Is Affirmative Action focused on the wrong things?

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@MandaJo

The notion that black people are dangerous goes all the way back to slavery and was always used as a justification for slavery: black people needed to be enslaved for their own protection and the protection of white people. That same idea was always implied by Jim Crow–you have to “keep them in their place” because they are dangerous otherwise.

A lifetime of being treated as less intelligent means a life time of fewer opportunities and less support. People assuming you are dangerous means that you’re more likely to be suspended from school or otherwise dismissed as a behavior problem. Of course these things have an effect on your performance. It’s multiplied, greatly, by poverty, but it’s there even for middle-class black kids.

OK, perhaps the scary negro stereotype began under Jim Crow (although ISTM that it really picked up steam in the 60’s and 70’s) These are still not problems that can be addressed by AA.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@monstro

Damuri, until you can produce evidence that universities admit Africans under AA and not for some other reason (like “Look! An international student who can pay full freight who meets the basic requirements for admission!”), then we’re merely exchanging opinions. Sorry, that’s not interesting enough to keep me hanging out in this thread.

These are not international students that can pay full freight. They are African immigrants. None of these schools are picking students because they can pay full freight and meet the basic requirements for admission.

I have produced evidence. You are asking for incontrovertible proof. I cannot provide proof that there is no other possible explanation short of a statement from these schools that they race palys a factor in the admission of these African immigrants; but can you tell me with an straight face that you don’t think that race plays into how these African immigrants are treated by the admission committees? Sure some of them would get in under their own steam but the hurdle for blacks simply is not as high as it is for others and that lowered hurdle seems to be applied to black immigrants who have no connection to Jim Crow or slavery in America.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@iiandyiiii

Principally that racism isn’t hurting the opportunities of black people today.

And who has said that? Racism is also hurting the opportunities of Asian people today. But the answer to that isn’t AA for Asians, is it? Because we are sorta doing the opposite of that.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

I find myself in a position where I am willing to admit that racism exists based on a reasonable interpretation of what I see and what I know but I am being asked for incontrovertible proof that AA is being used to give an advantage to African immigrants.

[monstro]

@Damuri_Ajashi

These are not international students that can pay full freight. They are African immigrants. None of these schools are picking students because they can pay full freight and meet the basic requirements for admission.

Bolding mine.

This is the kind of statement you need to back up with evidence. Not incontrovertible proof, but something. Because I seriously doubt every single non-AA admittance is chosen based on merit. We only have to look at Jared Kushner for exhibit A:

It reported that New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University in 1998, not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school. At the time, Harvard accepted about one of every nine applicants. (Nowadays, it only takes one out of twenty.)

I also quoted administrators at Jared’s high school, who described him as a less than stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard’s decision.

“There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard,” a former official at The Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey, told me. “His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.”

@Damuri Ajashi

I have produced evidence. You are asking for incontrovertible proof. I cannot provide proof that there is no other possible explanation short of a statement from these schools that they race palys a factor in the admission of these African immigrants

You only have proof that African students outnumber non-African students in the Ivy League. Show me that would not have been able to gain admittance but for their blackness. I doubt you can do it, but you can at least try.
Some cites that may help you understand that the discrimination that black people face is independent of their class status:

For people of color, a housing market partially hidden from view.

A new study has found that blacks, Latinos and Asians looking for homes were shown fewer housing options than whites who were equally qualified. And fewer options meant higher housing costs.

The study, conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Urban Institute (a nonpartisan think tank in Washington) used a method called “pair testing.” Two people — one person of color and one white person — called and then visited a real estate office to ask about an available property for rent or sale. Both of the pair testers told real estate agents that they had about the same income, assets and employment. Both testers were greeted politely and given appointments to look at properties. But whites were told about and shown more units. They were also more likely to be offered lower rent than their testing partners.

Black people are charged more for auto insurance, even after controlling for income, housing density, and driver history

Gifted black kids are more likely to be overlooked by teachers

Why did the new screening system find so many more gifted children, especially among blacks and Hispanics? It did not rely on teachers and parents to winnow students. The researchers found that teachers and parents were less likely to refer high-ability blacks and Hispanics, as well as children learning English as a second language, for I.Q. testing. The universal test leveled the playing field.

White kids get medicated. Black kids get suspended.

Black kids get less pain medication than white kids

Black children with acute appendicitis – a clearly painful emergency – are less likely than white children to get painkillers in the emergency room, researchers reported Monday.

And nearly as troubling, only about half of any of the kids got painkillers, even though they’re strongly recommended in cases of appendicitis, the researchers found.

“Black patients with moderate pain were less likely to receive any analgesia, and black patients with severe pain were less likely to be treated with opioids,” Dr. Monika Goyal of the Children’s National Health System in Washington and colleagues wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s JAMA Pediatrics.

What’s to blame? Probably a combination of an unwarranted fear of opioids such as morphine and fentanyl, combined with unconscious bias against African-American kids, experts said.

Have you ever heard of “death by a thousand cuts?” Cut anyone a single time and they’ll shrug it off. But a lifetime of discrimination has a way of wearing a person down, even when they aren’t aware it is happening to them.

[monstro]

Call me a rosy-eyed optimist, but I think pumping out more black professionals–educators, clinicians, realtors, law enforcement officials, city planners, etc.–will help reduce anti-black discrimination…regardless of where those black people’s immediate ancestors come from. At the most basic reptilian level, white folks simply don’t empathize with black people the same way they do other white people. Whether they can help or not is besides the point; differences in empathy translates into differences in treatment.

[iiandyiiii]

@monstro

Call me a rosy-eyed optimist, but I think pumping out more black professionals–educators, clinicians, realtors, law enforcement officials, city planners, etc.–will help reduce anti-black discrimination…regardless of where those black people’s immediate ancestors come from. At the most basic reptilian level, white folks simply don’t empathize with black people the same way they do other white people. Whether they can help or not is besides the point; differences in empathy translates into differences in treatment.

Yes, this. AA isn’t about fighting racism. It’s about trying to make up for some of the effects of racism. AA is a long term band aid for an unequal society.

But even with this intent, more successful black professionals will, in small ways, for racism, in addition to providing more positive role models for young black people to emulate.

[iiandyiiii]

@Damuri_Ajashi

It was actually a large part of your point, that these Nigerian immigrants were doing well because they were a self selected group of high achievers; exchange students etc. That is pretty well undermined if they are coming from a cross section of refugees who are fleeing Boko Haram. There is nothing self selective about being a refugee in the United States fleeing from Boko Haram. We do not select refugees based on their socioeconomic status, their human capital, their education or any of that, do we?

Maybe we don’t (hopefully)… but the circumstances? They may well “select” certain characteristics to be capable of making it out of terrible situations.

“You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates”

-LBJ

Your formulation could be used to justify AA forever.

Hopefully it won’t be needed forever. But as long as there are significant levels of racism and discrimination to make opportunity very unequal, as there are now, then it will be needed.

If your argument is that we have a type of racism now that is so powerful that is so powerful that it justifies race based discrimination but so inadvertant and subtle as to escape detection, then how do we know that these subtle and inadvertant little racisms don’t also weigh on Indian immigrants or Korean immigrants?

It certainly doesn’t escape detection – it’s pretty damn easy to see and there are plenty of signs and evidence for it.

[iiandyiiii]

@Damuri_Ajashi

You mean like Asian males?

I’m sure there are difficulties and instances of racism affecting Asian males, but I’m unaware of any prejudice against natural Asian hairstyles.

I agree. In what way does AA fix that problem? It seems to me that if there is no “buy-in” into the system at a young age because of police abuse, then the answer is to control police abuse, rather than tilt the playing field in their favor.

For the record, these police abuses used to afflict every group including Asian Americans.

AA doesn’t fix the problem – it helps make up for it, to some degree. AA isn’t about fixing these problems – it’s a temporary (albeit long-term) way to adjust for them so that black people (and others) can have a reasonable chance at success in society.

Whatever abuses happened in the past are irrelevant to AA, since AA is about discrimination and abuse today.

I have run into this exact issue in law practice where partners feel that client relations would best be served by giving legacy clients to white males rather than women or minorities, including Asians. Should we extend AA to everyone other than white males? If we have a societal problem of this sort, AA seems like a particularly bad way of solving the problem and a particularly good way of stirring up resentment.

If there’s evidence that Asians, or other groups, do not have a reasonable chance at success, then yes. Do you have such evidence?

The answer to racism is to address the racism. Addressing racism with AA does little to address racism.

AA isn’t about addressing racism, as already discussed.

Should we now have AA for muslim students?

I’m certainly open to it, if evidence shows that Muslim students don’t have a reasonable chance at success.

[iiandyiiii]

@Damuri_Ajashi

And who has said that? Racism is also hurting the opportunities of Asian people today. But the answer to that isn’t AA for Asians, is it? Because we are sorta doing the opposite of that.

If there’s reason to believe that Asian people in America don’t have a reasonable chance at success, then AA for Asians should certainly be considered.

[you_with_the_face]

@Damuri_Ajashi

I find myself in a position where I am willing to admit that racism exists based on a reasonable interpretation of what I see and what I know but I am being asked for incontrovertible proof that AA is being used to give an advantage to African immigrants.

Dude, straight out the gate, you treated us to the subtly racist assumption that a Nigerian-American couldn’t get in multiple Ivy Leagues without her race acting as an advantage. The funny thing is you could’ve easily stated your case without singling out a student who, for all we know, is a genius this world has never seen. But nope, you couldn’t do that. So here we are.

As your OP deftly demonstrates, Ifeoma White Thorpe will likely face demeaning assumptions (“She’s only in this elite institution/job because she’s black.”) throughout her life, not unlike Barack Obama. He too is not a descendant of American slaves, but that didn’t stop the stigma of being black from sticking on him. So why should we ignore this reality when it comes to programs like AA?

The next time you want to argue this topic (and I’m sure there will be a next time…because this seems to be a favorite of yours), here’s a suggestion: stick with generalities. Because once you start putting the spotlight on individuals like White Thorpe, the bias that underlies your assumptions starts showing. You don’t know her credentials, you don’t know her skills, you don’t know anything except her demographics.

[k9bfriender]

@you_with_the_face

Dude, straight out the gate, you treated us to the subtly racist assumption that a Nigerian-American couldn’t get in multiple Ivy Leagues without her race acting as an advantage. The funny thing is you could’ve easily stated your case without singling out a student who, for all we know, is a genius this world has never seen. But nope, you couldn’t do that. So here we are.

As your OP deftly demonstrates, Ifeoma White Thorpe will likely face demeaning assumptions (“She’s only in this elite institution/job because she’s black.”) throughout her life, not unlike Barack Obama. He too is not a descendant of American slaves, but that didn’t stop the stigma of being black from sticking on him. So why should we ignore this reality when it comes to programs like AA?

The next time you want to argue this topic (and I’m sure there will be a next time…because this seems to be a favorite of yours), here’s a suggestion: stick with generalities. Because once you start putting the spotlight on individuals like White Thorpe, the bias that underlies your assumptions starts showing. You don’t know her credentials, you don’t know her skills, you don’t know anything except her demographics.

I’d also like to see an explanation as to why it is unreasonable to assume that she got in on her own merits, and must have been a beneficiary of AA, but this guy did.

I does seem as though as long as people look at a black person who succeeds well, and assumes it is because of AA, that example of unconscious racial bias reaffirms why exactly we need AA in the first place.

[you_with_the_face]

@k9bfriender

I’d also like to see an explanation as to why it is unreasonable to assume that she got in on her own merits, and must have been a beneficiary of AA, but this guy did.

Because the default assumption is that white males belong where they are. If you are not a white male, you have to prove that you really belong, because the default assumption is that you don’t.

The Bizarro situation we’ve got going in the WH right now is the culmination of these default assumptions at their worst: stupid men who have never been asked to prove themselves and yet occupy the highest positions of influence in our nation.

It’s fairly tragic that the OP can’t see that he’s a puppet of this mentality. Here he is, asking us to be indignant about the White Thorpes of the world. All the while, we have a pack of idiotic jackals running the west wing. God bless America.

[puddleglum]

@you_with_the_face

Because the default assumption is that white males belong where they are. If you are not a white male, you have to prove that you really belong, because the default assumption is that you don’t.

The Bizarro situation we’ve got going in the WH right now is the culmination of these default assumptions at their worst: stupid men who have never been asked to prove themselves and yet occupy the highest positions of influence in our nation.

It’s fairly tragic that the OP can’t see that he’s a puppet of this mentality. Here he is, asking us to be indignant about the White Thorpes of the world. All the while, we have a pack of idiotic jackals running the west wing. God bless America.

We have a system that does not help white males so the default is the white males belong. We have a system that picks less qualified black people so the default assumption is that black people are less qualified. The only way to change the perception is to change the reality. Affirmative action creates the perception that its beneficiaries do not belong.
Anecdotally I have heard people say that before affirmative action if you saw a black person in a high position you assumed that they were more qualified than the average because you knew they had to overcome racism to get there. Now people assume the opposite.

[k9bfriender]

@puddleglum

We have a system that does not help white males so the default is the white males belong.

This is very, very untrue. We have a system that puts white males above everyone else. Trust me, I’m a white male (heh, this actually works quite often). I have taken advantage of many opportunities that are just left at my feet that others have to fight tooth and nail for.

When I opened my business with my sister is when I saw just how sexist everyone is. Landlords and bankers and vendors and advertisers treated her like shit, but any time I walked into the room, they suddenly had a peer worth talking to.

We have a system that picks less qualified black people so the default assumption is that black people are less qualified.

No, we have a system that assumes that black people are less qualified, and so offers them fewer opportunities. There are a few efforts to combat that assumption, AA being one of them.

The only way to change the perception is to change the reality.

This is true, but you and I have differing views of what the reality is, if you truly believe that white males are somehow being discriminated against in any aspect of mainstream society.

Affirmative action creates the perception that its beneficiaries do not belong.

It may create that perception among those who demonstrate a racial bias, but that is the problem of those with a racial bias, and minorities should not be made to suffer indignities just so that people with a racial bias do not need to confront it.

Anecdotally I have heard people say that before affirmative action if you saw a black person in a high position you assumed that they were more qualified than the average because you knew they had to overcome racism to get there. Now people assume the opposite.

Well, the people who said that are racists.

Before affirmative action, you simply did not see many black people in high positions, or even medium positions. You are correct in that if a black person did manage to achieve a high status, then that means that they were a truly exceptional individual, but do you really think that it is fair that if you are black, you have to be a truly exceptional individual in order to get any sort upward economic progress? Why does the average white guy beat out the above average black guy, the below average white guy beat out the average black guy?

To those who think that playing field is level, your perception is very flawed.

[you_with_the_face]

@puddleglum

We have a system that does not help white males so the default is the white males belong.

To believe this you’d have to believe 450 some-odd years of slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, and unchecked employment and educational discrimination has done absolutely nothing to advantage white men over others.

Which is to say, you’d have to be pretty ignorant to believe this.

[monstro]

Tell your average American that the ethnic Chinese discriminate against non-ethnic Chinese, and they’ll say “Of course! Everyone knows Asians are xenophobic.”

Tell your average American that black Zimbabweans are racists against white Zimbabweans, and they’ll say “Well, duh! That’s why you won’t catch my white ass in Africa anytime soon!”

Tell your average American that light-skinned Indians discriminate against dark-skinned Indians, and they’ll say “When will those silly Indians stop with the caste stuff and move into the 21st century!”

But tell your average American that black Americans are discriminated against, and they will say you are wrong wrong WRONG!! They’ll fully acknowlege that racism was a problem back in their granddaddy’s day and maybe even in their dad’s day. But today? Naw, man. Today, black people are the ones who have it is easy! It’s the white man who is singing the blues.

It is American exceptionalism at its worse. Through some miracle, every country in the world dscriminates against its visible minorities except for the US.

[you_with_the_face]

@puddleglum

Anecdotally I have heard people say that before affirmative action if you saw a black person in a high position you assumed that they were more qualified than the average because you knew they had to overcome racism to get there. Now people assume the opposite.

So the takeaway is that at no point in time does it appear a black person in a high position was assumed to be as qualified as a non-black in that role. Either they had to be extra brilliant or they had to be extra incompetent.

Why can’t you and the OP just stop assuming anything about black people? Is that too much to ask or what?

Every time AA is discussed on this board, it only reinforces my opinion that its still very much needed.

[monstro]

Asian girl accepted to 8 Ivy Leagues

I wonder if Damuri will use this fact to conclude that Asians are AA beneficaries, since that’s the standard he’s applying to Africans.

[k9bfriender]

@monstro

Asian girl accepted to 8 Ivy Leagues

I wonder if Damuri will use this fact to conclude that Asians are AA beneficaries, since that’s the standard he’s applying to Africans.

Probably not, for two reasons.

First, he has not responded to the fact that there was a white guy that got into all 8, and why that guy is not assumed to have benefited from AA, but the black girl has, so I doubt that he will now respond to another piece of evidence that demolishes his hypothesis.

Second, you link doesn’t work. Try this one?