I’m skeptical. In the early 1920s and 1930s, there was talk of moving to a more holistic admissions policy in Ivy League schools (most specifically Harvard), taking into account extracurriculars and such, for the stated intent of improving diversity (or to be precise, avoiding moving into a monoculture). The actual intent of the changes, of course, was to limit the number of Jews attending.
Surgery is not like assault for a number of reasons; the procedure is being performed for valid medical reasons, has a reasonable expectation of survival and recovery, and consent to the procedure are the big ones. Affirmative action has had questionable results, does not appear to be limiting itself as time goes on, and the students discriminated against really don’t consent to be passed over for another less qualified student based on the color of their skin.
So, if you kidnap people, harvest their organs, and put them up into the transplant lists, you may well be saving more lives on the whole and even perhaps even improving things in the utilitarian sense…but that doesn’t make you not a killer.
Discrimination is okay if you have good intentions? Unlike the difference between surgery and murder, where there is an objective way to determine whether it’s helping or hurting the other person, when you discriminate, you are helping one person at the expense of another, every time. Whether or not that’s good depends on your point of view, and I assure you that every discriminator in history has thought they were doing the right thing.
Discrimination is such a serious solution, we should probably define the problem we’re trying to solve better.
Sure and the same thing is happening with Asian in schools these days. But that’s not affirmative action. That’s just abuse of discretion. And it seems to me that you agree that [actual] intent matters, whether it is to limit the number of Jews at Harvard or counter the effects of half a millenium of slavery a segregation.
I don’t know what you mean by questionable results but the results are definitely there. Particularly with women and Asians but do you honestly think that the relative increase in college educated blacks in America has nothing to do with AA?
I’m not saying that surgery is a perfect analogy but Lance was making categorical statements, like 'discriminating based on race is always bad". His entire argument was based on this categorical statement being true. There aren’t a lot of things that are categorically true in a debate.
Of course the losers won’t be thrilled about losing. So?
OK. And in the context of race-based admissions preferences nowadays, the stated intent is to increase the number of minorities attending. Why is there this constant focus on imputing some kind of dishonesty to the process? The actual problem that these schools have decided they have is that they don’t have membership drawn from all these different minority populations, and they want to have membership drawn from those populations. That’s the actual goal. What are you skeptical of exactly?
It’s as if I walked into a car dealership and told somebody I was trying to save some money and the salesman said “I’m skeptical, the last guy who came in here said that and he was a fucking liar; all he wanted to do was take money out of my pocket.”
The end of affirmative action didn’t decrease the diversity of California universities. And if you increase the presence of some groups, you decrease the presence of others. And as my LA Times article shows, Asians benefitted more from the end of affirmative action in university admissions than whites.
I don’t remember where this is from (I closed the window) but it made me shoot coconut cream pie out of my nose.
Unless you think diversity means white vs non-white, the end of affirmative action reduced proportional diversity. Fewer blacks. Fewer chicanos. Fewer hispanics. Fewer everything except East Asian and Indian, heck there were even fewer white admissions. Now I’m not saying that I agree with affirmative action for the sake of diversity but it certainly can be used to improve diversity.
Oh wait now, so the goal isn’t diversity, it’s proportional diversity. Apparently students can’t be exposed to diversity unless the proportions are right? So having 1000 black students exposes them to more diversity than having 500?
Let’s be clear here. That’s not a concern for diversity, that’s a concern for beancounting.
Like I said, I don’t necessarily support diversity as an underlying rationale for affirmative action. I think affirmative action (at this point) should target the descendants of slaves and native Americans. But diversity has never meant more Asians and fewer of everything else.
If your point is that race blindness reduced white admissions at Berkeley and UCLA, I agree. I suspect that white admissions would drop at top colleges across the country if everyone adopted the UC system’s race blind (no legacy preference) admissions policy. And while it would be great for my kids, it would probably reduce black admissions from a small fraction to a teeny tiny fraction.
If we limit affirmative action to people who have faced unusual levels of discrimination as a means of recompense, then I can’t disagree. We’d also be dealing with a small enough group that very few others would be displaced.
I agree the number would be realtively small. There were approximately 150 fewer black students in the entire UC system after they went race blind. All of this reduction in enrollment occured at Berkeley and UCLA (about 200 fewer students enrolled). Thre was a trickle down effect and enrollment at other UC campuses went up but with an entering class of over 20,000 into the UC system, the drop in black enrollment accounted for less than 1% of the entering UC class (about 3% of the entering classes at Berkeley and UCLA).
That would be my preferred option, but a very narrowly tailored affirmative action is at least justifiable.
What we have now is a system that basically classifies everyone and your fate is tied to your race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, etc. If we only gave preferences to African Americans with a long history in this country and Native Americans, then no one would even notice except those who benefitted.
Thats a bit like saying that you are harmed because you can’t park in the handicap spaces. Why the heck should you have to park waaaaay the fuck over there when there is an open handicap space right next to the store you want to go into? That’s discrimination against people whoa ren’t handicapped and discrimination is wrong.:rolleyes:
Of course you neglect to realize that if those handicap spaces weren’t there you would still be parking waaaaay the fuck over there (but perhaps a few spaces closer) because the rest of the parking lot would still have gotten there before you.
Interesting analogy. It doesn’t really work, because a disability is actually logically connected to the need for a special parking space. And it’s affirmed by the parking placard.
You can’t just assume that all blacks are “handicapped” (or all whites aren’t) by past discrimination. Sure, if you want to have some special “black” permit in which the government checks to make sure someone has suffered a specific harm that needs a remedy, you could do that and require it of anyone claiming AA. But you’d have to let white people apply too, since many also have suffered past disadvantages that harmed them and put them down a few notches in life.
(And, of course, the analogy pretty much breaks down when you try to apply it to jobs or college applications anyway. AA means a white person may not just have to park further out, but not be able to park at all in that lot, so to speak).
BTW, I actually do have a handicapped placard, for a family member. I have thought about how I use it. I could get away with using it any time I want, including when the family member isn’t in the car or there’s a regular spot that’s close enough, or the family member is capable for various complex reasons of dealing with the normal space that day, but I only use it when I really need it. That’s because disability, like all disadvantages in life, are far more complicated than simplistic polar opposites like “disabled” or “normal.” Same goes for black and white. The world, literally, isn’t just black and white.
Please don’t respond to me unless you promise not to refer to my race. I give you the same respect.
Also, in parking, since it’s free, cities routinely overbuild parking space to avoid shortages. This is a favorite bugaboo of one of my favorite bloggers, Matt Yglesias.
Now if colleges all had unlimited admissions, this wouldn’t be an issue. But since unlike with parking the pie is finite, if one student gets in because of their race, it means another student will not get in because of their race. It’s hard to point to exactly who that is, but if AA was restarted in California, and I was an Asian kid performing in the bottom 30% of Asian students at my school(even if that still makes me a very high performer), I’d be worried.
The problem isn’t that we give a hand up to African-American students, it’s that we give a hand up to all minorities, just so long as they aren’t overperforming. Limit the program to African-Americans only, who have suffered unique discrimination in this country.
I didn’t say its a perfect analogy. If you can’t glean teh relevant portions from the irremevant detritus, that sounds like a decided lack of desire to do so.
So let them make their case. If they have a case as compelling as 500 years of slavery and segregation, I have yet to hear it.
College admissions is where the analogy stands up particularly well.
Very few people are denied a college education because of affirmative action, they are just fill less desirable college spots than they might if there was no affirmative action. The guy that barely got edged out of Harvard because the less qualified son of the victim of segregation got a spot doesn’t miss out on college, he ends up at some other very good school. There are more college spots than there are qualified people who want those spots. Noone is being pushed from Columbia to NYU.
There simply aren’t enough affirmative action candidates to make that sort of a difference.
I’ll stop referring to your race if you will read the links on cognitive biases (especially social biases) and at least try to understand what people mean by white privilege. I think you might be much less offended by my statements if you see where I’m coming from.
Parking spaces are physically limteed spaces, college spots are not. Resolved, parking spots are more finite than college spots.
And the choice isn’t between getting into UCLA or not going to college because some tiny percentage of admissions are getting in because of their race. The choice is between getting into UC Berkeley or going to UCLA. Affirmative action had almost no effect on black admissions at places like UC Irvine and UC Riverside (both great schools in the LA area).
I agree that a big problem is that we don’t target AA the way it was supposed to be targetted. If you want to increase diversity, that’s fine, but lets not confuse that with AA.
If we’re arguing physical reality, yes. If we’re arguing economics, no. Demand for parking in most places is lower than supply due to zoning laws that require the overbuilding of parking in suburbs and small to medium sized towns. Demand for elite college admission vastly outstrips supply.
They should be separate concepts, although I don’t think diversity is much of a problem except at the commanding heights of society. Thus my complaint that the very white folks who created these well-meaning programs insured that they and their kin would be unaffected.
Really? The only historical event you’re aware of is slavery and segregation? You can’t think of any others that have caused long-term disadvantage to certain groups of people? And why must it even be related to groups? If a white person grew up a poor homeless orphan who was beaten and abused at an orphanage and didn’t go to school, that’s a disadvantage – one that’s worse than the average black experience.
And why must it be “as compelling?” If someone’s historical suffering has been less than slavery, does that make it completely worthless? What’s that say about, for instance, women?
(Of course, women alive today don’t suffer from the effects of past discrimination against women at all, for obvious reasons, but that’s another story).
So? That’s still a harm.
No. No conditions.
I understand what white privilege means. That has nothing to do with this. I demand respect as a person, not as a member of a particular race. That should always be true, but especially on a thread about racism and such.
Not true. College slots are not unlimited.
AA is used for two reasons - to increase diversity, or to remedy past disadvantages. You can choose to want to use it only one of those two ways if you want, just say so.