Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

The ACLU has historically taken the philosophy of defending fundemental rights by defending them for unpopular people (eg. they would defend the right of Nazi's to march in a Jewish neighboorhood).

I don't know if I am looking at their past through rose colored glasses, but their new direction is disturbing. It seems like they are increasingly okay with sacrifing our fundemental rights in favor of short term expediancy.

Having said that, this is still just the start of a change in course. They still do a lot of good work, and they might find their way again.

The bigger problem is that liberalism is dying in the US. The ACLU is the last major liberal public group/movement and they seem to be turning away from it.

Your "ergo" is only seeing in black and white (pun not intended).

We do not need affirmative action in its current form, as it actually is not fair or an actual equalizing platform.

We do need a form of it that looks at ability and opportunity the child and the family have, and makes sure everybody at least has the same baseline of opportunities and skills they can work from.

Growing up as a 2nd generation child from immigrant parents, you hear about all of the opportunities your father sees you have that he did not. I think many times there are cases of people being blind to what's always around them ... ability to start a business, work for a better life, provide an even better future for your child than you had.

Malnutrition is a staggering problem for children that many people do not understand the severity of. It is much cheaper and convenient for a poor family to buy unhealthy food than healthy food. If a developing child does not have a good foundation to grow from, then that impacts their entire life.

I think better education is the key to a better society. But that requires actual education and understanding. In my college in the USA, I saw forms of affirmative action where certain students who belonged to groups (usually divided by race) were allowed to continue with lower grades. This is a terrible idea, as it only promotes under education of these students, and actually hinders their understanding of the topics, and limits their real world opportunities in the future.

Building a carriage is not the solution to flying to the moon. And right now we have a very poor carriage.

Damn right I’ll fight tooth and nail any policy which aims to make my child’s school worse to make a different child’s school better. Selfish? Hell yes.

I think this, and many similar issues, all come down to the need to clarify one's desire for equality of opportunity, or equality of result. If you are in support of equality of opportunity, then this is obviously a good thing. If you're in support of equality of result, then this is obviously a bad thing.

In my opinion, equality if result is not really a tenable position. I suspect even if we were all completely and absolutely genetically identical, we'd still see different groups perform differently. The reason in this case would be emergent cultures. The culture in area like Palm Beach is going to diverge from the culture in e.g. Nome, Alaska. When Nomians then have, perhaps, better results than Palm Beachians does that mean we now need to start making it harder for Nomians to get into schools? It just doesn't make any sense. And of course this is all built on top of a false premise of each and every group starting with genetic equivalence to each and every other group. Ultimately I don't see any realistic way you can achieve equality of result without turning society into a dystopia.

Legacy-based admissions are one thing, though I can't see how a policy based on race would be the right tool to combat that (and it's not entirely clear to me that it's unjustified for a school to find ways to get alumni funding, though some institutions like Harvard clearly have all the funding they need). As for students that come from schools with or without "proper funding" and such that "prepare them for college" better or worse... Suppose it's true that certain students would be the most meritorious if everyone got an optimal education, but that, due to unfortunate circumstances, some of those students ended up being significantly less prepared than the rest. Do you actually recommend a policy that would force colleges to take these less-prepared students? It seems like a recipe for problems.

(You don't actually say the opposite statement—"we would need affirmative action if some school districts do not receive proper funding". It seems implied, though you also call AA a "symptom", which admits an interpretation like "the situation makes people mad and they'll demand X and probably get it, though I don't necessarily think they're right to do so".)