Bye bye Affirmative Action?

Great thread. Great intellectual discourse. I'm Indian, but grew up amongst a predominantly white backdrop. I've never been back to India so what I bring to the table as far as diversity is concerned is pretty much the same as any white person would. I think there are countless other examples of races co-existing and not really stereotypically defining who that individual is. America was founded to escape prejudice and for everyone to feel equal in a utopic melting pot environment, but any measure such as Affirmative Action makes people second guess themselves as well as the merit of others and I think that's a travesty.

Thomas Sowell a renowned economist had the following to say in regards to affirmative action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtXLzhbTz5E

 

False, you make an excellent point, I've always thought and once wrote on a topic where Asian men are pretty much highest earning income group of any race/ethnicty with gender categories. Yet, you do not see a great number of Asians in positions of power in United States Even with a smaller population, it still does correspond an appropriate ratio of Asian men (or women) in power.

Generally speaking, people often associate affirmative action with beneficial entitlements given to mostly women and darker minorities (like Blacks or Hispanics) and someone who is automatically less qualified, conveniently. While, there are many other protected classes of people who are a part of affirmative action, such as sex/gender orientation, disabled Americans, particular religious groups and etc. Moreover, affirmative action does come with a double edged sword and sometimes (as you said) it can benefit a dominant majority population. Using the colleges were a good example, where you could end up with prestigious universities end up having a student population 75%+ being of Asian descent, especially universities in the West or Ivy-League schools.

 

Sowell uses a couple of anecdotal examples in his life to illustrate the problem as he sees it. First, as a photographer in Vietnam First, people would think that since he was a black photographer, he must be a damn good one. And, as the first black teacher at a college before the wide existence of affirmative action, people would say wow this guy must be really something. He then gives some examples post-affirmative action. As a teacher, after the wide existence of affirmative action, he taught class and students would say that they were surprised by how good the class was or second-guessing him(he doesn't really explain the context).

The results pre-affirmative action and post-affirmative are problematic for a variety of different reasons. Before affirmative action, he was seen as achieving in spite of the significant barriers and people were amazed that he was a black guy doing these things. In his post-affirmative action example - students thinking his class was going to be bad because it was taught by a black teacher who didn't know the material. In both examples, racism still exists his accomplishments are being viewed based on the color of his skin.

If all the examples that Sowell uses demonstrate latent racism and in all examples he is lauded for his accomplishments as an individual, why does he think that the pre-affirmative action result is better than the post-affirmative action result. Possibly because pre-affirmative action, he could have taken the compliments as based on his ability to overcome adversity, while post-affirmative action he takes compliments as stemming from a belief he has shown himself to merit an opportunity he was given. Honestly, I have no idea, both seem racist and patronizing to me.

Thomas Sowell raises a interesting question, does the mere existence of affirmative action cheapen the successes of black people. In people's minds it might be true, it's probably true to many black/hispanic people, and non-black people. Still, I'm not sure that the logical leap he wants us to make from this idea follows, because he doesn't necessarily address the question.

The question is should we have affirmative action and what form should it take. Presuming that Sowell's point actually matters, and I don't think it does for the above reasons, he has given us a problem with the current affirmative action regime - that the discourse that surrounds any action providing benefit to one group over another might be used to cheapen the accomplishments of those who did receive such a benefit. Even presuming that such a response is a result of affirmative action (not an carefully directed response designed to allow discriminating individuals to justify limiting the academic gains of African American/Hispanic by devaluing. their hard earned educational degrees in the the non-educational sphere), and that such a response is a problem, it doesn't mean that we should scrap affirmative action. I think it is telling that Sowell doesn't answer the question at the end of the interview about whether he thinks there are no benefits to affirmative action, and I find it unfortunate that the video ends there. The very fact that Sowell cannot outright categorically deny the benefits of affirmative action for African-Americans means that there are some. Given the weakness of his argument, it's likely that absent additional downsides, it doesn't outweigh the net benefits of AA and militate toward the dissolution of such programs

Ultimately the problem still exists, race and class still intersect in this country in a very real and unfortunate way. It’s almost a legacy of past-discrimination that minorities are now second guessing themselves and their accomplishments because as a class they are receiving a benefit. I think this goes back to an active passive distinction I made earlier. It is the luxury of the advantaged, those being people who are either well-off, well-educated, or white that puts them in a position not to have to navel-gaze and not to second guess their own abilities all the while accruing the benefits that have been accorded to them by their hard work of being born into the right family. If affirmative action is addressing the problem of unequal opportunity, then it should continue.

 

I saw this a bit differently. To me it seemed as if pre-affirmative action, the views people held of him were based on racial perceptions and stereotyping ie racism, but post-affirmative action, it seemed that people's views were based on government intervention.

I think you said it best here. Is Affirmative Action truly addressing the problem of unequal opportunity any more? How is there still a correlation between race and opportunity at this point? If as a minority, you in fact didn't need this government assistance, you would still be pre-judged by your peers due to affirmative action. To me, it seems that affirmative action is detrimental to the enlightenment of society in seeing everyone as equals and truly doesn't equate to an overall social good at this point.

 

There are two questions you are posing here. Does affirmative action address unequal opportunity? I'm sure the research is out there, but going by a gut feeling without looking I would say that it likely does. If a result would be unequal if not for the an action, then the action is likely addressing unequal-ness.

As far as your second question, how is there still a correlation between race an opportunity at this point, I can't say exactly why. I only know that there is still a correlation between race and opportunity. In an earlier post, I quoted the summary of a study about socio-economic mobility in the U.S., but here it is again:

I'm sure there are still tons of reasons as to why this is the case, I can't deign to know them all.

You last comment, that affirmative action is detrimental to the enlightenment of society in seeing everyone as equal seems not to follow from the reality we live in. People aren't seen as equal in our society for a variety of reasons, like race, sex, national origin, and religion. That sorry unenlightened state will continue as a reality even if affirmative action either ceases to exist or never existed. If the program does indeed actually equalize the playing field on a whole, even if it does provide another outlet for people to judge you based on your race, then it should continue as long as it is needed to level the playing field.

Any program designed to rectify unequalness will inherently treat different people unequally. Such a program can be used as fuel against the group receiving the benefit. Even the policy decision of having no programs designed to fight unequalness treats people unequally, because we don't have an equal society. I'd much rather attempt to correct unequalness than lie to myself and to others, do nothing, and pretend like we all live in an enlightened equal society.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action

Support
The principle of affirmative action is to promote societal equality through the preferential treatment of socioeconomically disadvantaged people. Often, these people are disadvantaged for historical reasons, such as oppression or slavery.[53] Historically and internationally, support for affirmative action has sought to achieve a range of goals: bridging inequalities in employment and pay; increasing access to education; enriching state, institutional, and professional leadership with the full spectrum of society; redressing apparent past wrongs, harms, or hindrances, in particular addressing the apparent social imbalance left in the wake of slavery and slave laws.

Opposition
Opponents of affirmative action such as George Sher believe that affirmative action devalues the accomplishments of people who are chosen based on the social group to which they belong rather than their qualifications.[54] Opponents also contend that affirmative action devalues the accomplishments of all those who belong to groups it is intended to help, therefore making affirmative action counterproductive.[54] Opponents,[55] who sometimes say that affirmative action is "reverse discrimination", further claim that affirmative action has undesirable side-effects in addition to failing to achieve its goals. They argue that it hinders reconciliation, replaces old wrongs with new wrongs, undermines the achievements of minorities, and encourages individuals to identify themselves as disadvantaged, even if they are not. It may increase racial tension and benefit the more privileged people within minority groups at the expense of the least fortunate within majority groups (such as lower-class whites).[56] American economist, social and political commentator, Dr. Thomas Sowell identified some negative results of race-based affirmative action in his book, Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study.[57] Sowell writes that affirmative action policies encourage non-preferred groups to designate themselves as members of preferred groups (i.e., primary beneficiaries of affirmative action) to take advantage of group preference policies; that they tend to benefit primarily the most fortunate among the preferred group (e.g., upper and middle class blacks), often to the detriment of the least fortunate among the non-preferred groups (e.g., poor whites or Asians); that they reduce the incentives of both the preferred and non-preferred to perform at their best — the former because doing so is unnecessary and the latter because it can prove futile — thereby resulting in net losses for society as a whole; and that they increase animosity toward preferred groups.

I agree with you that there needs to be something done to help those sectors of our society who are mired in cycles of poverty, but I think it's difficult to correlate the solution just to race. If anything, public education in underprivileged areas plays a larger part than almost anything else to this problem. If children aren't inspired to better themselves and find it futile to struggle, they'll walk down the same path as their parents regardless of how horrible it may seem to us.

I think with affirmative action you inevitably end up disproportionately helping those already advantaged minorities while thinking that you're helping the disenfranchised underrepresented educationally impoverished minorities. I'm not saying completely disregard race, but I think socioeconomic status and a myriad of other factors should also be taken into account.

 

I disagree, It's not hard to correlate lack of upward mobility to race; in fact, it is the one of the strongest indicators of upward mobility. See Hertz Mobility Analysis:

I agree that more funding for impoverished schools is part of the answer to the enormous gulf in attainment in this country.

That's the thing, as I explained in an earlier post, any characteristic you base affirmative action on will be an imperfect proxy for whatever goal you are really trying to achieve. Even "advantaged" african-americans and hispanics are still disadvantaged on average. So, if race is the strongest indicator of upward mobility, why not use it despite its imperfections?

I believe you'd advocate for some type of mixed factor analysis for any affirmative action scheme. Sure, that's great people love mixed factor analyses because they love splitting the difference, but they don't necessarily solve any of the problems. A couple of the big questions for some type of socio-economic class/race hybrid is is it workable and is it in any way substantively better in getting the desired outcome? Additionally, the whole college application process involves looking at a lot of different factors already, so how would your proposed system be any different?

 

I would say if diversity is the goal then look at socioeconomic status along with minority upward mobility as you stated before to help disadvantage sectors of society hopefully succeed. The problem sometimes is that you put people in situations where they are at a disadvantage due to the normal process being circumvented. Thus they are competing with people who have on average a better chance to succeed. This paper tries to show that after certain states did away with Affirmative Action, on average, there wasn't much of a change in minorities graduating as a % than in those states where Affirmative Action was still in place.

http://www.sole-jole.org/12022.pdf

"Despite these caveats, it is worth noting that the results of this paper still show the effect of affirmative action bans on graduation rates. The results do suggest that graduation rates of Hispanics and possibly blacks rise when affirmative action is banned at selective colleges, although this effect is small and may be due to the changing composition of students at these colleges. But the results for the effects of affirmative action bans on the stock of graduates from selective colleges are clearer: since fewer underrepresented minorities are admitted to selective colleges, fewer become graduates of selective colleges."

Another article by Thomas Sowell, shows a bit of the same correlation:

http://www.philosophicalturn.net/CMI/Social_Justice/Affirmative_Action_Minority_Graduation.pdf

"The real issue, however, is not how highly ranked the institutions are, but how big the racial difference in admissions standards has been. This they never tell us, despite mountains of statistics on everything else. From other studies, however, it is clear that racial differences in SAT scores, for example, are much smaller at Harvard (95 points) than at Duke (184 points) or Rice (271 points).
In other words, where the racial preferences in admissions are not as great, the differences in graduation rates are not as great. The critics of affirmative action were right: Racial preferences reduce the prospects of black students graduating. Other data tell the same story."

I do wholeheartedly agree with you that there must be something done, but just like with the housing market, I don't know if an action in the short term really benefits everyone in the long term as well.

 

I'm just tired of the word minority. Whites are outnumbered these days.

 

The good news is, even with another twenty hours to work with, that's probably the dumbest thing you'll say all day.

 

Diversity is not the only goal of affirmative action. Check the wikipedia article you cited to. Or just read one of my posts a couple of pages down.

Sure, that's a problem. It's a problem that affirmative action is designed to address at a macro level not just the micro level of schooling. At a micro level in school it is not a problem for affirmative action. That affirmative action can result in some students being at the top of their graduating class or failing out is presumed. This is something that advocates of affirmative action do not deny, though they might dispute whether the effect is as great as some would claim. Mainly they would argue that it doesn't even matter. Tons of people who graduate at the bottom of their class go on to succeed later in life. See President Bush, or Governor Rick Perry. College degrees by themselves even with poor grades that go into attaining them have value. Also it is quite likely that those with some college tend to do better than those with none.

Full disclosure: I don't have the time to read the entire paper and attack the stats behind it or the methodology employed, so I will go by your description of the articles as well as the parts you quoted.

I had to rewrite this post because the authors meant graduating rates as the ratio of the URM students who entered to the number who graduated, not the number absolute # of URM graduates before and after as I had thought initially. If they had then these results would still not serve as critique affirmative action because they have a myriad of explanations.

Ok, what they are saying is interesting. But, how is that an argument against affirmative action as tool to reach greater minority attainment? It would be an argument against the idea that doing away with affirmative action would result in a backward slide of minority graduation rates in an immediate sense. Additionally, I wonder whether even schools that formally did away with affirmative action, still didn't have race conscious decision making at an individual level thus contaminating the results.

Ok, so he says two things here. Graduation rates of hispanics and black don't go down and possibly rise (though he seems to hedge saying that this result could be noise). See my arguments above, this is not a strong argument against affirmative action because AFAIK he is not looking at the absolute numbers of URM graduates he is looking at the Graduation rates.

Second, he says that selective colleges (the more prestigious ones) accept and produce relatively fewer URM graduates with no affirmative action. So, what he is saying is that in selective colleges, if you take away affirmative action the ratio goes the other direction. Less qualified URMs get in. This seems like it would support using affirmative action and counter any argument that suggests that more underserving URMs get in to select colleges under affirmative action.

Sowell's research supports the broad conclusion of the first paper. It even catches a similar issue with more selective colleges. Same problems though. This piece does not provide a strong attack affirmative action because affirmative action presumes that some people who will not be able to quite cut it will get in. Additionally, the type of people who affirmative action is designed to benefit are, relative to the rest of the population, less likely to succeed in college because they are less likely so succeed in general due to their disadvantaged position. Because this paper and the one above it are not looking at the amount of graduates in absolute terms, but at graduation rates they don't critique affirmative action.

None of the papers you cited critique affirmative action in a substantive way. They do not demonstrate that affirmative action is not achieving it's goals. In fact, they could be taken to show that affirmative action is achieving real gains. This is not like the housing market. While the principle of not acting rashly has merit, affirmative action is a system that has been in use for over 25 years and has been built up and modified during that time, it is not in any way a short term action.

Perhaps it should be modified to have an income element, I agree that it sounds good. But for reasons I expressed in an earlier post in this thread, I worry that such a system will be unworkable and therefore not be any more effective in practice. Resulting in an eventual abandonment of affirmative action schemes as a whole before they have truly served to the logical end of their purposes. Nor do I believe that such a system would address the exact same goals.

If you agree with the goals of affirmative action, you'll have to look elsewhere than Sowell for a critique. He presents his arguments like they always have bearing on the discussion, and sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't. But Sowell is arguing based on different understanding of the goals of affirmative action. When he says something is an indictment of affirmative action, you have to step back and look at what goals of affirmative action it is really indicting or if it is a critique of a non-existing goal.

 

What do you mean Anus? I am curious about your viewpoint.

 

It has been a pleasure debating this with you. You're a very civil individual and I respect that quite a bit. I think we just have two differing view points. In closing, I wish I could cite better sources, but the three points I'd like to emphasize are the following:

1. Using race as the only characteristic, doesn't necessarily target assisting disadvantaged minorities.
2. By creating a "special" selective criteria, an invisible line is drawn between minorities and non-minorities which creates a divide as well as pre-judgement from others
3. By allowing minorities to circumvent the normal selection process, minorities can be placed in positions where they would have a more difficult time of succeeding rather than in a situation where their scores are closer to the norm

 

This article is somewhat dated, but its quite good and reading through this thread I thought it'd be worth linking to it for those interested:

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh

 

What's interesting about the attacks from the right against affirmative action is that they have in recent years moved away from attacking the program as unjustified and unjustifiable to a focus on the theoretical negative effects of affirmative action for URMs on other minorities. As affirmative action has become established in the consciousness of Americans, the prior attacks have less of an impact. I see the new move as an attempt at coalition building. Explaining and pointing out white privilege serves to undermine this nascent attempt. Unfortunately it is harder to articulate how privilege operates while affirmative action is easier to describe and easier to understand. This means that while privilege exists and serves as the strongest structural barrier to the success of all minorities, it's efficacy as a talking point is diminished. Thanks for the short article, is it in response or part of a larger piece?

 

The article is a summarized version of her slightly longer work entitled:
White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies.

Very true points, and my own observation is that the arguments against affirmative action are becoming less partisan and more racialized than they previously were.

There's always been a desire to reject the notion of white privilege by many, and such rejection is typically motivated by two prevailing desires- first, to elicit praise, and second, sympathy (these are by no means exhaustive). Praise is obtained or inhered within onesself by believing that one has acquired whatever he has 'on his own' ('no one gave me any handouts' mentality), and sympathy is elicited when confronted by accusations of privileges.

An American who migrated from Australia ten years ago and became a naturalized citizen will have little to nothing to do with the circumstances that created and established the privilege. But that does not mean he is not a beneficiary of it.

It is upsetting and painful for many to hear racialized constructs, particularly in light of America's history with race. But it is equally upsetting for many non-whites to hear the denial of privilege, as it conveys a poor understanding of the realities of racial discrimination and white supremacy.

 

I think this is what Anus meant..
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Cartman: You guys! You guys! We have got problems of biblical proportions! Stan: Dude, where have you been?
Cartman: I've been counting. Do you know there are 205 Mexicans here? And there are 190 black people.
Kyle: So what?
Cartman: So? Guess how many white people are at the water park today? 143! There are actually more minorities here than us!
Kyle: Well then they're not minorities, are they?
Cartman: What do you mean?
Kyle: [Annoyed]Dumbass! If there's 60% of them to 40% of us, then who's the minority?
Cartman: [Clueless] The black and brown people.
Kyle: No, you're the minority!
Cartman: Do I look like a minority to you, stupid?

 

Kennedy sounded very unpersuaded today. :/

I used to be against affirmative action because I believed that discrimination was bad no matter how anyone spun it. Yet, now I say that you can't declare equality suddenly (for admissions and job purposes) after several generations of racial discrimination.

To restore society back to equilibrium/level playing field, you have to favor the disadvantaged somewhat. Education is the key to power and social mobility, and I can't see any substantial reasons why affirmative action should be done away with. However, I read this goal didn't work at UT because of the Top 10% rule, so I would like to see AA modified.

I liked this clip from Real Time with Bill Maher 10/5/12. His line of "we started a race many years ago, and 3/4 of the way, we turned around and said, "okay black [minorities] people, you can start running now."

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/v2Czj-_Sdmw?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

I had a professor in college (CU Boulder) who had somewhere around a dozen adopted kids of all races. He was strongly against AA because he viewed them as handouts for his children when they might not have been deserved. It's proving to be racist in its own sense, helping some races while hindering others.

 

Recall that it was one of those "right wing jurists" that was the swing vote declaring the health care reform legal. People just do not fit into those tidy little boxes you like to put them in.