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Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

latimes.com

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Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#561

Post by JackFr »

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…

> Up until about 1971 (possibly later, but that's the date of Loving vs Virginia)

Minor nitpick, Loving was 1967.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#562

Post by dcsommer »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #325
solardev wrote: post #120

I often wished universities (and other organizations) would use a scoresheet-like "matrix of oppression" to determine someone's background difficulties. Like okay, you get X points if you're this race, Y points for that. Z points if your parents were poor. Or if you grew up in these bad zip codes. Or if your dad was gone and mom was an addict. Whatever. As an Asian American of relatively privileged (middle class) upb…

The who is more privileged game is not a fun one to play. Watched a white male friend and a white passing Hispanic female friend get into this argument before. He grew up poor in a rural area, only one parent worked a low paying job and the other was the care giver. She grew up middle class in a city, parents were college professors. There are a ton of other factors but even at those basics it got complicated. Is a m…

> I wonder if a matrix like that would even be legal.

Probably not, but I heard from an acquaintance college admissions official that systems like this exist, and they are highly secretive. This is just one anecdote, so make of that what you will.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#564

Post by UncleMeat »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #545
UncleMeat wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would like to see lotteries used for this type of thing, because they would be much easier to accept. Advocates for a new admissions system at TJHSST proposed a merit lottery. Conservative advocates called it racist and the proponents "enemies of excellence" in precisely the same way that they did for the eventually implemented system. A similar response would happen if applied to universities. I think that merit…

Advocates for a new admissions system at TJHSST proposed a merit lottery. Conservative advocates called it racist This is an uncharitable interpretation. AIUI part of the motivation for overhauling the admissions system was precisely to reduce the proportion of Asian Americans admitted, in order to satisfy some diversity goal set at the state level. So, even if the new admissions system wasn't racist on its face, it…

This is exactly what I mean when I say that merit lotteries will get exactly the same reaction where people just say "this is racist, you want to oppress Asian Americans."

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#565

Post by leephillips »

torstenvl wrote: post #556
duped wrote: post #158

I admittedly skimmed the opinion, but is this the first case that establishes a private entity like Harvard University is bound by the Equal Protections Clause? I thought existing law and precedent only had it applied to state/state actors (and a few cases where private businesses acted like governments, eg company towns).

I was also confused by this, at first. However, it's explained in footnote 2 of the majority opinion. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act makes the analysis identical for public institutions and private institutions subject to the Civil Rights Act.

However, the text of the opinion only invokes the 14th Amendment, not this Act or any other federal law. So I share this confusion.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#566

Post by molsongolden »

Balgair wrote: post #282
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'm going to assume positive intent on this and that it's not a troll comment. Race in the US is horribly complicated and tied into so many parts of life here in the US. Full Stop. HN comment sections aren't really the place to go into the very fine details, especially just one comment like mine. and the fine details do matter. Ok, all that out of the way, now to the questions here. Let's take a small micro-example a…

Differences in racial health outcomes are absolutely concerning and the medical training issues you call out are unacceptable.

However, examples like OBGYN diversity might outline a slightly different aspect of race and racial issues in the USA.

OBGYN is one of the most diverse specialties and, even with more diversity, it's still going to be unlikely for an African-American woman to end up with an African-American female doctor (assuming emergency intake and ignoring sorting done at the time of physician selection).

In the 2022 NRMP Match data[0], OBGYN residency applicants were 86% female and 11% Black/African American(B/AA). Quick and possibly unreliable skimming of recent paper abstracts returned ~62% female and 11% B/AA for the current overall OBGYN pool.

11% of OBGYN is lower than the overall population demographics in the USA but the B/AA population is still only 13%.

The answer might be better education and training for all doctors, or it might involve matching patient and doctor demographics for the best patient experience, but we're never going to have enough minority group doctors to make a minority group patient likely to receive care from a minority group doctor in a randomized setting.

[0] https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Demographic-...

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#567

Post by DonsDiscountGas »

solardev wrote: post #120

I often wished universities (and other organizations) would use a scoresheet-like "matrix of oppression" to determine someone's background difficulties. Like okay, you get X points if you're this race, Y points for that. Z points if your parents were poor. Or if you grew up in these bad zip codes. Or if your dad was gone and mom was an addict. Whatever. As an Asian American of relatively privileged (middle class) upb…

That's what the University of Michigan used to do, it was ruled unconstitutional in Gratz v. Bollinger in 2003.

It was never really clear (imho) how affirmative action (as actually practiced) could be implemented; discrimination based on race has been explicitly illegal since 1964 but somehow the courts ruled that some discrimination was legal (in Bakke v. California) but the courts can't actually provide a workable solution, they can just shoot down what people try.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#568

Post by snowwrestler »

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…

There is another reason, less talked about, that higher education started considering factors like socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, and national origin in admissions.

It became clear that immersing predominantly white, privileged students in a predominantly white, privileged campus during 4 years of college was poorly preparing them as leaders for a future world in which they will encounter a greater diversity of backgrounds than their parents did. (Because of both changing U.S. demographics AND growing global trade.)

And it became clear that sourcing students primarily from white, privileged backgrounds was poorly positioning the institutions themselves in an increasingly diversifying society.

As legal barriers to the financial and political participation of women and minorities fell, there were more opportunities for people of those backgrounds to succeed. And elite higher education institutions want to remain the schools of choice for the most successful members of society (regardless of background). They can’t do that if everyone thinks they only care about rich white people.

Adjusting admissions to increase the diversity of backgrounds of new students was a way to short-cut solutions to these challenges.

In short, a thumb on the scale to bring the student body more in line with global diversity was also done with an eye toward remaining competitive as a top choice among options for higher education.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#569

Post by prepend »

purpleblue wrote: post #250
BobbyJo wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intent is to factor in some unknown "racism" value. Poor White and Asian kids still beat out poor Black and Hispanic kids academically on average, so if you naively stratified by income, you'd still wind up with a mostly white and Asian student population. There are a lot of reasons Black and Hispanic kids underperform, and it's just easier for the school to short circuit all that and choose based on race rather…

Except it's not mostly poor, hardworking ADOS (African descendents of slavery) students that benefit. It's rich, Black students that are benefiting, especially those from outside the US and no lineage from slavery. The problem with affirmative action is that everyone is only looking literally at skin color, which is the opposite of what we should be doing.

I think ADOS stands for “American Descendants of Slavery” [0] as it is used in terms of US populations and, by definition, Americans aren’t African.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Descendants_of_Slaver...

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#570

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

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…

One issue is it isn't applied fairly. I know a Chinese-American who inquired into AA and was turned away because he wasn't a "traditionally disenfranchised" minority.
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