Well, I am 1/4th Native American. According to at least one college(wherever Liz Warren taught), that makes me Native American should I claim the heritage, which in turn means I am a very disadvantaged person.
I want a small business loan. And a top university admission, that would be nice too. Fully paid, of course.
No. Which in turn means that you have membership to a group which, as a group, has been disadvantaged.
Damuri has said the “one-drop rule” should define race for purposes of AA. That would make you more than eligible.
On the other hand, if you aren’t eligible, that means you’re getting nothing despite your heritage. That’s not exactly fair either.
I wonder if mixing of the races is the only thing that will finally put an end to this goofy racial politics by making such policies completely unworkable and expose them for the absurdity they are. Maybe not, since people like Damuri are out there actually saying the one-drop rule should define AA eligibility, meaning a person who is white in every sense of the word save one great-great-great grandparent would be labeled black and get the same benefits as a 100% African-American would.
What’s the difference? AA treats them as identical. Now suddenly you see a difference?
But from a policy perspective, it makes no difference whether I’ve had disadvantages.
One might also say that from a policy perspective, if there were no preferences at all, it would also make no difference whether anyone had been disadvantaged, just from the other side.
The point is that the existence of a tension - which I don’t believe anyone has denied there is - is no reason to pretend that some of us believe something we don’t believe; i.e. that every single person who might qualify as not-white is “a very disadvantaged person.”
But you get a better result if you do socio-economic status instead.
I think I agree with that, because I’m sure we both agree that the most immediate and most tangible form of disadvantage is a socioeconomic one. But it’s also an under-inclusive result; it doesn’t capture certain harms that institutional prejudice cause that are not immediate and tangible in socioeconomic terms. Shaq right now today is not suffering socio-economically, but that doesn’t mean that being a black American hasn’t detrimentally affected his life, all other things being equal. If he were not as good at basketball and enormous as he is, those things would take on a greater significance but they’d be no realer. I think some harms are experienced across the group.
So the only question, really, is under-inclusive or over-inclusive, which is preferable.
But does it need to capture those kinds of harms? Are rich black kids going to face enough problems because of their race that they need help that their money can’t give them?
But that’s the bedrock presumption of a racial preference policy! If you don’t believe it, why do you support a policy that is based on it?
Then at minimum you should support a policy that has BOTH socio-economic and racial factors. Certainly you should support socioeconomic ones first, if they are the most immediate and tangible.
And the same is true of dozens and dozens of other harms caused by many other social factors and forms of discrimination - poverty, religion, poor education, parentage, status as a foreigner or child or immigrants, disability or poor health, poor nutrition, accent or language skills, to name a few. Unless they correlate with race, racial preferences fail to account for any of those. If you are keen on correcting racial factors that have nothing to do with socioeconomic status, why would you ignore all these, many that do have a strong effect on socioeconomic status?
Why is race special?
But do you really think Shaq needs a racial preference to get a job or in college?
Or would you add other preferences for non-socioeconomic problems to take care of Shaq’s other issues beyond wealth?
But he IS good at basketball and enormous.
Oh, wow, now you’ve thrown in a whole new and really really difficult to defend doctrine in the mix.
Yes - please address all the other factors I listed above beyond race and explain why they shouldn’t be included.
Of course not. Again, the language of necessity here is confusing, considering that what’s at issue is whether even the attempt can be permitted, not whether everyone ought to be obliged to.
What would be enough?
I said that we use the same metric that was used during segregation. Adopting the metric used during segregation to try and remediate against segregation is not adopting their racism, its targetting the remediation to where the discrimination occurred.
If having one black grandparent was enough to force you to the back of the bus or keep you out of white school then its enough to give your descendants the benefits of AA. Is anyone else having trouble udnerstanding what I’m trying to say?
From a policy perspective, the assumption is that anyone with your heritage has inherited disadvantages regardless of whether you can see the disadvantages or not.
If you don’t need the AA then fine. Half the black kids that were getting into UC Berkely and UCLA would have gotten in ont heir own and AA didn’t make a difference. The other half would not have gotten in but for AA. AA is to help the second group because the first group doesn’t need help.
Unless we redefine the purpose of AA to mean eliminating environmental differences in the admissions process, its too broad in some ways and too narrow in others. A lot of jurisdictions have adopted this socioeconomic model as a proxy for race based AA but its not even a fair approximation of what AA was intended to accomplish.
The point is not to get more poor kids in good schools (which might be a laudable goal but is not the purpose of AA). the point is to get the descendants of 500 years of slavery and segergation into good schools.
I keep asking for the hordes of rich black kids that are getting in over less qualified poor white kids and haven’t seen a cite yet. Its almost like this hypothetical rich black kid is just a thought exoperiment.
500 years of slavery and segregation. Why do you keep forgetting that? I wonder.
No, and therefore applying AA to him won’t make any sort of difference at all. Just like the 50% of black kids that would have gotten into UCLA with or without AA.
None of them involve 500 years of slavery and segergation. How can you blow that off so easily? Please read the links on cognitive biases, especially the social biases. Its not a long read and its not particularly complicated.
I’ll be happy to discuss this further when you disavow racial prejudice.
I disavow racial prejudice. But your race and gender is obviously blinding you to the flaws in your arguments. I am being generous in assuming that you are blind and not racist.
I am confused by the fact that you can say that, while still holding firm to the idea that we need to pre-judge college applicants based on race when deciding who to admit.
Also, you appear to be making assumptions about lance based on your assumptions of his race and gender; that does not seem to be quite kosher, unless you are certain that only someone of a particular race and gender would hold a given opinion.
Here are my thoughts on the matter: due to a large variety of complicated factors which ultimately don’t strongly correlate with with historical oppression (note historical anti-semitism, anti-Catholic sentiment, anti-Chinese-immigrant feeling in California, and similar cases of discrimination towards groups now considered advantaged), members of certain racial groups trend towards the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum in America on average, and this has mulitiple bad, complex effects. However, I think the best way to solve the problem would be for universities to be both needs-blind and follow the Cal Tech model, and to actively solicit admissions in underrepresented areas. The idea would be that you come up with a rigorous admissions process strongly correlated to collegiate success (SATs and AP exam scores), admit no information that reveals the applicant’s race, sex, etc., and then encourage students who might not have applied to the university to do so, and have them compete for admission with the other students in a manner free of any racial prejudice.
Since AA is designed to address economic inequality by getting minorities opportunities, “enough” would be a substantial risk of losing their economic status due to discrimination. Is there a real risk that a rich black kid is going to be a poor black kid because he won’t get into the best university or won’t get a good job because of his skin color?
I don’t think you understand the meaning of the word prejudice. Would it be clearer if I used the word bigotry?
I suggest you read the thread. I did not make an assumption about Lance’s beliefs based on his race and gender, i made a guess about his race and gender based on his beliefs. Based on Lance’s posts I was able to guess that Lance was a white male who was suffering from the blind spot that so many white males have with regards to race and privilege in America. He confirmed by guess and proceeded to argue that not all white males are racist and that I was racist for suggesting that white privilege is something that whites, particularly white males are blind to. So, no, the beliefs were what clued me into his race and gender.
Sure its not foolproof but it is rare that someone that grew up as a minority (or even a woman) in America can be as ignorant to the advantages of being a white male unless you are a white male as Lance seems to be. It doesn’t mean that all white males can roll out of bed and become millionaires but the advantages are there and the level of bellyaching that you hear from white males about 1 or 2% of the spots at some school going to the descendants of slaves who got in over more qualified non-descendants of slaves seems pretty whiny.
The UC system gets pretty close to what you are talking about. And in the end more whites were kept out of UCLA and Berkeley than blacks and more Asians got in. The shift in white and Asian admissions, while significant was only 10 or 20% either way. Black admissions dropped by ~50%.
It sounds like you don’t think we should do anything to counteract the effects of 500 years of slavery and segregation other than encourage more blacks to apply to good colleges?
Jewish and Asian groups have experienced prejudice, internment, persecution etc. They are the most overrepresented groups at elite colleges.
Would it make a difference if it turned out that group differences were due to innate differences?
As I understand it, Chief Pedant’s argument is that if that is the case then it is only fair to provide quotas to enable more proportional representation from different groups as it won’t happen naturally. Is that the moral answer?
Or is the fairest approach to treat each individual, as an individual?
According to many different sources, white women actually benefit the most from affirmative action:
http://www.ncsu.edu/project/oeo-training/aa/beneficiaries.htm
It’s an urban legend that blacks/hispanics benefit the most from it