Why Do Liberals Support Affirmative Action?

Great Debates
141

Oh, now it’s the colloquial definition (lol). What a pathetic attempt to move the goal posts. Even under your “colloquial” definition, college admissions are not a zero-sum game. In the real world, a gain for one side DOES NOT NECESSARILY mean a loss for the other side. Letting one person in does not mean someone else, by the very nature of the first decision, does not get in. The number of slots is not fixed, nor is one person admittance based on another’s denial, The main reason people don’t get in to school like Harvard is not because they are not good enough, not because person X “took their spot”. Let’s say for some reason, only 1000 people apply to Harvard next year. If they are all qualified, they will all get in. If none are qualified, none of them will get in. In a true zero-sum game, there would be winners and losers based on the nature of the situation.

What? In what real world scenario do ones actions not affect someone else in one way or another? Please give me some examples of how one can gain without “harming” someone else. By your definition, “harm” is merely being without the object that another person has gained. By your logic, my buying a car at the dealership is a zero-sum game because someone else can’t have that same exact car. If I buy a basket of apples, am I necessitating someone else losing out on the apples I’ve picked? Obviously, there are not an infinite amount of apples, and I took that one guys apples, the he has been “harmed” by your logic. Is this situation a zero-sum game? Regardless, how does reducing the definition (after the fact) of the term we are arguing about to what you have make any sense? It has lost all its descriptive value.

142

In the U.S., slavery was followed by a tripartite system of domination by a white power group. White domination was accomplished by the economic oppression, political disenfranchisement, and segregation of blacks because of their race. Racism is more than discrimination. It is the belief in racial superiority and inferiority. Racism is the hatred of a racial group.

Affirmative action is not motivated to dominate or oppress a racial group. I don’t think it can even be classified as discrimination because it is not excluding a person because of negative, preconceived beliefs or attitudes.

143

I really hope that you do not follow this up with claim that only a dominant group can be racists.

I would posit that your definition, here, is too narrowly constructed. (I see no reason, for example, to include hatred as a necessary condition of racism.) One aspect of racism is certainly a belief that a perceived racial group is superior to or inferior to another perceived racial group. However, I would hold that an action that promotes the well-being of (or places a burden on) one perceived racial group over others is also a “racist” action.

144

I think that it is racist to arbitrarily attribute motives, qualities and characteristics to a person because of the “racial” group that she or he appears to fit into. And its sexist to do the same thing with gender.

That is not affirmative action. What he is doing is prohibited by Equal Employment Opportunity legislation.

You are absolutely correct. This is a brief explanation of the applicable EEO law from one of your links:

" Equal employment opportunity (EEO) is best described as a policy of simple nondiscrimination, in compliance with legislation prohibiting all forms of intentional discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, or national origin. It specifically outlaws discrimination in employment in all public and private sector organizations with 15 or more employees, as well as labor organizations and employment agencies."
“Thus, affirmative action and EEO policies both strive to maintain justice. Classical affirmative action, however, involves effort. In contrast, equal employment opportunity policies are passive.” (Underlining added for emphasis.)

It’s not just a matter of being PC, Monstro. (Did you mean PI?) How would you feel if this were a white man who said that he recognizes that white teachers and black teachers have different styles and ways of reaching students and that it has become taboo (politically incorrect) to speak of such things?

I’ve spent the last 37 years working against that very bigotry and prejudice against women. I’ve had black friends who have said that prejudice against them as women has held them back more than prejudice against them as blacks.

What black leader wasn’t allowed to join Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial, facing the crowd, when he gave his I Have a Dream speech? Think about it. She had a dream too when she refused to give up her seat.

It’s the damned pre-judging that is wrong. It’s wrong for “races” and it’s wrong for genders and religions and nationalities and even colors. Stop assigning motives. Stop giving labels. Stop assuming the worst. It’s wrong when “They” do it and it’s wrong when “I” do it and it’s wrong when “You” and your relatives do it.

Monstro, if you still have the book, take another look and think about it.

145

So you feel that Stanford would NOT have higher Asian enrollment in the absence of affirmative action?

146

I disagree. Top schools like Harvard turn away lots and lots of qualified applicants.

Under most circumstances, I would not characterize these situations as zero sum games. Because most of the time, a manufacturer of goods can be counted on to increase production to meet demand. By analogy, suppose that Harvard announced it would admit any applicant with an SAT score above 1200 and a GPA above 3.3. Suppose Harvard further announced that it would expand its facilities as necessary to meet the expected increase in enrollment. Well, that’s not a zero sum game.

By contrast, suppose that there has been an extreme weather event and it’s impossible to truck food into your region for a week or two. Within hours, the local supermarket shelves will be bare. In that situation, fresh apples are indeed a zero sum game. If you buy fresh apples, you are denying those apples to someone else.

It all depends on the scarcity of the resource in question.

Here’s an article I found with an internet search:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22945525-27702,00.html

See? It’s a zero sum game.

,

147

Well, darn! Honestly, I do define racism as a belief system held by a dominate power group. I view racism as a belief in racial superiority held by a power group to justify the discrimination and oppression of the perceived inferior racial group. Racism may not be a synonym for racial hatred but racial discrimination certainly cultivates an arbitrary hatred towards the perceived inferior group and self hatred within the discriminated group.

Even if the discriminated group promotes its own well being, it is motivated by survival and pride rather than racism. The discriminated group may seek to promote itself because it feels inferior and struggles for equality.

In the end, I agree it is a racist action when one racial group wants to advance its self interests at the expense of another racial group.

148

Nobody has made that claim.

Sure, some racists have the same idea of what ‘black’ means. And some, perhaps even most might even agree to a certain degree. But that doesn’t mean everybody does. I’m reasonably sure that, even among Americans “blackness” is not always solidly defined, and would probably range from the “one drop” rule to a hardcore racist, to “having dark skin” to the average person. Heck, from my experience in places like Austin, some people with dark skin are classified by those they meet simply as “ethnic”, and most people have no idea what “race” they’d actually belong to. But all of that doesn’t mean that race has an actual operational definition, or any real predictive or descriptive power in most of its uses.

The point is, as well, even if a large amount of people agree on what makes a race, the liminalities blur in any case and there can be (and generally are) disagreements about what constitutes the main body, anyways. If we asked 1000 Americans, probably 1000 would say that Chinese people were Asians. But how many would say that all Pacific Islanders were? How about Hawaiians? Likewise, I’m sure you’ve encountered at least one person who’s called any random Hispanic person “Mexican”, a name that would be considered as quite an insult to many people from the numerous countries, other than Mexico, that’re south of the border.

It also doesn’t mean that continuing to act as if they were valid categories which actually and adequately separated humanity into discrete and useful groups, is at all helpful.

As we can all agree, race is a biologically useless term. And if it has no actual scientific validity, then it is only a socially constructed term, and one that changes from time to time and person to person, to boot.
And if it is only socially constructed, and has traditionally led to great suffering and injustice… why can’t we change or eliminate its construction? No, not today, and not by fiat, but over time and by replacing it with a more accurate view?
There are, and have been, a great number of social constructs that time has done away with, from “the weaker sex” to “white man’s burden”.
Why can’t traditional fallacious concepts of race join 'em on the bonfire?

The problem with this, and your earlier formulation that discrimination based on race isn’t racism if it’s “good” discrimination, is that the definitions lose any objective meaning at all.

For instance, discrimination, while having a connotation of being negative, does not have that denotation. Nor, in all cases, would discrimination for a certain group be spared from a racist label. If a business decided “we really prefer white people, so we’re going to discriminate for white people”, that’d still be classified as a racist policy. Correctly.

Would a dirt-poor white family, who can’t afford to buy shoes for their children and have no power at all, not be racist for hating “those damn niggers?” They’ve got no power, after all. I hope that you wouldn’t use the answer that just because they’re white, even if they don’t have any actual power, they have power. That way is treating any white person as fungible. Or if you prefer “Awww, they’re all the same.”
When Farrakhan goes on about how he hates Jews, or whites, he’s not being racist? I’ve often heard the claim that “a black man can’t be a racist”, and it boggles the mind. What… if a white man says “fuck those darkies.” that’s racism, but when a black man says “fuck those white devils” it’s… not? What if, in the context in which it takes places, the black man has more ‘power’, however we’re going to define it, than the white man? Can a black man be racist on the streets of Harlem, for instance, but he becomes non-racist in the halls of Congress? If he’s the same man, with the same beliefs, does he really “become” anything based on where he’s sitting?

149

So what? The same observation applies to most if not all social constructs.

What makes a Christian a Christian? What’s the cutoff for tall? What is pornography? What should we call this color?

It’s absurd to call a construct meaningless or invalid just because 100% of the population doesn’t have exactly the same idea of what that construct means. Some people go around calling apes monkeys, but that doesn’t mean these people are right or that “apes” is a meaningless term.

Except that it does. If it didn’t, no one would be able to follow along in this conversation, including you. The OP started off talking about whites and blacks. If the terms have no “real predictive and descriptive power”, your first response in this thread should have been a question about who the OP was talking about. But you seemed to know right off the bat what was being communicated. You even posited that race is correlated with academic success.

150

Two or three of the articles are to full papers.

All the same, your attitude is perplexing. You won’t debate anyone without numbers. But numbers are few and far between, since the ones that can be trusted are found in exclusive, peer-reviewed journals. Now you won’t even touch abstracts, even when the findings are clearly spelled out. To my eye, you are attempting to shut down the discussion or at the very least, redirect it to a space where you are more comfortable. This is blatantly unfair.

This does not make any sense. There is always noise in the marketplace, so to speak, that drives individual income. But with a sufficient sample and control group, you can test for systematic drivers of income. Nothing is being homogenized, artificially or otherwise.

Other than addressing this rather small issue, you don’t even touch the underlying logic, the pareto criteria, or the perhaps controversial issue that slightly better credentialed students aren’t any more deserving of getting into an elite school. If there is anything illogical, you haven’t mentioned it.

You are just repeating your axiom that “all racism is bad”. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but for you, it is still an article of faith. This is probably why you are not very persuasive here. Argue to a normative position, not from one.

I cannot resist a brief game theory aside, because, well, I am a geek.

This is really, really bizarre. I think we mostly agree on this. But you trashed your fellow travelers for not knowing anything about game theory but when challenged, you fall back on the term’s colloquial sense. If we are going to keep it casual, then great, it should stay casual. But that means you don’t get to lambast someone for ignorance of technique.

Speaking of which…

This is pretty funny. People read Games and Economic Behavior because they are interested in the history of science, not because it has much of any practical value today in the field. That’s like having a discussion about physics and flinging quotes from the Principia Mathematica. It’s nice to be an enthusiast, but citing that of all things as an authority kind of shows your navel. Do you have Fudenberg & Tirole in your personal library?

151

I don’t see why monstro would have any problems with this statement. I don’t. Growing up, my black teachers did have different styles than my white teachers, generally speaking. Their styles reflected their cultural background. These differences weren’t dictated by their race, but they were associated with it.

You seem to think that it’s inherently wrong to say that differences exist between groups of people. I can’t really take this position seriously because it flies in the face of everything I’ve seen.

152

I agree with this, but I think that Shodan has a bit of a point. For example, most thinking people have noticed that for a long time now, just about all of the greatest sprinters in the world have been black guys. And there seems to be good reason to believe that this disparity has some genetic component to it.

And yet, when you make that sort of observation or argue that sort of hypothesis on an internet discussion board, there is a decent chance someone will say “race is just a social construct” (or something like that) in order to suggest that the observation or hypothesis is somehow invalid.

153

Only because the people making the case that its genetics don’t have any scientific evidence…which is necessary before we can attribute anything to physiological differences between racial groups. Any argument that essentially boils down to “there’s a lot of blacks doing X, therefore blacks must be genetically superior at doing X” is going to be called invalid.

But simply pointing out that blacks are more likely than whites to pursue a career in athletes is not invalid, since you can point to numbers that back this up. In this particular area (i.e. sports), whites and blacks are not the same. There’s nothing wrong in recognizing this. Why this is up for grabs, but not the observation itself.

154

Lack of evidence is a different issue.

155

The idea is that race doesn’t exist, unless you need it to get something. That’s why we bog down in tomndebb’s semantic games whenever pro-AA types want to deny race as a valid category, but embrace it when it gets some minority some benefit.

That was the point of my earlier post. Everybody knows who X is when you say “people in group X deserve AA”. If you say “people in group X don’t deserve AA”, all of a sudden there is no such group as X.

Regards,
Shodan

156

I don’t care whether the playing field is level or not. AA is unfair to me, and that’s mainly what matters to me and millions of other working class whites like me. You can’t reasonably expect us not to resent a law which is glaringly unfair to us. If you feel you simply must “level the playing field,” level it at somebody else’s expense, not ours.

157

Not for that particular year. If they were met the standard for that year, they would be accepted. However, I accept that my phrasing here is gonna make this an endless semantics debate, so let’s just drop this point. I’ll concede this to you.

Sometimes. Take the Nintendo Wii for a recent example. Harvard, like most manufacturers, can only adjust production/supply so much. It’s still finite. That was the point I was making. At some point, supply will run out, and if that exhaustion deprives someone else of that same thing, you cannot logically refer to that situation as zero-sum. It makes no sense, and is clearly not the definition of the term.

Why not? If we are operating under the definition Finn gave, how is your example any different. Certainly some unqualified people will apply, and be turned away. Thus there are still winners and losers. The only difference here is the shift from a soft cap to no cap. The “competition” in this case just switching from the admissions room at Harvard to the SAT and high school classrooms.

But I am always denying those particular apples to someone else. Again, using Finn’s definition, someone will always be without my particular apples. Sure they can buy apples later, just like someone could apple to Harvard later. Don’t you see why defining zero-sum this way is ridiculous.

158

Let me re-phrase my question:

To what extent is AA practiced in employment as opposed to admissions policies at prestigious universities?

159

And the scarcer the resource in question is, the more reasonable it is to refer to the situation as a zero sum game. It’s as simple as that.

No, the critical issue is the likelihood that one person’s win means another person’s loss.

It’s ridiculous in the situation you describe because the natural assumption is that there’s nothing special about any particular apple or set of apples. If they are the Faberge Apples, only 100 of which were ever made, then it’s a zero sum game.

160

What? Zero-sum game has a specific definition. This is not it. Show me a link to any definition of zero-sum that says what you say it means. And don’t start with some colloquial nonsense.

What is special about a particular admission spot at Harvard in any given year? Given that there are dozens of other equivalent schools available to students just as there are plenty of other apples.