Supreme Court might get rid of affirmative action

The only group supporting affirmative action is white progressives. You think black people like it? Polls show the majority do not. Latinos don't like it, Asians HATE it, and white conservatives do too. Only white progressives like it, and my guess is that is resulting from some new twisted manifestation of white savior complex, which white progressives elites flirt with all the time anyway. Not good folks, drop this one.

Latinos should like it! I’m glad it brought up many smart Latino women. I just hope they get over their LatinX bitchery. Look, Asians would never be offended if you lumped us all as AsianX. Fuck that shit! Put up or shut up. Proof is in the pudding. False pride linked to machismo (I.e. misogyny).

I’ve seen a lot of people advocating for affirmative action based on poverty, which I think is a great idea. There’s a huge wealth gap in the US, that far exceeds the employment gap. Roughly the same percentage of white people and black people are employed- it’s about 60 percent for both, if you look at absolute numbers and not at unemployment stats that exclude people not looking for work. In the more expensive places to live, a lot of the “children living in poverty” have at least one employed parent.

The one group who has benefitted most from affirmative action is white women. So go ahead and get rid of it, then pass the popcorn so we all can sit back and watch the show.

R1, why would Asians hate it? Going by the stats, Asians have done just fine getting professional jobs- not saying it’s because of affirmative action, but this is with affirmative action in place. “In 2020, 58 percent of employed Asians worked in management, professional, and related occupations—the highest paying major occupational category—compared with 43 percent of employed Whites, 35 percent of employed Blacks, and 26 percent of employed Hispanics. (See table 7 and chart 3.)“

I'm interested to see how this will play out in university hiring, and if search committees will no longer require diversity statements -- which, at least at public universities, are pretty damn close to compelled speech.

They're also used in states like California to determine the race of applicants (because they can't ask outright)

“For other private employers, the Supreme Court has permitted the use of such goals as part of a voluntary affirmative action plan, but the circumstances under which such goals may be used are quite limited, however: (1) the plan must be designed to eliminate a conspicuous racial imbalance in traditionally segregated job categories; (2) the plan may not trammel the interests of the non-minority employees; and (3) the plan is temporary in nature, intended to eliminate a manifest imbalance and not to maintain balance.”

I don’t think diversity quotas are even that widely in use. They aren’t mandated, and even under current rules they are only allowed to correct a “manifest imbalance” in “traditionally segregated” jobs and in such a way that doesn’t impact non-minorities’ interests. It seems like further weakening affirmative action is just some kind of political gesture. Affirmative action isn’t causing white people’s poverty; low wages are.

I posted the BOL stats in R5, but the stats actually underestimate the percentage of non-Hispanic whites in professional and management positions, because they include most Hispanics as being in the white category even though they also have a subset of data for the ethnicity category. So the 43 percent of whites in professional positions would be a higher percentage if it showed only non-Hispanic whites, and the chart doesn’t show that figure. And Trump actually chose to keep the data that way, with the two questions about race and Hispanic ethnicity, for the 2020 census. I’m not sure if that’s because his brand is to poorer people who feel they’re being held back, or what.

It is a sign of American immorality that legacy admissions are not considered "affirmative action" and will never be challenged because the oligarchy wants every privilege preserved for their sole advantage.

So African-Americans and Latinx students don't belong at Ivy League schools but Donald Trump Jr. does?!

OP Good, then maybe we can get back to the egalitarian ideal sought by our founders.

That ideal was limited to white males, R10. Women couldn't vote and had, at best, second class citizenship. Blacks were enslaved in half the country and elsewhere were considered less than equal.

So stop kidding yourself.

According to Gayle and Them This Morning, over 70% of Americans are against affirmative action. I found that shocking.

If it goes away, I hope there's support for a poverty-based program.

The idea that a couple of million people in the United States were slaves and were mere chattel and possessed absolutely no rights was considered egalitarian, R10?

It's Monday, R10, shouldn't you be washing your white sheets today?

[quote] I don’t think diversity quotas are even that widely in use. They aren’t mandated, and even under current rules they are only allowed to correct a “manifest imbalance” in “traditionally segregated” jobs and in such a way that doesn’t impact non-minorities’ interests. It seems like further weakening affirmative action is just some kind of political gesture. Affirmative action isn’t causing white people’s poverty; low wages are.

You're right on all counts. Quotas are rarely used because they cannot withstand judicial scrutiny. The anti-"affirmative action" arguments before SCOTUS now take it much further. The argument is that it is unconstitutional to use race as a criteria for conferring any benefit on any person of color. Conveniently ignoring that race has always and continues to confer benefits on those who are NOT people of color. In Amerikkka, it is lawful, and apparently constitutional, for a police officer to kill you unprovoked because you are Black but it is unfair that your lived experience as a 14th generation victim of American racism and malevolence should help you get into a state school built by the forced labor of your slave ancestors.

R11 you extrapolated a personal interpretation into what I said. Or you’re just limited.

Or both.

R5, you're looking at them as a group. If you look at them as individuals, you can see how, at an individual level, it makes things harder: fewer slots that are truly race-blind at elite schools in particular. It's undeniable at this point (the opponents to affirmative action in education have the numbers).

At this point, the question isn't whether there's discrimination: the question at issue is whether someone, because of his/her race, may constitutionally have their chance of admission reduced when applying for federally funded higher education (the Harvard addresses Title VII since it's a private institution taking federal funds, the UNC case addresses the 14th Amendment since it's a state institution). That is, is there any compelling interest that justifies the discrimination. Thus far "diversity in a student body is important to contemporary education" has been the justification.

To make it clearer, here's an alternative way to look at it:

Say Harvard's admissions office sees two identical applications, but can't see the race of the applicant. Same school, same sex, same grades, same test scores, same recommendations, same extracurriculars, same essay (e.g., they both talk about volunteering at a children's hospital), same everything. In theory they should have an equal chance at admission. Then, the races of the applicants are revealed, and because of that data (the races of the applicants), one applicant has a much higher (yes, "much higher") chance of admission than the other applicant. The question is whether that should be permitted: throw out one applicant because of his race, while granting admission to another applicant who's the same in all but his race.

Thus far, for a few decades, the answer to that has been yes. Will the court completely reverse precedent and say it's no longer permitted, and if so, how will they justify that?

[quote] [R11] you extrapolated a personal interpretation into what I said. Or you’re just limited.

I am not r11 but s/he is right on the money. Whatever "egalitarian" ideals were entertained by the founders never contemplated that women, or men who were not white, would EVER have equal rights or privileges. It is abhorrent that in 2022 so much deference is given to conservative judges' presumption of the thoughts and ideals of white men who were only self-educated at a time when the average person did not live past 35.

Pew's "famous" 2019 polling.

[quote] Thus far, for a few decades, the answer to that has been yes. Will the court completely reverse precedent and say it's no longer permitted, and if so, how will they justify that?

Yes, it will. This is the SCOTUS that suggested voting rights are no longer in jeopardy because it concluded elected officials and public servants no longer terminate the employment of, assault and terrorize Black people who attempt to exercise their right to vote in Mississippi.

This is the MAGA court that is highly resentful of any suggestion that people of color stand on equal footing with white people. The Asians that brought this challenge will live to regret it, it will only further the ends of white supremacists. Ivy League-educated Asians will still be second place to white Phoenix University grads in the professional world.

Judging by the dirtball scumbags that have been spewed out of Ivy League universities, i.e. Cruz, DeSantis, Trump, etc., junior college graduates shouldn't feel inferior to Ivy Leaguers.

abortion, affirmative action, gay marriage will be next,

yet american morons keep voting for the christo-fascist repukes

R19, I think some Asians simply want the unique experience of going to a top university for undergrad. It's not so much about getting a job or reaching the top of some company. If you've dreamed of going to Yale for years, and you worked really hard for it, and did amazingly well in school, you probably earned admission and deserve it. If you're passed over because of your race, your dream is shattered.

The materials from Harvard show just this sort of thing repeatedly. They use the personality rating to knock these Asian applicants way down, because they have nothing else to use to justify scoring them lower than applicants or other races who have significantly lower grades and test scores, and inferior extracurricular achievements and teacher recommendations. Using the personality factor, to where Asians on average are given extraordinarily low personality scores on average is very "Yellow Peril."

Right now, it's totally legal, because the line is that diversity is critical to a well-rounded education, and in today's world one must know how to work with people from all backgrounds. I'm just saying maybe at an individual level it's unfair to reject someone because of his race. But then again fairness isn't the priority: the court has repeatedly said it's about the state's interest in creating a well-educated workforce that can handle diversity.

The numbers are on the plaintiffs' side. The personality score trick is real.

[Quote] The plaintiff’s attorneys repeatedly emphasized the lack of written instructions to admissions officers on how to use race permissibly and not impermissibly in evaluating an applicant, in order to argue that Harvard allows implicit racial bias and stereotypes to infect the process. The plaintiff zeroed in on the “personal” rating—which assesses qualities such as likability, maturity, integrity, courage, kindness, even “effervescence,” based on admissions officers’ review of alumni interviews, student essays, and high-school recommendations—as an area where Harvard may let conscious or unconscious bias against Asians tilt decisions. Fitzsimmons’s testimony confirmed that admissions officers gave Asian applicants higher ratings than white applicants in the academic and extracurricular categories, but that Asians’ admissions rates were pulled down because of their lower personal ratings, despite having alumni-interview scores comparable to or higher than those of whites.

The Asian tax in admissions.

[quote] In No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life, published in 2009, Princeton professor Thomas Espenshade and coauthor Alexandra Radford demonstrate that, controlling for other variables, Asian students applying to highly selective private colleges face odds against their admission three times as high as whites, six times as high as Hispanics, and sixteen times as high as blacks. To put it another way: Asians need SAT scores 140 points higher than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics, and an incredible 450 points higher than blacks (out of 1,600 points) to get into these schools. An Asian applicant with an SAT score of 1,500, that is, has the same chance of being accepted as a white student with a 1,360, a Latino with a 1,230, or an African-American with a 1,050. Among candidates in the highest (1,400–1,600) SAT range, 77 percent of blacks, 48 percent of Hispanics, 40 percent of whites, and only 30 percent of Asians are admitted.

When will people get in the streets, and suburbs, to let them know this won't fly, how long do you get dragged like a dog?

When will people get in the streets, and suburbs, to let them know this won't fly, how long do you get dragged like a dog?

When will people get in the streets, and suburbs, to let them know this won't fly, how long do you get dragged like a dog?

When will people get in the streets, and suburbs, to let them know this won't fly, how long do you get dragged like a dog?

The biggest gaff I have ever seen was Clarance Thomas sitting on the bench saying he had no idea what Diversity meant.

[quote] The materials from Harvard show just this sort of thing repeatedly. They use the personality rating to knock these Asian applicants way down, because they have nothing else to use to justify scoring them lower than applicants or other races who have significantly lower grades and test scores, and inferior extracurricular achievements and teacher recommendations. Using the personality factor, to where Asians on average are given extraordinarily low personality scores on average is very "Yellow Peril."

I know this happens, r22, and I agree that it is fundamentally unfair. It is a manifestation of white supremacy and privilege. So why are the Asian students -- represented by a racist white lawyer -- targeting the even smaller pool of African-american and Latinx admissions?! Go after the legacy admits, or even the athletic scholarships or the moneyed elite who buy their spots. The system is made to ensure that white students are the dominant demographic, even if not the largest

R31, they're going after race-based affirmative action because that's something the courts can address, as race is a protected class under the federal constitution. There's no rights mechanism to go after legacy and wealth advantages in the courts, as non-alumni and the people with lower wealth than donors aren't protected classes; the court can't do anything about that kind of discrimination.

[quote]Go after the legacy admits, or even the athletic scholarships

Ivies don’t offer athletic scholarships.

Roberts Supreme Court had already decided we live in a post racist society, which is why in 2013 they gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That same year the very states that the law was aimed because of rampant racist policies pertaining to voting started the same shit all over again. The Supreme Court WILL get rid of affirmative action, not that it might. It basically a foregone conclusion. This Republicans and the radical court is moving the country back 50 plus years.

If affirmative action in education is banned for private institutions that take federal money, I'm pretty sure Harvard will just no longer take federal money. Same for all the rich private universities.

Get rid of AA. It's a form of racism.

How can people not understand why Asians and Jews oppose AA? This has been argued for decades. It limits their admissions into the top colleges in favor of lesser qualified or lesser working students.

[quote] Ivies don’t offer athletic scholarships.

Interesting. Wasn't the "varsity blues" scandal about rich people disguising their children as athletes to get admission?

They can do whatever they want! No one will stop them, and absolutely NOTHING will get under 30s to vote!

Why not remake society and Democracy into their dystopian Jesus-scape!

R26 - R30 The First Amendment is pretty broad, you can do so whenever you want. What are you waiting for?

If you’re the kind who waits for crowds, Occupy Wall St, Charlottesville, BLM, Portland Autonomous Zone, Jan 6, these things happen regularly in free and open democracies. Don’t miss the chance the next time your friends get together.

R38, they weren't doing that for scholarships. They were doing it for admission.

It's like playing lacrosse to get into Princeton, rowing for Harvard, etc.

R30 I think you missed the deeper conversation. It wasn’t a gaff. Thomas is a titan and a seminal legal mind, try to think harder if your going to punch above your class.

(I happen to disagree with most of his interpretations. But only a fool would dismiss him)

Smell you r43

R37 I for one have never heard a Jewish angle to AA. Please elaborate.

This will sink the Dems, not save them, OP. Most White people, deep down, don’t like Affirmative Action. They won’t admit it, because it isn’t what good, White people are supposed to say. And, since it is already the status quo, no real reason to argue against it. It is easy to support a policy when you don’t actually have a say in it. But, deep down, Whites (and Asians and probably Latinos) don’t like it.

If the court rules against it, it will force Dems to campaign on it, which will mean the Whites in the suburbs vote Republican.

*you’re

R37 I showered after the gym today. Confused

R46 most white ppl?! It’s most thinking ppl, regardless of race.

Affirmative Action = White parents shrieking about the black kid with a 3.8 GPA getting in over their precious 4.0 GPA kid, but then whining about all of the Asian kids who got in with a 4.0 GPA plus a higher SAT score than their precious.

How about you be more pissed about complete idiots like Dubya, Kushner (and his equally-stupid brother), Trump and the countless other wealthy/legacy imbeciles who couldn't get into DeVry if they applied, yet take places in the Ivy that they have no business getting.

[quote] How can people not understand why Asians and Jews oppose AA? This has been argued for decades. It limits their admissions into the top colleges in favor of lesser qualified or lesser working students.

"Jews" are among the most vigorous proponents of AA. Jewish people no longer face institutionalized or structural anti-semitism, especially not in academia.

I see your dog-whistle with that "lesser" bullshit. Ultimately, Harvard doesn't like being told what to do. When SCOTUS strikes down AA Harvard (and others) will just overhaul its admissions criteria and diminish the weight of empirical admissions criteria. Harvard can never be required to admit a student because they have a 5.0 GPA and a perfect SAT score.

Henceforth, the personal essay will be weighted such that you can write "I was raised poor, Black and..." and you will go to the top of the heap of applicants. Then someone would have to argue that race continues to be a factor in admissions and Harvard would just say "no, it's not, we base admission decisions on essays."

R49 I have an equal disdain for legacy admissions as I do for unqualified AA admissions.

I don’t like the whole lot you mentioned but Jared Kushner shouldn’t be grouped in with them. He is exceedingly more intelligent. (And a democrat, not that that has bearing on admissions)

[quote] If the court rules against it, it will force Dems to campaign on it, which will mean the Whites in the suburbs vote Republican.

"Affirmative action" hasn't been in the mainstream Democratic platform for decades. Dems absolutely will not campaign on it -- unless they are in a district that is amenable to AA ideology.

[quote]This will sink the Dems, not save them, OP. Most White people, deep down, don’t like Affirmative Action

We just had the most unqualified idiot become president. The very assholes who scream the loudest about AA are his biggest supporters. We have a US senator from AL who didn't know what the three branches were. We have idiots in the Congress who don't know what the 19A is and think it's "Gazpacho Police" "Marshall Law" and "Peach tree dish." These are the white trash people in power who the even bigger white trash screaming about AA, allow to get into power.

So clearly the ones who hate AA the most, have no issue with truly unqualified, stupid WHITE people being allowed to fail upward.

^^ ha! Sorry meant Josh Kushner, not Jared. Josh is quite intelligent. Jared is a cunty douchebag

R54, but Josh didn't get into Harvard because he had the grades. Daddy cut a check for BOTH to get in.

The cop at r16 is the unheralded star of this thread.

R55 i know, and that’s awful. But Josh had the academics to get in on his own, his dad just eliminated any chance he wouldn’t. Terrible. Point is, he was qualified, Jared absolutely wasn’t. You called Josh stupid. He isn’t.

[quote] "Affirmative action" hasn't been in the mainstream Democratic platform for decades. Dems absolutely will not campaign on it -- unless they are in a district that is amenable to AA ideology. [quote]

Unfortunately, R52, if you have not noticed, the Dems of recent do a very bad job campaigning on the issues that matter most to voters. Dems have spoken more this election cycle about “saving democracy” and “roe v wade” as opposed to the economy, which is the number one issue for voters. Dems are beholden to the Beltway class and the Blue Check Mark class. I assure you that the Dems would 100% campaign on the issue and would lose as a result.

R4 that has not been true at the college level for many years. White men are now benefitting from policies to correct gender "imbalance."

[quote]Many colleges have sought to remedy that imbalance by admitting more men, especially among undergraduates, forcing schools to reach deeper into the applicant pool. In the survey released last week by Inside Higher Ed, a web site that focuses on education news, 11 percent of admissions directors said they admit male applicants with below average test scores and grades. Only 3 percent of the 462 surveyed said they admit female applicants with below average credentials. At public 4-year colleges the number is even higher. Almost one-in-five 18 percent - are so hungry for male students admissions directors report admitting men with lower academic credentials, according to the survey.

[quote]A major reason for the gender gap is higher academic achievement by girls, said David Hawkins, director of public policy and research at National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC). "It's not surprising," said Hawkins. "Women are on average performing better than young men coming out of high school." Hawkins said there's no one formula for institutions to deal with the gender gap. Some schools tailor their marketing to men, while others have invested in sports programs or majors that might appeal to men. And some are admitting less-qualifed males.

Fear not, though. This SCOTUS will hold AA to the advantage of racial/ethnic minorities is unconstitutional, but have no problem turning around and saying it's fine to make sure men get their God-given advantages. So white men will soon be wildly disproportionately dominating college campuses again, and all the wingnuts feigning outrage on behalf of Asians will just forget they exist.

The only people who support it are white progressives who profit off of it.

It makes no sense in an increasingly multiracial America in 2022

Who is eligible? One black parent? One black grandparent? Suddenly you've recreated Hitler's Nuremberg Laws

What about "Blatinos" whose Black ancestry may date back over hundreds of years or intermarriage

Are Argentinians of Irish ancestry "Latinos"?

What about a blue eyed blond like Cameron Diaz? (WEHT, BTW?)

Most Americans feel it should be based on income rather than race

R58 is here to make the brilliant argument that Dems "would" do something they aren't doing and many haven't done for at least a couple decades.

Could the trolls stop lying about what most Americans, particularly people of color, support? A majority of Americans support AA overall, and support is much higher among Blacks and Hispanics.

[quote]White men are now benefitting from policies to correct gender "imbalance."

What's good for the goose.................

And yes, Asian Americans support it in high numbers as well.

You can keep trying with your bullshit R63, but we all know opponents of AA are all good with giving white boys the leg up even though women have always had to to actually outperform them to get anywhere.

BLAME the fat ass losers who couldn’t vote for “Her.”

R16, in a world where careers matter more than college, taking on an anti affirmative action stance aligns politically with people who have a pro-white stance overall. Even if it doesn’t necessarily show up in college admissions statistics, there’s an overall effect of promoting diversity culturally that can be helpful to all people of color, including Asians. But I think making it based only on race is a mistake since people can be poor and disadvantaged without being racial minorities. Everyone should have as many opportunities as possible for an education.

I’m white and I’m all for affirmative action. It’s the very least we can do—to give people of color a slight advantage to succeed after the centuries of crap we’ve pulled on them.

is it any surprise SCOTUS will scrap this? Look what they’ve already done in the past two years. They won’t lose a moment of sleep over this decision.

[R16] Thank you for your insightful post ! You put a lot of things in perspective, as I was unsure about AA and what the crux of the argument was. (I just know Sunny Hostin on 'The View' is pro-AA). Personally, I guess now I'm against it after reading your example - why should race be the deciding factor if you have two incredibly great candidates ? Thanks again - much appreciated for you to share this knowledge.

Everyone is just giving their opinion about AA. The OP asked about electoral impact of the hearing. There won't be one. Few follow hearings. A ruling would get more attention, but we won't have one that soon.

In any case while depending on the exact question wording voters may seem more or less favorable, every time affirmative action was on the ballot, it has lost. even repeatedly in California. Universities will do what they can to minimize the effect of the ruling, but I would next expect big electoral consequences for a ruling that will come down in 2023. long before the next election.

Jackass SCOTUS John Roberts is fucking our country again. This is the guy that gutting the Voting Rights Act claiming that racism no longer exists in America. What a buffoon he is! And look at the KKK fascist gerrymandering that is more fierce than any other time. He also gave us Citizen Inited that opened the door to foreign $$$ from Russia to destroy us from within. This SINGLE man has ruined our country and shredded our Constitution. This man is on par with Hitler in terms of the damage to our country.

Look out for liars who say that "actually everyone likes affirmative action, everything you've heard is wrong." Liars will also say "a majority of Asians actually do like AA."

Ignore misinformation!

Might?

The ruling of the Court is not in doubt. The question is how much can universities circumvent it? The answers may vary somewhat if we consider three categories: private universities, public universities in blue states and publics in red states. The latter category is going to have the most trouble, but most aren't too selective anyway, with a few exceptions like UT Austin (also UNC- Chapel Hill, but NC is not such a red a state).

[quote] is it any surprise SCOTUS will scrap this? Look what they’ve already done in the past two years. They won’t lose a moment of sleep over this decision.

Or when they decide there is no constitutional right to same-sex marriage AND that discrimination against gays is permissible as religious freedom.

R9, it varies by school, but on average, across all universities, admitted legacy students have higher academic credentials than non-legacy students.

The real issue is athletic admissions. That is how white students get admitted to Ivy leagues. Black students generally don’t get admitted as athletes. Most of the black students who get admitted to Ivy League schools are upper middle class and they are disproportionately descended from immigrants as opposed to slaves.

R12, even if you did class based affirmative action, the ones benefiting from it would be white and Asian students. Poor white students still on average do better than middle class black students.

R64, thank you for linking that article. In my commentary, I have suggested that Asians initiated this anti-AA push. While they are the plaintiffs/appellants in the lawsuit the architect was a white person. As the article noted many Asians support AA and are aware that their community is often used by the majority culture as a wedge to divide and conquer non-whites, and make them believe their interests are separate and at war.

[quote] ...Most of the black students who get admitted to Ivy League schools are upper middle class and they are disproportionately descended from immigrants as opposed to slaves.

Interesting. Do you have a source that you can link?

I read that Thomas said that he didn't go to a racially diverse school as part of his questioning. He went to Yale Law in the early 1970s. Of course it wasn't racially diverse at the time. He was the diversity. Same with the Supreme Court appointment.

Here, R79.

People against Affirmative Action are fucking morons. Expand it, add to it, include other groups of people, whatever people want to do to make it broader is fine. Doing away with it? Fucking stupid.

Another thing, on a macro level. affirmative action doesn’t necessarily help black students. When it comes to harder majors like STEM as well as law schools, the evidence shows that under qualified black students were much more likely to switch to an easier major, drop out of school, or finish near the bottom of their class. This is problematic if they’re taking on expensive student loans.

UCLA professor Richard Sander did a study which suggested that black law school graduates who were appropriately matched at their law schools were more likely to pass the Bar Exam.

The evidence is mixed as to whether beneficiaries of affirmative action enjoy a higher marginal benefit in income. Some studies show they have lower income.

I have a suspicion that if you got rid of the use of racial preferences, the academic skills gap between white and black students would finally start to close.

I love what Daniel Friedman writes about test scores:

“While it is bad advice for a job applicant to share test scores with an employer, nearly every job application will include an applicant’s college degree and the institution that granted it. There’s no taboo against telling people where you went to school. You’re expected to put it on your resume. You can mention it in conversation with people you just met. You can include it in your online dating profile. You can wear a T-shirt with the name of your school printed on it, or festoon your car with bumper stickers that show your school spirit. However, there’s almost no occasion where it is socially acceptable to brag about your test scores or ask somebody else about theirs.

People use the relative prestige of their degree-granting institutions to sort themselves, their colleagues and their peer groups into hierarchies, and employers use this information to rank prospective hires as well. If an applicant went to an elite university, most employers will assume that applicant is likely to be smarter than someone who attended a less prestigious school.

It’s true that being very smart and scoring very well on the SAT is the only way most people can have a chance of getting into an Ivy League school, but a lot of seats at elite schools are set aside for special people who don’t have to meet the high academic standards required of everybody else. Meanwhile, a lot of people with stellar scores attend lower-ranked schools, to take advantage of economic incentives like merit scholarships or in-state tuition, or simply because elite schools turn away a lot of top academic performers to make room for the children of the rich and powerful.

The 25th percentile SAT scores at Yale, for example, are 720 on the critical reading section and 710 on the math. The 75th percentile SAT scores at my undergraduate alma mater, the University of Maryland, College Park, which is currently ranked #61 by USNews, are 720 critical reading and 750 math.

That means at least a quarter of Maryland students scored higher on at least one SAT section than at least a quarter of Yalies. And there are dozens of other colleges and universities where significant percentages of students are more academically accomplished than many students at top schools.”

Good.

Great Twitter thread here.

It’s discriminatory and racist. People think black people are too stupid to get ahead based on merit. It’s completely unconstitutional. We have enough stupid people advancing into careers that have no business being in. Enough already.

More stupidity from the left. I swear, regardless of political affiliation, the dumbest people in the room have been given a megaphone. I can’t believe Scientific American would post such garbage. Our institutions are being run on feelings not facts. We’re paying the price for it.

If pushes for "equity" in schools were about opposing nepotism and making the admissions system more fair to eliminate discrimination, then there would be a broad consensus in favor of it. Instead, elite whites offered to set aside spaces in their elite organizations for elite blacks as long as doing so allowed them to preserve the side doors that assured admission for their children and grandchildren.

[quote]Only white progressives like it,

Although I did use it become a supreme court judge, the rest of black folk are lazy takers and do no deserve the same kind of privilege I enjoyed.

I have no problem with the children of rich donors getting into colleges. The schools then use that money to allow more poor kids to get scholarships.

Thanks for the link, r81/r76

I didn't know that statistic, the author reaches a different conclusion but I feel that those facts support an even more compelling pro-AA argument in favor of multi-generational Black Americans. We know the history of this nation. It is uniquely debilitating to be a member of a Black minority in a racist white majority country. Blacks have been in America for more than 400 years but have pointedly never been allowed to fully participate (to put it mildly) in its freedoms and opportunities. Apparently, this nation has so effectively conspired against the education, uplift, improvement and prosperity of Black Americans that when advancement opportunities seem to appear only Black immigrants from Black-majority countries can take advantage of them. The Black and mixed populations of the Carribean, Latin America and South America are descendants of African slaves as well but did not suffer under the yoke of Jim Crow for 100 years after the abolition of slavery. It is not only poverty that disadvantages Black Americans and renders them unable to prepare for higher education or opportunity but also the intergenerational trauma of racial discrimination, segregation, oppression and terrorism of a majority-white nation that has, with purpose and intent, sought to impede advancement of the Black race. This impacts middle-class and even upper middle class multi-generational Black Americans.

I am sure those with perspective on being Black and an immigrant will have their own viewpoints. Black immigrants have suffered longterm effects of racism but their experience would be very different from multi-generational Black Americans. I wonder if elite schools could use African-american slave ancestry as an admission criterion, so that the issue is not strictly race but specifically tailored to redress a systemic, structural racism in America that impacts a subset of a 'racial' group. Would that be constitutional?

That's not how it works R92. The money does not go to poor kids and scholarships Gramps. That concept died out about 40 years ago. It mostly goes back to other less rich kids in the form of free college for the privileged and connected.

[quote]Blacks have been in America for more than 400 years but have pointedly never been allowed to fully participate (to put it mildly) in its freedoms and opportunities.

There are two black people on the Supreme Court. It seemed like they were both fully participating. There's always room at the top. It's people who stay at the bottom, of all races, who are limited.

It will be interesting to see the end results of this. By merit (test scores and grades), Asian American students overwhelm their white peers. If 35,000 people apply for admission to Harvard, and 15,000 of those are Asian, using neutral criteria, probably 1200 Asians out of the class size of 1900 would be admitted. That would leave the majority of white people admitted as legacy admissions, and a few smart white ones who might accidentally slip through the cracks. In their desire not to have "unworthy" black and Latino candidates succeed, will white people really sit still to have Asian students attain majority status in the most elite schools in the country? This is a country which interned all Japanese citizens on the west coast 75 years ago without a qualm, and a country which forbade citizenship to Chinese people from 1882-1943!!!! (Also a country where a thriving black business community was burned to the ground 100 years ago in Tulsa and the people who lived there driven out). Turns out, white people (and that's my race, so I'm not saying this as an outsider), tend to be evil and vindictive when they notice that others are achieving more success than they are. Notice that the people arguing this case before the Supreme court did not bring up THIS possibility.

To the idiot above who says that Thomas knew what he was saying when he said he didn't understand the word "diversity", turns out they have a little thing called a dictionary that comes in handy in situations like these:

"the practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc.:"

One of the best things about the American public school system before it was deliberately and systematically damaged by Republicans over the past 40 years, is that people from all social classes. religions, and ethnic backgrounds were thrown together and forced to try to get along. In the process, people had to learn to "unlearn" a bit of their tribalism. Throw away diversity and you undo a good bit of the American experiment.

R87, I think when O'Connor wrote her opinion there was an unstated presumption that racism would be less of an impediment in 25 years time. However, in 2022, racism is more prevalent and virulent than 25 years ago. Foreseeable only to those who had a crystal ball, not Supreme Court judges.

R93, I never believed that racism is what prevents blacks from doing better in school. I think racism is the result of them not doing better in school.

Racism did not stop black athletes from doing well in athletics.

At the end of the day, good work and talent will speak for itself.

Good work and talent mean nothing if there isn't even a minimum of financial and educational support at home. Educational attainment means that long before school there was a parent actively involved in teaching his/her child the alphabet, playing counting games, reading books to that child before bed, etc etc. Sadly, in homes of desperate poverty, none of that exists. An athletic kid can go out and find a playground to shoot basketballs or throw a football, but he can't invent a parent who doesn't participate in setting the basic parameters of a quiet, safe, enjoyable learning environment at home.

However, school interventions, starting early and continuing on through college, can make up for some of these lacks over time. Without them, an underclass will continue to struggle and fail. By the way, all of this applies equally to squalid white slums in the small towns of the US rust belt. But percentage-wise, the amount of black kids raised in poverty far exceeds the amount of white kids.

R97, what you’re doing is another form of the “God of the gaps” argument. “You can’t expect how life originated on this planet? It must be God.”

But instead, you’re using a “racism of the gaps” argument to explain why there are still academic skills gaps.

Racism doesn’t stop Jews or Asians from doing better than whites.

Even if you got rid of all the racism from everyone’s hearts, the gaps would still persist. All the anti racism movement in the world is not going to close the gaps, just like all the praying to God won’t heal cancer.

[quote] I think when O'Connor wrote her opinion there was an unstated presumption that racism would be less of an impediment in 25 years time. However, in 2022, racism is more prevalent and virulent than 25 years ago. Foreseeable only to those who had a crystal ball, not Supreme Court judges.

A time limit was crucial to the ruling. The SC was going to allow something that is patently unconstitutional stay in place only because it was temporary. What will be crucial to the ruling in the current case is what Roberts expressed about affirmative action proponents intending it now to be permanent. That's not going to fly under the Constitution. The majority will knock it down because it no longer pretends to be a temporary solution.

R99, head start programs only close the academic gaps temporarily. But.. they do appear to socialize kids better in the long run (less likely to go to jail, end up a pregnant teen, etc).

R62 You can argue that most people support AA, but when it was on the ballot in California a few years ago, one of the most diverse States, it failed.

R103, it also failed in Washington a few years ago.

[quote] The majority will knock it down because it no longer pretends to be a temporary solution.

R101, a 25 (or even 50) year solution to a 400+ year problem? That is too optimistic and much too temporary. SCOTUS will likely destroy AA but that doesn't mean the majority's decision will be reasonable or well-founded, it will just be a snapshot of a politically biased SCOTUS at a horrible time in this country's history

R105, it’s not a solution at all. In a way, it’s kind of like putting lipstick on a pig to make the pig look “beautiful.” What affirmative action does is bestow a sort of faux equality on under qualified minorities. In a way, it can reinforce racism when white people notice when black people perform not as well because they were under qualified. (I suppose it balances out with the under qualified white athletes and legacy admissions). Yes, having diversity can break down negative stereotypes, but it can also reinforce negative stereotypes as well.

[quote] There are two black people on the Supreme Court. It seemed like they were both fully participating. There's always room at the top. It's people who stay at the bottom, of all races, who are limited.

I guess that is one way to view it. We've had a Black president, we have a Black-identified vice-president and two Black Supreme Court justices, so why do we need AA? Obviously, I wouldn't agree, and certainly don't agree that there is "always room at the top" but it is late and I am too drunk to fully articulate.

[quote] In a way, it can reinforce racism when white people notice when black people perform not as well because they were under qualified.

Nope, I absolutely disagree. Racism cannot be legitimately reinforced by anything other than white supremacy and more racism. White men chronically underperform in every corner of our society and they are rarely deemed unqualified. White men are presumptively qualified for everything, and Black people are presumptively under-qualified for anything -- that's "unreinforced" racism.

R108, that is bullshit that white men are presumptively qualified for everything.

The fact remains, white students still perform better on average academically than middle class black students. That’s not because of racism, that only perpetuates racism.

The problem isn’t white supremacy, the problem is that black people perpetuate a system of black inferiority. When they hold up George Floyd and Michael Brown as these innocent martyrs, when all the rap music is sex and drugs and violence, they perpetuate a system of black inferiority. It’s the system of black inferiority that needs to be dismantled.

R64 and R78, that piece centers around an exceedingly biased survey by three explicitly pro-AA progressive Asian groups. It's nonsense.

Pew is the gold standard. Everyone knows about their 2019 study.

R64, this is how the question in that survey is phrased:

"Next, do you favor or oppose affirmative action programs designed to help [SPLIT SAMPLE Blacks/Black people], women, and other minorities get better access to higher education?"

Nothing about the trade-offs or potential detrimental effects on Asian applicants. *Other minorities" is deceptive: it makes some Asians surveyed think Asian kids would benefit, too.

They created the question to get the stat they wanted, so articles like that from NBC could spread the "fact" that some kind of majority of Asians support AA. It's not true. Asians overwhelmingly voted against AA in Washington State in 1999, where the state as a whole voted to ban it in education.

2019, not 1999.

[quote] R64 and R78, that piece centers around an exceedingly biased survey by three explicitly pro-AA progressive Asian groups. It's nonsense.

r110 NBC. Just like foxnews etc of the left. They have consistently published very biased pieces, (completely opposite of what real world ordinary Asians strongly feel and think), not just this issues but so many others. This type of extremely progressive Asians - esp. politicians - are just like (well-off) progressive whites. Not only stances but background too: good/private/elite high schools and colleges and careers in such institutions, esp. media.

R113, boba liberal Asians, yeah. They're always discounting violence against Asians as a mere part of a "bigger discussion we need to have about structural racism and the Model Minority myth hurting Black Americans", and claim "those FOB Asians" buttress white supremacy. They always mention that they have Black friends.

They're basically pick-me Asians, desperate for the approval of those they see as "real Americans" (rich progressive white people and Black Americans). They like to say that they're "not like *those* Asians" (i.e., the sometimes FOBby strivers who aren't total sellouts and want to do good by their families).

Boba Asians.

[quote][R101], a 25 (or even 50) year solution to a 400+ year problem? That is too optimistic and much too temporary. SCOTUS will likely destroy AA but that doesn't mean the majority's decision will be reasonable or well-founded, it will just be a snapshot of a politically biased SCOTUS at a horrible time in this country's history

What you are looking for and needing is a Constitutional amendment to allow permanent racial discrimination, since the Constitution currently doesn't allow for that.

Edit:

They're always discounting violence against Asians as a mere part of a "bigger discussion we need to have about structural racism, *anti-Blackness in the Asian American community, and the Model Minority myth hurting Black Americans."

R113, check this out. Great Asian American podcast. They discuss bobas in this episode.

The Model Minority is reality. They do better because they strive harder than others.

Just for fun.

I don’t believe George Floyd is held up as a “martyr”. They are saying a man shouldn’t be murdered for petty crimes and/if they twitched (I.e. he twitched when I buried my knee on his neck or I broke his neck while doing so). Correct me if I’m wrong.

Asian hate it because their children are discriminated against in admissions to.schools with affirmative action. They may have stronger grades, test scores, extracurricular, etc., but may be denied in favor of a less qualified AA or Latino person.

Let's be honest. The Conservatives want to shut down any opportunity for minorities to "better" themselves, like education or receiving equal rights. It's about control of their superior vs. inferior based (race) class hierarchy system.

Let’s be honest - East Asians kick all asses. It’s because of the PERFECTION that the lazy rest of the world perpetuates. It’s simply sub-par. Watch this video and observe the difference from the rest of the world.

[quote] The Model Minority is reality. They do better because they strive harder than others.

They work harder and regularly outperform whites. They are not a model "minority" they are model citizens when it comes to their embrace and pursuit of education. At some point the majority culture will decide that's a problem too.

R123, other than Native Americans, Asians are the ultimate minorities in America. They're the smallest group after Native Americans, and that's not even dividing by Asian regions (South Asian, East Asian, Southeast Asian, Middle East, Central Asian). Also, they're the ones least seen as "American"—the perpetual foreigner.

Kiss this goodbye. And once it's gone, it'll never be back. Was never fair anyway.

It was telling that the pro-affirmative action lawyer couldn't explain why Asians as a group received Personal Scores lower than any other race/ethnicity.

The justices should have helped him out by explaining, "It's racism, stupid."

The Economist

The Supreme Court seems ready to toss out affirmative action

Race-conscious admissions policies have vocal but dwindling support

Nov 1st 2022

"Five votes”, Justice William Brennan perennially told his law clerks, “can do anything around here.” When the Supreme Court first blessed limited racial preferences in university admissions in 1978, the margin was 5-4. In Grutter v Bollinger, decided in 2003, the same count upheld the University of Michigan law school’s admissions policy seeking a “critical mass” of under-represented minority applicants. In 2016, another one-vote margin salvaged another challenge to affirmative action brought in Fisher v University of Texas.

Six years later, with six conservatives on the court, the balance has shifted. All are sceptical of, if not openly hostile to, racial tips. In nearly five hours of oral argument on October 31st, challenges to admissions policies at Harvard University (pictured) and the University of North Carolina (unc) found a receptive audience. The dissenters in 2016—Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, along with the chief, John Roberts—seem to have Donald Trump’s three appointees on board to overturn 44 years of precedent. When decisions arrive, probably in the spring, public and private universities alike may no longer be permitted to build racially diverse classes by giving preferential treatment to students from certain under-represented groups. Without that licence, both Harvard and unc say, their pursuit of diversity would falter.

The heart of affirmative action came under attack with Justice Thomas’s first question for unc’s lawyer, Ryan Park. “I’ve heard the word ‘diversity’ quite a few times”, he told Mr Park, “and I don’t have a clue what it means. It seems to mean everything for everyone.” Justice Thomas pooh-poohed the purported benefits of diversity at several points in the hearings. He told Mr Park that parents don’t send children to college “to have fun or feel good” but to “learn physics or chemistry”. Justice Thomas admitted to David Hinojosa, the lawyer representing a group of unc students, that he might be “tone deaf” about college life today.

But it was the universities’ admissions procedures—not the goal of diversity itself—that became the prime target for the other five conservatives. Grutter allowed universities to turn to race as an explicit admissions factor only if “race-neutral” means of enhancing diversity—those that do not classify students by race—came up short. Cameron Norris, a lawyer for Students For Fair Admissions (sffa, the plaintiff behind both cases), noted that Harvard only seriously considered such alternatives in 2017, three years after sffa sued the school. He said Harvard could achieve nearly as diverse a student body—and become “far less white, wealthy and privileged”—if it eliminated preferences for the children of alumni or major donors.

Seth Waxman, Harvard’s lawyer, contested this conclusion, arguing that the university could not reach its diversity goals without expressly taking account of students’ race as one factor in the admissions calculus. Harvard “need not blind itself to race” under the law, he said, and needs to keep its eye on applicants’ identities to provide “benefits to the nation”—including enhanced critical thinking, more innovative businesses and a more cohesive military. Mr Waxman parried charges that Harvard discriminates against Asian-American applicants by pointing to the trial court’s conclusion—with testimony from 30 witnesses and “detailed expert analysis”—that no such bias haunts Harvard’s system.

...

...

Elizabeth Prelogar, Joe Biden’s solicitor general, emphasised the value of affirmative action to the military. “Our armed forces know from hard experience that when we do not have a diverse officer corps that is broadly reflective of a diverse fighting force”, she said, “our strength and cohesion and military readiness suffer”. Ms Prelogar faced a question from Justice Alito about the government’s shift in position, as Donald Trump’s Department of Justice had opposed Harvard’s policy. But her bracing presentation led Chief Justice Roberts to muse that the court might consider carving America’s service academies—including West Point and the Naval Academy—out of a ruling barring affirmative action. Justice Kagan piggybacked on this. If there is a “very convincing case on behalf of the military”, she said, might there be a case to be made for similar claims for “medical facilities”, “businesses” or other institutions that are “critical to the well-being of this country”?

Chief Justice Roberts asked Patrick Strawbridge, another lawyer for sffa, whether he was opposed to race-neutral alternatives for reaching demographic goals. Mr Strawbridge replied that measures to expand diversity could be illicit, too, if they were motivated only by race. But he suggested that programmes like the University of Texas’s Top Ten Percent plan (which offers admission to the top decile of every high school in the state) could be kosher if they can be justified by appeals to “socioeconomic” or “geographic”, rather than racial, diversity.

Conservative lawyers and justices alike distinguished between flat-footed and more nuanced considerations of race. Using a racial check-box as a factor may be highly suspicious, but admissions officers could legitimately consider how students present their racial struggles—or other experiences—in an essay. Mr Waxman found this wanting: race should (potentially) matter for all candidates, not only for those applicants whose racial identity is of “such compelling importance that they write about it”. In another exchange, Justice Kavanaugh asked Mr Norris if preferences for descendants of slaves may be used. No, he said, as such tips are “still problematic under this court’s precedents”.

Two hours into the marathon hearings, Justice Kagan asked Ms Prelogar whether a “committed originalist” like most members of the conservative majority would find the 14th Amendment’s equal-protection clause to bar race-consciousness. There is “nothing in history” to support a principle of race-blindness in the amendments passed in the wake of the Civil War, she said. They were specifically designed “to bring African-American citizens to a point of equality in our society”. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson built on this. Isn’t clear historical evidence necessary, she said, before overruling a long-standing precedent? She also wondered why it would be acceptable to give a boost to a fifth-generation North Carolinian who is a descendant of slave owners but not to a fifth-generation North Carolinian whose ancestors were enslaved.

They started the Harvard part of the hearing (UNC and Harvard).

"Supreme Court might get rid of affirmative action"

[quote] this is how the question in that survey is phrased:

Typical non-facts used to bolster an unpopular opinion and even more unpopular policy.

Opponents of AA tend to think ANYONE non-white who gets into an Ivy didn't get there by earning it even when shown proof. White people don't want to compete at all, that's why they whine about Asians. If there was no AA anywhere and there was in fact an even playing field, white people wouldn't like the results because their mediocrity would never again be rewarded.

KJB is far more qualified than several of her white counterparts on the SC and yet I still see white sacks of shit claim she only got there because she's black.

Why would anyone think anything different? The entire country is being taken over to that a dwindling white population will maintain control and privilege over everything.

It started back a long time ago with the Southern Strategy and Lee Atwater. Karl Rove and the Project for a New American Century kept it going pumped with some new ideas about controlling the governors seats in every state and putting activist judges on the benches. They are reaping the benefits of a well coordinated plan to destroy representative democracy.

^ ...and preserve white privilege and supremacy.

Oh, he is a martyr. A career criminal who was probably heading back to the pen anyway, is now a martyr because that cop just didn't do his job.

You issue a citation or write a ticket for the offense and then you get back into your squad car and go on your merry fucking way.

Ya don't hop up and down on a suspects neck until he dies in full view of the community you are sworn to protect.

If a college doesn't take federal funds, do they have to follow the Supreme Court ruling?

More John Roberts fuckery. Impeach him!

Roberts push back on all the claims of Supreme Court extremism and illegitimacy should be abandoned now.

They know Putin placed Shitler to enforce Christo-fascism and white supremacy.

R138, if it's a private college, the ruling won't apply to it if it doesn't take federal funds (Title VI). All public universities would have to follow even if they don't take federal funds (14th Amendment).

Smart woman. I like Politics Girl.

p.s. Try too tolerate by deluding yourself that it is MTF.

Bump

Bumpitty bump

GOP works to win over Asian Americans – and draws ‘race-baiting’ charges

In reaching out to one minority group, Republicans have fueled complaints they are pitting racial and ethnic communities against each other

Harvard actually could live without federal funds, but they don't want to and very very few other universities could.

A few things are true. Asians are discriminated against. Also neither right nor left really cares about them. Right wing is using them as a wedge to get rid of affirmative action which they oppose not out of fairness concerns (they were for Jim Crow) but out of racism. The left thinks the Asians are doing fine, and is much more focused on Blacks and Latinos.

In fact, the Ivies COULD keep affirmative action for Blacks and Latinos without discriminating so much against Asians, but they would have to get rid of legacy preferences, "dean's list (rich donors' kids like Jared Kushner) and faculty kid/staff preference, all of which helps mostly white people. But they will NEVER do that, because that's them! The left doesn't actually LIKE these things, but they are hard to challenge and they're more focused on helping Blacks/Latinos so if Asians have to "take one for the team" because Harvard et al will not get rid of legacy admits, then that's OK with them.

Affirmative Action was meant to be a temporary assist to those where the educational systems failed minorities due to lack of funding at state and local levels because of discrimination.

That failure does not exist anymore. If there is a failure it is not due to discrimination. Perhaps if AA is done away with then they will face any failures in the educational system and address them as they should have been doing all along.

Affirmative Action has allowed school systems to fall behind without accountability because students' failings will be ignored so that AA goals can be fulfilled. Forcing schools to do their job for ALL students will be the best things that happened to the educational system.

Good, now we can get more Asians in College.

Asians are either white-adjacent ( e.g. for affirmative action) or POC (e.g. Atlanta spa shooting) depending on what’s convenient and politically helpful.

In a brief filed with the Supreme Court in opposition of SFFA’s case, Harvard said diversity enabled by race-conscious admissions promotes a “more robust academic environment.” Many experts suggested that if affirmative action is outlawed, Harvard could more heavily consider other factors in admissions, such as geography or socioeconomic status. “They can emphasize admitting students for whom English is a second language, and that will increase diversity in a variety of ways in terms of ethnicity and national origin,” said David B. Oppenheimer, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “Because most of the United States is very, very segregated residentially, geographic diversity can be a tool to increase racial diversity.” Though the Supreme Court’s ruling could strike down the use of race as a factor in admissions nationwide, nine states — Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Washington — already bar race-based affirmative action.

How about they stop asking about someone's race and make admissions truly blind. Attach a random number to the applicant and ban any reference to names or race in the application.

The people who benefited most from AA were white women, and not by a slim margin.

You can’t base affirmative action on poverty because those students can’t compete academically. Their schools are the worst and their families are the most fractured.

A lot of black and POC diversity professionals are watching these developments closely, I’m sure. What is their job supposed to be without affirmative action?

“ Most of the black students who get admitted to Ivy League schools are upper middle class and they are disproportionately descended from immigrants as opposed to slaves.”

Oh My God. This x 888772838492!!!! THANK YOU.

I am the child of refugees who fled a Soviet invasion of their homeland (Central Asian country). They came to the US with truly next to nothing, as friends and people around them were being shot, displaced etc. It boggled my mind that my background wasn’t considered “diverse enough” for AA purposes during college / grad school admissions.

I will never forget the arrogance I encountered during grad school of children of African and certain Latin American immigrants that came to the US under relatively peaceful conditions, of course never acknowledging the ginormous admission boosts from AA that they certainly shouldn’t have been entitled to.

I really hope SCOTUS shoots affirmative action down. I have seen what r156 is taking about. Those colleges say they want to foster diversity, but in reality, only one type of "diversity".

R157, that’s exactly what I was getting at. “Diversity” for higher education admissions basically being limited to just “Black and Hispanic.” Which is nonsense and insulting to the entire notion of diversity. By all accounts, people of my ethnic background are probably < 0.01% of the US population — even less than those of South Asian origin such as Indian-Americans. Add that to the circumstances (ie extreme adversity by foreign invasion; not merely a desire for greater economic mobility) which led to most of their immigration to the US. But somehow for AA purposes those factors don’t make me “diverse” enough.

i think that for the purposes of most educational institutions, "diversity" doesn't mean representing every ethnic group on the planet. Rather, it means, having a sufficient representation of the more numerous divisions in our country that the demographics of the college can more or less come closer to matching the demographics of the country as a whole. Our country is now just over 60% non-Hispanic white. Yet in demographic terms, most colleges are about 75-85% white. Much of the remainder is Asian.

Current US demographics: White: 60.1% (Non-Hispanic)

Hispanic: 18.5%

Black: 12.2%

Asian: 5.6%

Multiple Races: 2.8%

Just between them, Blacks and Hispanics make up 30% of the US population, but their representation in colleges and universities is much lower. But the proportion of black and Hispanics raised in poverty is much greater than in the US population as a whole, which ALSO means that they will very likely be attending low-achieving schools their entire lives, as well as having limited access to libraries, cultural events, and definitely very little in the way of enrichment (music lessons, dance lessons, tutors, computer schools, etc).

No matter how you slice it, whether by income level or race, there will be displacement of people to make room for other people, less advantaged, and that is where the pushback is coming from. . This is not as great a problem at state schools where at least there are usually some other options (less prestigious state schools, community colleges, HBCs, etc) but that doesn't exist at the elite private university level.

R148, public schools in large cities are still woefully underfunded. I know in CA, school districts are subsidized by district residents -- whether or not we have children -- through property tax assessments. Districts with higher property values provide a greater subsidy to district schools. So what was once accomplished by lawful discrimination is now served by wealth inequality and de facto segregation. In 2019, a Black woman in Ohio was charged with a felony for lying to enroll her children in a public school district where she did not live.

No school has ever underserved its Black students because it presumed they'd be beneficiaries of AA. Public schools will always be the baseline, and most often fall below minimal education requirements. Any suggestion that public schools will improve if AA is eliminated is white nonsense.

The opposition to AA was almost immediate and was based in the fear that AA might ultimately successfully close the wealth gap between the races. Of course, many whites cannot conceive of a world where they would live on equal footing to Blacks. In America, the white insanity that has followed in the wake of Obama's election has proven that -- Tea party = birtherism = alt-right = Deplorable = QAnon = MAGA.

However, it's not just poor, uneducated, disaffected whites (i.e. MAGA) who are threatened. In its earliest days, even well-to-do, somewhat educated whites were vocal in their opposition to AA because it could deplete the low wage worker pool. Among other things, there would be less household staff available to cook for white families, clean white houses and take care of white children. Or they'd have to pay higher wages (!) AA has been hobbled from its beginning, and of course, racism only redoubled in a manner that was intended to undermine it. In the context of race in America, even a "temporary" anti-racism measure would need to endure for no less than 100 years to demonstrate its efficacy.

[quote] But the proportion of black and Hispanics raised in poverty is much greater than in the US population as a whole, which ALSO means that they will very likely be attending low-achieving schools their entire lives, as well as having limited access to libraries, cultural events, and definitely very little in the way of enrichment (music lessons, dance lessons, tutors, computer schools, etc).

THIS is what they need to concentrate on. Access to some things will be naturally limited by geographic areas but what excuse for not making public education better? In things that matter - not necessarily all the frills. You don't need dance lessons or even music lessons to become a superior student. Hell I went to Catholic schools and we didn't even have a cafeteria or gym before high school.

Students achieve in college when they are matched with the best schools for them and their level of ability. Not the best schools for the group.

[quote] A lot of black and POC diversity professionals are watching these developments closely, I’m sure. What is their job supposed to be without affirmative action?

See commentary at r151. Or don't bother. If you truly believe that affirmative action in academic admissions is the same as diversity, equity and inclusion in a professional setting I'd prefer you remain ignorant -- so we won't have to compete for the same job.

R158, there are some in this country who would say you are entitled to nothing. Your entitlements ended when you left your native soil.

Now imagine it was not you but your 7th great grandfather who was taken from his native soil, his descendants spent centuries in slavery and it was their blood, sweat and degradation that made this the land of liberty and prosperity -- a refuge for all who suffer tyranny in their native land. How would you feel if that refugee, an immigrant from a nation that contributed nothing to America, felt entitled to considerations that are begrudged you and your forebears?

^ and where did r158 say anything about being entitled solely bc his parents are refugees? The point is that there is ALREADY a massive entitlement program with the purported purpose of expanding “diversity” in the academic setting. (Also note that concept isn’t necessarily the same as “proportionate racial / ethnic representation”, as r159 is conflating, or basically reparations which is what your post suggests). If diversity is the truly the purpose, then it behooves one to think that someone with definitionally more unique racial / ethnic qualities than what is already 30% of the US population isn’t not also able to benefit from the same entitlement program. You and the other white-American liberals here are really twisting yourselves into a (il)logical pretzel defending an incredibly narrow definition of what is (or should be) “diversity” - which is way more than “black” and “Hispanic”

R158 doesn't sound entitled to me. I think he's pointing out the hypocrisy in universities that pretend to look for diversity, but really are not.

Also, what makes you think r158 hasn't contributed anything to America? Sergey Brin's family came to America from Soviet Russia for instance. Yes a Jewish white boy who hadn't contributed anything to America... Yet. 20 years later he would cofound Google.

Not to mention, r163; even entertaining your logic here - then why are recent African immigrants then allowed to benefit from AA? What about say someone who’s parents are from Argentina (thereby easily allowing them to check the “Hispanic” box… kinda laughable when you really think this thru)? Neither of those demographics fit the archetype in your post. And they make up a not so insignificant portion of AA beneficiaries in higher Ed (see above link re African immigrants).

[quote] Students achieve in college when they are matched with the best schools for them and their level of ability. Not the best schools for the group.

Some people learn to swim by being thrown into a swimming pool. Students disadvantaged by race, poverty, class or geography should not be further victimized by diminished impressions of their ability. For students from underserved or disadvantaged backgrounds it is more difficult to gauge their "level of ability", or potential for success, using conventional markers like grades or standardized test scores. Elite schools certainly have the right idea in trying to lessen the homogeneity of their student body. The only truly mediocre Ivy League grads I've encountered were white legacy admits.

“How would you feel if that refugee, an immigrant from a nation that contributed nothing to America…”

Putting aside the extreme ignorance and presumption here (immigrants contribute nothing, meanwhile Americans descendants of African slaves do 🙄. Bitch pls): you do realize that “Black” and “Latino” “immigrants” also benefit from Aa… right? I’m not sure you really understand who benefits from affirmative action.

R160, the evidence shows that when you control for school funding, teacher training, teacher quality, etc. all of that only contributes to about 10% of a student’s academic achievement, The other 90% is the student’s own natural abilities. The Gates Foundation basically gave up trying to find low performing schools when they saw that it did nothing.

Forget about race, we live in a country where people are going to self-segregate, self-select, and try to be around others of similar interests and attitudes and intelligence. These self-segregated communities form critical masses. When all the smarter people leave the dumber people behind, what’s less is a critical mass of less intelligent people whom know amount of money can make smarter or their kids smarter,

fund^

Great Law Review article by Professor Amy Wax

“Unfortunately, whether remediation is actually achieved is another matter. Recent developments in social science and educational psychology cast doubt on whether affirmative action actually functions as a remedy, in the sense of “making the victim whole” by alleviating or curing the effects of past wrongs. A true remedy would put victims in the position they would have occupied if they had never been injured by others’ wrongdoing. This presumably includes possessing the ability to compete, based on their own aptitudes and achievements, on the same terms as people from other groups. Accordingly, the most plausible remedial case for affirmative action goes something like this: although blacks, on average, lag behind other groups in academic achievement, they possess untapped talent and ability. Suppressed by discrimination and disadvantage, those abilities are waiting to be cultivated and unleashed. By admitting more blacks to universities, society creates conditions in which blacks can catch up with others and achieve what is possible in the absence of discrimination and disadvantage.

Unfortunately, there is little evidence that this account corresponds to reality. The problem is not with the notion that underachieving blacks represent untapped talent, but rather with the assumption that creating opportunities at the university level will enable blacks to catch up academically and achieve equality. A wealth of emerging evidence on learning, educational attainment, and human capital has revealed that opportunities provided at the point of university admissions simply come much too late. By that time, damage has been done that is almost impossible to reverse. University students who lag significantly behind their peers in academic skills and aptitude virtually always remain behind. Human capital—including the cognitive and non-cognitive capacities that are needed to function effectively at work and in society—is built slowly over time and requires a lengthy period of consistent cultivation, nurture, and care. As the work of James Heckman and others reveals these capacities are established from birth, with the period of early childhood counting the most. Early deficits are stubborn and compound themselves. Disparities that show up before kindergarten, which is when class and race differences emerge, rarely disappear. People who do relatively poorly in grade school and high school, and who would not otherwise qualify for admission to competitive universities, rarely perform as well as their student peers after they are admitted and enroll. As some of the evidence at this Symposium shows, minority students who lag behind academically going into university programs at any stage (including professional school) continue to struggle once they are there and beyond. Therefore, the notion that educational deficits can be fully corrected at the college level—that allowing people to “jump ahead” in admissions enables them to “catch up”—is a myth.”

???? You girls are really spirited when it comes to talking about race, even though you claim to be exasperated by it.

R164, R158 emphatically states that they have a greater entitlement to being deemed a "diverse" candidate because of their background as a refugee.

R166, I agree. In the r163 scenario, the 'rebuke' would apply to anyone who is not a multi-generational Black American descended from African slaves, irrespective of race, class or national origin.

R168, read what you've quoted. I didn't say immigrants contributed nothing to our country, of course they have. I pointedly said the nation of the immigrant contributed nothing to America, so as not to give rise to any presumption of entitlement that an immigrant (a first generation immigrant) should receive something intended for a multi-generational native.

I am not endorsing the sentiment in r163 but I wanted to emphasize the seeming hubris of someone who appears to imply that their status as a refugee from a Soviet invasion makes them a more "diverse" candidate than a person for whom the 'entitlement' was created. Since we're among friends we can speak plainly and acknowledge that D&I is just an iteration of AA because AA has been under a "reverse racism" assault since its creation. SCOTUS has whittled it down to nothing, so now we must use less offensive, vague and misleading language because we cannot say what we mean. Today, in reality, "diversity" means Black, Latinx, Indigenous and only certain Asian ethnicities. It does not mean (most) Asian, East Asian or Caucasian.

In the history of America there have been so very few beneficiaries of AA or D&I relative to those who have been disadvantaged by structural racism and poverty. I know our country is fundamentally racist but I am still shocked and demoralized by the loud and rabid voices condemning any effort to right a continuing wrong.

Not an American here but is it just a financial thing? No affirmative action means more overseas students willing to pay big dollars and stay in the system for longer than local students?

R171, that author is a known anti-Black racist, and likely a crazy cat lady, too.

"We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today."

I believe anyone who judges and makes decisions by race - pro or con - is sick. If any group should be given a leg up for college admissions it's the poor.

Build time machines instead.

[quote]KJB is far more qualified than several of her white counterparts on the SC and yet I still see white sacks of shit claim she only got there because she's black.

LOL. She claims not to know what a woman is. She isn't qualified to tie her own shoelaces.

About damn time.

R178 I can tell you what a woman is, two X chromosomes and no tallywacker.

I support trans women and trans rights. But when it comes to biological definitions, it’s not confusing at all. It’s really simple.

R178 is exactly right. KJB was being untruthful (or is a complete idiot) when she said she couldn't define a woman. Then she goes and introduce the important women in her lives (all real women). Does she know what a black person is? A white person?

So, I must be stupid - this is does not include gender based discrimination?

R182, affirmative action conveniently doesn't cover gender. There are more women than men in college, so if they were consistent, that would mean Harvard should start giving preference to men over women during admissions. Something that doesn't fly well with the woke police...

^Agree. It's becoming a problem. So much focus has been placed on supporting the education of girls and women, especially those of color (thanks M.O.) that men have been left behind. Black women outnumber black men in college 3:1. But prison? There are 8 x as many black men incarcerated compared to black women. We should be give way more support to boys and young men at risk.

“ Today, in reality, "diversity" means Black, Latinx, Indigenous and only certain Asian ethnicities. It does not mean (most) Asian, East Asian or Caucasian.”

Honey, you are deluded if you think it includes ANYONE outside the first 3 categories you listed. Not even “certain” Asian ethnicities. And again you have yet to explain why this concept of ethnic “diversity” should be curiously limited to only three groups.

I didn’t see any “hubris” in the other poster’s post - it’s moreso pointing out the stunning hypocrisy behind the “diversity” logic proffered by AA proponents.

R174, you need to address the substance, not the messenger.

[quote]LOL. She claims not to know what a woman is. She isn't qualified to tie her own shoelaces.

Well, she's smart enough to avoid being baited into a no-win situation.

Are the Ivy’s going to remain predominantly homosexual?

[quote]LOL. She claims not to know what a woman is. She isn't qualified to tie her own shoelaces.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) was asked by a HuffPost reporter to define “woman,” and replied, “Someone who can give birth to a child, a mother, is a woman. Someone who has a uterus is a woman. It doesn’t seem that complicated to me.” When the reporter asked him whether a woman whose uterus was removed via hysterectomy was still a woman, he appeared uncertain: “Yeah. Well, I don’t know, would they?”

R189 I saw that clip. How baffling. He should’ve just stuck to science and not tried to over think it. Two X chromosomes. That’s it.

They need to examine admissions at elite public high schools.

[quote] [R182], affirmative action conveniently doesn't cover gender. There are more women than men in college, so if they were consistent, that would mean Harvard should start giving preference to men over women during admissions. Something that doesn't fly well with the woke police...

Some forms of AA did include gender. White women were positioned to take advantage of it and did. It has corrected the gender imbalance in most professions.

Depending on the racial group men are still higher-ranked candidates for admissions. White men -- having no historical sociopolitical disadvantages due to race or gender -- are fine and continue to advance, unimpeded, well beyond the threshold of their competence (i.e. Donald Trump).

R174, Amy Wax is deeply anti-Asian, too.

She has the same takes as a plurality of DL eldergays. Yellow Peril, etc.

R189, no one on this thread claimed Sen. Hawley was a genius. He doesn't need to be. But the fool @ R134 claims KJB (you know, one of the nine SCJs making monumental decisions that affect all Americans) is the smartest, most capable and qualified person in the room.

R194 is spot on IMO. Not knowing any of them personally but having read many of their opinions, KJB strikes me as very middling. BUT keep in mind the company she keeps. I think she’s middling among towering legal scholars. That’s not a bad position to be in. However 3 current justices and many past, possess/ed the kind of scintillating intelligence which strikes the listener intellectually and (almost) physically when their ideas wash over you. Even if I ultimately disagreed with some of them.

I think people get what Hawley was saying. It is the human being with the biology of a female - whether that biology is in working order or not. When your car breaks down you don't start calling it a fire hydrant.

[quote] Some forms of AA did include gender.

R192, I think you mean SEX not gender. Women are not discriminated against based on their gender. They are discriminated against based on their SEX.

We need to move away from using Gender as that word has been completely corrupted into meaninglessness.

Good. I hope they rule it unconstitutional.

Affirmative Action only benefits one class of persons, and we all know who. It does not benefit MENA, Asian/SEA, South Asian, Native Hawaiian/Alaskan. In time they will no longer apply it toward Latinos, either. All of this despite the fake PR of "POC v. White".

I'll never forget when Michigan had two constitutional amendments in the mid 00s. One to ban same-sex marriage/civil unions, and one to ban affirmative action. Both passed. However, Wayne County (Detroit) was majority against an affirmative action ban. They were majority FOR the gay marriage ban. I wonder why.

OP Since a large majority of Americans, including Democrats, look unfavourably on Affirmative Action, it's dismantling won't do anything at all to harm Republicans.

The NY TIMES posted the polls a few days ago. Read 'em and weep. In this particular case, if the SCOTUS repeals it, it will be on the same page as most of the electorate.

The electorate supports increasing diversity on campuses, but not using race that excludes qualified or more qualified students to get there.

The majority of those bringing this action are Asians, who are so hugely successful that if quotas weren't in, they would represent a majority on those Ivy League campuses. They feel they are being unfairly sacrificed because they are a "successful" minority.

And, by the way, they are also the fastest growing minority in America. And they vote.

The Asian community was the key factor in getting the California proposition on the ballot last year (or the year before) attempting to put in racially based AA in schools.

Here you go, OP. And that's just the first one that popped up.

So, no, such a decision will not galvanise Democrats.

I’m a solid Dem, so are 2 of my 3 sisters. None of us support AA, with differing degrees of passion about it.

I completely understand the original objectives of AA, they were noble and very well intentioned. But I don’t believe in social engineering and most attempts at it are fruitless and/or malignant. We need to ensure the equality of opportunity and we’re far from equal. Artificially forcing some change does nothing for the candidate, the institution or more importantly for society.

^^ agreed, but the question at hand is the constitutionality of AA. It is undoubtedly unconstitutional, despite good intentions.

r200/r201 - Why are you responding to yourself?

R198, Asians are already more likely to attend college in the US than any other demographic. That’s with the system we have now in place. I attended a public college 20 years ago, also I think with the affirmative action system we have now in place, and there were only a few black students there. The idea that a quota means that there is a large amount of diversity I think is incorrect; it just means that there is SOME diversity in places where before there was no diversity.

And the issue is only being put to the fore because of racism. Even if it isn’t part of the official dialogue, it’s all over the internet. And for what? The US Civil War had a greater percentage of population death toll than all other U.S. wars and conflicts combined.

It’s strange that so many on the right just sprinkle racism on top of their version of helping the poor so they can pretend they don’t actually support policies that help the poor. People actually would benefit from higher salaries for the lowest earners and from more total people employed and racism has nothing to do with that. Neither does race for that matter.

Some Asian immigrants are gang members and not well educated at all, while 35 percent of the black workforce is in professional jobs. It’s not even about “race” whatever race even means.

[quote] Artificially forcing some change does nothing for the candidate...

I wonder if the "candidate" would agree.

r195, I wish you would have identifies those Supreme court justices of "scintillating" intelligence, instead of just leaving that hanging. I don't really find anyone on the current supreme court so brilliant that I gasp at their intellects. First of all, many of their opinions are now written by their clerks, and only tweaked by the justices themselves so I would be loath to use those as the basis for judging their intellectual capacities or writing skills. Mostly we can gauge their intellects by the questions they ask during arguments. Roberts - bright but not brilliant Thomas, definitely not bright or brilliant. Alito, bright, but dishonest as hell (really used dishonest arguments about history and common law in his Dobbs decision). Kavanaugh, not brilliant. Gorsuch, bright but extremely disingenuous and a bit of sociopath IMO, making up for his mother's bitterness at the government. Kagan, very bright. Sotomayor, bright, Amy, bright but only in limited spheres of knowledge, (asks a lot of dumb questions during arguments, IMO), and Jackson, very bright.

There is no one on there in the league of a Louis Brandeis, an Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Brennan, or a Joseph Storey. Scalia could write well, but he really used his skill for evil in many instances - finding support in originalism for a bunch of hooey, and rejecting originalism when it came up with a result he didn't like.

^have identified, not have identifies.

Too bad we can’t get hot mics when they are at home or a restaurant or something.

Jumping ahead to write something on my mind. Then I'll go back and read from R161 onward.

I want to say that A LOT of the school budgets now go to dealing with kids with autism. These kids need smaller classes and more teachers and helpers and aids and everything. Not talking about any one racial group or sex. Not talking about slightly slow kids who might have other great qualities like beauty or comedy or athletics or empathy. And I'm not trying to say they are worthless either. I'm saying that this is a huge problem. I really think that that is where a lot of the the money is going, but what do you do? The parents need time to work or to decompress so they can continue with their lives. The kids need to be taken care of.

[quote] The parents need time to work or to decompress so they can continue with their lives. The kids need to be taken care of.

You do know school isn’t daycare, right?

R209, I think we are probably on the same side here. What you think I am saying is not what I am saying. But what is the solution?

I just learned that California banned affirmative action in 1996. That seems so counterintuitive.

I like the British term for AA. Positive racism.

The purpose of education, absolutely regardless of any identity politics, IMO;

- to ensure that the top 20% are equipped and encouraged to learn, lead and innovate in whichever field they choose.

- to allow the 30% under them, to develop meaningful skills and abilities to work and contribute to society, at different levels, leaving open for the possibility that structured formal education may not have nurtured their individual potential, and they may flourish and thrive in their applied skills.

- for the 50% under them, to acquire basic skills so as to function to the best of their ability, care for themselves, and lessen the burden on their loved ones and society at large.

Whether or not it seems warm and fuzzy, I suggest it should be somewhat dispassionate. Our future success as a civilization is almost entirely dependent on ‘expecting much from those to whom much has been given’ (cognitively and functionally) and to ensure, to the best of our ability, those least capable individuals aren’t absorbing too much of our limited resources to hold the top 50% back.

R205, your placements of the SC Justices in bright/not bright categories is generally spot on. Except for Sotomayor; she is definitely in the not bright category, She's just a notch above Thomas.

In recent times, Scalia and Ginsburg were the two brightest in the Court. And they recognized it in each other, despite being polar opposites politically, which is why they were able to bond as friends.

I wonder if some of you have ever really been around diverse groups of people. To say that blacks aren't discriminated against constantly is false. True that there are tons of opportunities for blacks if they know where to look, but that doesn't help all blacks. Also, it's true that blacks want it both ways. They want to keep the coolness factor and say that whites, etc. who copy them are appropriating culture, but then they also want to be taken seriously in all situations. It's super complicated. But seriously, racism against blacks is real.

We were having a conversation last night, and my son told me to discuss it on Datalounge. I was saying that Indian Americans in New Jersey (the parents, those not born and raised here, not the kids), will move to wherever they think will benefit them the most. That is, where the schools are ranked the highest and there tend to be fewer blacks and Latinos. They haven't grown up with all the emotion and knowledge that liberal whites, blacks, etc. have and understand. There isn't a desire to help the community as a whole, because there isn't really an understanding of it.

Also, children who tend to do well in society have parents who speak well and write well. It's difficult to understand complex issues and to think abstractly if you don't have words for those ideas. So speaking in slang doesn't tend to be helpful.

R215 I grew up in northern Virginia just outside of DC, and I always recognized that black people are discriminated against but I did *not* understand what that really means until some profound, life-changing experiences. I figured discrimination was stuff like being followed around in stores by racist shopkeepers who assume black people are criminals, getting pulled over for speeding more than white people do, etc.

Then hurricane Katrina happened and I had to really reprocess the scale and scope of inequality. Mass deaths based solely on the conflation of race and poverty, and really, the white people who ran the government did not care.

Then a little girl I grew up next door to was 14 and she disappeared. Her parents desperately appealed to the police to put out an Amber alert and they refused, deciding based on nothing that she was a runaway who hung out with 'bad influences.' She had no criminal record or anything of the kind. She was a little girl. She was eventually found butchered on the side of a highway.

Then I moved into the city. I was told before I worked here that black and white people on DC are segregated and I thought that was ridiculous because when you go outside, you see an endless spectrum of people everywhere you go. I learned quickly that black and white people more or less do not interact socially at work. I made fast friends with a black woman my age from DC and she told me I was the first white person she had ever befriended in her entire life. She told the older white women at work that I wasn't a bad guy and all of them softened to me and showed themselves to be nice women. A horrible vice president who was from the DR and who was married to a black man kept hiring black men and being absolutely vicious to them. No one could understand it. They never lasted long. She spoke to them like they were misbehaving children—all of them, no exceptions. At first, walking outside with my new friend, I thought she was paranoid when she would ask "Did you SEE how that dude looked at us, like we shouldn't be walking together?" Within a couple of years, those confused glares were obvious to me.

One young woman I worked with said her friend's brother was pushed out of a window and fell to his death during a house party after the cops were called about the noise. I told her that that couldn't be true because it would have been all over the news and she was flabbergasted that I didn't believe her and she cried. My other friend told me she knew a half dozen people from her high school who had been shot to death by cops and that not one of those incidents was ever reported in the local news. "They hunt us."

And then came the cell phone videos—Ferguson, Baltimore and on and on. I could not believe the overt hunting of black people that the police seem to do for sport in this country.

I never doubted discrimination is real but I had no way to know of actual experiences and how nightmarish they are until I moved into the city and became friends black people who I got to know well enough for them to tell me what they experience without feeling insecure about it.

I have another coworker who is one of my best friends, and the same age as my mother, and she is totally fatigued from explaining these sorts of things to white people who care and want to understand. She does it and she's so disheartened that people just don't see it.

^ holy Christ, dude. Take a breath, then try to work on offering a concise POV.

We’re not here to read someone’s stream-of-consciousness blog.

R217 You can block me if too many words terrify you or offend your sensibilities.

Here:

😜

😞

🥸

🤪

🥰

I hope these wordless symbols of emotional states have restored you to well being.

R216, I am here to read your thoughts. Very interesting and true.

Anyways, back on the subject of school admissions policies... UC and Michigan have both barred Affirmative action in their admissions and just recently they've touted how their latest entering class was one of the most diverse. Once AA gets snuffed out, I'd image the Ivy League and other elite institutions would take cues from what Berkeley has been doing, and try to get around explicitly factoring race by using associated substitute deciding factors to still try and limit East Asian and South Asian admitted students as much as possible. I know for sure they don't want their admitted classes to look like CalTech's with like 35-40% Asians. It'll be quite interesting to see what Harvard's workaround will be.

R220, when did Michigan ban AA? Grutter v Bolinger is one of the big AA cases and that was about University of Michigan Law School and that was the one where Sandra Day O’Connor wrote that diversity was a compelling interest and the use of race had to be narrowly tailored.

I think the benefits of racial diversity in education are overstated. I think homogeneity also has benefits? I don’t mean RACIAL homogeneity, I’m talking about intelligence homogeneity. When you have a bunch of smart people around each other, that will reinforce the smartness and good habits of the student population.

Harvard is basically a school for rich kids that isn’t serving a lot of underprivileged black students. I don’t think white and Asian students miss out on anything if there are fewer rich black students.

The regulations as they are seem incredibly anti-Asian to me. It's racist and a shame.

R221

Grutter was 2003, Michigan banned affirmative action in 2006.

[quote]They haven't grown up with all the emotion and knowledge that liberal whites, blacks, etc. have and understand. There isn't a desire to help the community as a whole, because there isn't really an understanding of it.

Civic duty is not part of the culture in India. They are loyal to their own families, but don't feel any need to elevate the lives of their fellow citizens. It's a problem that's deeply rooted in the caste system.

R223, the regulations as they are actually benefit the US Asian communities because affirmative action aside, they are heavily test-based.

And because of historical policy from the 20th century limiting immigration from Asia to people with college degrees, there was a pro-education culture already established that more recent immigrants could also benefit from.

Pro-education culture means higher test scores. Not necessarily better thinking on all levels, because education itself can be limited in what types of thinking it encompasses.

I met Sotomayor in Harris Teeter. She was so gracious and sweet

The Harlem Renaissance was the result of promoting literacy and the arts and professional careers for blacks…a lot of black immigrants from Jamaica and Barbados came to the United States already well educated and then promoted arts and education here. Can you imagine the effect of more affirmative action rather than less, and an increase in pro education culture?

There have been studies showing listening to violent music is associated with increased anger and negative emotions, so why is rap music promoted so much?

The Nicholas Brothers’ splits on the stairs move (see the end of this video) was much admired by Gene Kelly, but when he performed with them in a movie the scene was cut out for screenings in the South.

Correcting things like that is what affirmative action was originally meant for - making sure people with talent are not held back because of racism.

“In a survey on Korean doctors’ satisfaction with their jobs, 51% of 1,004 physicians were content with their job, but approximately 80% reported experiencing burnout with physical and mental exhaustion because of excessive workloads “

On top of that, sometimes work cultures end up destroying the well being of people who are working so hard…so you spend your youth getting high test scores and your adulthood burning out on the very job on which the stability of your life depends.

More work life balance is associated with better mental health and less burnout, more pro-social behaviors, and greater productivity. Plus life in general is more pleasurable if you can feel appreciated for what you contribute…and that would apply no matter what type of work you do.

All of which is to say, I don’t think there’s an urgent need to make college admissions even more based on test scores than they already are. Society would be healthier if there were less people having to struggle under low wages, which leads to burnout physically while feeling unappreciated mentally.

I’m still reading this headline as if Diana Ross was telling me to butch it up.

But R229, why is affirmative action necessary? If blacks aren’t good enough to get into Harvard or the other Ivies, they can still get admitted to the next ranking universities. Are you saying that a black person who only goes to UCLA is somehow less educated than a black person who goes to Harvard?

Hey, if the top universities didn’t practice racial preferences and steal all the blacks that would qualify for the second tier universities, then there would be no reason for the second tier universities to practice racial preferences to get black students.

Private universities are more expensive and usually more selective. They are by definition intentionally discriminatory. Many were the original universities in this country, which by and large had strong influence from religious organizations. They were a force for good in the sense of American intellectualism. They are a force for evil in having become exclusive clubhouses that prioritize elite social connections over education for the sake of acquiring knowledge and attaining wisdom. Harvard, Yale, Penn, Georgetown and others are the incubators of the Bushes, the Trumps, the Kushners and other wholly soulless people who exist only as parasites. Yes, smart people go to these universities. But are they best off at these universities that push them toward a social caste system and replacement of morality and intellectual curiosity with capitalism as a religion and if-I-can-get-away-with-it-then-it's-ethical sense of ethics.

Public higher education in this country can be excellent. I do believe that many public institutions are equal to private ones in terms of educational quality, I believe they are superior in the sense of cultivating an appreciation for the power of education to enrich lives, to light an intellectual spark without the trappings of the caste systems the private elite universities base everything in, and public institutions without any doubt are a better value.

I wish the public and employers would catch on to the scam of and damages caused by elite universities. People like George W. Bush, Donald Trump and his children, Jared Kushner et al. were rich and networked, yes, but they needed their credentials to open doors and to get people to take these fools seriously. Harvard, Yale, Penn, Georgetown have failed and harmed this nation by making their pedigrees available to the highest bidders no matter how intellectually limited they are, no matter how selfish or harmful their intentions are. They don't care. And it's really disgusting. Harvard's endowment is greater than the GDP of Donald Trump's trophy bride's home nation and yet the university is are corrupting itself to get billionaire and multimillionaire cash flowing in. Greed greed greed. Public universities and colleges are committed to the public interest, and private universities are engines of corruption that control the country and ensure that our alleged public servants, called "the honorable so and so," are indeed dishonorable and working against the interests of the greater nation.

[quote] I could not believe the overt hunting of black people that the police seem to do for sport in this country.

Is that what they tell you in Russia, R216?

Harvard actually has 55 percent of students receiving financial aid, which doesn’t stop it from being at the top of the world in many fields. It has an income blind admissions program.

The school demographics are about 21 percent Asian, which could seem high if you consider that Asians make up about 7 percent of the U.S. population.

It would only seem discriminatory if test scores were the only legitimate factor in measuring college admissions criteria, which most would agree they aren’t. But they still are already heavily considered, which is why Asian admissions are at three times the population level, corresponding with high scores.

And with affirmative action in place, Harvard is a very good school, as seen by the stats.

[quote] Harvard actually has 55 percent of students receiving financial aid, which doesn’t stop it from being at the top of the world in many fields. It has an income blind admissions program.

"Income blind" after satisfying its greed.

Harvard accepts 6 percent of applicants.

Of those, 14 percent were legacy students. The acceptance rate for legacy applicants is 33 percent. This undermines the idea of fair and equal and equitable admissions.

From the New York Times in 2017:

[quote] Harvard University. The median family income of a student from Harvard is $168,800, and 67% come from the top 20 percent. About 1.8% of students at Harvard came from a poor family but became a rich adult.

From the New York Post:

[quote] The university has a whopping 23 times as many rich students as poor students — and that’s just how the Ivy League institution likes it, an education expert testified Monday.

And if any doubts linger about Harvard's greed, the fact that Jared Kushner's father donated $2.5 million just before the subpar student was admitted should be enough to make people realize that for all the token admissions Harvard makes to poor, excellent students, Harvard's real business is in admitting children of the highest bidders and alumni who contribute the most either in cash or in publicizing the brand.

R236, I guess it depends what qualifies as rich as the value of money declines and the cost of education gets higher. Even families making a combined income of $150,000 or more would qualify for financial aid. But it does seem like Harvard is leaning on people who don’t qualify for financial aid at all to pay its full tuition rates. I guess they pay for the prestige and a lot of people who are very talented but not as wealthy get help paying for an education.

Am I mistaken to think that it is up to Biden and only the Senate to decide to impeach SCOTUS justices?? Or to add the number of justices? If this is true, the SCOTUS justices will be impeached and the number of justices increased. I hope and beg this is the case🤞🤞🤞

R238 the President has no part. Justices can only be removed by both houses, impeachment by the House (simple majority) and conviction by the senate (2/3 majority), just like any other official of the federal gov’t.

In other words, unlikely to ever happen. Unless they’re caught in bed with a live boy, or a dead girl, as they say.

R238 to expand the court, it requires both houses and the president’s signature, just like most legislative actions. House (simple majority) Senate (supermajority), and the President. While not specified in the Constitution, it’s been 9 since 1869.

In other words, unlikely to ever happen.

Fuck me!🫄🤰🫃

They want to go back to Jim Crow. Next they’ll go after Civil Rights and anti-discrimination, it’s already begun with right-wing assholes like Kanye attempting to convince repeals.

Justices don’t [italic]go after[/italic] anything. They interpret a document and its amendments [italic]brought to[/italic] them. And legislative remedy is always available.

I don’t think Kanye et al. have much influence.

R243

Wow, you’re manipulative as fuck. I bet you’re the same one who tried to convince us abortion and gay marriage were safe.

R244 no, I don’t think I am.

I’m strongly pro-choice and never thought abortion was ‘safe’ constitutionally

I’m pro gay marriage and strongly believe it’s ‘safe’ constitutionally, whether or not it was decided properly

Like I said, there’s always legislative remedy. The constitution is not a ‘choose your own ending’ panacea.

GFYS.

R246 something makes me think you’re not equipped for this conversation