So, that's the whole point of using affirmative action (AA) in college admissions. The Court didn't do anything except roll back decades of AA based on race for college admissions and the previous Supreme Court ruling that allowed race-conscious admission policies. I would actually agree with this ruling if it weren't so foolishly color blind in a society that is full of strong colors. But my larger point is more important to me: this is yet another example of our long history of progress, followed by a roll-back of progress for blacks.
Why is being treated the same as everyone else a roll-back of progress for blacks? Shouldn't everyone be held to the same standards? Is there any reason a Nigerian immigrant son of a tech millionaire, all else being equal, should have an advantage over a poor Vietnamese son of a fishmonger to get into Harvard?
Interesting to see so much concern for Asians getting into schools. Of course, they will be the next target for republicans when Asian university populations rise uncomfortably high. You should hear my trump in-laws complain about they don’t recognize the SF Bay Area anymore…
That doesn't really answer my question. You are postulating that some historical oppression, which may be 5 generations or more behind the applicant (or didn't apply to the applicant at all, which is the actual content of the post you responded to: a rich Nigerian immigrant competing against a poor Vietnamese immigrant), justifies differential treatment by race. I obviously disagree. Can you give a response that actually justifies the differential treatment of the two hypothetical candidates I presented? What is uncomfortably high? Massive overrepresentation of Asians has been happening for years in California. I certainly have not been bothered by it. The people that seem to complain the most about it here seem to be black or Hispanic.
has been that way since the 1990s. Asian representation ~5.6% of Calif population. ~~42% of UC Berkeley's student population ~~33% of UCLA's " " ~~37% of UC Irvine's " " actually, the most vociferous complainers have been suburban white women who have kids / grand kids trying get into college.
Yes and Asians aren’t monolithic in this regard. There are many Asians who have no problem with Affirmative actions and Asians also benefit from many minority set asides. The other issue though is that for many on the Right Asians are convenient to use in regard to this issue but the right is pushing other issues they negatively affect Asians such as doing away with birthright citizenship. Also as we saw with COVID very often criticism towards the PRC often spills into racism towards all Asians.
affirmative action was a way to excuse/balance merit/need based discrimination i.e. we want to continue admitting rich/dumb legacies, so we'll balance that with a racial quota kind of like the rich buying off their pollution using with carbon credits the penalty is borne by those who would have been accepted in a race-blind/income-blind system
It provides a fuller context, and hopefully, that helps answer your question. But since it didn't, a rich Nigerian immigrant wasn't going to compete against a poor Vietnamese immigrant for college admission based solely on race. Admission policies consider various factors such as standardized test scores, being the first person in the family to attend college, legacy status, financial status, and donations (directly to the college of admission). You, along with many people across the political spectrum, including this Court, tend to emphasize race and perceive it as the sole or main determining factor, when in fact it is one of many factors, while simultaneously disregarding its relevance to an individual's experience and the college's aspiration for diversity. My justifications for considering race (and in a larger extent, diversity and experience): Race is probably the single most important factor to an individual's experience and a college's aspiration for diversity in today's American society, which is far from being a color-blind society. Once we are closer to actually being color-blind, race can be completely removed and should be removed as a factor. At a statistical population level, every race has similar intellectual abilities. Those abilities are shaped and influenced by a person's upbringing and the opportunities they have had. I believe that people are still very capable of returning to the statistical baseline once given the full opportunities to do so, given that they meet some basic requirements (unfortunately, some are too far behind to catch up), even at a late stage such as starting college. I think it's fair for college admissions to reflect the population at large based on race as one of the many factors (again, in a society that isn't yet close to being color blind). Eg. if we have a society consisting of 50% white and 50% non-white individuals, college admissions should be approximately 50% white and 50% non-white. We can further break it down by adding categories such as Asian, Black, and Brown. This reflects utmost fairness in my opinion, where we treat everyone (notwithstanding outliers due to conditions at birth) equally from birth. However, achieving such a utopia is not possible (and probably not even desirable, given people's tendency to focus on their own importance first and harbor resentment when they feel they have been wronged, regardless of the advantages they may have received based solely on the status they were born into). Nonetheless, we can strive to get closer to it and be more fair through a system that at least tries to realize that society still has a long way to go to get to a colorblind society.
I don't think it is the sole or main determining factor at all, I know it is a very substantial factor because it has been proven. When someone in the 4th academic decile (meaning 60-69% of applicants have higher objective measures of academic ability using Harvard's own metric) who is black has a better chance of admittance than someone in the 10th academic decile (meaning 0-9% of applicants have higher objective measures of academic ability) who is Asian or someone in the 9th academic decile (meaning 10-19% of applicants have higher objective measures of academic ability)who is white, race is obviously a very powerful factor. I think it is bizarre to believe race is the single most important factor to an individual's experience. That would suggest that LeBron James has more in common with a homeless black woman than he does with Kevin Love. That's nonsense. I would say individual choices are the single most important factor to an individual's experience, followed by parenting. Two people of any race that make identical life choices will probably have a lot in common. Two adopted children of the same parents of different races will probably have much more similar lives than they will with a random person of the same race. Your second point is based on the wholly unfounded assumption that the reason a black applicant is in the 4th academic decile while an Asian applicant is in the 10th academic decile is due to some societal influence holding down the black applicant's intellectual performance, and absent this systemic racism, he or she would have scored as well as the top achieving Asian applicant. Seems like an awfully tenuous basis on which to base abject racial discrimination.
I don't know if it's the single most important factor, but I believe it's probably the most important factor in shaping individuals' experiences. Choice is also important, as is economic status, parenting, nationality, and geography. All of these factors shape experiences, yet the court deems race as not important at all, stripping it out as a proxy for experience. Your point of comparing LeBron James to a homeless person is a single data point that can easily lead to a wrong conclusion. You should look at the population level, not just a few data points. Societal influence certainly has an impact, but my second point isn't about the cause of the differences, but rather that at a statistical population level, every race has similar intellectual abilities. Given that starting point, if everything else is equal, college admissions should represent a racial makeup close to that of the population.
Not for all but if anything this thread shows that there are many who do look at it through ideological lenses.
I had a debate with a libertarian leaning friend Friday night about this. His argument came down to its about “equality” versus “equity” and that the drive for “equity” is harming “equality”. I would agree that things like AA and minority set asides are not equal. The issue though is has things like college admissions ever been equal? The argument that we should test everyone equal and it is a colorblind society is aspirational but it also requires ignoring history. We had things like Civil Rights because for most of this history there wasn’t equality. Simply saying that we’re not going to discriminate doesn’t create an equal society given historical advantages. The Libertarian argument would be that everyone is equal and starting from zero when in reality people are born with innate advantages that others don’t have. For example someone born with Spina Bifida is going to have disadvantage over someone else. We have a society have decided that we should actually give advantages to someone like that through the ADA. So in the absolute sense they aren’t being treated equally but we recognize that is for the overall interest of equity to do so.
And there we go. Since the supreme court allows this, what will stop the next store from not serving black people?
