Affirmative action in the Supreme Court again

Great Debates
41

I don’t want to answer the question with certainty, and I certainly don’t want to speak for anyone else in this thread, but I read something interesting the other day on a topic with some indirect similarities. It was about how well immigrants adapted to society. The person/people/paper (now I wish I had paid more attention at the time) indicated that it took approximately three generations before the individual was fully integrated. In other words, if you came over on the boat, your grandchildren would basically be totally integrated and good luck talking about anything “back home.”

The relationship to your question is at best quite indirect but it does seem to point at the possibility of answering the question.

42

Legacies.

43

I agree that there are lingering effects of institutional racism. I think it is horrific to attempt to correct these effects by more institutional racism.

What is striking is the attempt to justify it by saying that these are “good” preferences because the goal is diversity. While true, bigots of 50 years ago also thought their preferences were “good” to achieve the goal of white supremacy.

Let’s end it all now. There is not ever a good reason to use race as any part of any factor for anything. Ever.

44

Whoever said it upthread had a great point: diversity does not necessarily equate with race.

Although a tanget, where I work “diversity” means race and gender. For example, an American born Chinese that speaks not one word of Chinese nor ever been outside of his State is considered “diverse”, whereas my 25 years living in Greater China speaking fluent Chinese still leaves me as a white male.

45

Given the tremendous disparities in SES, wealth, education, and opportunity faced by minorities today as a lingering effect of institutional prejudice and generational poverty, how would you propose correcting the situation without acknowledging race? Or does it need to be corrected?

46

Jews and Orientals do not need affirmative action.

47

More than forty years since the civil rights legislation was passed into law it is becoming increasingly difficult to blame those disparities on white racism.

48

As soon as Jews were allowed to compete with Gentiles they tended to outperform them, even while hostility against Jews persisted.

People who dislike Jews generally resent them because they tend to perform well intellectually.

As soon as blacks were allowed to compete with whites athletically they also tended to outperform the whites.

You can see where I am going with this argument, but I think I better stop before I receive another infraction, am suspended for a month like I was previously, or get banned. :eek:

49

Focusing on whites vs. blacks for a moment:

When X is negatively affected, it’s pretty hard to repair the damage done to X without directly addressing X. By this I mean entire races have been disadvantaged in various ways, and it’s going to be hard to close the gap without giving them advantages that won’t also benefit the privileged.

That’s the crux of the issue. If you help the disadvantaged, the advantaged cry foul and want the “better deal too.” If you try to help everyone, it doesn’t actually solve the issue and the gap still exists.

Whites, for instance, have always gotten more – but they think if another group gets more, that means they’ll get less. They feel it’s a zero-sum situation where someone’s going to lose, and they’d rather it not be them. People are extremely uncomfortable with the idea that they technically got preferences they didn’t work hard for.

“It’s not my fault slavery happened – they should just get over it.” Even though it didn’t occur while we’re alive now, whites still benefit from the ripple effect over time. I mean, free labor for 200 years… benefiting whom, exactly? Same thing with indentured servants who came here from Asian countries.

How does a group of people move on from being dehumanized? Working 20+ hour days, enduring atrocities and not being paid anything, not being allowed to live, and not being allowed to read or get educated… then suddenly you “free” them. How on earth do they catch up?

AA, as stated earlier, technically helps white women the most if you look at the numbers. It’s the same sort of thing with desegregation back in the day. It was supposed to help, but instead, many black schools were penalized – they had to use their money to recruit and diversify their student body whereas white schools didn’t have to do a thing. The end result was that many black schools had a better quality of education pre-desegregation.

The answer to your question, IMO, is that there is no truly “fair” way to do it. Many problems are solved with a higher quality of education + cost reduction, so I think a lot of the focus has to go there. However, it’s worth asking if it’s really “unfair” to give benefits to someone who has been disadvantaged for the sake of your gain.

It’s not an easy issue – but I think if people are going to discuss race honestly, they need to be critical about the history and not naively handwave away crucial issues. Check out Jared Diamond’s Gums, Germs, and Steel sometime for more on socioeconomic evolution.

50

The word "Oriental’ is pejorative. I would appreciate it if you refrained from using that word.

Back to the topic at hand, I have heard arguments for improved inner city schools as another “solution” to what affirmative action is trying to mollify. This makes sense, however, fixing schools is not an over-night deal.

51

IceQube, not to be snarky nor to hijack this thread, but would you care to explain the logic and history behind “Oriental” = pejorative? Puh-leese, don’t start with Oriental = rug. Thanks.

52

You’re right, it is difficult. And yet.

Poverty is demonstrably generational. Unless you’re going to argue that African-Americans are just worse people, they continue to feel the effects of systematic slavery, oppression, and disparagement. Forty years since civil rights legislation has not been sufficient to simply make all of that go away.

53

You tell me what you mean by “institutional racism” and I’ll tell you whether I think it exists.

54

“Orientals”?

Even if we leave aside such an archaic term, the above post shows fairly extreme ignorance of the reality of Asian-American life.

Obviously, many Asian-Americans are doing quite well, but large numbers aren’t.

If you’re remotely familiar with the Hmong, Laotian, or Cambodian communities in the US you’d see that there are several which could use some Affirmative Action to help them out.

Obviously there are a huge number of ignorant racists who believe in the idea that Asian-Americans have some sort of genetic advantages but anyone who looks closely will notice that other factors are involved.

For example the children of Vietnamese Catholics and other Vietnamese who were the children of the upper class which fled a Communist revolution have done well, but the children of Vietnamese peasants who came after the initial wave haven’t done remotely as well.

Korean-Americans have obviously done a lot better than the Hmong or Cambodians, but considering that most are the children of college-educated immigrants that’s not terribly surprising.

I suspect careful studies would indicate dramatic differences between the children of educated Chinese immigrants and the children of Chinese peasants.

Obviously, the brain-dead morons who believe in the Bell Curve and all the asinine theories that were discredited generations ago will probably ignore this.

55

I personally dislike the antiquated word. It has connotations of exoticness, which I don’t find particularly flattering - more demeaning, actually.

I’ve heard of Charles Murray’s work before. Why do you disagree with his Bell Curve? Doesn’t it simply argue that IQ is a measure of how successful one will be in society?

56

While AA might be unfair in some technical, theoretical sense, I have real trouble seeing people expressing emotional outrage about it and claiming their outrage is legitimately seated in moral ideals of fairness and not rooted in racist feelings, without my BS meter pinging at eleven.

Racial inequality is a real systemic and historical problem. AA is a pragmatic experiment with noble intent. There are probably more effective and fair solutions, but it is not the sort of thing to get in a moral panic about.

If you are legitimately for fairness and racial equality, then promote and advocate for programs you feel are more effective, and the less effective programs will gradually be phased out and replaced. There’s no need to try to litigate one particular program out of existence. And I really can’t see anyone wanting to take that approach unless they are racially motivated.

Personally I’d rather see programs that target younger underperforming youth, and college entering students that are financially under privileged. But I’m not going to get myself into a tizzy if a black B student gets into a college before a white B+ student.

57

You clearly have no idea how government works. Once a program is in place, it will last forever unless positive steps are taken to eliminate it. We are still paying a telephone excise tax that was put in place as a “temporary” measure to fund the Spanish-American war. We are still subsidizing goat herders because we needed wool for military uniforms during WWI.

If you are legitimately for fairness and racial equality, then stop supporting the racial inequality of Affirmative Action. If you are all about fairness, then you SHOULD get into a “tizzy” if a less qualified student gets in over a more qualified student based on race. How would you feel if a white B student got in over a black B+ student because he was white? Not happy about that? OK, then. You aren’t for “fairness and racial equality”, you are for discrimination. Justify it all you want, that’s what it comes down to.

58

How do you feel about the fact that black people were oppressed and enslaved for a couple hundred years while white people enjoyed the fruits of the labor for free? Is that fair?

59

Nothing in life is fair, and race-based affirmative action is simply a band-aid for the ills of society: past, and present.

I would frankly like to see racial AA go and socioeconomic AA put in its place.

60

Who determines the qualifications in this society?

The upper echelon. People who are virtually raised from birth to winnow the wheat from the chaff.

Who belongs in the upper echelon in American society?

Who has always been in the upper echelon?

I do not need to answer those last two questions.

These folks have defined the criteria that are used to determine whether an individual is “qualified.” It is not by coincidence that their children always manage to meet the bar. If they didn’t, then they wouldn’t be able to inherit the throne. But it becomes an arms race because folks on the lower rungs eventually become hip to the game–the upper echelon does not want to share its place. So with each generation, the standards become harder to attain. The “qualifications” become more abstract. You need a divining rod to figure them out.

All of this is just to point out that the very concept of “qualified” is a construct. SAT scores are correlated with socioeconomic status, which is correlated with parental educational attainment, which is correlated with grandparents’ committment to education as a pathway to success, and their ambition and optimism about their place in society. In other words, an SAT score is an indicator of an individual’s relative position to the upper echelon, and it is so by design. An individual’s SAT score has more to do with factors beyond their control than within their control.

Affirmative Action, for all its flaws, is a way to counteract the tendency of the “cream of the crop” to always be the product of people who were raised to be the “cream of the crop”, so that only their children will be the “cream of the crop”, while everyone else is beaten over the head for being so very lazy and stupid. It is a way to challenge the idea that “qualification” is something that can be numerically quantified or that is objectively meaningful.

I have said so in earlier threads: I believe I benefited from AA, at least in undergrad. My SAT scores were not that great (compared to my university’s average), and while I was in the top 10% of my HS class, I did not have a whole roster of AP classes on my transcript. My school did not offer a whole roster of AP classes for me to take. Yet I was admitted to a top-notch engineer school. I wasn’t “qualified”, and yet I somehow managed to graduate with honors. As did other people just like me. And so many of the people who were “qualified” did not do so. I suppose you can weep for the future Bill Gates who ended up having to go elsewhere because my “unqualified” application was accepted in lieu of his or hers, but I don’t. From my perspective, I didn’t get something unfairly handed to me. The system that made me have to compete against kids who had been offered dozens of AP classes to the three my school had offered, and the system that had inculcated all of us with the notion that SAT scores summarize the complete worth of a human being, intellectually or otherwise, even though there is a billion dollar industry that exploits the very vacuousness of this lie…now THAT is unfair. Much more unfair than Affirmative Action.

We have both systems of unfairness in place. If you want to undo one, you’ve got to undo the other.