On Friday a team of researchers released the results of a survey about racial views among Black, white, Democratic, and Republican respondents. There's a big gap between Democrats and Republicans, which is hardly surprising, so it's more interesting to rejigger the data and show just the difference between Black Democrats and white Democrats. Here it is:
There aren't a lot of Black-white differences in the first five or six issues, but the differences widen for the last four. White respondents were a lot more likely to believe that white people are less likely to be hired and less likely to be admitted to college thanks to affirmative action. And—oddly?—Black respondents are much more likely to think racism will get worse in the future.
The most interesting divergence however, is in the two discrimination questions. Among Black respondents, 73% believe discrimination is common but only 25% say they've been personally discriminated against. Likewise, about 50% of white respondents think hiring and college admission discrimination against white applicants is common, but only 11% think they've been personally discriminated against.
And now for a look at actual policies:
There's nothing much to see in the top two policies. However, when it comes to concrete preferential treatment, there's a difference of 15-18%. And reparations produce a whopping 36% difference.
Nickel summary: white Democrats generally say the same thing as Black Democrats, but when it comes to the concrete questions of whether white people are discriminated against in hiring and college admissions—and whether they should be—there's a pretty sizeable difference. Whites believe that affirmative action has hurt them and they don't support it. Even among Black respondents, about a third believe that affirmative action hurts white people and only about half support it. Affirmative action just doesn't have a lot of support, even among Democrats.
What is shows is that racist beliefs are very deeply embedded in our nation, even among people who are not loud & proud racists.
This is so even when the beliefs are totally at odds with reality, like white people being less likely to be hired or be admitted to college.
Whites also are more likely to be hired for a job than blacks, as the unemployment rate clearly shows, with white unemployment persistently half that of black unemployment.
But these are facts and for a good 50-80% of the voting public, facts are subservient to emotions. So every time a white person doesn’t get a job that is filled by a black person becomes yet another argument that reverse discrimination is a huge problem.
Respectfully, your statement "Whites also are more likely to be hired for a job than blacks, as the unemployment rate clearly shows, with white unemployment persistently half that of black unemployment" is misleading.
Your statement might be true if there were equal qualifications (education, skills etc) and non skill related issue (criminal record, work history etc).
The goal of affirmative action, I would contend, is to help qualified people of color advance (selective college admissions and employment opportunities).
In contrast, affirmative action can not solve the issue of under qualified applicants: other actions are needs to increase educational skills, test outcomes, criminal records etc
True but if the statement “whites get turned down for jobs in favor of blacks” was both true and widespread in our society, blacks would have a better employment rate than whites. The fact that whites people are more likely to be employed though suggests that, while some whites somewhere might have been turned down for a job in favor of blacks, it’s not widespread enough to make a dent in overall white employability vis-a-vis black employability.
Yet given how widespread the *belief* is among white people that they face more job discrimination than black people, despite white people *actually succeeding* more often in getting jobs than black people, suggests that we’ll never be able to solve the problem of racial discrimination. As long as one white person can point to a job they didn’t get because a black person was chosen instead - even if the black person had equal or better qualifications - the myth that reverse discrimination is a major problem will continue to undermine real efforts to deal with systematic racial discrimination.
What's a "racist" belief though? Your outdated thinking of race is the problem. Let's remember post revolutionary southern states were mostly of Scot Irish trash and Norman/Viking descent with all the L2 haplotypes. Not exactly R1a-n4117 or R1b-L51 which dominated Eruope the last 2000 years and came out of the Corded Ware. Yes, the Vikings were essentially light skinned Slavs.
You're not keeping up SOG. Time to reread "Albion's Seed"?
Guess you missed the Nature aticle that found Viking DNA was remarkably diverse, and that being a Viking was less about enthnicity and more about a life style choice.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2688-8?proof=t
That was my point. "White" is a generic term. The Vikings were diverse to a point. Even PIE through the Corded Ware/Yamna is unknown founder effect. Who started the IE language/religious franchise. The Nazis crossed their heart it was R1a-n4117 and other PIE subgroups like it.
Fwiw most original Vikings were L2, a Slavic marker back to GAC.
I think that's kinda the point. You blither and blather so much, it's impossible to tell what your point is.
Good grief, not everything is seething racism. Here it seems maybe just maybe there are some people who want to solve the issue and notice that a 50-year old policy hadn’t done so.
Maybe, just maybe, if we focused on making black children’s kindergarten experience more equal we wouldn’t have to go to the Supreme Court every time someone doesn’t get into the top 10 law school of their choice.
The unequal funding of public schools, accompanied by de facto segregation based on housing patterns (and discrimination) is a major obstacle faced by Blacks. I agree that a focus on intensely improving the public schools, with the resources (huge) required would be vastly more beneficial than some explicit affirmative action programs.
That said, Black kids need role models, and role models in elite law firms, government, colleges and universities, has help lift the image of Blacks in popular media. Not to mention the advocacy enabled by more powerful Black people in government and business.
I wish this country would spend what is really necessary on pre-K to 12 education--meaning much lower class size, mentoring, tutoring, etc. And without addressing the homelessness problem among school children, problems with public education in places like New York City will persist.
Regarding the KD post, if you are going to conclude "racist beliefs are very deeply embedded in our nation", shouldn't you at least give an example of what you mean? Is it racist in your view to not support affirmative action? Or did you have some other point in mind?
There’s no question it’s easier for a black person to get admitted to college, all other factors being equal. Surely you’re not suggesting otherwise.
That is only the top elite colleges and flag ship public universities. I believe Texas addressed some of this problem by admitting top 10% from any public high school. That avoids explicit affirmative action and allows entry to kids from very poor school districts.
3.4% of the student population at UCLA is black. If a whit person didn’t get accepted it’s far more likely that they were beat out by an Asian American.
So basically it’s just like every other chronic problem in this country: everyone would like us to do something about it, but opposes any solution that would personally cost them anything, so ultimately nothing will be done about it.
And then we wonder why it seems like things are getting worse and nothing is improving from generation to generation. (I write “seems like” here because the Kevin Drums of the world will otherwise point out that there are tons of metrics on which the US has improved over the decades. The most correct thing to say would probably be something like “actual progress is falling further and further behind expected progress.”)
Or “actual progress is falling further and further behind acknowledged progress.”
How long does a policy get?
How long did slavery and Jim Crow get to immiserate African-Americans? How long did displacement and confinement get to immiserate Native Americans?
Also how long were Asians barred from entering the US? How long were they forced to live in ghettos? I think we also owe Asian Americans some helping hands too - we seem to only see the "model minorities" but sadly there's a ton of folks struggling to get by, a ton hurt by the Pandemic.
I disagree that there’s a “chronic problem” for which “everyone” would like us to do something about.
Right. Some people don't believe being a racist is a problem.
This changes my mind about whether affirmative action can continue to be practiced as it has been. Too few people understand and support what is being done. One thing that might be helpful is more transparency. There should be easy-to-find annual reports from universities, say, about the racial makeup of their applicants and of those admitted.
Maybe under-representation of Black Americans should be addressed by a special admissions program that doesn't pretend to be folded into the general admissions process. Care should be taken to reduce stigmatization of the applicants in that program. One thing that might be positively received by most Americans would be some commitment to community service by students admitted under this racial balance program. "They're helping their brothers and sisters succeed" might defuse resentment.
I have high level affiliation with an elite US university (sub 15% admissions rate). The challenge with affirmative action, in my opinion, is how it works in practice.
Affirmative action candidate (note they do not use this term) at elite schools still need strong grades and test scores. In practice, many of the people of color who qualify either are from upper income families or are students from elite high school (think scholarship student at fancy boarding schools). In contrast, low income white students are shut out of this process.
Too often the winners in this process are rich students of colors....
Man, the University of Austin is already really up on itself.
Thanks, this is interesting to learn about. I know no one wants to call it "affirmative action" anymore, but people still perceive it the same way. It is unfortunate if there are a lot of cases like what you're seeing, where the race-based remedy doesn't seem like justice in relation to economic class.
‘Elite’ colleges and universities are never going to be much of a factor; the students they admit are already on a track to succeed. As jte21 noted in a comment to an earlier Drum post, social mobility in the US now lags behind other developed countries. It’s the schools like CUNY, or my alma mater, the University of Missouri - St. Louis that enable large numbers of young Americans to rise in socioeconomic level. The weakest link is elementary and secondary education, because of fragmented and unequal funding. When more of us see that the success of others benefits all of society, we can turn that around. (I also think that it’s the moral thing to do, but that’s a harder sell, against the ‘own bootstraps’ theory reflected in the data above.) it didn’t help that we had a President who promoted the false zero-sum view.
The weakest link is elementary and secondary education, because of fragmented and unequal funding
The first part of your sentence is probably true. The second part of your sentence probably isn't. As far as I know the achievement gap between students of low and high socioeconomic status can't be attributed to education funding levels (for one thing many of the attend the schools of places like NYC where public education is lavishly funded).
America has a lot of poor outcomes with respect to education mostly because it tolerates high levels of poverty and economic equality in general, not because it doesn't spend enough on the schooling of people in poverty (although sometimes it doesn't).
Agree with second sentence, but disagree about funding. Here in MA my husband taught in two very poor districts. School's physical environment was massively inferior to our own children's school in a wealthy town.
Poor children, often from highly-stressed families, need smaller class sizes, more intensive attention. But stress, hunger, housing insecurity, and trauma significantly affect children's ability to learn, even in good, middle and upper-middle class school districts.
One of the leaders in education always stressed that the way to improve education is to give all families a living wage, and secure employment.
KenSchulz - two points
1) So called elite universities enroll a small percentage of college student. Agreed that say CUNY or U of Missouri enroll more students of color and thus likely create more social mobility.
2) Affirmative action (using the term of the article versus my preferred name) likely does not play a huge role during the admissions process for the University of Missouri. With an 80% acceptance rate, most qualified applicants of all races are accepted.
Re 2)
- As long as there is any selection, there is the potential for adverse selection.
- ‘Qualified applicants’: Qualification depends on how well your primary/secondary education has prepared you. Whether or not you apply is affected by the encouragement and support you get from teachers, counselors, parents …
"Likewise, about 50% of white respondents think hiring and college admission discrimination against white applicants is common, but only 11% think they've been personally discriminated against."
My take is as follows. While affirmative action is, potentially, a large political/social issue it is not that common, for most, in their everyday life. For example, about half adults in the US have any college and most do not attend a selective college (colleges with say a sub 30% admissions rate): therefore, only a small percentage of white Americans have ever, potentially, experienced affirmative action.
Similarly, most Americans don't work as selective law firms, consulting firms or large financial firms. Thus, personally their professional world is not directly impacted by affirmative action
Stated differently, affirmative active mostly directly impacts élite colleges and jobs.
It the perception, not the actuality. It’s the white guy assuming that the woman or POC got the job or promotion over him because of ‘reverse discrimination’, even when the other was better qualified.
bingo!
Racism is definitely going to get worse after Kyle Rittenhouse is acquitted. That will be J.D. ANTIVAXXX's cue to launch his GOD'S LIBERATION ARMY - WESTERN HEMISPHERE project #VANCE2020*.
*Originally Kony! Koni! Kone! but discarded as "too ethnic".
#VANCE2022.
Apologies for the error.
Lol, Rittenhouse doesn't even have the proper "white" genes. Educate yourself.
His parents do look like mole people.
My girlfriend thought he was part Mexican
The only Mexican a Canadian would know is Auston Matthews.
Affirmative action's problem is that it tried solving racism with.......racism. Doesn't work well. Count black gangsters as employed to the gang. Black unemployed drop down to white levels. A interesting paradox indeed.
Do you enjoy being rude online?
It's a troll. It leaves its droppings to get attention. Please don't feed the troll.
You mean ShootsOfGrey or MiddleOfTheChodeDem?
Do you?
Whether or not you have been affected by affirmative action just about everyone has several affirmative actions stories about a relative, friend, acquaintance, news story, of someone who was affected.
People routinely assume that the affirmative action hire/college admission/etc was someone unqualified. In fact, the person might be very highly qualified. Is a person who scored 92% less qualified than a person who scored 95%? When there is a lot of competition for a job lots of people aren’t going to get it. If it was 1 job/admission were all of the people who scored above 92% denied the job due to affirmative action? They might think so, but only one of them was. But all of them will tell the story about how they didn’t get what they wanted due to affirmative action.
Don’cha know, The Former Guy made it OK to be an asshole!
Wrong place, reply to middleoftheroaddem.
You touch on an important point. We do not have very good ways to establish "merit" in a meritocracy.
The purpose of affirmative action is to get employers, schools, etc., to give people a chance. One of the responses has been changes in job requirements. Jobs that just needed high school degrees now require bachelor degrees. That's done in part to help them sift through the tsunami of applications a posting can get, but it also screens out minority and poorer applicants.
We're also dealing with the "war on drugs" aftermath--where white kids get rehab and minorities get felonies. It was Nixon's way to disenfranchise those who'd vote for Democrats--and destroy families in the process.
Those that vote Democrat? Nope, they never voted or cared to vote. Another dumb post.
"Affirmative action just doesn't have a lot of support, even among Democrats."
I doubt that's true. It probably has more to do with the wording of the questions. If you ask people if some should get "preferential treatment" due to their race or gender, yes most Democrats will say no. But if you reframe the question to ask if colleges should "take race into account in admissions" and "corporations should have strategies to promote POC and women" - I'm sure the vast majority of Democrats will agree. People don't like to admit they support overt discrimination based on race and gender. But once the right euphemisms are employed, everyone gets on board.
Sticking my neck out...
This whole topic just makes me shake my head. The notion that lots of people have "experienced" "reverse discrimination" strikes my as first order BS. If you're white and you've gone into a minority owned restaurant and watched minority people arrive after you and get seated before you do, then I suppose you could say you've experienced reverse discrimination. But we're talking about college admissions and hiring practices here.
I'm calling BS on anyone (or at least 99% of them) that think they know someone who has suffered reverse discrimination due to "affirmative action" in hiring or college admissions. a) I'm not sure a person can even legally find out whether a non-white person was admitted to college/university instead of them. b) I don't think that's how college admission works; i.e. "we have 1 slot left and two people, one white and one non-white..." etc. c) I don't think that's how "affirmative action" works in education, but I'd be willing to bet money that the white person with the admission grievance hasn't bothered to even try to find out how "affirmative action" is implemented at the institution involved. It's just sour grapes about not getting in. d) in the work world, I'm pretty sure you CAN'T find out the rationales used in selecting an applicant for a particular job.
In short, how the heck does anyone know if the reason they didn't get the thing they wanted was due to "affirmative action". You can't know, it's just a knee jerk reaction to the idea that for minorities, their minority status may be a factor in the decision; as if that has never happened in favor of whites. Right.
"I'm calling BS on anyone (or at least 99% of them) that think they know someone who has suffered reverse discrimination"
But can't you say that same thing about blacks who feel they have been discriminated against? Like with discrimination against whites, rarely will you be told you are being discriminated against. In fact, discrimination for the most part is illegal. People will do their best to make it not obvious.
Yes, for individual cases it applies both ways: difficult to know. But for systemic racism it's about institutional patterns over long period of history. And regulations like "affirmative action" are just crude tools to try to provide some relief.
Still I think that when there has been long standing broad based discrimination against blacks, each instance feels like just another confirmation. And even if it wasn't discrimination in one case, that doesn't negate the fact of the broader trend.
I think it would be hard for any white folks to argue that whites have been discriminated against on a broad scale over a long period of history.
Lol, sure some sections of whites have been "discrimination" to deal with. Look at the Founding Fathers and " Swedes". Look at the Irish. Poor white trash.
You sir are a moron
Here's another angle that makes this topic ridiculous for discussion. The decision to admit someone or to select someone for a job position is not the whole story. A person can get admitted to a school and flunk out in 2 semesters regardless of whether race was a consideration in their admission. And a person can get a job where their race was a hiring consideration and fail miserably when it comes to job performance, leading to being fired.
Admission and hiring decision only provide opportunities.
In my life I have received the benefits of white privilege in both college admission and job hiring. But, you know what? I was a damn good student (graduated cum laude) and a damn good employee (something I made sure of). And those last two things are where "merit" comes in. If people want to argue about "affirmative action" in the context of "meritocracy", it's a huge reach.
Yup.
I think I might belong to a small group:
“Among Black respondents, 73% believe discrimination is common but only 25% say they've been personally discriminated against. Likewise, about 50% of white respondents think hiring and college admission discrimination against white applicants is common, but only 11% think they've been personally discriminated against.”
I have no way of knowing for certain, but I do suspect that I was passed over for a job because I did not represent a trendy idea of “diversity.” I received an email from a tutoring center at the school where I’m in a grad program. The email claimed there was a need for tutors. I applied. And, honestly, in terms of qualifications, I don’t think there was any reason to reject me: good GPA, relevant classes and training, and stellar written recommendations from well known professors. So, I was set up with an interview (over Zoom), and as far as I can tell I was dealing well with all of their questions. Until they brought up the topic of diversity. Honestly, I don’t have much to say about it. I think it’s great, and I told them that. And that was about it. My skin color, however, does not indicate that I belong to a minority. There are other facets of identity which are less visible, but I personally have no interest going into detail about private aspects of my life in an interview. So, I later heard back from them, and they were taking a pass on me.
And here’s the thing: I didn’t need the job; I already have one. I simply wanted to help out. So, what went wrong? I’ll never know for sure, but I have a few guesses. For one thing, I think they wanted me to indicate that I share their ideology. And I could’ve done that by answering the question on diversity with some kind of deeply personal testimonial or with an over the top avowal that promoting diversity is the most important thing that will ever happen in my entire lifetime. But none of that would’ve been an honest portrayal of myself. I would’ve happily worked with students of any background, but my emphasis is on action: not words.
So, I do think I may be in that “minority” who think they were passed up for a job so that it could be given to someone who more overtly represented some form of diversity. Or am I just getting paranoid?
I was favorably considered and given a position because I am a team player. Other people aren't so much team players. Doesn't make them bad people, but a team player was a better fit for the job position. Nothing about race here, but were any non-team-players discriminated against for their personalities/values?
I don't have a big dispute with you, but maybe the job function was such that your lower level of enthusiasm for "diversity" would actually have made you less of a good fit functionally? Just asking.
There's so much involved with hiring / placement decisions.
One of the things that complicates all of this is just how much our lives are impacted by interpersonal factors that allow racism of the past to continue on. It's not because the individuals involved are racist, but simply that people share their knowledge, experience, and connections with the people they know, and the people they happen to know is highly influenced by who their parents and grandparents were. And the social positions of their parents and grandparents was indeed shaped by racism, even if their individual parents and grandparents weren't racist themselves.
If your parents went to college, you will grow up in a home that has a lot of knowledge about the admissions process, what colleges to apply to, and what the expectations will be for your work. This is why first-gen students often struggle more, regardless of race. If your parents have professional jobs, they and their social group will be able to off you advice about the skills, training, and opportunities available in professional fields. It's not racist to offer to look over your friend's kid's resume, or to tell them what graduate school is going to be the best one to apply to, or to mention a job opening at your employer. But it does help perpetuate inequality.
This kind of inequality is very hard to disrupt. Just look at the students at online, for-profit schools. They skew heavily first generation and non-White. Those students will likely encourage their friends and family to enter the same institutions, because that is what they know. But these same institutions are not viewed well by others, and often result in higher debt loads and high rates of default. For some, college is a first step to success, and for others it's just another form of poverty.
For college: So, what we're saying is that there aren't enough college spaces to hold all the qualified applicants? And then pretty much the same for jobs.
Build more colleges that are highly competitive.
Consider George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Which person strikes you as the one more substantially “helped” along by affirmative action?
The one with the legacy admission.
Right, not even to mention the obvious point: Can we please see the polling on people who oppose affirmative action, but think giving a boost in college admissions to children of alumni and/or donors is A-OK?
I remember an episode of the old TV show "Homicide" in which one character, a detective played by Andre Braugher, commented, upon hearing of a white colleague who got a job through a relative, "ah, affirmative action, white people style."
Yup.
Affirmative action is illegal in a number of states:
California, Washington, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, Arizona, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Idaho
Having seen the higher education environment in Texas, I can say it is more diverse and representative of the state's population than places that have not banned affirmative action. Meet these objectives using broad 'merit based' or socioeconomic criteria and much can be achieved for racial progress.
Yeah, I will never support reparations.