It’s absolutely not the best indicator for future success. Standardized tests set a minimum bar, but they are not the be-all and end-all. People are more than a number on a sheet of paper. Even China, which until fairly recently relied on a number-based system, has moved towards using a more comprehensive evaluation system for college entry. If you look at examples in the real world, it becomes pretty obvious that solely relying on statistics or numbers is far from optimal. Case 1- the private job market, imagine hiring based solely on test scores and nothing else. Grades and test scores may serve as minimum requirements, but experience and personality are often much more important. Private companies also value diverse backgrounds to improve their bottom line, as they have realized that diversity leads to better cultural and financial outcomes. Case 2- NBA teams consider far more than just statistics when it comes to drafting and trades. Often, we have no idea how to measure the ‘it’ factor until we witness it through the player’s experiences.
normally I don't comment on comics but this one is particularly stupid. honestly, I just think this reflects the overall idiocy of commentary and thought on this issue. this is almost painful to see
here is the "checkbox" approach to diversity that the Court has eliminated. Diversity goals can still be pursued but must be pursued in a different way
Its amazing that the fourteenth amendment apparently means that colorblindness is public policy. There's no shred of evidence that the authors of the fourteenth amendment intended for race to never be a consideration of public policy. Even Brown v Board didn't strike down school segregation because of some principle of colorblindness. Rather it stated that segregated schools were illegal because schools for African American children were inherently unequal and that it was impossible to build a separate school system for African Americans that was truly equal to the system for white children. Even in that decision, there's no reference to the idea that policy cannot explicitly reference or be tied to race. Not to mention, other things like inter-district busing have been upheld despite also having an intent and design built around race. Lastly, this same court upheld Section 2 of the VRA in the same session. This court is arbitrarily ruling that the 15th amendment allows for race conscious policymaking when it comes to voting but the 14th amendment simultaneously prohibits it when it comes to school admissions. That doesn't really make any sense but this court doesn't really stick to any basic logical standard anymore.
Not just an opinion, a strong one! Now, we are getting somewhere. It's on point in relation to concious racial policy as a larger context. There are 'affirmative' actions for all kinds of things (some listed in that cartoon), but when it comes to race, a huge part of society (liberal to conservative) really thinks that's not okay. Weird, huh? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/07/opinion/resistance-black-advancement-affirmative-action.html By Randall Kennedy Professor Kennedy teaches at Harvard Law School and is the author of “For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action and the Law.” As we await a Supreme Court ruling that is likely to restrict, if not prohibit, crediting racial identity as a plus in competitions for selection to institutions of higher education, it is worth recalling a sobering feature of the racial history of the United States: Every major step undertaken to advance African Americans and to redress the consequences of racial subordination has been met with charges of “reverse discrimination” and unfair “preference.” Allegations of immoral and unlawful discrimination propel the lawsuits pending against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina before the Supreme Court. Opponents of affirmative action assert that in attempting to aid African Americans and Latinos, elite institutions of higher education are mistreating white people and people of Asian ancestry. A baleful echo haunts this ongoing debate. When abolitionists petitioned Congress to emancipate slaves, Senator John C. Calhoun objected, warning that “the next step would be to raise the Negroes to a social and political equality with whites; and that being effected, we would soon find the present condition of the two races reversed.” Black Americans would be masters and white people slaves. President Andrew Johnson vetoed the nation’s inaugural civil rights legislation because, in his view, it discriminated against white people and privileged Black people. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 (which Congress enacted over the veto) bestowed citizenship upon all persons — except for certain American Indians — born in the United States and endowed all persons with the same rights as white people in terms of issuing contracts, owning property, suing or being sued or serving as witnesses. This law was proposed because the Supreme Court had ruled in Dred Scott v. Sanford that African Americans, free or enslaved, were ineligible as a matter of race for federal citizenship, and because many states had barred African Americans from enjoying even the most rudimentary civil rights. Johnson vetoed the act in part because the citizenship provision would immediately make citizens of native-born Black people while European-born immigrants had to wait several years to qualify for citizenship via naturalization (which was then open only to white people). According to Johnson, this amounted to “a discrimination against large numbers of intelligent, worthy and patriotic foreigners, and in favor of the Negro, to whom, after long years of bondage, the avenues to freedom and intelligence have just now been suddenly opened.” Johnson similarly opposed the provision in the act affording federal protection to civil rights, charging that it made possible “discriminating protection to colored persons.” A key defect of the Civil Rights Act, according to Johnson, was that it established “for the security of the colored race safeguards which go infinitely beyond any that the general government has ever provided for the white race. In fact, the distinction of race and color is by the bill made to operate in favor of the colored and against the white race.” Johnson opposed as well the 14th Amendment, which decreed that states offer to all persons equal protection of the laws, a provision which he also saw as a wrongful venture in racial favoritism aimed at assisting the undeserving Negro. In 1875, Congress enacted legislation that prohibited racial discrimination in the provision of public accommodations. Eight years later, in a judgment invalidating that provision, the Supreme Court disapprovingly lectured the Black plaintiffs, declaring that “when a man has emerged from slavery, and by the aid of beneficent legislation has shaken off the inseparable concomitants of that state, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws.” In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt promulgated Executive Order 8802, which prohibited racial discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries and established the Fair Employment Practices Commission to carry out the order. Assailing the order, Representative Jamie Whitten, a Mississippi segregationist, complained that it would not so much prevent unfairness as “discriminate in favor of the Negro” — this at a time when anti-Black discrimination across the social landscape was blatant, rife and to a large extent, fully lawful. Segregationist Southerners were not the only ones who railed against antidiscrimination laws on the grounds that they constituted illegitimate preferences for African Americans. In 1945, the New York City administrator Robert Moses inveighed against pioneering municipal antidiscrimination legislation in employment and college admissions. Displaying more anger at the distant prospect of racial quotas than the immediate reality of racial exclusions, Moses maintained that antidiscrimination measures would “mean the end of honest competition, and the death knell of selection and advancement on the basis of talent.”
Part 2: Liberals, too, have attacked measures they deemed to constitute illicit racial preferencing on behalf of Black people. When the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, proposed “compensatory” hiring in the early 1960s — selection schemes that would give an edge to Black people on account of past victimization and the lingering disabilities caused by historical mistreatment — many liberals resisted. Asked about CORE’s demands, President John F. Kennedy remarked that he did not think that society “can undo the past” and that it was a mistake “to begin to assign quotas on the basis of religion, or race, or color, or nationality.” Kennedy’s comment that it would be a mistake “to begin” to assign quotas reflects a recurring misimpression that racial politics “begins” when those who have been marginalized make demands for equitable treatment. When Kennedy spoke, unwritten but effective quotas had long existed that enabled white men to monopolize huge portions of the most influential and coveted positions in society. Yet it was only when facing protests against monopolization that he was moved to deplore status-based quotas. This same dynamic has been recurrent in subsequent decades: Every major policy seeking to advance the position of Black people has been opposed on the grounds that it was race conscious, racially discriminatory, racially preferential and thus socially toxic. That racial affirmative action in university admissions and elsewhere has survived for so long is remarkable given the powerful forces arrayed against it. Some will say that their abhorrence of racial discrimination impels them to oppose any race-based policy, including that which purportedly helps African Americans. That response would deserve more deference if those who typically voiced it had a more impressive record with respect to fighting old-style anti-Black racism. Historically, though, those who have been at the forefront of attacking affirmative action have hardly been militants in challenging white supremacist policies, habits and customs. Often, the only discrimination that snags their empathy is that which they see as adversely affecting white people. Some will say that I am exaggerating because opposition is focused only upon policies that explicitly mention race in competitions for scarce opportunities. They declare confidently that race-neutral strategies for facilitating racial diversity will be in the clear. They insist that wealth-based, or income-based, or ZIP-code-based affirmative action will be immune to judicial attack because such markers are not expressly racial, though if tweaked carefully they can dependably yield substantial numbers of Black beneficiaries. That view is naïve. Zealous opponents of affirmative action have extended their attacks not only to programs that explicitly list racial criteria in efforts to admit greater numbers of Black and brown students; they are also challenging so-called race-neutral programs because of their race-conscious aims. Our future may disclose a horrifying prescience on the part of President Andrew Johnson. It may reveal a serious effort to delegitimize all efforts toward racial integration, diversity, reparations and antidiscrimination because any such effort is inescapably race conscious. Not every opponent of affirmative action is racist or indifferent to racism. Nor does this history offer a rebuttal to critiques of affirmative action that are weighty and ought to prompt a desire to reform existing programs. The alacrity, consistency and intensity with which programs aimed at helping Black people have been assailed, however, should give pause to all participants in the debate, including the justices of the Supreme Court. Why is it that people who typically defend localism, habitually champion institutional experimentation, usually defend the prerogatives of private entities, routinely insist upon judicial restraint and generally resist the exercise of centralizing federal power insist upon a single, absolutist, judicially imposed command when it comes to affirmative action? There are undoubtedly several reasons. But one that has long been on conspicuous display is malign resentment at the sight of Black people getting ahead.
no, not really "on point" either specifically or in some kind of putative larger context. I'm not really sure how the Kennedy essay below from the NYT is relevant to the SFFA cases (the essay resembles Justice Jackson's "dissent" more than anything). SFFA alleged a very specific kind of discrimination; both (1) the checkboxes on the Common Application and (2) the graphic showing Harvard's student racial percentages (below) pretty much sealed the deal.
It's absolutely on point when you look at US history. This particular case is yet another example of the many historical cases in US history where race becomes an issue when it is used as a means to level the playing field. However, for most of US history under racist policies, race was not seen as an issue. Many people on the right today claim that there isn't even racial disparity or that institutional racism (or prejudice against black people) is even a real phenomenon. This sentiment is so strong that the history of racism and the struggle of black people is being banned by figures like DeSantis, while self-proclaimed advocates of free expression and ideas remain silent or, in some cases, even support figures like DeSantis. That's the pattern in US history - whenever black people make gains through preferential treatments, a backlash occurs. I would love to see a color-blind society, but until we truly become color-blind, it is pretty stupid to strip color from society.
Nobody is “stripping race from society” . . . . This decision certainly does not. What Harvard was doing (and has been doing for years) was clearly illegitimate if not outright illegal. What admissions officers need to start doing again is actually reading admissions applications rather than just tallying up the number of applicants who check the “right” boxes on the Common App.
You keep focusing on the specifics of this case when I'm discussing it as part of a historical pattern of backlash. Anyhow, let's talk about this case for a bit. The admission process used by Harvard can be summarized as follows: Harvard used six: academic, extracurricular, athletic, school support, personal, and overall. Then, after the officers identified an initial pool of applicants who were all qualified for admission, they cut down the list to a final class. At Harvard, those on the list to be cut were evaluated on four criteria: legacy status, recruited athlete status, financial aid eligibility, and race What Harvard and many others, who consciously used race as part of the admission process, did is not illegitimate. They believe that race is a valid proxy for diversity and experience. You may agree or disagree with this perspective. The central idea here is that race can serve as a valid proxy for diversity and experience in today's context. Until we achieve a truly color-blind society, which we are far from, race remains a significant factor in fostering diversity and a crucial element in shaping personal experiences. I believe it can be argued that race has a more substantial impact on diversity and shaping personal experiences than factors such as income, geographical location, nationality, sex, and so on. Whatever you think of this case, the backlash from society has a historical reference and pattern, and I think this case fits right in.
the thread is about “USSC decisions” . . . if you want to start a “the history of racism” thread , I think you should. That would be an interesting thread. more on the rest later, I’m tied up at the moment
okay, the "illegal and illegitimate" claim: Harvard has engaged in the filling of quotas . . . period. hard stop. Going back to Bakke and also to Grutter, it has been ILLEGAL to employ quotas in filling admissions spots. Illegal. hard stop. The Court looked at the ten-year data from Harvard--and this is WHY the Chief included the graphic, the data is THAT DAMNING--and drew the conclusion that Harvard had clearly been setting quotas and admitting applicants according to unchanging quota percentages. The numbers for EACH GROUP are basically unchanging, each year, for ten years. THAT WAS WHAT WAS ILLEGAL, AND STILL IS ILLEGAL. The Court did NOT overturn anything. The Court did not create new law. The Court did not change society or "strip race from society" or any of the other silly things the Court has been accused of doing. The Court simply did one thing: reminded Harvard what the LAW is, and insisted that Harvard (and UNC) comply with the law. Existing law. hard stop.
Bakke: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/regents_of_the_university_of_california_v_bakke_(1978) excerpt: In the case, Bakke was a white male who applied to medical school at the University California at Davis. Although his admissions score was well above that of the average admittee and the school had open slots when he applied, his application was rejected because of the school’s racial quota system. Previously, the school implemented a quota system where white applicants could only compete for 84 out of 100 spots, and the remaining 16 were reserved for racial minorities. Bakke sued the school, arguing that the clear-cut racial quota system was unconstitutional and a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Court held that these admission criteria violated the Equal Protection Clause and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Court blended the analysis of the two, finding that a violation of the Equal Protection Clause is discrimination, which the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits. In this case, the court applied strict scrutiny, reasoning that the Equal Protection Clause requires that a government have a compelling interest with narrowly tailored means to blatantly base their actions on race alone, as was the case here. In so reasoning, the court extends the heightened scrutiny on race discrimination to all races and does not limit it to the protection of racial minorities. The medical school argued that their racial quota system served a compelling government interest by remedying the traditional underrepresentation of minorities in the medical profession and that the diversity in the classroom enhances the free exchange of ideas. The Court rejected the University’s arguments though, finding that there are other ways to achieve representation of traditionally underrepresented groups and classroom diversity without a blatant racial quota system. That is, the Court left the door open for race as a consideration among many in admissions. But the Court ruled that a quota system which excludes candidates because of their race alone is racial discrimination and that the University did not have a compelling reason with reasonably tailored means to overcome the constitutional standard of strict scrutiny.
