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Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

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Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#591

Post by lozenge »

zarro wrote: post #391
lozenge wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because life sucked for black people in the 60s and they managed to change the law?

I don’t see how that has anything to do with forcing a private institution into serving customers it doesn’t want to. The argument is: Imagine you and a friend have a private tutoring business. You should be able to have the freedom to pick whatever customers you want, your not a slave, your not obligated to provide a service for someone if you don't want to. Over time if there is demand for private tutoring that you…

Your laissez faire approach was tried and it didn't work. For example, the backlash from white customers and suppliers could be enough to make it "not worth it after all". Only when the law made private businesses treat all customers equally regardless of race, could outcomes begin to equalise.

Just like we require certain minimum wages and environmental laws, disallowing racist behaviour in businesses is just something that the government can and should impose on commerce.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#592

Post by fromky »

JPKab wrote: post #504
bigendian1234 wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I'm a white person who used to think of affirmative action as unfair discrimination. That was true until I spent time volunteering teaching technical skills to kids in poor immigrant neighborhoods. Now that I have had an up close experience with these communities, I'm here to tell you institutional racism is real and we're far from it making sense to end these programs. There simply is not a quick easy solution…

Do you think the kids in poor immigrant neighborhoods are in worse positions than poor kids in eastern Kentucky? Because the current policies treat white kids from trailer parks like white kids from fancy suburbs. And they treat FOB Asians like they are doctor's children. And black kids from fancy suburbs are treated as if they came from poor ghettos. The idea that "oppression" is limited to dimensions of race and ge…

This is actually factually incorrect. White kids from different economic backgrounds are treated identically != race-conscious admissions policies as they are currently described in the ruling. And FOB Asians is not an economic class, so I am not sure what argument you are trying to make. Is FOB Asian supposed to be poor? Because you need them to visit some places like Vancouver and Waterloo.

I think your point that oppression is not only racial but socioeconomic is not misguided. But as I understand it, the ruling does not preclude adjustments based on the access and opportunity limitations you refer to, which are not strictly limited to a particular race.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#593

Post by fromky »

autokad wrote: post #530
bigendian1234 wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I'm a white person who used to think of affirmative action as unfair discrimination. That was true until I spent time volunteering teaching technical skills to kids in poor immigrant neighborhoods. Now that I have had an up close experience with these communities, I'm here to tell you institutional racism is real and we're far from it making sense to end these programs. There simply is not a quick easy solution…

> "those who are not oppressed simply have no real frame of reference to understand the problem" Yet somehow you think you are enlightened by a little volunteer work. as far as immigrants in America go, Asians make more money than whites. When you compare Chinese, the difference is starker. FWIW, I don't think you were really that poor. I grew up white, male, and poor from Appalachia. I promise you, there was no priv…

On the other hand be happy you were given the poor white from Appalachia scale for your test scores rather than the middle-class Asian from New Jersey scale.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#594

Post by Retric »

rohit2412 wrote: post #309
defen wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard. Neither Brin nor Page went to Harvard and are both more famous for their connection to Stanford as graduate students IMO

They did bring fame though right?

I think their dropping out may have hurt Harvard’s reputation as much as helped it. It’s often viewed as a place smart people and the elite go, but not always where they receive a great education.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#595

Post by dwoozle »

defen wrote: post #539
nybble41 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't really assess someone's capability of becoming a president/CEO/famous author based on their achievements before age 18. It's also really hard to determine whether people achieved those things because they went to Harvard. These statements are almost completely incompatible. If there is no way to tell who is likely to be successful beforehand, and yet those who attend Harvard are more successful as a group…

What I'm trying to say is that Harvard has a selection process in place, for which thousands of people per year count as "qualified", and I don't think there's a strong reason to believe that the admitted students are in any way "better" than the qualified-but-not-admitted students. However, getting that Harvard stamp of approval (which really comes down to luck, if you're qualified) opens a ton of doors, in terms of…

> I don't think there's a strong reason to believe that the admitted students are in any way "better" than the qualified-but-not-admitted students

On what basis do you think that? What data or reasoning suggests that the people Harvard almost admits would produce equal (fame, donations, other currency) to the university as those who are actually admitted?

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#596

Post by mar77i »

bduerst wrote: post #423
_ooqq wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm seeing happen is that unis (and other affected institutions) are trying to get rid of diversity of opinion in favor of diversity of skin color/ethnicity, and... I find that reasoning nothing but racist.

Isn't that a false dichotomy though? You can have both, and I'm not entirely convinced that universities are disqualifying candidates based on opinions in their applications.

As far as universities do these things publicly, this is inadvertently going to tip the scales in who is going to apply. And I'm nowhere seeing an university that is actively filtering for opinion-conciousness in this sense, that might actually not be that bad of an idea.

Then again, if they test for both things, how are they supposed to not prioritize one over another?

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#597

Post by repolfx »

gameswithgo wrote: post #76
umvi wrote: post #19

It's like we have these two irreconcilable ideas: - Diversity is good - Discrimination is bad When 50% of the world's population is from China/India, how do you both promote diversity and not discriminate?

To me the obvious thing is to aim to eliminate racial/national/gender bias as much as possible by blinding admission/hiring processes to those things. Then on top of that offer spots for people who have had to deal with exceptional difficulty. Whether that be physical handicap, racial prejudice, economic, etc. There are companies/grants that take an approach like this. Its going to be subjective but perfect is the en…

How do you blind an admissions process to race, and then offer spots for people who have suffered racial prejudice? That sounds like a contradiction.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#598

Post by repolfx »

darawk wrote: post #263
dmix wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't that the whole idea of affirmative action?

My understanding was that affirmative action was supposed to correct the under-representation of minorities by eliminating the over -representation of non-jewish whites. Not that it was designed to under-represent them.

Stated vs actual goals. Listen to the rhetoric of the people who campaign for affirmative action and then judge what they'll really do, not what they say they'll do.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#599

Post by oldmanthrowit »

StevePerkins wrote: post #117
habosa wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Jewish person I feel weird seeing "whites" being broken into Jewish and non-Jewish. What about other religions? Why include religion at all? In particular with respect to Harvard and Boston I'd think Catholicism might deserve a mention if we're going to bring religion into this. In the end I think religious diversity is important but it doesn't belong in the same conversation. You can choose your religion and al…

Oh come now. Judaism as an identity class has a lot more to it than mere religious affiliation. I have to suspect that if the representation were 0.5x, rather than 5x, then its consideration would strike you as more natural.

Agreed, I know at least a dozen atheist Jews who are Jewish ethnically (Sephardic / Ashkenazi) / culturally, but not religiously.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#600

Post by murgindrag »

bigendian1234 wrote: post #459
tomschlick wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the justification is that these classes are/have been historically discriminated against and constitutional admissions which take race into consideration are a temporary measure to right these historical wrongs by leveling the playing field. So under that thought process... when does the temporary measure end? Is there a specific goal? Or is it something unachievable like "when income inequality is fixed".

FWIW, I'm a white person who used to think of affirmative action as unfair discrimination. That was true until I spent time volunteering teaching technical skills to kids in poor immigrant neighborhoods. Now that I have had an up close experience with these communities, I'm here to tell you institutional racism is real and we're far from it making sense to end these programs. There simply is not a quick easy solution…

Institutional racism is real. That doesn't make these programs right, or even a solution. Ivy+ schools carefully pick out minorities who didn't grow up in poor neighborhoods. Most of these programs act as institutionalized racism, and give the appearance of doing something without the reality.

If you pick out students who had real disadvantage -- growing up with horrible schools, having uneducated parents, not speaking English, being poor -- I'd be 100% for them.

That's not what we've got.

We've got a system where Harvard will bring in black people from the "right" neighborhoods, and white people if their parents went to Harvard, taught at Harvard, or donated to Harvard.

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