181–190 of 286 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Presumably if you cannot use race to decide who gets a place, you cannot use race to decide who get's a scholarship. At least as Harvard University, different rules might apply for the NAACP etc.
Who said anything about race? If you can afford Choate, you can afford $250k/year at Harvard. But the kid from Biloxi, MS gets a "scholarship" so she only pays $25k/yr.
> Institutions like Harvard say they consider an applicant's race as one of several factors - including economic status and religious belief - in order to build classes that accurately represent the racial and ethnic diversity of the country. I mean, this is all kind of window dressing for elite institutions to be elite, right? There are millions of people qualified to attend these university, Harvard gets to hand se…
I'm curious as to why affirmative action in the US has always been race-based and not economic-status or household income based? Asking as someone with no skin in the game; I'm merely curious if anyone has any constructive opinions on why they think economic status based affirmative action may/may not work?
The US has traditionally built laws to hinder one race in particular. Affirmative action targeting race aims to compensate for some of those
Asians have been discriminated in many cases in the past as well. Goes way back to the days of slavery:
> After slavery was abolished in the United States, Chinese laborers were imported to the South as cheap labor to replace freed Blacks on the plantations [...] Starting as early as 1865, Southern newspapers began printing editorials and letters calling for Chinese labor to be the new labor supply.[2] This interest was sparked in part by accounts boasting that the Chinese contract labor attributed to the increase in Cuban agricultural imports. The Chinese effectively became the new labor supply but were positioned societally at the same level as African Americans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Labor_in_the_Southern_...
Then you have the railroads era, WWII internments camp era, the Chinese Exclusion Act, 2021 Atlanta Spa shooting, and more. Then factor in all the other racist policies against Asians: minority roles in film, in white collar job sector, bamboo ceilings, violence/assaults against asians vs police response, US government witchhunt on Asian researchers during Covid, dealing with "Model Minority" myth...
Yet, Asians are constantly excluded when it comes to Affirmative action in these modern times, why is that? We can clearly see they've had an unpleasant history too, so why are institutions increasingly hostile against them? This isn't even restricted to Colleges, even though the lawsuit stemmed from it, we can see it affecting the workplace as well:
> "Asian Americans Are the Least Likely Group in the U.S. to Be Promoted to Management"
https://hbr.org/2018/05/asian-americans-are-the-least-likely...
> "Pfizer defends exclusion of Asian and white applicants in fellowship, says it’s ‘non-discriminatory’"
https://www.yahoo.com/video/pfizer-defends-exclusion-asian-w...
We should embrace Asians to be part of the diversity and Affirmative Action policies, not reject them, so I feel the current implementation of AA needs to be addressed, which I hope the ongoing college lawsuit will do.
I'm curious as to why affirmative action in the US has always been race-based and not economic-status or household income based? Asking as someone with no skin in the game; I'm merely curious if anyone has any constructive opinions on why they think economic status based affirmative action may/may not work?
> why affirmative action in the US has always been race-based and not economic-status or household income based? We have both. We reserve the term “affirmative action” for race-based tilting. But means-based aid is also significant.
Does this refer to scholarships and other forms of tuition assistance, or does it also include admissions criteria as well?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What happened to it refers to a concept called the meritocracy trap.
Let's say you need open heart surgery. Doctor one has a 3.9 GPA from Harvard medical. Doctor two barely passed your state's medical school Which do you want doing your operation? The "meritocracy trap" often caves into "wealth and privilege" and this is not meritocracy.
Ask the wrong question and you will rarely get the right answer.
Good lord, this really encapsulates the level of this debate, and how it is about anything but actual merit.
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There are so few people this would apply to (wealthy individuals with large amounts of unreported cash income who are applying to college) that its not even worth considering as an edge case for college admissions. The point isn't to eliminate every possible way college admissions can be gamed but to get the best method that works for the majority of applicants.
> There are so few people this would apply to (wealthy individuals with large amounts of unreported cash income who are applying to college) that its not even worth considering as an edge case for college admissions. You would be mistaken.. This is actually a rather serious problem. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/income... https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-van... https://…
> The court is hearing challenges to their admissions policies, which consider race among many factors when evaluating applications.
> Institutions like Harvard say they consider an applicant's race as one of several factors - including economic status and religious belief - in order to build classes that accurately represent the racial and ethnic diversity of the country.
In which case -- sure, perhaps this is a valuable conversation to have. But if one considers the efficient frontier of tradeoffs between the goals of having the most "meritocratic" class of students with the best grades and test scores or most AP credits etc, or having a "representative" class which reflects the diversity of the nation, I'm guessing there are bigger opportunities for improvement. Legacies and athletic recruitment, perhaps?
If the explicit consideration of race is removed from admissions, are there not plenty of ways for admissions offices to try to consider similar factors other than personal academic performance, which would leave the plaintiffs still unsatisfied? Non-race factors for which admissions offices could try reflect national statistics in incoming classes:
- percent public school vs private school
- percent households which rent vs own their primary residence
- distribution over home values in admits' zipcodes of residence
- share of admits who had a parent incarcerated for some portion of their childhood
- personality big 5 scores
We get indignant in public about different treatment on the grounds of race. But I think students and families get frustrated because of the (inevitable) feeling of a loss of control when being judged based on criteria out of their control. If instead of race, one had the sneaking suspicion that one was not admitted because there were too many other private school, owned-home, 800k - 1.2M home, non-incarcerated-parent, high-conscientiousness applicants ... would you feel better?
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Appointed by politicians = political appointee in my book. But yes, they are lifetime political appointees. "Supreme Court justices serve lifetime appointments specifically so that they are not subject to political interference." I also think this is naive. In my view, they serve lifetime appointments because they don't want to give up power, and no one's been able to force them to so far.
It’s written into the constitution.
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Who said anything about race? If you can afford Choate, you can afford $250k/year at Harvard. But the kid from Biloxi, MS gets a "scholarship" so she only pays $25k/yr.
Of course, for 250k*4y I could probably just buy a house in Biloxi... And many of the people the current system removes from the pool come from areas that would be just as economically under-performing as other groups. Sorry if I have missed your point?
Also, Biloxi is very affordable![1]
[0]https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/weal...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Notice that they don't care about diversity of viewpoints or politics Ever talked to someone from Harvard? (they'll usually tell you in the first 4 minutes you meet them telling you they went to school in Boston). They admit quite a number of conservative people if that's what you're worried about, and even their more left people are pretty center-right, as in they really don't want to pay more taxes. > they could…
> They admit quite a number of conservative people... Nope. Fewer than 10% of students are conservative.[0] > and even their more left people are pretty center-right... Nope. ~65% self-identify as "Very Progressive" or "Progressive"! [0] There is no pretending that this is an accident, given that conservatives outnumber liberals by ~40% in the general population! [1] [0] https://features.thecrimson.com/2022/senior-su…
You seem to have misunderstood the article you cited, from the article:
>The percentage calling themselves conservative has been steadier over time and, at 36%, is the same today as in 1992.