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American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

economist.com

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Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#611

Post by RigelKentaurus »

Tozen wrote: post #592
RigelKentaurus wrote: post #437

Indian-American father here, living in the Bay Area. My wife and I came to this country with a few hundred dollars between us and have worked hard to reach where we’re at. We're far from privileged. I am 100% against affirmative action on the basis of race. I think there should be some measure of AA on the basis of economic status. It's quite personal for me this year. My 17-year old is applying to universities to st…

> I am 100% against affirmative action on the basis of race. The problem with your statement is that affirmative actions is not based solely on race, so it appears that you are attempting to or have mistakenly fallen into perpetuating an offensive myth that the main beneficiaries of it are Black/Hispanic. The group that has benefited the most from affirmative action are White/Non-Hispanic women. White Women and Affir…

>That's gaming the system, for personal benefits, and contrary to the purposes for which affirmative action was created

It should have been abundantly clear to anyone that I mentioned CollegeVine to show how the system works, not that we intend to apply as another race. Sheesh.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#612

Post by rayiner »

worik wrote: post #581

For some of us (me included) living in a racist society is like a fish swiming who does not notice water. I only noticed when I became intimate with a person from a minority race and saw how they were treated. That is when I noticed I live in a racist society. I love the economist. Their writing is so good, they are biased but know it, and acknowledge it. Biased, but not bigoted. nYet this article misses the point, I…

Do you live in the U.S.? Because, as a minority myself, I'm really at a loss to understand what you mean by "[we] live in a racist society."

Also, what the hell is this supposed to mean:

> For doctors, lawyers, architects, accountants (yes) etcetera being from a similar community as your clients is very helpful for your clients.

Most folks at Harvard law are going to go to corporate law firms, where most of the clients are rich white people. Are you suggesting that as a Bangladeshi I'm less helpful to my clients because I'm not from a similar community? Is a lawyer from a less affluent part of Appalachia less helpful?

I can at least understand the justification that quotas are needed to allow access for historically oppressed groups. But the "diversity" justification seems like straight up racism to me. Are we supposed to be the same or are we not?

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#613

Post by rayiner »

RigelKentaurus wrote: post #437

Indian-American father here, living in the Bay Area. My wife and I came to this country with a few hundred dollars between us and have worked hard to reach where we’re at. We're far from privileged. I am 100% against affirmative action on the basis of race. I think there should be some measure of AA on the basis of economic status. It's quite personal for me this year. My 17-year old is applying to universities to st…

When the Supreme Court strikes down legalized discrimination against asians, I hope you remember who put those judges there.

Politics is about people voting in their self interest. If you're Asian, that calculus is simple. Trump might be boorish and say mean things, but his side wants to maintain a system that has worked extraordinarily well for Asians. Poor Asian kids have more than double the income mobility of poor white kids. Vietnamese people came to Reagan’s america in poverty, and closed the gap within a generation. The numbers are irrefutable.

Sure, the other side will make an elaborate show of learning how to pronounce your name. But they want to create a system where your kids (and my kids) will be left holding the short end of the stick simply because they're "not the right kind of diversity." Just consider the phrase they love to use "BIPOC." Non-white people all lumped together, our distinctions erased, except for two groups listed as "first among equals." They are telling you who they are, believe them!

And don't think for a second it will stop at college admissions: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-affirmative-action-had.... In Kamala Harris’s America, Asians will be 7% of the engineers at Google and Facebook, instead of 40%. That’s “equity.”

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#614

Post by Dreako »

mythhouse wrote: post #577
RigelKentaurus wrote: post #437

Indian-American father here, living in the Bay Area. My wife and I came to this country with a few hundred dollars between us and have worked hard to reach where we’re at. We're far from privileged. I am 100% against affirmative action on the basis of race. I think there should be some measure of AA on the basis of economic status. It's quite personal for me this year. My 17-year old is applying to universities to st…

Quoted post unavailable.

>You had the momentum generations of high caste privilege and high caste education focused culture in India that let you achieve that.

still not a reasonable justification to misdirect talented individuals to mediocre colleges and waste their potential.

On a long term, this negatively affects scientific progress, and indirectly the national security.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#615

Post by [deleted] »

RigelKentaurus wrote: post #437

Indian-American father here, living in the Bay Area. My wife and I came to this country with a few hundred dollars between us and have worked hard to reach where we’re at. We're far from privileged. I am 100% against affirmative action on the basis of race. I think there should be some measure of AA on the basis of economic status. It's quite personal for me this year. My 17-year old is applying to universities to st…

[deleted]

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#616

Post by ro_bit »

RigelKentaurus wrote: post #437

Indian-American father here, living in the Bay Area. My wife and I came to this country with a few hundred dollars between us and have worked hard to reach where we’re at. We're far from privileged. I am 100% against affirmative action on the basis of race. I think there should be some measure of AA on the basis of economic status. It's quite personal for me this year. My 17-year old is applying to universities to st…

> Berkeley

If it makes you feel better, public California colleges cannot employ affirmative action as documented by https://ballotpedia.org/Affirmative_action_in_California, so your son's chances in the UC system should be unaffected by race based quotas. Best of luck to your son on college admissions. Having recently gone through that myself, it's a hell of an undertaking.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#617

Post by inglor_cz »

Tozen wrote: post #592
RigelKentaurus wrote: post #437

Indian-American father here, living in the Bay Area. My wife and I came to this country with a few hundred dollars between us and have worked hard to reach where we’re at. We're far from privileged. I am 100% against affirmative action on the basis of race. I think there should be some measure of AA on the basis of economic status. It's quite personal for me this year. My 17-year old is applying to universities to st…

> I am 100% against affirmative action on the basis of race. The problem with your statement is that affirmative actions is not based solely on race, so it appears that you are attempting to or have mistakenly fallen into perpetuating an offensive myth that the main beneficiaries of it are Black/Hispanic. The group that has benefited the most from affirmative action are White/Non-Hispanic women. White Women and Affir…

TL;DR: According to you, an Indian teenager born in the 21st century should be treated as less desirable during a college admission process, because of things that some white people did to some black people in the 19th and 20th century.

Sorry, this is textbook bigotry to me, and I am dismayed by the fact that this way of thinking infested the American academia and half of its political system.

As a young guy in the 1990s, I knew a few old bigoted Polish Catholics who disliked the Jews because they "killed Christ". Being naive, I was thinking back then that this kind of heritable guilt was on its way out. Nope, I was wrong. The ideology that you describe is arguably even more nonsensical, classifying totally unrelated ethnic groups as "white-adjacent" and assigning them the same or even greater level of malus points.

The most absurd thing about your argument is that OPs ancestors probably lived under British colonial rule more recently than American blacks under their masters, and approximately at the same time when Jim Crow was rampant. And in 2022, white liberals treat them as undesirables once again, and once again for racist reasons; only the details have changed, but not the principle: Sorry, there is too much of your people on the campus already. Begone.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#618

Post by thereisnospork »

nonethewiser wrote: post #511
coyotespike wrote: post #187

Here in Texas, any student from the top 10% of their high school is guaranteed a place at the flagship University of Texas at Austin. This is widely understood to be a form of affirmative action. Naturally, high schools in underprivileged areas - rural or urban - will produce students who are nowhere nearly as prepared as students from elite or wealthy schools. We ignore that difference as a policy matter. Top 10% is…

> This is widely understood to be a form of affirmative action. That's a misunderstanding then because that's not affirmative action. Affirmative action is targeting specific groups of people to achieve some desired makeup. That's literally what affirmative action means. It doesn't ensure you get all the best students. That's true. But that doesn't make it affirmative action.

>Affirmative action is targeting specific groups of people to achieve some desired makeup. That's literally what affirmative action means.

When the 10% of a high school class consists of a statistically outsized proportion of a desired group of people favoring them would be called affirmative action, yes. Just because a policy doesn't pick people out by the color of their skin doesn't make it not affirmative action. (And likewise, just because a policy doesn't call out skin color doesn't make it not racist.)

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#619

Post by [deleted] »

mythhouse wrote: post #577
RigelKentaurus wrote: post #437

Indian-American father here, living in the Bay Area. My wife and I came to this country with a few hundred dollars between us and have worked hard to reach where we’re at. We're far from privileged. I am 100% against affirmative action on the basis of race. I think there should be some measure of AA on the basis of economic status. It's quite personal for me this year. My 17-year old is applying to universities to st…

Quoted post unavailable.

[deleted]

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#620

Post by howinteresting »

Manuel_D wrote: post #504
howinteresting wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minority isn't just numerical, it can also mean having a minority of power. For example, in South Africa Black people were (and still are in many ways) a minority even though they were a numerical majority.

One would be pretty hard-pressed to argue that women hold "minority of power. For several decades now, women have had higher college enrollment rates. And among the two youngest generations, the gender pay gap has actually reversed with women out-earning men [1]. One could very well make the argument that discrimination favoring women isn't affirmative action, but rather "punching down" so to speak. 1. https://www.th…

Only 30%ish of US state legislators are women. Abortion rights we're just taken away in a number of states. That's a pretty naked display of power.
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