Can Democrats perform better with white voters?

Politics & Elections
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How is it misleading? In the exact same post I say that the kids were in fact predominantly white and the white kids were predominantly jewish. I suspect the majority of those jewish kids were immigrants or the children of immigrants.

The fact of the matter is that one of the “big three” specialized high schools in NYC was at one point majority black and hispanic. That school right now is about 15% black and hispanic. Those blacks and hispanics have largely been replaced by asians. Mostly poor immigrant asians.

At the other two elite schools, the white population has dropped from 68 white to 23% white at Bronx Science and from 70% to 19% at Stuyvesant. Those seats were also lost to asians. Mostly poor immigrant asians.

The Vox article was implying that the SHSAT was some form of preservation of privilege by wealthy whites. It was a defense of objective standards and meritocracy by jewish immigrants.

But it wasn’t merely the influx of asian immigrants that caused the plummeting black and hispanic admission rates.

Black and hispanic neighborhoods lost their GT programs because NYC deemed it too expensive to effectively create a separate schools within otherwise failing schools in black and hispanic neighborhoods for the small number of students that qualified. There were not enough kids that qualified for the GT programs to justify the overhead of maintaining a GT program, in some cases it would result in a teacher teaching a class of 5 or 6 gifted students at a low performing school. These GT programs were the pipeline through which black and hispanic kids got into the specialized high schools.

Furthermore, the recent focus on diversity has also resulted in high end private schools skimming the best black and hispanic academic talent. Almost every exclusive private aschool in NYC has a much higher black population than before. For example Trinity (perennially one of the best schools in NYC) has 15% black and hispanic students. The percentage 50 years ago is probably closer to 1% Pretty much every low income black student that would have gone to stuyvesant and Bronx Science in the past are now recruited by schools like Trinity, Regis, Dalton, etc. These schools offer much better pathways to top colleges than Stuyvesant (the flagship specialized public school).

But to too many woke liberals, there are too many asians compared to the number of blacks and hispanics and that means that something is wrong. Something unfair is going on and must be remedied. They intend to fight what they perceive as injustice with actual injustice. This isn’t just some random woke SJW crying racism as minority kids (of the wrong color) stream into these schools, its the mayor of NYC and the chancellor of the NYC public school system.

Different factions have different ideas.

https://www.savetheshsat.org/

This group supports this bill

The SHSAT is free to all NYC public school 8th graders and all pirvate school 8th graders that can establish NYC residency.

The SATs have been dumbed down over the last 30 years. There was a time when there were a small handful of perfect SAT scores per administration. Now there are hundreds of perfect SAT scores each year. It used to be that taking the SAT a second time was a big red flag and you only did it if you really thought you would do a LOT better the second time. There were several reasonas for this but the main reason is that colleges didn’t want that much differentiation between students.

And it was dumbed down deliberately. But that’s an entirely different discussion about the dumbing down of America generally.

I didn’t conflate anti-asian discrimination with affi5rmative action. Asians are not the ones that conflated affirmative action with anti-asian discrimination. It was the woke SJWs that did so.

They conflated the two and then accused the asians of selfishness and racism. They claimed that asians were being duped by white supremacists into fighting against affirmative action when we were only fighting anti-asian discrimination.

Asians were pretty sure that you could have affirmative action without discriminating against asians but the woke SJWs have convinced many of us otherwise. You created the opportunity for the conservatives to show that affirmative action is largely borne by rejected asian students, not rejected white students.

Now you find yourselves trying to convince asians that anti-asian discrimination is NOT necessary for affirmative action after spending years trying to undermine the harvard lawsuit by saying that anti-asian discrimination didn’t exist and what we were really fighting against was affirmative action.

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It started when I claimed that Democrats were racist in their own way and it went from there. The problem that Democrats have with white voters is that they only really care about white people if they have money. Poor white people can go stand in line behind blacks. And for some reason they should stand behind hispanics as well.

Trump is not actually cratering in swing states.

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#ForSomeReason

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Clearly the (Democratic) Deblasio Admin has exposed their view that they are playing an zero-sum, them-or-me game with admission specialized high schools.

However, as your own city-journal source states, the test was put in as a bulwark to prevent school integration efforts at the time.

The nydailynews source cites Brooklyn Tech as an “example” when it reality it was an anomaly and Black and Latino students were never a majority or even close in elite schools in the aggregate.

This absolutely doesn’t mean that today it still makes sense to support eliminating the test, it’s just wrong to misrepresent the situation and ignore the history.

FYI - this was in reference to the college admissions issue, not high school

I didn’t say you conflated anti-Asian discrimination with AA, I said that the logical conclusion to your argument as that the govt. has the choice to either keep or axe it. You’ve already eliminated quotas or metrics for balancing, tying admissions to all colleges purely to the SAT won’t work, and lawsuits haven’t found any conscious discrimination. The only choice remaining is to eliminate AA. The fact that most dems don’t want to eliminate AA doesn’t make them racist.

I think the situation is similar in nature to housing discrimination in the Boston area in that the problem exists in the subconscious minds of thousands of people and you can’t solve that with a targeted policy - you would have to use a sledgehammer.

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You got something you wanna say?

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No, it was a bulwark against “a time when the ideal of equality of opportunity gave way to demands for equality of results”

There are only 3 elite schools. Blacks and Hispanics were the majority in one of them. Admissions to all three schools were based exclusively on the exam. How is it not an example. The article CLEARLY states that the schools were majority white (jewish). The point of that statement was to show that the test wasn’t exclusionary or biased.

I don’t think you grasp the history, there was NEVER a time when eliminating the test made sense. Hecht Calandra Act was not some Jim Crow law designed to exclude blacks and hispanics. It was a law designed to maintain objective merit based criteria for admission. The three SHS were selective schools. The SHSAT was the method of selection and the test selected mostly immigrant jews for stuyvesant and bronx science and mostly blacks and hispanics at brooklyn tech.

This is not like the implementation of holistic review at harvard, which was a deliberate attempt to reduce the population of meritorious jews at harvard in favor of non-jewish whites.

I’m not sure what can be done but I don’t think that preferences for one minority group should come at the expense of another politically weaker minority group.

I don’t know what can be done about underrepresentation but whatever problems exist, it is not due to discrimination or bias in the admissions process. So maybe we need to address issues that arise earlier in their education.

A single test is the primary determinant for college admissions in many countries.
By and large a single test is the primary determinant for law school admissions. Medical school admissions are also largely determined by the results of a single test. There is a fair bit of affirmative action there as well, but between people of the same race, the LSAT and MCATs are probably a bigger determinant of admissions than anything else.

It doesn’t have to be a single test but too much of what we call holistic admissions is a vehicle for circumventing a merit based system in order to give preferences to particular populations. That was the original intent when it was implemented at harvard and it continues to be the primary purpose today.

The benefits of affirmative action are largely paid for by asians.

see chart on page 299

Eliminating affirmative action increases the white admissions by about 2.36% at competitive schools.

Eliminating affirmative action increases asian admissions by 32.58% at competitive schools.

If you know these things and you still support affirmative action, then you are effectively saying that you want preferences for one minority at the expense of another minority. And that seems racist to me. That’s a big “if,” but ignorance of these facts seems a bit discriminatory as well. I don’t think democrats would remain ignorant in the face of similar complaints by any other minority.

Sledgehammers based on race are generally unconstitutional.

Affirmative action is largely used these days to provide seats at selective schools for URM students that are far less qualified than their classmates. It’s not that they won’t get into college, it’s that they won’t get into the most selective colleges.

For example, affirmative action is illegal in California public colleges.

The public university system is divided into three tiers, the University of California system which it targeted at the top 10%, the California State University system which is targeted at the top third and the California community college system

The University of California system is about 4% black in a state that is 7% black; 21% hispanic in a state that is 39% hispanic; 25% white in a state that is 38% white and 30% asian in a state that is 15% asian. The concern AFAICT is that blacks and hispanics are severely underrepresented at Berkley and UCLA.

In the Cal State University system we see 4% black; 41% hispanic; 23% white and16% asian.

In the California community college system, we see 7% black; 41% hispanic; 29% white; and 14% asian.

There is persistent under-representation of blacks and hispanics at the UC level both before and after prop 209. The primary effect of prop 209 was pushing blacks and hispanics down the pecking order of UC schools from UC Berkeley and UCLA to UCSD and UC Irvine. The underrepresentation of blacks and hispanics should be viewed in light of the underrepresentation of whites (which is milder but still significant).

There is also black underrepresentation at the CSU level but the under-representation of and of hispanics has virtually disappeared as has asian over-representation. Meanwhile white under-representation continues.

AFAICT, the problem with diversity at these schools exists mostly at Berkeley and UCLA and that drives almost all of the push to repeal prop 209. The problem isn’t so much that blacks and hispanics don’t have access to college, it’s that they can’t make the cut at the most selective colleges.

And in order to remedy this, they want to stack the deck against asians.

To paraphrase RBG: “I ask no favor for my race; all I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.”

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This is the problem though - if you don’t think there’s an clear solution for college admissions discrimination, I don’t think it’s fair to call the dems racists for themselves not coming up with one.

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The problem that Democrats have with white voters (well NCEW voters specifically) is that the GOP has been able to sell that complete cock and bull story as believable, and that the Democrats have not done a good enough job combating it.

Meanwhile the GOP does not care about any people without money, be they white, Black, yellow, brown, or purple. They have however managed to use resentment politics to their cynical advantage.

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Here’s what the Dems would have to do to get my vote…

1; drop their antigun stance, attempting to ban semiauto firearms will not prevent further gun crime, and most law abiding gun owners (myself included) will NEVER use our firearms offensively or go on shooting sprees.

stop trying to blame/punish US for the actions of mentally ill people and/or just plain evil people who shouldn’t own anything more dangerous than a cotton ball (admittedly, that cotton ball could be used as a weapon, but… :wink: )

2; stop meddling in peoples personal affairs (SSM/Abortion) the Government is NOT supposed to be a Nanny.

3; use taxes to pay for infrastructure maintenance.

4; use the Military for protecting the country, not pre-emptive wars.

that’s basically it, really, i’m not a fan of the GOP, in it’s current form, i’m an Independent, and have no love for Orange Man, but I also didn’t like Obama, Dubya, or Clinton either, i’d say the last president I was happy with was Reagan, and back then I was in High School and wasn’t as versed on the politics of the day.

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2… Huh? It’s the Democratic party that is on the “freedom of choice” side for SSM and abortion. The Republicans want to ban both.

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I don’t think there is anti-black/hispanic discrimination in the college admissions process, I think there is anti-asian discrimination.

I thought you were asking how we could boost black/hispanic college admissions considering their under-representation. And I think the answer to that lies way before they start studying for the SATs.

The Dems are racist for giving preferences for a politically powerful constituency at the expense of a politically weak constituency that they feel already have enough and are more or less fungible anyways. That’s how racism works racism=prejudice+power

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You don’t think the Democrats are putting URM ahead of poor whites? Because that’s the way a lot of poor whites feel. Why do you think they feel that way? Because Republicans are telling them to feel that way?

You’re basically saying that the poor whites are being duped by the republicans and don’t know what’s good for them. That’s almost exactly what republicans say about blacks being duped by democrats and not knowing what’s good for them.

Republicans would argue that the free market does more to alleviate poverty than social programs.

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I think the post should have started :“this is what a political party has to do to get my vote.”

Sort of libertarian isolationist.

Once Trump is out of office, I will need reasons to vote Democrat because it’s a close thing right now and i think it Romney was running against any of these guys, I would vote for Romney (if I could convince myself that Warren was just pandering too the woke SJW crowd with some of her recent statements, I could vote for her).

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Democrats are doing all of these things and have been all along.

The problem is Republicans go around telling people that the Democrats are doing terrible things. And some people believe them.

My advice is that you pay more attention to what’s actually happening and listen less to people who are telling you stories.

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To clarify my question:

  1. Is there a workable strategy the Democrats should be pursuing to respond to anti-Asian discrimination in college admissions other than eliminating affirmative action?

  2. If the choice is simply keep or eliminate affirmative action, are the Democrats racist for not trying to eliminate affirmative action?

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100% I do not feel that Democrats are putting under-represented minorities ahead of poor whites.

I do feel that Democrats have, since Obama '08 anyway, failed at marketing to NCEW, mostly rural, voters, and that in the void of an effective positive message marketing campaign to them by the Democratic side the GOP had stepped up with a very effective campaign selling a message of resentment and othering. The Ds have presented good policy but policy is not perception if it aint packaged and advertised well. You need to also tell the good (and truthful) stories.

No question that quite a few Republicans feel that social programs are less effective than the free market at addressing social ills, and some NCEW voters, inclusive of those who have and do benefited mightily from many of those programs and would shout loudly if they were threatened, buy that claptrap. They assume that the social programs in question are the ones that benefit those others, not the ones they use. Some don’t even think of what they use as “social programs.”

Democrats do not, in general, pretend that inequities based in minority status that go above and beyond economic disadvantages, do not exist. They unfortunately though do a poor job recognizing, or at least articulating recognition of, how rural districts also face some unique challenges that go above and beyond economic disadvantages as well.

I believe a D presidential candidate can win the general election with losses in the NCEW voter column even beyond 2016 levels, with a tent full of college educated white voters, minority voters across all districts, and suburban to urban district voters of all demographics. I do not think that win, a win that leads one demographic to further conclude that they do not matter to the rest of the society and are left behind without any concern by the rest, is the best way forward for our country overall. A win that includes winning by decreasing the 2016 R margin with NCEW voters because their just issues are being taken seriously, is the better win for our country’s long term health.

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I’m not a huge fan of Jeremy Corbyn, but IMO this is the kind of ad that Democrats should be running in the middle of the country (i.e. to “white working class” areas):

Just a magnificently simple political advertisement.

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Affirmative action as it exists today? I don’t think so.

The woke SJWs have spent the last couple of years conflating anti-asian discrimination and affirmative action and I have come to the conclusion that they may be right. The current form of affirmative action may require anti-asian discrimination.

Democrats would have to abandon Harvard’s “diversity” model of affirmative action and redefine affirmative action because too much of what passes for affirmative action today is not any attempt to equalize opportunity, it is an attempt to equalize results.

Yes. At least to the extent that it provides preferences to hispanics and black immigrants or pretty much any group other than the descendants of slaves and american indians.

So sure go ahead and keep affirmative action for the descendants of slaves and american indians but I have not heard a good justification for why a poor hispanic immigrants should be given a preference over a poor asian immigrant aside from the fact that there are already a bunch of asian kids in good schools.

If you wanted to use race as a tiebreaker to try and achieve diversity, that would probably not be racist but we are seeing differences of up to two standard deviations in test scores at competitive colleges and the Bill DeBlasio plan would expand that difference to the point where a signifciant portion of the black and hispanic kids would be below grade level while a significant portion of the asian kids would be approaching genius level.

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This is another case that I don’t think would work in practice.

Do you not allow Latino people to report their race? Since Latino ethnically is a mix of European, African and Native American ancestry, could they just report Black/African or Native American?

EDIT: If you had to present proof of direct ancestry, what about people who might have ancestors who were slaves or were on the “approved list” of non-Latino indigenous people but didn’t have proof one way or the other?

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If the societal cost of racial preferences are predominantly going to be borne by a politically weak minority like asian americans, and there is no practical way to limit the benefits, then what do you think is the right answer?

When the overwhelming majority of the beneficiaries of race based affirmative action are black immigrants and hispanics and the burden of this racial preference is borne predominantly by another minority, how do you justify the practice?

Everything is race blind and then you add affirmative action preference at the end. We are not asking people to “self identify” as black. We are asking “were a quarter of your ancestors American slaves” (or whatever other formula you want to devise to determine who qualifies for the preference).

The number of african and caribbean immigrants prior to WWII is trivial and is very sparse before the civil rights movement. Pre civil rights era - not a lot of blacks immigrating to the USA. Post civil rights era - a lot more black immigration to the USA. 1960 is not that long ago as far as records are concerned. If you can’t prove that your ancestors were in america before 1960, then they probably weren’t.

American indian tribes have registries of tribe members. They take that shit seriously, I would take their word for who qualifies and who does not.