# Why Do Liberals Support Affirmation Action? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 5, 2012, 10:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-support-affirmation-action/643058 "2012-12-05T10:13:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-support-affirmation-action/643058/201 "2012-12-13T15:36:48Z")
The article would be pretty good if it actually referenced the curious underlying assumptions. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-support-affirmation-action/643058/202 "2012-12-13T15:42:28Z")
All the references in the world wouldn’t fix the problem with his summary-that it is wrong to make any sacrifices at all to pay for our previous misdeeds. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-support-affirmation-action/643058/203 "2012-12-13T15:45:27Z")
**LonesomePolecat** , would you mind telling us what website you were on that lead you to that link? ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2012, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-support-affirmation-action/643058/204 "2012-12-22T21:34:33Z")
I know this thread is kind of on the old side, but I came across this [NY article](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/opinion/asians-too-smart-for-their-own-good.html?src=me&ref=general&_r=0) on another board. > [@](#): > > Asian-Americans constitute 5.6 percent of the nation’s population but 12 to 18 percent of the student body at Ivy League schools. But if judged on their merits — grades, test scores, academic honors and extracurricular activities — Asian-Americans are underrepresented at these schools. Consider that Asians make up anywhere from 40 to 70 percent of the student population at top public high schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science in New York City, Lowell in San Francisco and Thomas Jefferson in Alexandria, Va., where admissions are largely based on exams and grades. > > In a 2009 study of more than 9,000 students who applied to selective universities, the sociologists Thomas J. Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford found that **white students were three times more likely to be admitted than Asians with the same academic record**. So can someone remind me again why blacks are made out to be the only group who benefits from Affirmative Action? Looks like white folks are winning in that regard. ---
**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:** [December 23, 2012, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-support-affirmation-action/643058/205 "2012-12-23T22:20:20Z")
> [@Bremidon](#): > > Originally Posted by\*\* gatorslap \*\*: > _What’s wrong with affirmative action programs that don’t take race into account? For example, a university may give preferential treatment to applicants from low-income households, single-parent households, children of non-college-graduate parents, etc. What’s so bad about this approach?_ > Nothing. In fact, this is exactly the approach that I would suggest. Most of the people who support AA tend to cite the disadvantaged situation as the main reason these groups need help. So why insist on using a one-off criteria to get help to those who need it most? Look. I’ve presented this data elsewhere on this board many times. If you do not take race into account, you will not be able to get enough blacks represented in university and other situations (graduate degree programs; jobs, etc.). This is because blacks who have equivalent opportunity substantially underperform all other SIRE groups, esp whites and asians. Black students given equal opportunity (the same 4 year programs, e.g.) as whites and asians never catch up on (for example) law school or med school admission exams. They never catch up on medical licensing exams. They never catch up on medical specialty exams. And the same is true for all other STEM disciplines. Black children from wealthy families and educated parents underscore whites and asians from poor families and undereducated parents. Every educational institution has a system in place to account for (lack of) opportunity. But the problem is that, at every opportunity level, blacks substantially underperform other groups. It is simply not true that, given the same opportunity, blacks score equally well on any sort of quantitative evaluation. So only race-based AA will get blacks closer to proportionate representation. If you just used opportunity, then better-qualified poor whites and asians would overwhelmingly outnumber even well-advantaged blacks (much less equally disadvantaged blacks). We simply have to maintain race-based AA quotas if we want blacks to be represented anywhere near in proportion to their SIRE group numbers. ---
**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:** [December 23, 2012, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-support-affirmation-action/643058/206 "2012-12-23T22:39:52Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > So then why did you classify them as a separate race? > > Now please, since you do insist that people can be “biologically white” and “biologically black” explain what are the “biological” differences between this guy:[http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/\_/7852223/Giancarlo+Esposito+18452374.jpg](http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/7852223/Giancarlo+Esposito+18452374.jpg) > > and this guy: [http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/05/07/timestopics/manny190.jpg](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/05/07/timestopics/manny190.jpg)? > > If your claims that race is actually a useful biological classification and these two are of different “races” then this shouldn’t be a difficult question to answer, though you’ve repeatedly failed to answer it. > > Please do so this time. > > Similarly, please explain why you think that this person [http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2010-05/53587201.jpg](http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2010-05/53587201.jpg) > > and this person [http://static.wix.com/media/1c94c5\_857665be93294a85fe810819a959e26f.jpg](http://static.wix.com/media/1c94c5_857665be93294a85fe810819a959e26f.jpg) > > are of the same “biological” race. I have answered your questions about race many times. I am not confident you are able to grasp the answer. Human populations–even today–reflect ancestral populations that have been separated (and re-mixed) for about 200,000 years or so, since anatomically modern humans have been running around. Some of these populations have been separated from others for tens of thousands of years. Many populations left behind in Africa have only trivial genetic admixture from populations descended from “out of africa Eve,” for example. Today, we use Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity as a social construct to categorize populations. But because of the history of human evolution and migratory patterns, that SIRE-based grouping creates an average chance that a given individual will have access to a given geneset, and each SIRE group has a different chance of getting that geneset. This is why we can talk about “average” differences in testosterone among “black males” and “white males” even though “black” is not “biologically defineable” and even though Navin Johnson gets to call himself black. “Race” is a very crude biological category. Even though it’s biologically crude, it still produces average differences that are genetically driven (see, for example, incidence of HbS trait in US blacks versuse US whites). Another example might be the relative frequency of MCPH1 in sub-saharan versus non sub-saharan populations. If you self-categorize as “black,” you would be much less likely to have MCPH1 than if you were “white” or “asian,” and your chances would drop to nearly zero if you were “black” and in a San tribe in Africa; they would rise if you were a US black and had some admixture with out-of-africa ancestry, but the chance would not rise to what it would be if you were “white.” The MCPH1 gene arose only in populations that had already left Africa. I think the thing that confuses people about the “race” discussion from a biological standpoint is that they keep thinking of it as a conversation about individuals, and not a conversation about averages and statistical chances of having a particular gene. At some level, we want us to all be part of the same family, drawing from the same gene pools, but this is simply not the case. The extent to which “race” is a good way to categorize populations depends on how much of a lumper or a splitter you are. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-support-affirmation-action/643058.md?page=10)