

armchairhacker wrote: post #149
dahart wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is true, that can and has happened. I don’t think it’s true as rule, but it’s a valid point. Still, the most important question is what is the alternative? We are closer to ending sexism and racism than we were 70 years ago before any affirmative action existed, right? Who’s to say that all the backfiring and unintended consequences that have happened aren’t better than the parallel universe in which maybe s…

> We are closer to ending sexism and racism than we were 70 years ago before any affirmative action existed, right? Correlation does not imply causation > Who’s to say that all the backfiring and unintended consequences that have happened aren’t better than the parallel universe in which maybe slavery still exists? They are better, but it's a low bar and an even lower one > Would it have happened faster with no quota…

> Correlation does not imply causation

This is not relevant to what I said. We are closer to ending sexism and racism due to legislation, which is causal. We took specific actions to try to end sexism and racism and we know they had a positive effect.

> Artificially balancing preferential treatment by applying it badly in the wrong direction is a duct tape solution

I agree! It was meant to be a duct tape solution, from the start. It was meant to be temporary and end preferential treatment and go away.

> it may have been justified after the Civil Rights Act

I agree with this too, the justification was probably much stronger 60 or 70 years ago. It is weaker now… and that might be an indicator of its success.

Applying it badly has happened, and it’s lame and sucks, but that’s not an inherent feature or outcome of the core idea. Some might rightly say it was predictable.

The big open question is whether turning off all affirmative action will close that remaining gap, or leave us with a little bit of persistent systemic bias, or worse, a backslide. If that does, the next question is what to do.

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

#163

Post by freejazz »

rayiner wrote: post #160
lupusyndrby9 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 familie…

You're a troll

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

#164

Post by rayiner »

UncleMeat wrote: post #158
rayiner wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

It doesn't matter whether it's height or anything else. The point is that there's a fundamental difference between contexts in which you're evaluating an individual, and contexts in which you're evaluating groups in the aggregate.

> You are also different policy treatment of these groups.

I do not support any policy that would treat a specific individual differently because they're Bangladeshi.

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

#165

Post by graemep »

rayiner wrote: post #156
graemep wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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: t…

As I said, I agree with your in principle. I just think its true to say "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." That is actually a sweeping generalisation, quite similar to the assumptions behind affirmative action.

> But asians faced terrible non-material injustices.

Some did, some did not. Some perpetuated and and benefitted from those injustices.

> I don’t think we should be weighing these injustices against each other.

I agree with you there.

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

#166

Post by BrenBarn »

anamax wrote: post #159
BrenBarn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 da…

I totally agree that there are lots of problems with just assigning the benefits based on coarse categories like "race". My point is just what I said in the quote: a process that seems "locally" unfair may produce a more "globally" fair result. Or it might not! I mean, you have to do it right. But if your goal is to produce a fairer result you might do things even though they seem unfair from a different perspective.

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

#167

Post by rayiner »

webnrrd2k wrote: post #148
rayiner wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because two wrongs don’t make a right. Where else in our society do we justify imposing a moral wrong on a specific individual on the premise that moral wrongs may have been committed against other individuals?

I disagree with your charaterization of the problem as exclusively a moral wrong... Was it only a moral wrong? Was the only effect a moral one? Or were there physical or tangible effects, too? For example, were there economic affects? I'm not claiming to know the solution to the problem of ~200 years or slavery and ~100 years of Jim Crow laws, lynching, and further discrimination. I am saying that doing nothing about…

> I am saying that claiming that it's immoral to do something about it

I'm saying it's immoral to try to correct one injustice by doing a further injustice to an individual who had nothing to do with it. And it's not even me saying that, Plato said that 2,400 years ago.

That doesn't mean you can't do anything. You can have race-neutral policies that directly target individuals who have economic need. Cory Booker's baby bonds proposal, for example, would go a long way towards erasing racial wealth gaps: https://www.acluok.org/news/baby-bonds-path-toward-prosperit.... And it would do so without creating a new racial class system.

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

#168

Post by blagie »

Georgelemental wrote: post #110
blagie wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not an accident. If you talk to admissions officers, over drinks, they'll tell you that poor black students from marginalized US communities have abysmal performance at elite schools. The decision to admit rich black students is very deliberate. There are many reasons why. Schools in the US are locally-funded, and a marginalized community might have 25% of the per-student spending of a rich community (actual,…

In my state, the poor Black inner city schools have the highest per-student spending in the state (and some of the highest in the country), as the state government funds them heavily. Performance remains abysmal

I'm curious: Which state?

However, there are *many* such effects. Whack one, and I can point to a dozen others.

Until and unless they're systematically addressed, it's actually very hard to either make progress or even draw good conclusions.

What's needed is a project to address *all* of the obvious ones, comprehensively, ideally on a national scale, but initially, at least on a pilot scale.

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

#169

Post by blagie »

ndriscoll wrote: post #144
alistairSH wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair questions and criticisms. I would prefer to have colleges [elite or otherwise] be generally representative of the population by race, religion, socio-economic background, etc. The problem, as I understand it, is "best qualified" is massively impacted by things like race, parental income, and other factors outside the control of college applicants. Society is far from a meritocracy.

In what way is that not meritocratic? The goal isn't to find the most Christlike figure born to the humblest beginnings and tempted thoughout his life by literally Satan to fall off the good path; it's to find the actually realized best qualified person. If you're the smartest, most knowledgeable, most conscientious, most humble person because you had a fantastic support system, well you're still genuinely a great pe…

40+% of the slots at Harvard are taken up by ALDCs. That's most of the white students slots. If you're like, say, our vice president, you have quite literally a snowball's chance in hell of making it in.

I doubt people are incentivized the way you think they are. Smug attitude aside, everyone wants best for their kids. Many people don't know how. They don't know how because their parents, grandparents, and no one in their community knows how. You end up in what research calls a culture of poverty.

That common among, but not exclusive to, many low-income black communities, due to a history of Jim Crow and slavery, but also in many immigrant communities, and white communities in places like, again, where our vice president comes from.

Improving outcomes for such communities means:

1) Improved economic growth

2) Improved social stability

Representation at Harvard means such communities might trust science. I have very little sympathy for white liberal university faculty complaining how some groups don't believe in climate change when those same faculty are giving those same groups every reason to distrust the academic establishment.

There's also no law which says schools should be meritocratic.

Admissions departments can and do optimize for things like future donations, political influence, and so on.

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

#170

Post by rayiner »

selimthegrim wrote: post #157
graemep wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My understanding is that Pakistan got what we would understand to be real elections in 1970: https://mygoldenbengal.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/pakistan-vot.... In 1950, the National Assembly was elected not by the people, but instead by provincial representatives elected during British rule.
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