- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
Affirmative Action has now ended in the United States.
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We just had to lock a thread in politics over this, I suspect we may have to lock this one as well. If your only take is “affirmative action bad” you might as well just leave now.
School is better for everyone if it includes a diversity of experiences. It enrichens and deepens our culture to know each other and to have professionals from all backgrounds learning from one another.
This is a loss for every single person that actually wants our schools to be the best that they can be.
I’m going to copy over parts of my response from another thread on this topic. I don’t think it’s a loss for every single person, and the topic of equity is much more complex than just race.
As someone who went to an “elite institution,” coming from a low-income, first-generation college student, and immigrant background, and used it as a vehicle for massive social mobility, I am quite ambivalent (not in apathetic, but strong feelings about it on both sides) about the elimination of race-based admissions at these institutions.
The people who truly benefit from the current state of race-based affirmative action are not real “underprivileged people”. 99.999% of those will never even reach the academic qualification needed to get past the first round of screening at these schools. The overwhelming number of people who “benefit” from this are under-represented minorities from extremely elite backgrounds - the black of latino kid who went to top-tier private schools. If you have two applicants: 1 White/Asian kid from a poor background, vs 1 black/latino kid from Philip Exeter, who do you think these schools will take?
These schools are institutions with the goal of perpetuating elitism. period. Legacy, athletes, and “extracurriculars” are all just forms of gatekeeping for people without the knowledge, or social economic freedoms to partake in these activities. (I’m very confident about this from my years of helping underprivileged kids get into universities)
Now I do think race-based affirmative action does 2 things very well:
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It broadens the racial and international perspectives of the new “wave” of elites, and there are numerous studies on how that improves the performance (mostly from a capitalistic point of view) of those students in the new international world. This flows into your argument about how allowing race-based affirmative action actually makes schools better. However, this could be a dangerous justification. What if segregation makes schools better? That same logic can be used to justify private school admissions metrics that we can agree are objectively unjust.
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It makes it so that there is some semblance of race diversity (at the cost of economic class diversity) within the new wave of “elites” coming out of these schools. I think this is actually quite a good thing, which is one of the reasons that I am quite ambivalent about race-based affirmative action at these private schools.
In many ways, the current race-based admissions system in the elite schools actually sacrifices economic affirmative action, for race-based affirmative action. Again, we can debate how intersectional the two topics are, but that’s just the reality of how these systems work.
IMO, the path to more social equality isn’t by changing the skin color of people who become elite, but by opening the gate for more people from non-traditional backgrounds in the form of community colleges and an easy path to transfer to universities (a la California university system, though the current pace of UCs is also aiming to join the ranks of these “elite” institutions). There needs to be a non-“luxury” path, a non-rarified path, towards quality higher education.
This is an interesting perspective, thank you. I wouldn’t have considered that AA optimizing for race may simply select for already-privileged PoC more strongly than white students and may also give a false sense of equity based on improved racial demographics, but it makes sense. Is there no selection for the less advantaged at all? Even if it’s not as efficient as it could be, surely opening the floodgates for privileged PoC which circumstantially lets in a trickle of less privileged people is still better than nothing? I need to look into the stats on this.
The alternative is what the UC system does, which takes into account social economic background but is race blind.
But the outcome of that is much less “sexy” from a diversity perspective. You end up with a bunch of Asian kids. (I’d argue disproportionally pushed out by these other top private universities, so the demographics is even more distorted) But if you peel back a layer, the portion of the UC student body that was previously on free and reduced lunch, that portion is much higher than that of Stanford or any of the Ivy leagues.
There is definitely some consideration for economic backgrounds at these top schools, I was part of the low income first generation student group at my school. But it’s very very tough for many of these kids because they have a tough time keeping up with their peers, especially in STEM fields. (Imagine coming into school ready to take calculus, because that’s all your school offered, when some of your peers have already finished linear algebra, that really does a number on your confidence to pursue STEM fields)
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Sad, but expected. I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did. Just another casualty in Conservatives’ war on equality.
I guess being treated better/worse because of the color of your skin is equality.
My parents were alive and in schools when segregation in education was ending. Decades of Jim Crow laws holding people down isn’t simply remedied by saying “We’re all equal now.” and doing nothing to redress the damage inflicted through the abuse of governmental power. Especially not when “We’re all equal now.” is largely lip service and systemic racism is still prevalent.
That’s probably true, and for that matter, even if you imagine a truly colorblind society exists for the next 100 years, it seems likely that inherited wealth and privilege would still be passed down.
Having said that, AA was not a very good remedy. It laser focused on only one thing, sometimes disregarding a clear reality. In an extreme example, if you took someone like David Steward’s kids, they would benefit from affirmative action despite being born to a billionaire.
Keep in mind, colleges and universities can still provide all the advantages they want based on other signals. Good ones might be family income and first-generation college students.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good
Saying “oh we’ll let some blacks in” isn’t a helpful solution
AA had done more harm than good
Now, i do wish we had better solutions that actually address the issues of individuals and communities suffering from poverty and discrimination, but AA does not solve that.
I’d much rather we provide an actual solution, than one that looks like while still being racist and in many ways making the situation worse, in particular by being a target to point to when talking about real solutions as “we already addressed that”
AA had done more harm than good
Would love to see a source on this. Literature is extremely mixed on this topic because, perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s almost impossible to control for all factors and implementation of AA varies so greatly (explicit diversity goals vs. some kind of equity boost vs. mandatory spots, etc.).
Saying “oh we’ll let some blacks in” isn’t a helpful solution
uh …come again?
Piling on more systemic racism makes things worse, not better. We should focus our efforts on addressing systemic racism in the areas where it still exists, not on compensating for it elsewhere. Provide better funding for schools in low income areas. Support economic development to pull those areas out of poverty, etc.
You’re not wrong, but the goal of AA was to create that by proxy. Give students better education to help them get better jobs and help their communities. That and forcing institutions hands so they don’t come up with other bullshit reasons why they’re only accepting white students.
Equality v equity.
Do you want every to be given the exact same resources at the start? Or do you want everyone to be able to reach the same outcome?
The state legislated racism - kneecapped a swathe of the population’s ability to access education and prosper. So how could the state possibly provide restitution for this without addressing the population it did this to?
Because available spots in colleges are limited in order to give to one group you have to take away from another, it’s a zero sum game. I don’t know what the right answer is but I know that treating asian kids worse because they are asian isn’t one. I also don’t belive that kids should suffer for the sins of their grandparents.
Like I said I don’t know what the right answer is but I think offering scholarships to talented, hardworking kids who can’t afford to pay for school, regardless of race is a better solution than race based preferential treatment.
From the majority’s opinion
nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university. Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice
Sounds like schools can still look at specific circumstances of a person’s life; just can’t make a blanket assumption that because they look a certain way they must have had things hard or easy.
If the goal is to provide restitution to people who have been impacted by government policies, evaluating whether or not they were actually affected, and to what extent, seems reasonable to me.
The issue here is exactly the issue affirmative action aims to help resolve - if you leave it so universities can if they so choose look at how someone’s experience of race has impacted on them, many of them won’t, because of structural racism and how ingrained it is. This decision is not requiring universities to consider their admission practices and what barriers might be in place - and many won’t.
It’d be great if they did, and in an ideal world we wouldn’t need requirements like this because universities and other organisations would proactively consider how their processes and decisions might be creating or removing barriers for all their students. Currently, that isn’t happening.
This reply will almost certainly be lost, but I do understand where you’re coming from since it is literally true, but fails to account for context. Consider a marathon in which half the participants were given 10 pound weights on each leg. Halfway through the race, the judges ruled those participants shouldn’t have weights on. Is the race now fair, since everyone is being treated equally? Of course not - they were immensely disadvantaged from the outset, so the only way to try to approach some level of fairness is to give them advantages to make up for their initial handicap. In theory, AA is meant to be corrective action to restore equity, at which point it can be dropped because it’s no longer necessary, but a simple glance at census data demonstrates we’re nowhere near that point.
Incidentally, this is also why “race blindness” is considered a bad thing in social justice. In theory it would be ideal that you don’t treat people differently, but in practice it means ignoring their disadvantages.
The Trump presidency was a near death sentence that we’ll have to reverse.
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I didn’t have to read the article to know that the black guy definitely voted against black guys.
Samuel L. Jackson dubbed him “Uncle Clarence.”
This may be apocryphal, but rumor was that Jackson said he based his performance in Django on Clarence.
Obviously Affirmative Action wasn’t something that should be in place forever, but any reasonable person has to see that it sought to un-tip scales that were already heavily tipped. The process for removing Affirmative Action should not be “well let’s ask some old people whether we should remove it”, it should have been a long term study showing the impact of the measure, and perhaps come up with a plan for scaling it back until it was no longer needed. Removing it outright without any kind of intelligence behind it is just…irresponsible.
While AA is not a good remedy, I wish that shooting it down would have come with some better solutions attached.
The supreme court can’t make policy they can only declare policy actions made by others as unconstitutional. There would need to be a bill from congress with solutions…
Shocker
this is why relying on precedent is very bad, write that shit down as law like youre supposed to
Good, any law that gives anyone an advantage or disadvantage based on race seems short sighted to me.
Jumping into a thread on such an important issue and leaving a potentially inflammatory response strikes me as bad faith. Would you like to expand your comment?
Does using a spare tire to get to the tire store also seem short sighted to you?
I love this analogy
Been on that spare for a long time, if we don’t go without we may never replace the wheel anyway.
your wheelchair is old so I threw it away, you’re welcome 😤
That’s a big departure from the spare tire analogy. The spare tire analogy is based on the principle that affirmative action should be a stepping stone that gets us to the place we want to be and then stops being needed. Whether we’ve gotten to that point or not isn’t a topic I want to get too weighed down on, but I think the point is that the goal is a world where we don’t need affirmative action.
But a wheelchair is (in general) a tool that compensates for a permanent problem. People who need wheelchairs need them forever. Are you arguing that’s what affirmative action is? Systemic racism can never be undone and affirmative action has to live on in perpetuity?
Not trying to get too bogged down in the analogy itself, but it seems you’ve got a fundamentally different view of the issue than the person you’re replying to.
the goal is a world where we don’t need affirmative action
Completely agreed. A lot is lost when you go in for a one line zinger, and I’m not going to write up a whole post replying to someone who didn’t put the effort in the first place, especially when presenting an opinion that’s easily interpreted as hostile towards minorities.
This is one I actually agree with. I don’t know of a solution to historical racism, but current racism against another group doesn’t seem like it can be it. That would just lead to an unending loop IMO.
how is affirmative action as a concept contributing to “current racism against another group”?
Well, I suppose it depends on your definition of racism, but to me giving preferential treatment to one group and lowering treatment of another based on race is a form of racism. From my understanding of the case, Asian and White applicants needed substantially higher SAT scores to be admitted.
That’s not how it worked at all. Affirmative Action actually benefited white women more than any other minority group.
Affirmative Action was never about “lowering treatment for one race vs. another.” It was about evening the playing field. That evening is gone and we have no solution as a replacement. It will demonstrably negative for minority groups (that aren’t white women, lol) all because white people couldn’t stand the idea of not having a leg up in something.
Which, btw, is the reason why your definition of racism is flawed, if not flat out incorrect. There has to be a power imbalance for racism to be real. Me calling someone a cracker doesn’t mean anything compared to the structural inequalities I face as a black person. One of the few structural benefits I did have is gone now thanks to mediocre white people seething. Does that make sense?
Sorry, we had to deny your application because you’re Asian. Try another school.
Affirmative Action has had a net positive impact on Asian Americans, given the fact that Asians had the largest college enrollment (59%), more than any other race.
A study from Georgetown University also found that Asian Americans actually benefit from affirmative action. It showed that if colleges only considered test scores, while Asian American enrollment would increase slightly, 21% of Asian Americans admitted under the holistic system would lose their spot.
In short, Asian Americans with lower SAT/ACT scores would give up their admission to Asian Americans with higher test scores. This would potentially affect lower-income Asian Americans, who cannot afford to spend money to prepare for those tests.
That said, your statement is so blatantly silly I’d like to confirm you’re actually arguing in good faith, or just stirring the pot with a hypothetical that absolutely does not happen. Thanks!
