Well, again this comes to root causes vs. kluge. If the conclusion is that our traditional metrics are not identifying competent students, then the metrics need to be fixed.
To be honest, I wouldn’t mind at all a race-blind system that was not simply focused on the top N candidates, but instead randomly chose otherwise less-qualified students. Not everyone is hyper-focused on grades and scores; as you say, there is a marginal return on raw intelligence after a certain point. A strategy which did not always pick the 1500 SAT student over the 1400 SAT student would necessarily be more racially inclusive without being racist itself. It would also capture more diversity even within, say, just the white male students.
This is essentially an admission that there are metrics that we don’t know how to measure, and that we should broaden the selection to at least have a chance of including students who slip through the traditional metrics. No argument at all. I just don’t see a need to bring race into it.
Sure. But the point I was making is that even without that–even if the students start out with no biases at all–then surely the existence of a group of less-competent minorities is an easy means of cultivating biases.
I’m missing something here. Why would women need AA? They already have higher admission and graduation rates than men. If anything, men need AA since they have worse academic credentials on average.
And yeah, of course a big component of racial AA is essentially guilt over our racist past.
You named a bunch of things which, while interesting, have little to do with the kind of diversity that AA provides. These are things which could improve if we could have, say, a native Afghani at the school. But AA is essentially for Americans. And for all the differences there are between a while male suburban kid vs. an inner-city black woman, they are both Americans and their cultural background overlaps considerably. There’s just not a whole lot brought to the table. A little bit, sure–but not a lot. This is what I meant when I said that the diversity you want doesn’t lie on that spectrum.
And frankly, the real problem in your examples is not lack of diversity but lack of sensitivity–or more accurately, recognition. You don’t need to be Ethiopian to recognize that if you’re designing a sewage system for the region, then you better not depend on a sophisticated computer control system. It is just a part of evaluating the local environment; something that must be done whether you’re a computer engineer or an architect or whatever. And these are fact-based questions as well; there’s no subjectivity in asking if someone with a hammer and handsaw can maintain your system, or if your machine won’t be used because the average woman isn’t strong enough for it but the males are unwilling to help for cultural reasons.
what am i–the Indian rolls bureaucrat? how should i know what you are asking?
a little googling (that i’m not sure why you couldn’t do yourself) would seem to indicate it’s the Dawes final rolls of the Choctaw nation. further googling listed various Tribal Benefits afforded to members. these include increased educational offsets and free healthcare (the two things i mentioned).
in my case, i have a fairly high percentage of native american in me (i’m dark complected/dark headed…my grandpa on my mother’s side was just a straight up Native American Man–of poorly documented heritage, hence my failure to secure my position on the rolls. my father’s side has not-far-removed full blooded native americans who, because of stigma, eschewed their heritage and so they as well are difficult to confirm in relation to Dawes).
meanwhile, i have two ex gfs who are both extremely Caucasian but still have lowest-possible fractional level of Indian Heritage that IS documented, so they both receive free healthcare. both are from upper-middle class families as well.
how that works, the bureaucracy or policy or governmental rulings behind it–i’m not a part of all that shit, i don’t know. the point i was making was that personally i can see both sides of racial preferential treatment. quote:
i can see the dumb luck of juuuuuuust barely having the right amount of well-documented heritage that enables you free healthcare based on race–given to people who could otherwise afford it on their own but hey–it’s free–so why not, while i have also seen on the flip side someone who’s grandpa was an indian guy from families that kept poor records, who grew up lower middle class, who will be paying off student loans for the rest of his life, who cannot afford healthcare, has not been able to go to the doctor in over ten years, who has ulcers that he cannot afford to treat and a cracked tooth he cannot afford to fix–who, by the principle of the Dawes Rolls, by race and in the spirit of purpose, SHOULD get help, yet does not.
the point i was trying to make is there are obvious flaws in racially preferential programs. i presume Dawes roll style “aa” junk isn’t at all actually AA as we voted on it, but the principles of racial preferences apply and support the point i was making.
*for the record i have been jerked around on sussing out my heritage and have been told wildly disparate things–“you know, you can track it down to the last known family member on the rolls and extrapolate forward and get yourself on them,” as well as “the rolls are not closed. if they didn’t keep records, that sucks–but it’s too late for you.” i am ignorant to what the reality is, and i’m a grown man at this point, so i dont know if it’s even worth looking into.
I’m honestly very surprised it took this long for Oklahoma to pass such a thing. I had no idea they still had affirmative action. OK is one of the most right-wing states in the union.
I asked you because you were the one who made the assertion and I wanted you to think about your claim.
In fact, according to the information that you have now bothered to look up, Affirmative Action has nothing to do with the Indian rolls and they will not be affected by the change to the Oklahoma constitution. The state of Oklahoma is not giving any preferential treatment to any person in the action that you describe. The Choctaw nation is extending benefits to its members. If you have an issue with the way that the Choctaw Nation maintains its membership rolls, then you need to pursue that matter with them. (Such challenges have, sometimes, jumped over to Federal courts, but I am not familiar with the specifics of such cases.)
What you appear to be missing is that it is not “racial” in any form. The Dawes roll was based on the membership in a group at a particular moment. No DNA test or shopping bag test was performed at the creation of the roll. It was a membership roll of people who were present at a particular place and time, regardless of their “racial” composition. Your appearance might have more to do with Creek or Cherokee or some other, not Choctaw, ancestry or it could be a fluke. Regardless, you and your girlfriends are not being judged on appearance or perceived “race,” but on documented evidence of membership. From that perspective, the only one who seems to be making “racial” judgments is you, based on your own perception of appearance, and that hardly has any bearing on AA, even as commentary.
Can you point to some good data for this?
It doesn’t seem to be true for medical or law school, for example, where the scores for black applicants are woefully behind other SIRE groups, the pass rates for the licensing exams are woefully worse, and (in the case of medicine) the pass rates for specialty certification exams are woefully worse again.
It doesn’t seem to be true according to several of the amicus briefs in Fisher v UTexas Austin where it’s argued that black and hispanic students cluster in weak classes and at the bottom of class rankings once they are put in an environment that includes all students (versus their home high school peer group).
It doesn’t seem to be true in any of the STEM fields, where PhDs awarded to black students are barely any more frequent than decades ago, and still woefully underrepresented.
If we literally use grades (and not quantitative scores), there may be some truth to the “similar grades” part of your statement because grades are so variable. I might get straight A’s at a weak institution and have competitive grades with a student from Harvard–but I would not necessarily be a student of equivalent potential when it comes time to sort me out for the PhD programs.
But otherwise, I think your statement is a baseless assertion and I’d like to see some data for it. If it were true, then we should see equivalent success for all SIRE groups once you get to a college level, and we don’t see that at all. In the business world, we do see some job parity, but of course the business world aggressively recruits and promotes minority candidates, so one can’t argue that success in getting a job reflects an equal potential to do the job.
It’s not a matter not being able to identify competent students. Elite schools do not have enough spots for every competent student. The question is not a matter of competence seeing as 99.9% of the people they admit are competent. They are essentially picking nits.
Fair enough, but nobody would ever agree to such a system for a variety of reasons.
The quantitative metrics used by schools are used as a proxy for things they cannot measure. More and more study has questioned the reliability of testing to measure talent and knowledge. In fact, the use of such metrics only arose as a means of attempting to mitigate other biases that shut out many minorities (eg. Jews) back in the day. Tests were not meant to be used as, nor are they understood by schools to be, a perfect measure of a student’s “merit”. It’s only the public, with their over emphasis on such metrics, who thinks that scholastic excellence entitles them to spots at elite universities. As if a superlative academic resume means you have to be accepted. Does anyone think having the best academic resume entitles you to a job, or that having that being good looking and successful entitles you to the best mate? Of course not. Schools are often making decisions in a similar way.
They bring race into it because race influences the other metrics they look at in the vast majority of cases. They are also interested in diversity in all aspects for which race is often a useful (if crude) proxy. I just don’t see how discriminating based on race, for the purposes of creating a more diverse and capable class, is any worse than doing it based on geography, parental income, musical ability, speaking ability, ability to interview well, or ability to excel on a standardized test.
And what world do you live in where children make if to college age fresh as the driven snow, free of all biases? Let’s get real here. More importantly, I don’t care about the perceptions of people who cannot come to such irrational conclusions.
Now, my question is, given this fact, why don’t most people look at woman doctors, lawyers and scientists with the same skepticism and assumption of inferiority than they do minorities in those positions? Is it because there is still a large group of people who on some level feel racism has more “validity” than sexism? If that is the argument, than make it. But don’t deny the reality that if you think admissions biases create animus against those being deferred to, then women should be (more) subject to that as well.
That is the case NOW, BECAUSE OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION. Affirmative action is not just giving a minority student a few extra points when admitting kids to universities. AA is outreach programs, internships, mentoring programs, etc. It’s asking for “binder of women” when you see they aren’t applying to certain jobs.
Also, men are now often the beneficiaries of AA in a strict sense. So the issue is not just how to we get more minrities, it’s how to we get a competent, diverse class. If that means deferring to Blacks one minute, people from Georgia another minute, or men who play the flute the next, schools will do it. Just to focus on minorities just shows that most people approach the issue with unclean hands in the form of existing racial animus. Note that nobody sues because MIT doesn’t accepts a disproportionately small number of students from certain cities, or because they accept too few women, or because they accept too few Mormons. It’s only when someone feels entitled to something they feel was taken away by someone inferior (eg. brown people) do they decide to sue. If this is not selective and misdirected outrage, I don’t know what is.
In it’s inception, it certainly was. I think arguing that is the basis for it’s continuation is facile at best.
CA did not get rid of affirmative action. They banned “using race, ethnicity and gender in admitting students to public colleges and universities”. AFAICT, they still utilize AA in most other senses. See here.
i never, not once, said the dawes rolls had anything to do with AA. i, in fact, explained they specifically didn’t–as i explained several times now i was only using them as an example for a plot point you either are incapable of understanding or just flat out refuse to acknowledge–the point being it is preferential benefits for an ethnic group. either way, you are making a tiff over an extremely minor point that you are patently ignoring in order to create an artificial argument. no one, not once, ever said AA had anything to do with Indian Benefits.
NOT ONCE.
what i was talking about was social benefits based on race or heritage, which is a fundamental of AA AS WELL AS Tribal Benefits of many kinds, dawes laws and others. different programs, similar attributes, cogent point. stop nitpicking this issue now, please-my point is valid, yours is not–youre arguing 1. something no one said, and 2. something you are dead wrong about (it not being “racial.”) what you are nitpicking isn’t just wrong–it also doesn’t change the complexion of my point whatsoever.
huh. so AA requires DNA testing? when did that start?
me–and my girlfriends–are being judged on racial heritage that was based on genealogy. opting in to the rolls required some book-keeping documentation that you were native american (of a particular blood quantity) and being of that quantity of ethnic build up entitles you to some pretty rad-ass benefits.
the part where you say “it is not racial” is just bullshit and flat out wrong. the Blood Quantum Laws were used in determining ethnic heritage. that is race. you couldn’t just be some irish goon and sign up for the dawes rolls. you had to be in some way arguably (documented) indian blood and of a specific quantity.
and no–it’s not just “Choctaw.” Dawes is just a single entity of many, many tribal benefits (government benefits for indians of all tribes). the office of indian affairs has many programs that extend benefits to native americans of all tribes, and then other tribes have other programs themselves–ALL CONTINGENT ON YOU BEING OF INDIAN BLOOD. IHS for healthcare, various housing programs, educational programs, etc etc. these all exist and are all granting preferential treatment in various forms to people of a particular ethnic group.
i’m not saying it’s wrong, i’m saying it’s preferential and racially based. i’m not saying AA has anything to do with it, and you flat made up the part where i said AA laws would affect it. i just brought it up to explain i have personal history with racial benefits both being denied and being taken advantage of.
I would ask you what your problem is, but I guess it would be a waste of time.
You have objected to Affirmative Action on grounds that can be argued. Fair enough.
In your second post, you made a point of talking about what you perceived as racial discrimination based on the difference in appearance of you and people you have known, but also noted that the apparent discrimination was based on rolls of Indian tribes.
I asked a couple of questions about the rolls to which you referred.
You responded, (with rather more asperity than was necessary for a simple question), that they were tribal rolls and provided enough information to demonstrate that they were not really an example of Affirmative Action. At the end of that post, you admitted that they were not really AA, but you still felt poorly used.
I pointed out that you had clearly demonstrated that they were not examples of AA and that the new law would not affect them, anyway.
You are now going off on a temper tantrum objecting to my agreeing with you that you were not really talking about AA, but you still want to be mad about the tribal rolls and you want to be mad at me for agreeing with you that you are not talking about AA.
Since you are not interested in actually paying attention to your own information, I will leave you to it with one final note that I am sure you will ignore:
The situation to which you refer regarding the various tribal rolls was not based on being “an (ethnic) Indian.” They were based on being a member of a particular Indian nation that had specific treaties with the United States that were abrogated by the United States. Various remedies for those abrogated treaties have been adjudicated or negotiated in the last half of the twentieth century. The whole point of the rolls was not to identify one’s ethnic or perceived “racial” heritage, but to identify that one was a descendant of the recognized members of the tribe or nation that was in dispute of the various abrogated treaties. It is quite possible to demonstrate with DNA, blood tests, and a scrupulously recorded genealogy that 100% of one’s ancestors have been descended from people living on North America prior to 1492 and yet be ineligible for the benefits that you have described if one’s ancestors are not members of any Indian nation that had treaties with the United States. If you are 100% Penobscot or Ojibway or Chinook, you are not eligible for any benefits established for the Choctaw nation because your ancestors were not part of the tribal nation of Choctaws that entered into treaties with the United States. Thus, (for better or worse), the beneficiaries of these various treaties and court decisions are determined by having been recorded as part of the various nations, (not “races”), that were affected by treaties. You also invoked the spectre of the Blood Quantum Laws, and I would agree that they attempt to address ethnicity, (not really “race”). However, as you should be aware, those laws are used differently and applied differently by any number of tribal nations and even they are subject to flawed logic as any number of persons recognized on the Dawes Rolls, (1898 - 1906), probably had “white” ancestry from the late 18th century when those ancestors were adopted into the tribes.
The BIA has a few (paltry) programs for people who are more generally recognized as “Indian,” but that is based on the treatment of the collective Indian nations by the United States. As you noted, (when misinterpreting one of my comments), AA is not based on DNA. Neither are BIA administered benefits. One still needs to demonstrate that one’s ancsestors were part of a particular Indian nation in order to apply for such benefits.
my objection to AA is that i feel a continuous focus on race in any admission or hiring process or benefit portioning all reinforce racial issues and encourages racial stereotyping. my objection, and reason for voting for it, was based on the language on the ballot about no longer granting people preferential treatment based solely on race. it seemed like the progressive way to go.
you jumped to the conclusion of “racial discrimination.” i never said that. i never said i was or even felt discriminated against. what i said was it forces arbitrary distinctions that, based on arbitrary elements, can yield benefit or lack there of, which doesn’t seem fair or progressive to me at all.
i didn’t say i was judged (nor should be) on my looks. you jumped to a conclusion there.
what i was saying (both 2 and 3) is that i can see arbitrarily applied racial preferential treatment (note: that word is not “discrimination”).
i never said nor implied how i look vs how they look should be enough to grant either of us benefits based on race. i merely pointed out that i actually am a great percentage of indian, to a degree i even look it, yet i cannot qualify for benefits based on arbitrary laws (something i liked to the arbitrary aspect i see in AA as well) . they are such a low blood % they don’t at all look it, yet get the benefits, all based on an arbitrary factor of bookkeeping and documentation.
my point, as i said many times now, was that i voted against AA because i see it as both an arbitrary crutch and an arbitrary hindrance. what *that *means, is that i think it’s not a very clearly applicable law to making anything at all fair anymore.
altho i said “rolls,” there are many, many AA style–if not AA itself–laws and programs around here that give preference and benefits to people of Indian heritage. my one example was from a specific instance referring to the rolls, which is applicable to the point–because the point was racial preference is an antiquated and poorly executed system, be it from AA, Dawes laws, tribal benefits or whatever else.
4. the asperity is because your questions (and nitpick) bring literally nothing to the conversation. you presumed my intention and, according to what you just said, presumed an attitude then replied based on theses wrong conclusions.
which, i think, was a pointless thing to do, because like i said–what does that bring to the conversation?
if the convo was about AA–and i point out that i think racial preferential benefits have arbitrary and unevenly applied outcomes–then give anecdotal experience as to the kind of things that caused my opinion–how does it move the conversation forward to nitpick “your example was only the same in every principle but not *legally *exactly the same!” ??
i can’t find a reason for you to do that, other than to be contrary. so you’re met with what you started with. you are not discussing the concept i pointed out in the OP–that laws which encourage racial profiling are probably, at this point, kind of antiquated. then i pointed out what i think are more viable solutions.
you didn’t want to discuss that–the meat of the point, the whole concept at hand. you wanted to nitpick that the racial benefit law in my anecdote–and anecdote i prefaced with " i see arbitrary results from these kinds of things," wasn’t PER SE AA.
to which i agree.
to which you then replied again, claiming i “made the assertion they were related to AA,” which is bullshit; i never did, nor meant to. you jumped to that conclusion. point out where i said that. (you can’t).
now point out where, in my 3rd reply, i explained what my point was (you can. i did).
all i can say is you seem like you just wanted to be argumentative for the sake of it. what you brought up didn’t move the conversation in any manner. you’re quicksand. pointless quicksand.
to your last segment, you have no idea what you are talking about. it is about percentage of blood-heritage.
about dawes laws (separatefrom the above)
nice tid-bit:
and just so you can’t nitpick what a blood certificate is,
and finally, just so you can’t nitpick “native american’s aren’t a race, but maybe an ethnicity…”
according to the US Census:
so, for the five-millionth time–it’s an issue of racial preferential treatment. you have to have a specific blood level to be recognized as native american.
from the BIA site:
according the AAIA website, to recieve tribal benefits, you need a blood certificate.
however–
i am at a loss as to what you are arguing at this point.
yes, membership to many tribes IS based on blood percentile.
yes, tribal benefits ARE based on your indian blood.
yes, having indian blood DOES attribute to being American Indian.
yes, being American Indian IS a race.
yes, being of that race DOES grant you benefits.
yes, being of that race but of poorly documented genealogy DOES exclude you from benefits, regardless of your actual race.
yes, this IS similar to AA.
yes, the complexities cause it to be rather arbitrary in both directions.
from Briefings and Cases on Tribal Heritage (of the Cherokee Nation ((the tribe both gfs got free healthcare from)):
to be clear: BIA benefits require both tribal membership AND blood certification. to that end, i cannot go take a blood test to gain benefits. i can take a DNA test to confirm my indian race. i cannot use that information for entitlement to to benefits, as it doesn’t associate me to any particular tribe, only race.
to be further clear–Cherokee want you to be BLOOD to receive tribal benefits and fought it court. conclusion:
the fact you made an issue of this just further proves your sole point was to be contrary.
I asked a question based on your words that you now want to pretend say something different than the text that actually exists in post number 4.
You misread my actual question and jumped to your own conclusions, then wanted to get mad about what I had not said.
It is no big deal. I will point out that the following are directly contradicted by post 4:
You might want to look up the meaning of the verb “to discriminate” which is an action that needs to occur in order to give preferential treatment.
So, they get benefits because they have documentation of membership in an Indian nation and you fail to get the same benefits despite appearing to be “more” Indian. That is what you said and what I said.
That is fine. Perhaps your should have stuck to arguing that point instead of injecting the hijack about benefits accruing to members of Indian nations.
If there are many preferences given based on ethnic ifdentity, then you would have been better to cite those rather than your misleading example of triabl membership.
It is not a nitpick to point out a serious error in an example that is put forth to justify a position.
This is the Straight Dope. We prefer factual accuracy. (And you could have dropped this hijack by simply moving on to a better example several points ago.)
Because it was the ONLY example you provided, thus making it appear that you might not actually have a legitimate point.
Actually, it is not. A number of tribal nations have attempted to make the “percentage” of ethnic “blood” a criterion, (although the percentage varies widely from one five parts in eight down to one part in tirty-two, depending on the tribal nation concerned), however, the “blood” counted is not simply pre-Columbian North American ancestry, but membership in the specific tribe in question. And, given that the point from which the membership “blood” is reckoned begins anywhere from 1898 to 1934, there were over 300 years of westward European expansion to have clouded the results with mixtures of European and African “blood.”
Are you even reading the texts you are quoting?
So you are re-affirming my point that the government programs for Indians are based on membership in a tribal nation, (That would be a “federally recognized Indian tribe”) not on some actual determination of “racial” composition.
The “racial” categories that the U.S. Census employs are social categories that are based on perceptions of appearance and the ways in which people with those appearances are treated in society. The whole question of perceived biological “race” is a separate discussion.
No. You have to have a certain amount of blood tracing back to membership in a particular tribe–and if your ancesters from prior to the various censuses had happened to have been Europeans or Aficans who were adopted or married into the tribe before the censuses, then you got in regardless of any actual Indian “blood.”
(You might want to go re-read the Cherokee membership rues you quoted that indicate that a non-Cherokee who had married into the tribe at the time of the census or subsequently would be denied membership. It does not provide any way to determine the actual percentage of Cherokee “blood” from the generations prior to the census.)
why are you so desperate to claw to some weird victory here? you care waaay too much about being right about this, for whatever reason. it’s really weird and i’m starting to feel embarrassed for enabling you…
i don’t even know what else to do with you…at this point if i said the moon was in the sky you’d try to find a way to argue it. if i showed you the moon you’d try to convince me that technically it’s not because (of some crazy thing you would insist).
there are the quotes. from the documents and the legislation, and the tribes and the way it fucking works in THIS real reality. read them with your eyes and argue with your pupils, because dude. that’s what it says. sorry you can’t accept it.
you haven’t provided any quotes or cites to the contrary, just your own dismissal of reality in favor of winning at all costs. you’re Karl Rove.
so i mean. good luck with that, i guess.
…but there’s the actual reality. in the quotes. in their documents. in their words. with their rules. …about bloodlines. you’re to the point you are arguing “races” as defined by the fucking census doesn’t mean “race” because apparently you have fucking *veto on what words mean * so you can be argue champion of planet you. dude. it’s a race. of people. …what the crap.
I’m not. I just care about things being presented factually. That is what “Straight Dope” means: facts.
You don’t have to “do” anything with me. Although, if you actually take the time to understand your errors, it will probably be to your advantage.
I have done nothing more than point out the errors in your misunderstandings regarding the ways in which tribal nations provide services to their members and the ways in which they determine membership in those tribal nations. I have provided no external citations because the actual facts are in the citations to which you have alluded (and have misunderstood).
Yep. The rules that they set forth to identify the members of the various separate Indian nations that govern the disbursement of benefits that those nations administer. (I am not sure why you keep dodging that issue other than the fact that the reality cuts the heart out of your complaint. I am not sure that the selection process used was the correct one, but it remains true that a selection process was set up to identify tribal membership and that membership, not perceived “race” or ethnicity or any other biological reality outside the membership rolls, is the basis upon which benefits are distributed to individuals.)
Are you actually aware of the several different meanings of the word “race” and how they are separately used in discourse in the early 21st century? By your statements, I would guess not, but by your attitude it would appear that you are not interested in learning those separate meanings, either. I have no veto power on the meanings of words, but I have taken the time to actually understand the multiple meanings that many words have. You have both complained that people are granted special benefits based on “race” and complained that various people are included or excluded from benefits based on membership when the benefits should be based on race.** You appear to be conflicted on the topic. You are also the one who explicitly dragged in the topic of benefits accruing to tribal membership in a discussion you started on Affirmative Action, despite the first being a matter of legal membership and the other being a matter of perceived social class.
And your own citations show the BIA using membership in a tribal nation (regardless of perceived “race” or other biological markers) to determine who will benefit from various programs.
Thank you. I appreciate you extending public recognition of that fact.
i contacted a tribal member friend and discussed this today.
while he confirmed what i was saying, he also confirmed what you are saying–in a way that neither you nor me really expressed. he said percent blood as pertaining to blood quantum or whatever were governmental mandates and that his people, as a whole, do not consider that indication of race. he said they have a lot of issues about tribal membership and law, as too many people (like my exes) abuse the loophole of being on the rolls yet not actually a true indian. he also said he hates the preferential stuff,esp pertaining to hiring process, because he personally has a lot of unqualified indian friends who get jobs they totally shouldn’t have.
he emphasized the aspect of cultural oneness and preservation of culture. in short, he said being indian was something more than tribal rolls, membership or blood. it was about actually wanting to BE indian in the cultural sense.
there seems to be a lot of semantics about what’s what with these things, and i admit it’s a little more complex than the straight terminology alone, which made me misunderstand a great portion.
at any rate–this conversation is freaking murdered at this point, and that’s fine, as the point of why i started it dissolved days ago.
so at this point, i am saying maybe i didn’t understand it all, and i was out of line for being a dick, regardless of right or wrong.
If the college thing were about actual diversity, they would test people on their opinions and not their race. All arguments for diversity talk about being exposed to new ideas. So why the heck aren’t they testing for those ideas instead of using skin color as a proxy?
Basic affirmative action, where a minority wins a tie with a non-majority person makes some sense from a reparations standpoint. But what most people mean by affirmative action is not this. They are referring to quota systems, where X number of people of a certain race are included under the excuse of diversity. And, as I pointed out, that excuse is bogus. If diversity is what you want, test for diversity. Don’t test for skin color–test for culture.
I hate to say it, but Chief Pedant is right that we just feel good creating the appearance of diversity. And I’m not certain it’s not because we do actually think as he does, that black people are inherently inferior in intelligence, so we take pity on them.
I mean, if we really thought it was environmental, why in the world do we focus on affirmative action rather than programs to help black people to reach parity? It’s clear to me that it’s environmental, as the only other choice is genetic, and that doesn’t work because black people don’t actually have the same genes in common, but it’s not clear to me that most people actually think it’s environmental, based on their actions.
And by programs to help reach parity, I’m talking programs while they are children to make up for the environment that is lowering their scores. What I hear about is really bad schools in the areas where there are a lot of black people. Why the hell aren’t we using money to improve those schools? Why do we focus on normalizing scores between races rather than actually trying to make them equal?
The quota system of AA is doing the exact opposite of what we need to be doing. It rewards those who aren’t up to snuff, thus decreasing the motivation of people who qualify for AA to improve themselves. (And don’t kid yourself–a quota system is what all these diversity systems are, even if they try to obfuscate it. They want X number of of people of a certain race–they just have to be creative on how to get that number without going afoul of the law). Quota-based AA only makes sense if you think there are inherent differences in the races and thus that’s the only way you can make up for it. It makes sense as a stop gap while we are working on everything else, but not a permanent solution.
Another reason I know there aren’t inherent intelligence difference in the races is that intelligence is not solely genetic in origin. My parents and I have the same genes. Yet I’m much smarter than they are (as is my sister). We had a better education than they did. There may be some genetic basis for intelligence, but it is still so malleable that any actual measurable difference are more likely environmentally based.
I know I may sound like I’m all over the place, but I’m not. I think people still need to be convinced that intelligence is not innate, and that black people (along with other minorities) aren’t permanently disadvantaged. Quota-based AA needs some sort of inherent disadvantage to be justifiable.