Was she really attacking the idea of a referendum itself? Sheesh, I’m not a fan of them, but that is no business of the SCOTUS unless they find something unconstitutional about them. Which I can’t imagine…
No, it didn’t. Read my previous post or the decision being discussed.
No, it would have meant that the decision would be left to the legislature as to whether the board of regents should use race, sex, etc. as a criterion. If the SC ruled the other way, MI would not HAVE to have AA or racial preference.
No, the US is not a democracy. It is at best a representative democracy. Direct democracy was intentionally avoided in part because the majority can easily trample on the rights of people in the minority.
That is part of the issue: When is it permissible for PEOPLE to make laws rather than the legislature. The people have their chance to speak when the elect representatives. Why should any interest group have multiple bites out of the apple via legislature and referenda?
No, racial discrimination is NOT against the law in the US. Even granting that calling AA racial discrimination is highly misleading, racial discrimination is not against the law.
She obviously disagrees, and given that we see the results such policies have had in other states, a more compelling case can be made for her side than yours. Besides, that is only part of the issue. Why should the state be allowed to discriminate based on 100 other reasons, but not race or gender?
Should the people be allowed to vote to ban interracial or gay marriage? Should they be allowed to vote to not require disabled access to buildings? Should people be able to make immigration violations subject to the death penalty? In short, why do you think the people’s will is so important on any specific issue?
Or, we can eliminate all preferences and see nearly every top public university filled with foreign-born Indians and Chinese.
No, it’s not. This has been debated numerous times, and the evidence that it harms AA is far from conclusive.
Did this make sense to you when you typed it? Did you even read the opinions, or what the case was about?
Because that is where the sovereignty of the government ultimately rests.
Besides: where else? What other source, what other will, is your proposed substitute? King Brickbacon I, Protector of the Downtrodden?
She’s apparently arguing that the Civil Rights Act should be abolished, and that infringing on a college’s right to discriminate on the basis of race and sex is a bad thing. Either that, or she’s just a dumbass hypocrite.
That is not entirely clear.
No, they are not. AA can be something like a campaign to get women into the STEM fields, or a job fair specifically held in a Latino community. Racial preference, the kind that was outlawed, is typically meant to apply to extra points or preference being given at the point at which admission or employment decisions are made.
Your parents not having money affects ones ability to takes tests though? Clearly, the issue is that being Black, or not having money, or being a women typically affects a host of things that in turn can affect one’s ability to take tests.
Why? First, do you agree the referendum would have been deemed unconstitutional if it had been determined to disadvantage minorities? If so, why do you think enacting a policy that had quantitatively proven to result in fewer minorities getting into certain schools from which our future leaders dis-proportionally attend, and qualitatively in terms of reduced diversity, does not disadvantage minorities?
I suppose in part she was. The issue is that where do you draw the line with regard to mob rule via direct voting? As long as you muddy the waters enough to make plausible arguments that the outcomes from said policies do not disadvantage minorities (eg. mismatching college theory), then there is little impediment to mob rule. I think her dissent was in part because of that, but also the court’s reluctance to speak to the role race plays in society as she and others see it.
Which ignore the question. The question wasn’t from whence the government gets it’s power. It’s why the poster held direct voting in such high esteem given the problems that often arise from it.
No, from the elected representatives we vote for. You ignored the question Bricker, do you think the public should be able to amend a state constitution to exclude or allow ANY behavior regardless of whether it tramples on minority rights?
Really? So SCOTUS has never overturned a law? One of the basic purposes of a judiciary is to protect voters against the consequences of their own ineptitude (and that of their legislators) by enforcing both the letter and the spirit of constitutional principles, as has happened every time SCOTUS has ever overturned a law. Conservatives had no problem at all trying to use SCOTUS to overturn duly legislated health care reform, did they?
In this case, the notable case in point is Washington v Seattle School District, in which SCOTUS in 1982 overturned a local ballot initiative against school busing, wherein those danged darkies were being bussed to white schools and the voters didn’t like it – indeed they hated it a lot more than they hate affirmative action today. But the Supreme Court wrote that “the initiative removes the authority to address a racial problem—and only a racial problem—from the existing decision making body, in such a way as to burden minority interests”, thus violating the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment – and thus invalidating the voters’ racist preferences.
Yeah, that would be the same guy who also said that he couldn’t see how money could possibly be a corrupting influence in politics. :rolleyes:
Sotomayor rephrased that quite eloquently, and John Cassidy ends that particular article thusly – after noting both the irrationality and inconsistency of this latest decision:
That is part of what I am trying to address, but also the racial disparities and discriminatory practices that exist in part based on ignorance and a lack of access. I will give you a real world example of what I mean. Back before digital film was used for movies, the celluloid they used was not sensitive enough to dynamically capture darker skin by design.
Those people probably didn’t do that because they were racist, or by design, nor did they question their assumptions or the technology. They just did what “worked”, and it “worked” because there where no consequences for their oversight because there were no Black people around. What does that have to do with affirmative action?
A lot of these little injustices occur in part because there are not colored people around. We need to have a diverse set of people in colleges, in board rooms, and in politics because just their mere presence often reminds people that their perspectives are not the only valid perspectives. Now if that means adopting a metric of evaluation that accounts for the negative effects those small and large injustices have on the quantitative metrics we have chosen as a proxy for the qualitative ones we desire, then so be it. I think we are better off in the long run, and it’s certainly no worse than preference based on geography, legacy, or income. I just don’t buy this notion that primarily White people should be telling society we can’t consider this one thing we know has an effect today because other White people in the past used it negatively.
It’s Texas, and the scheme sucks, if only because it doesn’t account for the relative disparities between schools. For example, the top 30% at a big Houston high school like Fort Bend Clements is very likely to outperform the entire top 10% at some dump like HISD Kashmere or Stephen F. Austin.
Over the last decade and a half since it was implemented, something like 80% of all students admitted to UT and A&M are because of this program.
So for the kids in the 11% through 30% at Clements, they’re thrown in with all the other kids in the state to fight for the remaining 20% of spots at A&M and UT.
It’s hardly fair; under the older admissions methods, probably any of them who applied would be accepted, but that’s not the case anymore.
I don’t think you can claim racism based on the sensitivity of film stock; that’s a technological issue, not a political one. Photography was probably similarly limited if you look into it; the film was predominantly the same.
The issue is that camera meters (and by extension, films) are trying to meter to an average light level of an 18% gray. In other words, they take the entire potential photograph and adjust the aperture and exposure time so that overall, the same amount of light enters the camera as if it was looking at a uniform 18% gray wall.
White skin isn’t too far off in brightness- hispanic skin is actually closer. Black people are more in the realm of being in the shadows when metered like that. Film’s always been intended to optimally capture that well-metered shot, so it’s not surprising that skin tones outside that middle range aren’t captured well on film- I bet albinos have the same problem in reverse.
Digital photography and cinema lets us change the pictures after the fact- that’s probably more of what you’re seeing in terms of the skin tones.
This is what I’ve always said about Affirmative Action. Race-based AA in education in the present day doesn’t treat the problem, it treats the metric used to measure the problem. The reason African Americans would be underrepresented isn’t because of racism in college admissions departments (which some form of AA would be able to mitigate), but because black students from lower-income areas have really, really shitty school systems. If we as a society made a concerted effort to fix primary and secondary education, the racial disparity at the college level would correct itself.
Meanwhile, we need some way to correct for the fact that it is hard to compare the performance of someone from a poor school with the performance of someone from a more affluent school. A mediocre student from an affluent school will have an application/resume full of clubs and AP classes and SAT prepping, etc, while a quite smart student from a school that can’t afford all of that won’t. Applications from better schools will look better than applications from poor schools, but that doesn’t necessarily reflect the relative merit of the students at those schools. Until we can achieve education equality, we need a method to read merit in college applications.
Race-based AA is a blunt instrument*, trying to solve the above problem but failing. It may make sense to impose quotas when there is actual racial discrimination going on, but that’s hardly the case here. This problem is structural, and needs a structural solution.
He said specifically that he wasn’t doing that.
First, I specifically said it was not likely racism. Second, much of what you wrote is discussed in the article, and the experts they spoke to came to an opposite conclusion. Either way, the reality is that if more people of color had been film production early on, then film would not be the way it is. Additionally, some of your objections are just false. Some film (Fuji, IIRC) are much better at capturing darker skin. Clearly, there is not solely a technological reason film can’t be better at capturing darker skin than it is.
I’m in favor of affirmative action in most areas where it is currently practiced, but I don’t understand why this case ever made it to SCOTUS. The challengers’ position would basically have had the courts mandate that legislatures (or universities) adopt some form of race-conscious admissions policy. That’s an awful idea.
It has its appeal but it’s not really any better targeted than race-conscious admissions policies. The top 10% of almost any high school - even the worst- are generally offered places at better colleges than this state or Texas can offer.
More worryingly, the scheme also places a heavy emphasis on secondary-level grades, which are a poor predictor of future academic performance.
This is incorrect, and has already been discussed. See here for part of the explanation:
Actually they are the best quantitative measure we have of predicting future academic performance.
As much as it pains me to admit, I have to acknowledge that most of this is true. Aff Am as a whole isn’t a failure, but aff am in determining admission to elite state & private colleges is usually a bad idea. Not because white folks are suffering injustice through aff am - generally speaking, they aren’t - but because of the mismatch effect ITRC refers to.
Here in Cali, black students who can no longer get into Berkley are now going to other UC schools. They haven’t lost anything, and their graduation rates may be improving.
When it comes to schools like Harvard, most of the “black slots” are taken up by African and Caribbean immigrants, along with the biracial children of black fathers and white college educated mothers. Having a white, college educated mother appears to be a huge advantage, whatever color the children happen to be.
What it would have done is say not that affirmative action is mandatory, just that it can not be changed via referendum. What the lower court said was having to pass another referendum that authorized affirmative action was so hard it was an unconstitutional burden for affirmattive action supporters.
This ignored that the people who did not want affirmative action had the exact same burden and met it. They attempted to say that because they did not like the results that the policy should be placed outside of the referendum process. It shows the naked contempt that the Michigan Supreme court and the liberals on this court have for their fellow citizens. The judges become like Iran’s Guardian Council where it doesn’t matter what the people say if they don’t like the law, then the law gets overturned. There is no pretense of interpreting the constitution, there is just the idea that the people’s vote only matters if they vote the right way. If the vote the wrong way the court decides.
Aside from the fact that there were a lot of issues with how the signatures for that referendum were obtained, the broader problem is that majority rule via direct voting is always a more uphill battle for minorities. For example, I have no doubt a bill mandating strip searches of Arab-Americans flying after 9/11 could have easily passed in many areas. There are places today where an interracial marriage ban would pass. Gay marriage bans have been passed in many places. Now obviously not everyone will vote so nakedly in their own self-interest, but the gradient skews toward the majority in a way that disenfranchises lots of people in the minority.
And that would have been declared unconstitutional by the courts, so I that’s a red herring.
Democracy “skews towards the majority”. That’s a feature, not a bug.
Originally I thought this was about Alcoholics Anonymous (also AA), and thought who the F— would deny anyone on the basis of race and why was this brought before the SCOTUS.
But reading this about Affirmative Action, I have to consider my above as in Affirmative Action is also discrimination based on race, although it’s a attempt to correct a past and arguably a persistent injustice, but do we, can we correct a injustice by being unjust?
there is also the issue that testings may be skewed to a particular race.