Why Do Liberals Support Affirmative Action?

Great Debates
61

Actually, the claim that there is “persistent and often institutional racism in society” has been suggested a whole lot, but there is no proof for it that’s been given. None. Suggesting something without actually proving it is a tactic that wouldn’t fly in most other GD threads where ideology wasn’t the guiding factor.

It depends if ‘different background and set of experiences’ means what it says, or is code for ‘different race/ethnicity/gender/nationality’. Are we talking, simply, about characteristics, whereby a black man and a white man and an Asian woman all could have lived in an inner city? Or are we saying that if someone is Hispanic, they must thus have a different background and set of experiences?

That is, is it really experience based, or is race treated as a stand in for experience?

Well, as the fallacies of composition and division would get in the way of race or gender reflecting significant diversity of experiences, I think we can put that canard to bed, yes? As for the belief that diversity helps an organization, (whatever, exactly, diversity is used to mean), then I suppose that the motive isn’t rancid. But, again, assuming we’re talking about race and not experiences, that then justifies behavior at the opposite end of the spectrum; if it’s legitimate to select employees based on race, it’s legitimate to decide that you want a non-diverse organization instead of a diverse one.

Well, belief is all well and good, but this is GD not IMHO, right? When we’re talking about something so sweeping as employment and education policies that effect tens if not hundreds of millions, shouldn’t we base our decisions on something more than ideology and feelings?

I mean, absent any hard numbers, how do we know, other than by taking it on faith? I mean, we’ve had AA for how many decades now? Are we still losing jobs to India and China? Is the American high-tech sector not growing at a competitive rate? What problems, exactly, are we expecting to see solved? And if, after decades of a program going on, we haven’t seen appreciable results… what then?

And even things that have been done like pointing to there being more women, for instance, in a certain fields do not tell us if AA is working or not, even in that limited context. What if women, on their own, decided that they wanted a different type of career in the wake of the Sexual Revolution? What if more started applying to and doing well in MBA, engineering, civil planning programs? What if they weren’t helped by AA so much as their own hard work? What if some were helped by AA, and some were helped by their own labors? Do we know who is who?

And if for instance, a certain percentage of AA hires come at the expense of marginally more qualified individuals (or as the cases of Texas and California have shown, dramatically more talented individuals), how does it help those individuals to be passed over? Whether or not it benefits society as a whole is, as you admit, something to be taken on faith. But whether or not it harms someone not to get into a good college or to get a good job is easily quantifiable. How much disadvantage for some, through no fault of their own, is too much? If an Asian man misses out on attending Berkeley, and doesn’t make contacts he’d need later in life, and ends up getting a job that’s below his skill level, what then? How much hardship is enough? What if he makes 5K less than he would have otherwise? 10? 30? What if he has to put off having a family and children for an extra five years so that he can save money? What if it’s ten years? What if he can never afford to have children and give them a decent life?

If programs like AA do harm sometimes, and they do, we’ve seen that they tend to keep Asians out of the best schools for higher education at a disproportionate rate… then don’t we at least need to show that it’s doing a hell of a lot of good, and not just take it on faith?

62

Well, provide some stats to prove your case. Two pages in this discussion, and those who are incredulous at the idea that whites have benefited the most from AA (an assertion that makes common sense if you just look at the groups who are targeted by AA and then look at their numbers in the population), haven’t provided anything to support why blacks are deserving of all the attention.

No I don’t agree with that, since my very argument is that white women have benefited the most from AA. Since the last time I checked, white women are members of the white race and comprise about half of that population, I don’t see how you can reach the conclusion that whites are hurt by AA. They’ve been helped a lot by the program and they continue to be helped by it.

63

It may not be necessary, let’s first make sure I understand your claim.

Are you saying that each race in the U.S. has received a net average benefit from affirmative action? Yes or no, please.

64

Don’t know about “each” race. But specifically the white race? Yes, I’d say that as a group they have benefited from AA. As have blacks and Latinos.

65

It can’t be overstressed that, by this point, the debate now includes a claim of ‘races’, a concept which has been shown to have zero actual scientific validity, which is then used to claim if if a certain (unknown) percentage of 51% of the fallacious “white race” benefits, then we don’t have to speak about the actual percentage of white women but, instead “the white race” as a whole.

Everybody would call out such a position if it was “a certain percentage of Arabs are terrorists, therefore, Arabs are terrorists.”
Why, then, the difference when it comes to race in America? Are American blacks and whites and Hispanics, etc… any more fungible than any other loose grouping? If “some Arabs are terrorists therefore Arabs are terrorists.” is a bigoted fallacy, why is “some but not all white women benefit from AA, therefore The White Race benefits?” cool?

Are we going to work with one standard to say that prejudice, bigotry, racism and sexism are wrong, or two standards and say they’re only wrong when they don’t serve our agendas?

At the point where you’re dealing with things that don’t actually exist as anything other than a linguistic fiction, and taking a small subset of that population to claim that a generalization applies to the entire fallacious group? You can count on the fact that you’re arranging fiction to suit a personal narrative.

66

And what about Asians? The exact same argument you made about whites applies to Asians, no?

67

Feel free to enlighten me because I don’t. Right now, my focus has been on whites because they are the majority group. Asians may be hurt in some areas when it comes to AA (like college admissions), but they are helped in other areas (like where they are currently underrepresented, such as in government work).

68

The argument you made about whites applies to Asians too.

Your argument is as follows:

(1) Affirmative action benefits women as a group.

(2) The group known as whites is approximately half female.

(3) Therefore whites as a group are better off on average because of affirmative action.

The exact same argument applies to Asians.

Therefore, according to your logic, each major racial group in the United States is better off because of affirmative action.

So, according to your logic, affirmative action has conferred a net average benefit to everyone in the United States. This is mathematically absurd, of course. But there it is.

69

I said AA helps Asians (and whites), if only for the fact that half these groups are women.

You insist on framing things in terms of net benefit, which is a quantity that I don’t know with respect to Asians. As I pointed out, they may be in disadvantaged in certain areas. But they may be helped in others. You’ll need to provide some stats to support that they suffer overall as a result of AA.

AA is not a zero sum game, where one group has to always lose and one group has to always gain. If you think otherwise, again, it’s time to put up some cites.

70

Here we go again.

Abstract 1

Abstract 2

And especially, Abstract 3.

This part also deserves quotation:

As with any study, all of these have limitations, both with respect to methodology and data. But to continue to claim that these policies are pursued on faith and without any real data is misinformed, to say the least. The literature is huge and methodologically rich.

71

I don’t understand your position. Does affirmative action confer a net average benefit to whites or not? I understand that it helps some whites. Nobody disputes that. My question is about the net average.

I don’t see how it could be otherwise. If people from group X are given a preference with respect to some scarce resource that’s being handed out, it necessarily means that people outside group X will receive less of that same resource on average than they otherwise would have.

A preference in favor of Group X in hiring; or university admissions; or whatever; is necessarily a preference against people from outside Group X.

If a major university or employer announced that it intended to start discriminating in favor of whites, would non-whites have reason to complain?

72

Yes you keep talking about net averages. You’ve mentioned it several times. And I’ve told you, several times, that I am only speaking in terms of benefit, period. If you want to make a case that whites and asians suffer a net loss, then make that case already. The longer you go without making that case, then the more likely I will concude that you can’t.

Because “group X” is not the same group in every situation where AA applies. On one day, “Group X” might be a white woman looking for work in an IT department. On another day, “group X” might be a black man being recruited by a prestigious law firm. The next week, “group X” might be a Latino female applying to Cornell veterinary school. The next month, “group X” might be an Asian male trying to land a senior executive position at the FDA.

And just as “group X” can change from situation to situation, so can the groups that don’t benefit.

Sure. Whites have reason to complain when they are discriminated against, too. They can even sue and file EEO complaints. You know this, right?

73

I have no idea what you mean by that. I asked an extremely simple yes or no question.

I already did, for whites anyway.

Lol. The longer you evade my question, the more likely I will conclude it’s because you know I’m right but don’t want to admit it.

Logically, that shouldn’t matter because one could add up all the benefits and detriments of affirmative action and get a net result for each group. If one instance of affirmative action is a zero sum game, it follows that 1000 instances of affirmative action are a zero sum game.

Of course. Because discrimination in favor of one group is necessarily discrimination against people outside that group.

74

>Said another way - if there were no such thing as race, no doubt the people who have been put at a disadvantage…

>There is no thing as race.

Well, this has already been chanted several times. And yet even the people chanting it then go on to refer to race again.

Is this some kind of word game? Redefining race to be something other than what most of us mean, and then proving that that isn’t real?

Look, when they find a skeleton in the woods, they can usually figure out what race it is, as well as the age and gender and a few other things. I mean, they can usually figure out whether the ancestors of the skeleton mostly came from Europe or Asia or Africa or the Americas.

Some diseases and conditions, like Tay-Sachs or lactose intolerance or sickle cell anemia, have a very uneven profile of susceptability in different races.

And taxicab drivers have some basis on which to decide whom they aren’t going to stop for, if they are going to exercise some bigotry - I’ve seen a long video showing a black man and a white man both trying to hail cabs, and the white man usually gets the cab, and the black man usually doesn’t.

Whatever it is that serves as the distinguishing parameter in all these examples, I think is what people here probably mean when they use the word “race”. But if you want to reserve the word “race” for something else, well, at least give us some other word to use to refer to these very real things!

75

You haven’t put forth any cites. You have yet to mention any figures. All you’ve done is essentially state “what I say is true, because how can it not be true?”

This is not how debates work. Just sayin’.

76

Nonsense, I presented a logical argument which you have been unable to rebut.

Indeed, you refuse to give a clear answer to my question which goes to the essence of the issue. Instead, you repeatedly evade and obfuscate.

77

My question is, to what extent is AA currently practiced in the US? All I’m aware of is that some colleges assign a few extra points to minority group members in situations where there are more applicants than slots.

I’m inclined to oppose race-based preferences, but that leaves me a little bit underwhelmed.

78

Your “logical argument” is based on a premise that you have yet to support. Try again.

79

Again, that’s nonsense. Besides, you haven’t really disputed my position. You’ve just obfuscated and evaded.

80

Eloquent, but erroneous.

One point in particular (since others have covered alternative points): that conservatives supposedly champion equality of opportunity. On some level, it seems like it might be true, for example in advocating that college admissions should totally ignore race. A even playing field, no? But this totally ignores the fact, for example, a black student is more likely to have been educated in a poorer school district that is strapped for resources, has had trouble recruiting qualified teachers, and has never had comparable access to the best educational resources (up-to-date books, modern computers, well-stocked and maintained libraries, facilities in good repair, etc.) available to your average predominantly white school districts. It also ignores the culture of repression and discouragement–not to mention outright suspicion and hostility from police and authority in general, not to mention affluent whites–that blacks have to face daily, as a legacy of slavery and latency racism.

With this broader awareness of reality in mind, it is arguable that the conservative position of ignoring race in school admissions is not an argument for “equality of opportunity,” but a retention of the status quo which continues to keep minorities (especially blacks) away from opportunities more readily available to whites.