SCOTUS rules States can ban race-based AA

[brickbacon]

@John_Mace

How do you define “diversity”, and is race the best way to determine if someone is bringing diversity to the table?

Not that I buy into the diversity argument, but it seems we automatically assume that diversity = race. Does Sasha Obama bring a diversity of thought/life experience to the table that Bubba Jones from Hicksville Tenn does not? Do you want an Evangelical Christian and an atheist in your class or just someone with a different skin color from you?

Obviously a lot of these things are overlapping categories, but I think, in general, Obama’s kids will bring different perspectives on many things that Bubba Jones (is this a White name?) may not because the vast majority of White people aren’t in daily situations where their race is ever an issue. Just consider the fact that Sasha’s dad is arguably the most powerful man in the world, yet he still gets called a nigger, and is denigrated for being Black, thousands of times a day, often from people who should generally know better because they have a lot to lose.

People often overestimate how much wealth and power can insulate you from racism and all the negativity that accompanies that. Doesn’t matter if you are a successful hockey player who scores a game winning goal, or one of the world’s best soccer players, or just a Black NFL player. It’s not too much different from being a regular Black guy attending a comedy show, or playing Xbox live.

In fact, I think being in the spotlight will makes things worse for Sasha Obama. Do you honestly think she is gonna go through life without someone intimating she is a monkey, or calling her a nappy headed ho? I cannot think of a prominent Black person who is not subjected to some of the most vile slurs on a regular basis. Does that mean every White person is racist? Of course not. But it does mean that there are virtually no Black people alive that are not aware that the chance that they will be directly or indirectly subjected to drive by racial slurs, constant micro aggressions, and subtle prejudices on a regular basis is basically 100%. I used to keep track on how many times this very board had some thread devolve into supposedly scientific discussions about how Black people are inherently stupid. It was shockingly routine.

What do you think that does to someone? Even beyond feeling compelled to debunk the same routine bullshit over and over, it just wears you down. Knowing that there will always be this filter through which many other people analyze your actions and character that you have absolutely no control over. I can almost guarantee Sasha Obama will at some point feel that powerlessness that comes when you realize )or are told) how much race matters, and the sadness that comes when you have explain the same thing to your own children.

Even though Sasha’s life probably is (and will be) a lot richer than some poor White kid that lives abject poverty, I doubt the diversity he brings will be as unique and bone deep as the ones most Black people bring. You don’t have to own being poor. You have to own being Black. There is nothing you can do to get less Black, or (generally) avoid the all that comes with it (good or bad).

Also, I generally think it is more important to take steps to foster racial diversity more than SES diversity because the former is less likely to happen organically. To put it another way, I think the average White person knows far more people who grew up in different SES situations and in different geographic areas than they do Black people. That’s not an accident. And although I don’t think most of it is actively due to racism, I think taking steps to increase the interactions between people of different races is more valuable if for no other reason than we are less likely to actively seek it out.

[brickbacon]

@jackdavinci

The people who are going to get into or not get into a particular university because AA is or is not in place, are already academically challenged

Are you contending that a bubble candidate at a school like Harvard is “academically challenged”?

@jackdavinci

how does it help them to encourage them to attend a more challenging school and do worse, rather than attend somewhere they can excel?

Again, there is little proof that the phenomena you mention is actually happening. Just look at the real world. How often do you heard people saying some engineer should work at Blackberry instead of Google or Facebook because they will be more likely to “excel” at the lesser company? At which company will you likely become better at your job?

That’s in addition to the fact that the “better” school is often not the more challenging school in terms of the rigor of the work and the material covered.

@Bone

Like I said, disparate impact is bullshit. Consider the crack vs. powder sentencing example.

If crack was used primarily by white people, or equally among all people, the law wouldn’t be racist under this principle, right?

The point is that if that were true the law wouldn’t have been created. You can obviously argue the point, but the underlying assumption is that race is a factor in the creation of many of these laws. Either way, the law doesn’t declare things “racist”, it just provides a means to see if negative impacts are disproportionately borne by a specific group, making it discriminatory.

Even when the intent is pure, the point is that measuring the effect is much easier than trying to tease out intent. I am sure you can find lots of people back in the day that would argue that many Jim Crow laws weren’t racist even if they clearly were. You can’t always tell what is in someone’s heart, but you can see if a protected group is disproportionally harmed. The impact of a policy is generally what matters to people because that is what affects their lives. So even if you make a law with no ill intent, the fact that it greatly harms one group of people means it’s functionally equivalent to one created with that intent.

@Bone

The use of disparate impact analysis means that a law can be either racist or not, and switch between each on a daily basis based on the racial makeup of who is impacted.

Can you give me a case of this ever happening? Besides, that is a weak argument anyway. If the

@Bone

Would you agree that any law that treats different races differently would be racist, regardless of the impact?

Not necessarily. Treating everyone exactly the same isn’t always fair, and using race as a factor or criteria for something isn’t always racist.

[John_Mace]

@brickbacon

Obviously a lot of these things are overlapping categories, but I think, in general, Obama’s kids will bring different perspectives on many things that Bubba Jones (is this a White name?) may not because the vast majority of White people aren’t in daily situations where their race is ever an issue. Just consider the fact that Sasha’s dad is arguably the most powerful man in the world, yet he still gets called a nigger, and is denigrated for being Black, thousands of times a day, often from people who should generally know better because they have a lot to lose.

People often overestimate how much wealth and power can insulate you from racism and all the negativity that accompanies that. Doesn’t matter if you are a successful hockey player who scores a game winning goal, or one of the world’s best soccer players, or just a Black NFL player. It’s not too much different from being a regular Black guy attending a comedy show, or playing Xbox live.

In fact, I think being in the spotlight will makes things worse for Sasha Obama. Do you honestly think she is gonna go through life without someone intimating she is a monkey, or calling her a nappy headed ho? I cannot think of a prominent Black person who is not subjected to some of the most vile slurs on a regular basis. Does that mean every White person is racist? Of course not. But it does mean that there are virtually no Black people alive that are not aware that the chance that they will be directly or indirectly subjected to drive by racial slurs, constant micro aggressions, and subtle prejudices on a regular basis is basically 100%. I used to keep track on how many times this very board had some thread devolve into supposedly scientific discussions about how Black people are inherently stupid. It was shockingly routine.

What do you think that does to someone? Even beyond feeling compelled to debunk the same routine bullshit over and over, it just wears you down. Knowing that there will always be this filter through which many other people analyze your actions and character that you have absolutely no control over. I can almost guarantee Sasha Obama will at some point feel that powerlessness that comes when you realize )or are told) how much race matters, and the sadness that comes when you have explain the same thing to your own children.

Even though Sasha’s life probably is (and will be) a lot richer than some poor White kid that lives abject poverty, I doubt the diversity he brings will be as unique and bone deep as the ones most Black people bring. You don’t have to own being poor. You have to own being Black. There is nothing you can do to get less Black, or (generally) avoid the all that comes with it (good or bad).

Also, I generally think it is more important to take steps to foster racial diversity more than SES diversity because the former is less likely to happen organically. To put it another way, I think the average White person knows far more people who grew up in different SES situations and in different geographic areas than they do Black people. That’s not an accident. And although I don’t think most of it is actively due to racism, I think taking steps to increase the interactions between people of different races is more valuable if for no other reason than we are less likely to actively seek it out.

I think Sasha is going to have many more opportunities presented to her, without an outside help, than Bubba will. Does she need extra help to get into a sate school in Illinois? If so, why? If she doesn’t, then why not?

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@Honesty

It is curious it hasn’t been mentioned yet: the voter ban in Michigan on Affirmative Action was put on the ballot by Affirmative Action opponents who engaged in systemic voter fraud. It should never have been on the ballot to begin with. I am disappointed (and surprised) that it wasn’t highlighted in Sotomayor’s dissent.

• Honesty

There seems to have been some dispute over the signatures collected, but the results do seem to have satisfactorily represented the will of the majority of the voters in the state of Michigan who had no trouble electing Democratic governors and Senators in the same election.

[Chief_Pedant]

@jtgain

First, is the MCAT really the cat’s meow, so to speak, of determining who is qualified to become a physician? If so, then we need to see why black people are under performing on the test and take steps to improve that.

If not (as some like to claim of the MCAT and LSAT) then why are schools so reliant on it as a metric? We need to change that if people who would otherwise be great doctors can’t get their foot in the door because of the results of a flawed test.

However, under no circumstances would I promote a candidate simply because of race when the agreed upon metrics show that the other candidate is better qualified.

Standardized tests are not the only measure of qualification. However they are better than other method of predicting the ability to understand and retain information.

In fields like law and medicine, this skill is obviously necessary, even if it is not sufficient by itself to be a good practitioner. But standardized exams are present in thousands of other arenas as a mechanism by which to filter relative qualification. Standardized exams might be a hiring metric for a tech firm who wants to look for bright people; they might be a screen for firefighters to see which individuals can best master material thought relevant for those who are being considered for advancement.

Standardized exams measure things that grades don’t, and they measure against a standard that grades do not.

If race is not permitted as an isolated criterion, it will be impossible to get black representation that reasonably reflects the percentage of our black population, because standardized scores lag so badly.

Controlling for every known variable nevertheless leaves blacks on the lowest performance tier of every given peer group. Those variables include family wealth, family education, similar schools, exposure to special educational assistance, and on and on.

The disaster that SCOTUS created is probably well intentioned, after Chief Justice Roberts’ idea that the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. The problem with this, as Justice Sotomayor noted, is that it is out of touch with reality.

The reality that it is out of touch with is that there are no known circumstances under which performance levels are smoothed out among SIRE groups. Therefore there is no known circumstance under which we will ever get proportionate representation without being permitted a double standard that permits a special consideration for certain SIRE groups wherever we think proportionate representation (diversity, in code word) is of value.

We are diverse. We intend, on average, to celebrate that diversity and to do our best to find a place in the world for everyone. We have found ways to create special considerations for sex; for disability; for age; for religion. There is no reason we should have to exempt race from special consideration on some sort of mistaken pretext that every “race” is going to have exactly the same performance in every arena.

[UltraVires]

@Chief_Pedant

Standardized tests are not the only measure of qualification. However they are better than other method of predicting the ability to understand and retain information.

In fields like law and medicine, this skill is obviously necessary, even if it is not sufficient by itself to be a good practitioner. But standardized exams are present in thousands of other arenas as a mechanism by which to filter relative qualification. Standardized exams might be a hiring metric for a tech firm who wants to look for bright people; they might be a screen for firefighters to see which individuals can best master material thought relevant for those who are being considered for advancement.

Standardized exams measure things that grades don’t, and they measure against a standard that grades do not.

If race is not permitted as an isolated criterion, it will be impossible to get black representation that reasonably reflects the percentage of our black population, because standardized scores lag so badly.

Controlling for every known variable nevertheless leaves blacks on the lowest performance tier of every given peer group. Those variables include family wealth, family education, similar schools, exposure to special educational assistance, and on and on.

The disaster that SCOTUS created is probably well intentioned, after Chief Justice Roberts’ idea that the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. The problem with this, as Justice Sotomayor noted, is that it is out of touch with reality.

The reality that it is out of touch with is that there are no known circumstances under which performance levels are smoothed out among SIRE groups. Therefore there is no known circumstance under which we will ever get proportionate representation without being permitted a double standard that permits a special consideration for certain SIRE groups wherever we think proportionate representation (diversity, in code word) is of value.

We are diverse. We intend, on average, to celebrate that diversity and to do our best to find a place in the world for everyone. We have found ways to create special considerations for sex; for disability; for age; for religion. There is no reason we should have to exempt race from special consideration on some sort of mistaken pretext that every “race” is going to have exactly the same performance in every arena.

So it is your contention that:

1. These standardized tests are the best metrics for determining future performance, and
2. No matter what we do, blacks will never perform as well as whites on these tests, in fact, so much so that there would be virtually no black physicians in the country?

If so, I disagree with #2, but even if that is true, then I still do not support affirmative action. If the lies of the KKK turn out to be true that blacks are so intellectually inferior to whites that they cannot be the same quality physicians as their white counterparts, then we damn sure should have 100% white doctors.

It would be better for all races to be treated by better quality physicians that to have a few people die on the altar of diversity from the mistakes of unqualified doctors.

[Odesio]

@John_Mace

How do you define “diversity”, and is race the best way to determine if someone is bringing diversity to the table?

Race is but one criteria for a diverse student body. Is it the best way? Well, I don’t know. It’s certainly been one way people have used to increase diversity on college campuses. I suspect they might be able to accomplish the same thing by focusing on income though.

Not that I buy into the diversity argument, but it seems we automatically assume that diversity = race. Does Sasha Obama bring a diversity of thought/life experience to the table that Bubba Jones from Hicksville Tenn does not? Do you want an Evangelical Christian and an atheist in your class or just someone with a different skin color from you?

Yeah, Sasha Obama is likely to have a different perspective on things than Bubba Jones because she’s led such a different life. Sasha and Bubba are both likely to bring something to the table that the other had never considered before. Do I want an Evangelical Christian and an atheist in my class? Sure. In my case I was the atheist and another person was the EC and we both brought our own points of views to school.

Granted, I don’t think diversity matters all that much in some classes. None of the math or hard science classes that I can think of involved a lot of class conversation. Lab work, sure, but no actual conversation.

[Chief_Pedant]

@wolfpup

Ah, yes, the old anecdote, the last refuge of… well, of anyone trying to frivolously “prove” anything. :rolleyes:

In other anecdotal news, two members of the Medical Board of California are black. (They should probably revoke their memberships just on general principle!)

And in another bit of anecdotal news, a black dude was seen in the Oval Office of the White House – probably a servant, or maybe an intruder … details and more news at 11. :rolleyes:

It is not the case that there is no correlation between physicians admitted to weaker medical schools and problems related to quality of clinical practice. Obviously if you accept a lower tier of students (as measured, say, by average MCAT scores) you are going to have some increased difficulty getting them certified into advanced specialties and perhaps even getting the lowest tier to be able to practice on par with “average” physicians.

For this reason, it’s true that disciplinary measures are much more likely against physicians with weak entrance qualifications. For example, “A Courant analysis of disciplinary actions against doctors nationwide found, however, that both Howard and Meharry (HBCU med schools) produce troubled doctors more frequently than most other schools – at rates about 10 times greater than the schools with the lowest numbers.”

It’s unrealistic to expect performance par among all physician groups just because they’ve all been through med school, though. Despite the widespread skepticism in some realms of academia that standardized scores are a reasonable measure, the truth is that standardized scores actually tell us quite a bit about an individual’s ability to grasp information so that it can feed into a decision-making process.

But the larger point is that it’s a greater net value to create diversity than it is to gloat over metrics that show one group underperforming another. We don’t go around gloating that male firefighters can carry unconscious bodies out faster than female ones. We find ways to include both genders and then we find ways to make firefighting still work.

[Chief_Pedant]

@jtgain

So it is your contention that:

1. These standardized tests are the best metrics for determining future performance, and
2. No matter what we do, blacks will never perform as well as whites on these tests, in fact, so much so that there would be virtually no black physicians in the country?

If so, I disagree with #2, but even if that is true, then I still do not support affirmative action. If the lies of the KKK turn out to be true that blacks are so intellectually inferior to whites that they cannot be the same quality physicians as their white counterparts, then we damn sure should have 100% white doctors.

It would be better for all races to be treated by better quality physicians that to have a few people die on the altar of diversity from the mistakes of unqualified doctors.

Actually, all doctors should be asian if we are just looking for the top academic tier by SIRE group.

What I meant to say was that no variables controlled for so far have produced equivalent results among various SIRE groups. That’s reality.

So we should deal with it and retain race-base preferences, at least until the appropriate (currently unknown) variable can be found and corrected.

[brickbacon]

@John_Mace

I think Sasha is going to have many more opportunities presented to her, without an outside help, than Bubba will. Does she need extra help to get into a sate school in Illinois? If so, why? If she doesn’t, then why not?

What makes you think Sasha Obama needs help to get into a state school? What makes you think she would necessarily displace a poor, White kid? What makes you think the entire situation is zero sum? Not every Black kid that gets into a good school does so because of AA.

Sasha Obama currently goes to an exceptional private school, and (I hear) gets good grades. Given her visibility, being Black will not help her chances at any school that evaluates holistically. Any boost she get will be because her dad was the President, and both her parents are rich, Ivy League legacies.

Plus, this notion that socioeconomic preference and racial preference cannot co-exist or are competing interests is really strange to me (especially given the overlap), and just highlights how weak the anti-AA side’s argument is when they have to resort to absurd hypos like the President’s daughter applying to, and needing help to get into an Illinois State school, AND necessarily displacing a poor White kid. This argument particularly annoys me because it rests on the notion that successful Black people are not subject to discrimination, and the fact that poor White people are particularly sympathetic and relatable victims. You never hear people saying AA is bad because some poor Black kid got in over a rich, White celebrity’s kids, or even an poor Indian kid. You can’t sell that injustice to middle America.

Especially if the argument is that racial presence leads to unqualified practitioners who get their medical licenses suspended for not paying child support. If that is what you truly believe, they you should advocate for NO PREFERENCE at all. If you believe grades and test scores paint a complete and accurate picture, then why should a poor kid get a boost? Or a kid from Alaska, or a kid who raised money for charity, or a woman? Why have essays or ling applications, just have students submit their scores, and a transcript. Why don’t we just do that, and see how “fair” treating EVERYBODY the same is. How many of these people who hate AA would be fine with Stanford and MIT admitting 85% foreign born Indian and Chinese students? Because given sheer numbers, that is likely what would happen.

Besides, the issue was not whether Sasha will have a better life, or will have more opportunities afforded to her, but rather whether she would bring less diversity of thought and experience than a poor White kid.

[Martin_Hyde]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

I’m glad the Supreme Court upheld this law, although they ought to have gone further and rejected race completely as a criteria for colleges that receive any sort of public funding/support. Ideally, the same should be done with regards to admissions on the basis of being the children of alumni or athletics.

I don’t believe public schools do legacies (which is what alumni-familial preference admissions is), but perhaps they do. The SCOTUS would in any case have no legal authority to dictate a policy position like the one you just espoused. That’s a matter for the State Governments which control public universities within their borders. If the Federal government wished to impose the sort of requirements you mentioned they would need to do so through “coercive” legislation like they did with age 21 drinking laws and the 0.08 BAC threshold for DUI.

@YogSosoth

Conservatives used the opportunity of the gutted Voting Rights Act to immediately create racist voter ID laws, it will be the same here. They used a very innocent sounding scheme just like you did with your example. For voting, the said simply shortening times or giving more time to military absentee voters isn’t racist, which on the surface it seems so. But it is for reasons already discussed. So will conservatives try it with this issue by creating a bunch of standards that seem race neutral but end up targeting minorities

Those laws predate the SCOTUS case that overruled a small part of the VRA. If you actually followed the VRA developments after that case at all (your comments make it obvious you have not, at least not from any news source other than DailyKos), you would know that a previously unused clause of the VRA actually opens up Justice Department oversight of basically all states (including ones like Ohio and Pennsylvania that have passed “racist” voter ID laws.) The only difference is the government has to show to a judge some level of justification for putting a state under scrutiny.

In the net it’s actually resulted in better policy and more rigorous ability to properly enforce voting rights across the entire country and not just areas where the Democrats never win electoral votes.

@Honesty

It is curious it hasn’t been mentioned yet: the voter ban in Michigan on Affirmative Action was put on the ballot by Affirmative Action opponents who engaged in systemic voter fraud. It should never have been on the ballot to begin with. I am disappointed (and surprised) that it wasn’t highlighted in Sotomayor’s dissent.

• Honesty

The Federal government has the authority to investigate and prosecute election frauds, even of State and Local elected officials. If that is the truth people should be pushing for that to happen, and not writing bad case law at the SCOTUS level (which is what Sotomayor wanted to do.)

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

Yes, no, no. The SAT tests only basic arithmetic and the essay isn’t scored. You may be thinking iof the SAT IIs, which AIUI are generally not considered in college applications.

When I took the SAT it included geometry and algebra, no trig or calculus. Basic arithmetic is usually understood to be very basic functions like addition, subtraction, multiplication, division along with perhaps the concept of square roots, exponents, averages, along with other concepts like calculating probabilities and working with percentages and fractions.

@brickbacon

Also, I generally think it is more important to take steps to foster racial diversity more than SES diversity because the former is less likely to happen organically. To put it another way, I think the average White person knows far more people who grew up in different SES situations and in different geographic areas than they do Black people. That’s not an accident. And although I don’t think most of it is actively due to racism, I think taking steps to increase the interactions between people of different races is more valuable if for no other reason than we are less likely to actively seek it out.

I consider the decision to foster racial or economic diversity to be matters of public policy, which puts them into the realm of the legislative. We aren’t talking fundamental civil rights, we are talking about various mechanisms through which the government identifies the disadvantaged and gives them some form of “leg up”, and that should solely be the realm of policy.

If we’re talking about letting schools decide whether or not blacks are even allowed to attend, or States deciding if people named Rodriguez should really be allowed to vote or not that is when it’s not a matter of policy, because we are talking legitimate civil rights with claims under both Civil Rights legislation Federally and extant case law around the 14th Amendment.

@Chief_Pedant

The disaster that SCOTUS created is probably well intentioned, after Chief Justice Roberts’ idea that the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. The problem with this, as Justice Sotomayor noted, is that it is out of touch with reality.

The reality that it is out of touch with is that there are no known circumstances under which performance levels are smoothed out among SIRE groups. Therefore there is no known circumstance under which we will ever get proportionate representation without being permitted a double standard that permits a special consideration for certain SIRE groups wherever we think proportionate representation (diversity, in code word) is of value.

I don’t care about any of this because Roberts is right about the law and Sotomayor is not. All the stuff you’re going on about is a good policy argument. The legislature is supposed to set policy, not the judicial branch. If your argument about various forms of diversity of result were instead constitutional rights (which is what Sotomayor is really advocating for by saying a State cannot make the policy decision on its own), then we’re essentially saying the SCOTUS gets to set broad based admissions criteria for not only schools but arguably (and it would be reflected in later court rulings most likely) all forms of position placement.

It’s simply not a matter for the judiciary under our constitution or our laws. Whether it’s good policy or not is a wholly separate issue. I think it’s good policy not to engage in “Fair Trade” type nonsense when negotiating treaties and I think it’s good policy to cap the 15% capital gains tax rate at a certain amount of total income, I think it’s good policy to privatize social security. But those are policy debates, I wouldn’t want the SCOTUS deciding any of those things even in my favor.

[Shodan]

@brickbacon

What makes you think Sasha Obama needs help to get into a state school?

Because that is the default assumption that underlies affirmative action based on race, rather than class or any other criterion.

[QUOTE=even sven]
SAT scores are not particularly well correlated to future grades.
[/QUOTE]
This is largely due to the fact that colleges and universities typically admit students from a relatively narrow range of SAT scores. The average SAT score at MIT is going to be significantly higher than that of students at a community college, but an A at MIT is not the same measurement as an A at Podunk U.

If, as is supposed to happen under affirmative action, a student who has lower SAT scores is admitted to an elite school, his grades are going to correlate much better to his SAT when compared to his classmates. (Cite, if you really need it.)

Regards,
Shodan

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@Martin_Hyde

I don’t believe public schools do legacies (which is what alumni-familial preference admissions is), but perhaps they do. The SCOTUS would in any case have no legal authority to dictate a policy position like the one you just espoused. That’s a matter for the State Governments which control public universities within their borders. If the Federal government wished to impose the sort of requirements you mentioned they would need to do so through “coercive” legislation like they did with age 21 drinking laws and the 0.08 BAC threshold for DUI.

Actually I’d have proposed a similar scheme to what has been done regarding the drinking age (ie tying federal highway funds to it) by tying Pell Grants and federally subsidized loans for colleges to not basing admissions on these sorts of non-merit criteria.

[brickbacon]

[quote=“Shodan, post:172, topic:686760”]

Because that is the default assumption that underlies affirmative action based on race, rather than class or any other criterion./QUOTE]

You missed the word “need”. Even if she gets it, I highly doubt she needs it. You are also forgetting that she doesn’t even need to identify her race if she chooses not to, and that by your logic, that is the underlying assumption of any preference given, including gender, geography, SES, and legacy status. Would it really be fair to say Harvard thinks kids from Wyoming or Alaska need a leg up? If not, why are you choosing to view race that way?

[Jimmy_Chitwood]

@Martin_Hyde

I don’t care about any of this because Roberts is right about the law and Sotomayor is not.

No he isn’t; not with respect to the part Chief Pedant quoted. Roberts is the one making a policy argument on that point. Roberts is the one abstracting the issue into some kind of bizarre misreading of his own opinions from cases he fucked up himself a few years ago so that we’re no longer talking about “legitimate civil rights,” as you put it. All of these affirmative action / desegregation cases are about legitimate civil rights issues, and they always have been. The Court has just been getting further and further away from those issues going all the way back to Brown.

[magellan01]

@tomndebb

A racist law is one that has a disproportionate and unjustified negative effect on a perceived racial community, even if the word race never appears in the law.

Making the punishment for crack cocaine ten times as heavy as the punishment for powder cocaine was a racist law, since it explicitly targeted one of two drugs with equal addictive properties that was more popular among one community than another.
It was probably not passed as a racist effort, (just as an act of Congressional hysteria), but when the punishments were not rectified for eighteen years after the original belief of disproportionate addictive properties was demonstrated, (fewer than twelve months after the law was passed), the continued application of the law was racist.

Do you have a cite that shows that the two strains of drug have equal addictive properties? From what I’ve read, that is definitely NOT the case.

Also while the underlying drug might be the same, the purity that the body receives is different. And another difference is the delivery method itself. Snorting cocaine has a slower ramp up with a less intense, longer lasting high. Smoking it allows the body to feel the effects within seconds and is MUCH more intense. So it is no surprise that the two strains of the drug would have different addictive properties.

While I snorted a bit of cocaine back in the day, I never tried crack. But I was just googling around and found the below, which I found illuminating and thought I’d share. There’s from various blogs or question and answer sites. If posting them is in any way counter to the rules, please just remove them. I don’t think they are, but just wanted to rase the flag.

As a nurse I will tell you First of all …people do not crush crack and sniff it … they smoke it or inject it crack has chemical additives just like most cocaine’s are mixed with some sort of powder substance of the dealers choice to make more so they have more to sell.

Crack is about 100 times more addictive than powder form cocaine and once you smoke it you will be hooked forever chasing that first feeling you got when you did it, you will spend 1,000 of dollars and when your money runs out you will steal from the people you love to get high… you will ruin the relationship with anyone you ar e close too …while this happens with people who use powder cocaine it does not happen as quickly. and people who tend to sniff usually go to way the occasional weekend party and drink sniff to the extreme sniff 100’s of dollars a day sniffers.

I have worked in rehab and detox and it is a horrible drug (crack) there are people who go to rehab 3 or 4 times and still use when they get out. and end up back in hospital after they hit rock bottom have gotten arrested for stealing to supply habit or family just says enough.

• snorting Cocaine coats the mucous membranes of the nasal passages with Cocaine HCl (hydrochloride, remember) allowing the drug to be absorbed relatively slowly. Therefore the high takes longer to come on (minutes), is less intense but lasts longer.

• smoking Crack Cocaine allows the drugs to be absorbed quickly via the lungs. The onset of the high is rapid (5-10 seconds) is more intense but begins to wear off in as little as 5-10 minutes.

• injecting Cocaine is the fastest and most potent way to administer it. It also has the considerable hygiene and potential overdose problems associated with intravenous drug use.

• swallowing Cocaine (any sort) has practically no effect as the Cocaine is broken down by the digestive system.

• chewing Coca leaves (contain 0.1% to 0.9% Cocaine) enables a small amount of Cocaine to be absorbed through mucous membranes in the mouth.

There is another way to administer Cocaine - rectally (mucous membranes again) but I shall not go into detail here!

[magellan01]

@brickbacon

Even though Sasha’s life probably is (and will be) a lot richer than some poor White kid that lives abject poverty, I doubt the diversity he brings will be as unique and bone deep as the ones most Black people bring. You don’t have to own being poor. You have to own being Black. There is nothing you can do to get less Black, or (generally) avoid the all that comes with it (good or bad).

If one is Black and well-educated and famous, these days her race is an asset, not an impediment.In a world where most people want a more diverse school, workplace, whatever, a person off color will get the nod over someone else. Just look at the people used by advertisers. In the past ten hearts there has been a tremendous increase in the use of models and actor of mixed-race. The more ambiguous the “otherness the better”. I have a godson that is mixed race, and he and his brother benefit from this is some of the modeling they’ve done. Can’t tell if he’s whitefish, or Asian-ish or Hispanic-ish… Perfect, he’s in!

[Jimmy_Chitwood]

They aren’t two different strains. It’s the same drug, so pharmacologically there’s no distinction to be drawn; just a question of whether a faster high is more addictive, which doesn’t seem to have been demonstrated.

[Bone]

@brickbacon

The point is that if that were true the law wouldn’t have been created. You can obviously argue the point, but the underlying assumption is that race is a factor in the creation of many of these laws. Either way, the law doesn’t declare things “racist”, it just provides a means to see if negative impacts are disproportionately borne by a specific group, making it discriminatory.

No. Reality is that groups of people behave differently at times. The law treats all the same regardless of race. That’s not discriminatory at all.

You can’t always tell what is in someone’s heart, but you can see if a protected group is disproportionally harmed. The impact of a policy is generally what matters to people because that is what affects their lives. So even if you make a law with no ill intent, the fact that it greatly harms one group of people means it’s functionally equivalent to one created with that intent.

So? Laws will always have an unequal impact on different groups of people. That doesn’t make them discriminatory or racist. Like I said - if a law being racist is so fluid that the determination can be changed depending on the demographics of the day, then the term has no meaning.

Can you give me a case of this ever happening? Besides, that is a weak argument anyway. If the

I’m sure you left out a part of what you were going to say. In any event, if the law allows this to happen, even if it has not, then it is a shitty law.

Not necessarily. Treating everyone exactly the same isn’t always fair, and using race as a factor or criteria for something isn’t always racist.

What a wonderful nebulous standard that allows anyone to proclaim something is racist.

If treating everyone the same isn’t fair and your idea of what is fair is dependent on outcome, your system is rigged. It’s like the Sacramento Kings (NBA team) always losing and saying that’s not fair! Fuck yeah it’s fair (to the extent the NBA isn’t rigged) they just keep losing. It would not be fair to give them a win when they are outplayed. Fairness sets up rules that are the same for everyone. It’s absurd to say you can use race as a factor or criteria and claim that’s not racist. Either that or like I said, you are using a definition of the word that we will never agree on.

[OurLordPeace]

@Bone

No. Reality is that groups of people behave differently at times. The law treats all the same regardless of race. That’s not discriminatory at all.

So when drug use by communities of color is not much different than among white Americans, and yet the War on Some Drugs is prosecuted much more harshly among communities of color, how does that fit your narrative? Even if “the law” treats all the same regardless of race, lawmen and lawwomen, with their government-issue costumes and increasingly heavy weaponry, do not.

If treating everyone the same isn’t fair and your idea of what is fair is dependent on outcome, your system is rigged.

Treating everyone the same isn’t fair, because the system in which we all live is already rigged.