# SCOTUS should preserve race-based AA because we are not created equal **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 19, 2012, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219 "2012-10-19T11:55:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/81 "2012-10-23T00:09:00Z")
That’s not a good analogy, but like I said, I don’t see that having women on the Curling team is a reason to shred the 14th amendment and/or the equal protection clause. We put restrictions on things the state can and cannot do whereas private entities have more latitude. If the Curling team is private, all bets are off. If it’s financed by my tax dollars, then it needs to abide by the constitution. If you want to change the constitution, pass an amendment. But I also think your “only have enough money for one team” issue is a violation of federal law. You need to find a way to finance a women’s and a men’s team. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/82 "2012-10-23T00:44:36Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > "\*For admission to the very highest ranked, brand-name schools such as Princeton or MIT, applicants need scores of 750 to be considered for admission. I know you were quoting someone else, but the fact remains that this is not true. According to [MIT](http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/mit_admissions_statistics_2007), in 2007, the scores are as follows: > [@](#): > > Middle 50% score range of admitted students: > > SAT Reasoning Test - Critical Reading [670, 770] > SAT Reasoning Test - Math [720, 800] > SAT Reasoning Test - Writing [670, 760] > ACT Composite [31, 34] > SAT Subject Test - Math [730, 800] > SAT Subject Test - Science [700, 800] For [Harvard](http://collegeapps.about.com/od/collegeprofiles/p/harvard_profile.htm) in 2011, they were as follows: > [@](#): > > Test Scores – 25th / 75th Percentile > > ``` > SAT Critical Reading: 690 / 790 > SAT Math: 700 / 800 > SAT Writing: 690 / 790 > > ``` ---
**Author:** ![Chuck11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Chuck11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chuck11)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/83 "2012-10-23T00:59:40Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > It’s not just one. If you just want a non-debunkable explanation, that’s easy- a combination of a myriad of environmental differences- things like nutrition and physical and mental health during pregnancy (including the emotional state and stability of the mother), differences in economics and education, discrimination at multiple levels, childhood nutrition, media role models and portrayals of race, parental involvement (and parental emotional state), community role models and peer pressure, etc. That’s a good start, and there could be pages and pages of potential differences. > > Until all (or at least most) of the genes for intelligence and aggression are found (and subsequently analyzed for frequency in various populations), the “genetic explanation” remains a hypothesis. What I can do is lump the hypothesized causes into broad classes and show, on theoretical ground, why these classes of explanations are implausible – which is not to say impossible. For example, purely cultural explanations are suspect because it’s an empirical fact that cultural effects (e.g., adoption) do not induce correlations between score differences and heritability. Likewise, the class of biological explanations that includes all factors which increase the within family variance within populations (e.g., malnutrition) is implausible since these factors decrease sibling correlations and since the Black and White sibling correlations are no different. I can also rule out specific explanations which have already been thoroughly investigated, such as peer group or motivation. If you wish to go through specific explanations or sets of them, we can. Indeed, I was asking for possibilities that held up in light of other relevant facts a while ago, but no one seemed to be interested in the slightest. Generally, a purely environmental explanation faces the following quantitative problem: the magnitude of the effect has to be massive to induce the, by adulthood, over 1 SD difference, given the low amount of variance explained by shared environmental factors in the Black population. You basically have to argue that Blacks live in a cognitively affecting environment equivalent to that experienced by the lower White 1 percentile. (shared environment for Blacks = no less than 0.2; black-white difference = 1.1 SD by adulthood; 1.1/ square root 0.2 = 2.4 SD = 0.99 percentile.) This is in addition to the problem of explaining why Blacks are so uniformly depressed. You basically have to argue that few Blacks have had the opportunity to realize their true genetic potential. (For reasons explained in the previous comment.) But I agree. The genetic hypothesis will remain a hypothesis of some degree of plausibility or another until the proper tests are done. (Apparently, you don’t think that admixture mapping would suffice?) But I would say the same about the environmental hypothesis. ---
**Author:** ![Chuck11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Chuck11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chuck11)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/84 "2012-10-23T03:20:37Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > I know you were quoting someone else, but the fact remains that this is not true. This doesn’t alter the facts, though. Take MIT’s minimal SAT M+V: 1390. Now compare that with the Black average SAT M + V in [2012](http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/09/25/sat-scores-are-down-and-racial-gaps-remain): 856. As the standard deviations are ~200, the Black mean falls 2.67 SD below the cut off. Only under 0.5% will possibly qualify on the basis of SAT scores alone. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/85 "2012-10-23T03:39:18Z")
> [@Chuck11](#): > > This doesn’t alter the facts, though. Take MIT’s minimal SAT M+V: 1390. Now compare that with the Black average SAT M + V in [2012](http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/09/25/sat-scores-are-down-and-racial-gaps-remain): 856. As the standard deviations are ~200, the Black mean falls 2.67 SD below the cut off. Only under 0.5% will possibly qualify on the basis of SAT scores alone. Actually, it does. First, there is no minimal SAT score to get into MIT. What you are referring to is the 25 percentile score, which by definition means 25% of their class has lower scores than that. Like nearly every other school, there is no hard SAT floor for entry. Second, you are not addressing the actual question posed, which was: [QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright] Perhaps I’m missing something. Are you saying there are no black students who qualify to admission to Harvard, et al., on their own merits? [/QUOTE] **Chief Pedant** responded, “exactly so”. That is clearly not true, even if you were just considering test scores. It doesn’t even pass the smell test. It’s so obviously false that it makes me question whether your ignorance on the matter is willful. That said, I hate to interrupt our SDMB bi-weekly “Black people are stupid” thread. Between my daily duties and worrying about the [looming human genetic crisis](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=542079), I rarely find time to participate in these entertaining threads. But like I said, don’t let the facts get in the way. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/86 "2012-10-23T03:55:27Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Because if we don’t do this, we will lose the best black candidates. Suppose you are Harvard. You want your share of black candidates, and the best ones come from backgrounds that are more privileged (this is true as an average fact for all SIRE groups). If _I’m_ Harvard, I don’t want the best black candidates, I want the best candidates. If the best black candidates are worse than the worst white candidates, I’m not giving them a slot just because the other black candidates are even worse. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/87 "2012-10-23T04:13:03Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > **Chief Pedant** responded, “exactly so”. That is clearly not true, even if you were just considering test scores. It doesn’t even pass the smell test. It’s so obviously false that it makes me question whether your ignorance on the matter is willful. Whatever the case, if you had race neutral admissions then the percentage would fall significantly below their percentage of the population. Overall, you’d apparently see a substantial increase in the percentage of Asian students and a decrease in the percentage of white, African-American and Hispanic students (see table 9.1). > **[Affirmative action: the numbers](https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2009/10/affirmative-action-numbers.html)** > > Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade has a new book on elite college admissions. He is an author of an earlier study which quantified t... ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/88 "2012-10-23T04:17:53Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Whatever the case, if you had race neutral admissions then the percentage would fall significantly below their percentage of the population. You’d apparently see a substantial increase in the percentage of Asian students (see table 9.1). > > [Information Processing: Affirmative action: the numbers](http://infoproc.blogspot.co.nz/2009/10/affirmative-action-numbers.html) So what? If the schools want “diversity” they can use socio-economic status. State schools should not discriminate by race. We have a constitutional amendment that tells us that. If we want to discriminate by race, we should amend the constitution to allow it. Good luck with that. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/89 "2012-10-23T04:36:17Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Whatever the case Not whatever the case. The case is very clear. What he said here, has said elsewhere, and what he will likely continue to say is FACTUALLY INACCURATE. Both of you spout pseudo-scientific racist garbage time and time again. Then when you get called on your gross misrepresentations, illogical conclusions, and bald faced lies, you pretend like it’s up for debate. I guess you figure that since most of us are, at this point, too busy or tired to deconstruct your elaborate nonsense, that your claims suddenly have merit because they do not face the same scrutiny they did before. Rest assured that most of us are just annoyed to have to waste our time educating you on a routine basis. I have no idea what compels you both spend so much time and effort digging up discredited studies and twisting data to prove to other how stupid Black people are, but I pity the fact that you have nothing more positive to occupy your time and thoughts. > [@Chen019](#): > > if you had race neutral admissions then the percentage would fall significantly below their percentage of the population. You’d apparently see a substantial increase in the percentage of Asian students (see table 9.1). > > [Information Processing: Affirmative action: the numbers](http://infoproc.blogspot.co.nz/2009/10/affirmative-action-numbers.html) Maybe, maybe not. You are conflating “race neutral” with “the exact same as it is now but without considering race”. There is no reason to assume disregarding one metric will mean they will not replace it with something else. There is no reason why a school’s qualifications have to include, or weigh favorably, things that benefit one group vs. another since there is no objective definition of the term “best”. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/90 "2012-10-23T04:53:17Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > Not whatever the case. The case is very clear. What he said here, has said elsewhere, and what he will likely continue to say is FACTUALLY INACCURATE. Both of you spout pseudo-scientific racist garbage time and time again. Then when you get called on your gross misrepresentations, illogical conclusions, and bald faced lies, you pretend like it’s up for debate. I guess you figure that since most of us are, at this point, too busy or tired to deconstruct your elaborate nonsense, that your claims suddenly have merit because they do not face the same scrutiny they did before. Rest assured that most of us are just annoyed to have to waste our time educating you on a routine basis. I have no idea what compels you both spend so much time and effort digging up discredited studies and twisting data to prove to other how stupid Black people are, but I pity the fact that you have nothing more positive to occupy your time and thoughts. Have I produced any discredited studies? I’m a reasonable person - if you feel something I have cited is incorrect just say so, but produce some evidence explaining why I’m wrong. Happy to discuss. > [@brickbacon](#): > > Maybe, maybe not. You are conflating “race neutral” with “the exact same as it is now but without considering race”. There is no reason to assume disregarding one metric will mean they will not replace it with something else. There is no reason why a school’s qualifications have to include, or weigh favorably, things that benefit one group vs. another since there is no objective definition of the term “best”. Well if they place the same emphasis on academic credentials it seems that is what will happen? Indeed that appears to have been what occurred at Berkeley following proposition 209. You appear to be skirting around CP’s point that affirmative action is required to achieve reasonable racial representation. ---
**Author:** ![Chuck11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Chuck11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chuck11)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/91 "2012-10-23T04:55:04Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > Actually, it does… That is clearly not true, even if you were just considering test scores. It doesn’t even pass the smell test. …It’s so obviously false that it makes me question whether your ignorance on the matter is willful. Ok, I misread the link. So: were one to just consider test scores then the % of Blacks admitted would be the % that exceeded the average of those admitted, which would be, as noted \< 0.5% as compared to the White \>5%. Is that a problem? I’m not the one arguing that it is. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/92 "2012-10-23T05:35:30Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > You are obsessed with the genetics side of the equation, and I’d like to save that for a different debate… Then you shouldn’t have brought it up. This is why **Ibn** thinks you are baiting him, as the exact cause of the disparity is completely irrelevant to the point you made in your OP. You even admit that what you have is merely a hypothesis that you cannot actually prove. Even if you don’t think your view is racist, why bring it up on a board you know consists of people who do believe it is racist, especially when it’s completely irrelevant to your point? It inevitably causes people to challenge that point and thus go off your main topic. And I do not believe this is a hijack or being snide. It’s addressing a point in your OP. Whether the disparity is inherent or caused by outside factors is irrelevant to your contention that we should just flat out accept racial quotas and stop hiding behind obscuring language. I am thus truly curious why you brought the subject up. ---
**Author:** ![Chuck11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Chuck11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chuck11)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/93 "2012-10-23T05:41:50Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > There is no reason to assume disregarding one metric will mean they will not replace it with something else. There is no reason why a school’s qualifications have to include, or weigh favorably, things that benefit one group vs. another since there is no objective definition of the term “best”. I don’t understand your point. The problem in a nutshell: Lower g people do worse on measures that are important to schools. As a result, schools discriminate against these people. Since Blacks and Hispanics tend to have lower levels of g, schools end up discriminating against them. A sort of collateral discrimination. But schools, usually run by ueber liberals don’t want this, because they love Blacks and Hispanics. But they also don’t want to give up discriminating against the low g people _in general_. Otherwise they would do away with all g loaded measures and admit on some other basis. To escape this dilemma, which in industry is called the “diversity-validity dilemma” they try to concoct means – of questionable constitutionality – by which they can discriminate for Blacks and Hispanics to counteract the effects of their general discriminatory policy. So what’s your point? ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/94 "2012-10-23T11:05:34Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Wait a sec… \*\*Chief Pedant \*\*made the OP. What’s going on here? I also was curious about this. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/95 "2012-10-23T11:36:25Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Then you shouldn’t have brought it up. This is why **Ibn** thinks you are baiting him, as the exact cause of the disparity is completely irrelevant to the point you made in your OP. You even admit that what you have is merely a hypothesis that you cannot actually prove. Even if you don’t think your view is racist, why bring it up on a board you know consists of people who do believe it is racist, especially when it’s completely irrelevant to your point? It inevitably causes people to challenge that point and thus go off your main topic. > > And I do not believe this is a hijack or being snide. It’s addressing a point in your OP. Whether the disparity is inherent or caused by outside factors is irrelevant to your contention that we should just flat out accept racial quotas and stop hiding behind obscuring language. I am thus truly curious why you brought the subject up. Coupla things. First, to the genetics part of the equation. I think it is relevant, and I don’t mind it being brought up. I did put it as a core piece of the OP–in fact, in the title. I don’t think it’s helpful to threadshit with a comment about penis sizes… If we assume that SIRE differences are not genetic, we have no reasonable way to include (relatively) mediocre-performing, high-opportunity black students who are still the best black student candidates for that school. And this is an important category because within all SIRE groups, SES correlates with academic success. If, on the other hand, we say “Well, these groups are inherently different in maximum potential but I still want all SIRE groups at the academic table,” then we can put blacks in a separate category within which they are evaluated against the rest of their SIRE group and not against the rest of their Opportunity group. In other words, I can accept a mediocre black student who is from a rich household with educated parents over a poor white candidate with better scores. This scenario above happens every day in admissions across the US, and this is what is being challenged in Fisher. Once we say genetics has nothing to do with performance (at a SIRE group level), we take away any moral obligation to be inclusive of black students who have had high opportunity but who underscore everyone else. Our moral obligation (in my world view) is to be as inclusive as possible, particularly with respect to SES opportunity. I don’t want a world where there is absolute meritocracy but where SIRE groups are so disproportionately represented that SES is layered according to SIRE group. We can tolerate this easily in the NBA. That’s a tiny total pool. But what if we had almost no black attorneys, or professors, or physicians? Now for those of you all offended by the idea that SIRE groups do not differ in genetically based potential, I offer a caution, and Fisher is the warning flag. When your egalitarian assertion is tested by offering equal opportunity it fails miserably. Let me say it again: black SIRE groups with high opportunity substantially underperform other SIRE groups with that same opportunity. In fact, they underperform other SIRE groups with less oportunity.. So if you assert that ONLY opportunity–and not nature–separates SIRE groups you are going to begin to lose these court battles over admission fairness in spades. You are going to see more and more challenges demanding more and more looks under the cover into admissions processes in schools, and more and more challenges that schools are using race-alone “unfairly” in their effort to keep a SIRE-diverse student body. You will be hoist on your own petard, and your hypothesis that we will all perform equally given equal opportunity will fail. By then it will be too late to suddenly decide that we are created differently. The second item I’d like to address is the MIT/etc scores chain above. It’s true that every high-performing school has no technical minimum SAT score. Some do not require SATs at all. SATs are only one of many filters. Every school wants flexibility to admit the genius that invented a brand new paradigm change but just doesn’t give a crap about formal education systems. They also want the flexibility to admit a student body that is SIRE-diverse. It is completely incorrect to say that Harvard takes the best candidates without consideration to race. What they do is assign race a value (a “proficiency,” in UTAustin-speak) so that they can end up with a SIRE-diverse body. And actually, the emphasis is quite literally on race alone; not SES. Even though race correlates with SES, for the reasons I’ve mentioned ad nauseum, lower SES status would still produce a disproportionate amount of white and asian candidates since at every level of opportunity, the same rank-order for SIRE groups exists,and the margins are wide. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/96 "2012-10-23T11:43:09Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > I also was curious about this. I believe that a quote tag was missing from the original post, and that is why it seemed screwy about who said what… ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/97 "2012-10-23T11:56:35Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > **Chief Pedant** responded, “exactly so”. That is clearly not true, even if you were just considering test scores. It doesn’t even pass the smell test. It’s so obviously false that it makes me question whether your ignorance on the matter is willful. That said, I hate to interrupt our SDMB bi-weekly “Black people are stupid” thread. Between my daily duties and worrying about the [looming human genetic crisis](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=542079), I rarely find time to participate in these entertaining threads. But like I said, don’t let the facts get in the way. For the sake of brevity, I did say, “exactly so” (to the general summary notion). And then I posted additional detail, along with a cite. This, from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education: _“Thus, if high-ranking colleges and universities were to abandon their policies of race-sensitive admissions, they will be choosing their first-year students from an applicant pool in which there will be practically no blacks.”_ (underlining for emphasis mine) And this, from the rest of my post: “Therefore, under a system of quantitatively tested “merit” alone, it’s correct to say that there are almost no–certainly not enough to go around–black students for the highly competetive universities.” Perhaps, instead of sniffing that I am not letting facts get in the way, you’d like to take time from your busy schedule and find such a fact. Do you have some sort of statistic that counters the numbers listed in the JBHE? I’m not making the case that there is not a single black candidate merit-worthy for a single high-performance institution. I am saying that the total pool is so small–especially if based on any standardized scores–that once those candidates are distributed across all schools competing for them, at any given school there are very few high performing black candidates. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/98 "2012-10-23T20:14:43Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Coupla things. > > First, to the genetics part of the equation. I think it is relevant, and I don’t mind it being brought up. I did put it as a core piece of the OP–in fact, in the title. I don’t think it’s helpful to threadshit with a comment about penis sizes… > > If we assume that SIRE differences are not genetic, we have no reasonable way to include (relatively) mediocre-performing, high-opportunity black students who are still the best black student candidates for that school. Then why did you say you had a problem with the topic? We can scroll up and see what you said. And again, WHY do we have no reasonable way to include the “mediocre-performing, high-opportunity black students”? I don’t see any problem with that at all. If I assume that they have been relatively permanently disadvantaged by, say, their environment when they were younger, I can still do the exact same thing. And actually have a chance of it succeeding since it will not be perceived as racist. The rest of what you said seemed to have nothing to do with my question, so I’ve omitted it. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2012, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219/99 "2012-10-23T20:39:16Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Then why did you say you had a problem with the topic? We can scroll up and see what you said. > > And again, WHY do we have no reasonable way to include the “mediocre-performing, high-opportunity black students”? I don’t see any problem with that at all. If I assume that they have been relatively permanently disadvantaged by, say, their environment when they were younger, I can still do the exact same thing. And actually have a chance of it succeeding since it will not be perceived as racist. > > The rest of what you said seemed to have nothing to do with my question, so I’ve omitted it. I’m not sure where I had a problem with the topic of genetics, but I can answer if you can show me. It is not typically the case that applicants have had a change in their opportunity level since birth. I won’t say it never happens, but it’s not typically the case. So if you use opportunity instead of race, at every level of opportunity, black candidates will be beaten out (on average) by other SIRE groups who have had the same (or lesser) opportunity but present better scores and/or other academic achievements. Note that this also happens with white students, who are beaten out by asian students, on average. There is some controversy over whether asian students are “taking the place” of white students or other underrepresented groups, but there isn’t a lot of hollering over a white student losing a position to an asian one, and when it happens, it is because of a clearly superior asian application, on average, with clearly superior scores. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scotus-should-preserve-race-based-aa-because-we-are-not-created-equal/638219.md?page=4)