In a ruling that surprised precisely no one, the Supreme Court killed off affirmative action in university admissions today:
Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. And the Equal Protection Clause, we have accordingly held, applies “without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality”—it is “universal in [its] application.”
....The case Grutter v. Bollinger...expressed marked discomfort with the use of race in college admissions....To manage these concerns, Grutter imposed one final limit on race-based admissions programs. At some point, the Court held, they must end. This requirement was critical, and Grutter emphasized it repeatedly....The importance of an end point was not just a matter of repetition. It was the reason the Court was willing to dispense temporarily with the Constitution’s unambiguous guarantee of equal protection.
....Harvard concedes that its race-based admissions program has no end point. And it acknowledges that the way it thinks about the use of race in its admissions process “is the same now as it was” nearly 50 years ago....In short, there is no reason to believe that respondents will—even acting in good faith—comply with the Equal Protection Clause any time soon.
The dissent [defends] a judiciary that picks winners and losers based on the color of their skin. While the dissent would certainly not permit university programs that discriminated against black and Latino applicants, it is perfectly willing to let the programs here continue. In its view, this Court is supposed to tell state actors when they have picked the right races to benefit. Separate but equal is “inherently unequal,” said Brown. It depends, says the dissent.
The opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts, a longtime foe of affirmative action, who was joined by all the Court's conservatives and opposed by all its liberals. It's a remarkably short and simple ruling, saying little more than (a) the state must be race-blind in all things, and (b) therefore affirmative action—which might be tolerated temporarily due to the extraordinary circumstances of American history—has to end at some time. And this is finally the time. There's really nothing more to it.
Paraphrasing RBG, it's not raining right this second, so John Roberts and the rest of the conservatives have decided it's the perfect time to throw away all the umbrellas.
To be fairer though, colleges and universities should be well-prepared for this eventuality. It was always highly unlikely that race-based affirmative action was going to survive "forever" - hopefully, the vast majority of colleges and universities will switch to using FAFSA to promote income-based affirmative action plans... which (until our overlords get rulings against those too) are still perfectly legal.
hopefully, the vast majority of colleges and universities will switch to using FAFSA to promote income-based affirmative action plans...]
It's pretty certain the "vast majority" of institutions will do no such thing, because a clear majority of them offer non-competitive admissions. Virtually everyone over a low bar gets in. This ruling overwhelmingly affects a very modest portion of US postsecondary education.
The ruling suggests that colleges and universities promote racial equality in a way that is separate but equal to affirmative action.
There's no way to do that when 40% of whites get in as legacy and the others do not.
That's some really nice affirmative action for a bunch of entitled white kids. What a waste.
Apropos of simply my continuing, quixotic tilting against the Telephone Game:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/6/30/legacy-scrutiny-sffa-harvard/
Is Harvard actually better in terms of percentage of legacies (included in ALDC) than other universities? Where does the 40% figure come from?
Affirmative action has been going on for long enough that I would expect that there are now quite a few legacies of the earlier beneficiaries of affirmative action. I would expect that there will generally be twenty to forty years between a parent's attendance at a university and an offspring's application to the same university, and affirmative action is more or less fifty years old.
When I did research on academic testing, including NAEP and SAT, it surprised me that the underlying statistics did not support their ostensible use. The test questions themselves are horribly biased toward cultural characteristics, so it made sense to correct for this bias using affirmative action. Every question can be analyzed using an "item/test" correlation usually easily available to see how much the score on the test 'explains' answering the question correctly and typically that statistic shows about 25 percent explanation. They use tests primarily because testing companies pay them to use the tests: it's a grift. This Supreme Court decision should end testing and thus eliminate the need for affirmative action.
I have never before heard this claim stated based on actual research. All the research-based claims I've heard of concluded that the SAT does a very good job at measuring academic ability and preparation as applied to college education.
If your research reveals otherwise, can you share more of your methodology, or point me to where you published the results?
Thanks.
Even though it looks like Brian are on opposite sides ot the fence, he asked an extremely good question; I too would like to see the results. When you claim that your statement is backed by hard data, ... you best provide that data. Sources, cites, links, yadda yadda, you know the drill.
So lets ban testing, and use what? GPA? Interviews? Personnal prejudice? Testing may not be a very good way of evaluating individuals, but that doesn't mean the alternatives are any better, or even as good.
It's a big problem. Testing was one way of checking a student's skill set against grades and recommendations, but most schools have made SATs and other standardized tests optional -- students will only send their scores in if if they've done exceptionally well. This means schools basically have the high school transcript, recommendations from counselors or teachers, and personal essays to go on. Those can be useful, but it also means that teachers are now under whithering pressure to pad grades, allow test re-takes, have basically no deadlines for turning in work, etc. ChatGPT will probably make the personal essay obsolete going forward because they're *all* going to be AI-generated. I guess that leaves oral exams and in-person interviews as one of the few remaining ways of assessing what a student actually knows.
That's a very good question, one that I ask myself. And I'm on the math side of the equation. And the only answer I can come up with is a personal evaluation by a trained evaluator. I noticed after a while that, for example, which students had obviously gotten a cheat sheet from a fraternity/sorority (they do it differently these days, or so I am told) vs students who were actually good, which students were slacking but wouldn't do much better if they put in three times the commitent vs slackers who could actually pass the class with flying colors if they just put some effort into it (I was one of the latter, so I know whereoff I speak.) And so on and so forth.
TL;DR: The standard tests measure something, obviously, but how accurate are they? And while the tests measure something, do they measure everything? Or at least, everything necessary?
You know where this is going of course. It ain't gonna happen. Not no way not no how. And equally obviously, you know why 🙁
Every question can be analyzed using an "item/test" correlation usually easily available to see how much the score on the test 'explains' answering the question correctly
Um, maybe I'm missing something, but isn't there *supposed* to be a pretty strong corellation between answering questions correctly and the overall score on the test?
I'm guessing he's thinking something along the lines of whether or not there's a correlation between wrong answers and race? That is do black kids miss the answer ranodmly? Or do different cohorts of black kids miss the same questions over and over again?
Cohorts miss mostly the same questions, yes.
They'll be missing some context that wasn't included in the question, because cultural differences giving them a different selection of words in their vocabulary and different vents in their experience.
Biden gave a good speech that explains some workarounds. Colleges can consider an individual applicant's life experience, they just can't consider ONLY race. So, for example, Sasha Obama or one of Kanye West's kids don't get any kind of preference simply by being Black. This seems OK to me.
I'd consider overcoming the challenges of being raised by Kanye West as a sufficiently compelling case for preferential treatment.
they just can't consider ONLY race.
I don't think that's right. Starting immediately, they're not supposed to consider race at all: what you describe is the 1978 Bakke decision, and that has effectively been overturned.
And we don't need the Voting Rights Act because segregation has disappeared.
This past, recent experience should give us a clue as to how many public universities in certain states will respond to this ruling.
"the state must be race-blind in all things"
Unless it favors whites of course. Then it's okay....
We'll just assume that the state is race-blind unless there's overwhelming proof otherwise. We don't need to concern ourselves about the possibility of state employees like cops, prosecutors, teachers, or other government officials using their discretion in a racially biased manner that is coincidentally almost impossible to detect or punish on an individual basis.
So the court ended the practice of enrolling legacy students? Hurray!
What!?!?! You don't say? Oh. No hurrays today, I guess.
I'm not in favor of legacy student admission; but,
is there anything that's actually unconstitutional about it?
If so, I'd be interested to hear it;
If not, why would the Supreme Court wind up getting involved?
You want a diverse student body, or admit a population that looks like the country's?
Or do you want to admit legacy students?
And for how long? Certain people throw the words "it's been twenty-five years" to justify this exclusion. But how long have legacy admissions been going on? I don't have the figure at hand, but I have a sneaking supsicion it's been a lot longer than twenty-five years.
So, nothing unconstitutional about it?
This kind of heads i win, tails you lose approach is championed by Roberts and his group of Supreme Grifters and so many in the priviliged class.
Clearly there was no Constitutional basis for over-ruling affirmative action policies, so there is no need for a constitutional basis to disallow legacy/class/status admissions.
Why would I want a diverse student body that looks like the country’s? Seriously. Why would that be an objective? Shouldn’t the objective be to take the most qualified students?
What a question.
What is the purpose of educating the people of this society? Why should society have an interest in this?
Cant we just educate the people that Atticus views as the most deserving? His class is all he has an interest in, shouldnt the government and all of society share his narrow interest and designation of the most deserving elite.
And that is exactly the reason i put him the troll rolodex.
A week or so ago he was arguing that trans people have an unfair advantage when it came to female leagues and teams. Look what he's arguing now. Yeah.
I'm not 'going ballistic' when I note his arguments are internally inconsistent. The same applies when I make the observation that he is easily intelligent enough to know this. And when I say he's my moral inferior, well, that's simply a fact.
Tokyo response doesn’t make any sense and doesn’t correlate to anything I said. I said the colleges should take the most qualified applicants. I never mentioned anything about class.
... And right on cue. I never mentioned anything about class either.
You do realize, A., that you're making my point for me, right?
The schools were already able to choose the most deserving.
The Supreme Court said that the school can no longer do this.
You chimed in adding that you know better than the schools do who is the most deserving. Your further argument that you would prefer to not refer to your chosen/favored group as a class of people is kind of irrelevant. You have your favored group.
Because when you ignore race to extent that you pretend it doesn't even exist you end up like France is right now.
If every person excepted to the school is white, and the applicants were accepted on merit, it’s not the school’s admission process that has a problem. The problem is far upstream.
You are obviously making 2 wild, unsupported assumptions:
1) that the school is actually choosing based on merit
2) That the merit based system accurately determines who has the most merit.
These seem like bad assumptions. But when constructing a class based system, these are the assumptions that are easy for the ruling class.
The schools are arguing to admit based on race.
If they are not admitting based on merit, they are welcome to revise their methods of measuring merit and then to admit on merit.
Apparently you believe that this would result in roughly proportionate numbers of students by race being admitted.
Great! That would make everyone happy. No raced based admissions and all the equity and inclusion that anyone could ask for!
Shouldn't the objective be to take uneducated students who want to study the areas offered by the college?
There are any number of reasons to take kids, but as schools receiving federal government dollars there should be some socially beneficial reasoning and as schools not receiving it there should probably be something which prevents terrible prejudice against some gender, race, age, etc.
But, it's all entirely debatable as there is no social science to say what's best.
Sigh. Did you actually read what I wrote? Or did the point I was trying to make fly right over your little pointy head?
Sorry, wrong reply. Is it just me or is the site a little wanky today.
The Supremes allowing legacy enrollments makes sense. What are the odds an affirmative action enrollment later in life will be able to provide free trips on private jets to pricey exclusive "facilities". The odds of a Supreme scoring are much greater with a legacy enrollment.
Yes, schools with rich student families will want legacies and other schools will want successful students who have some chance of sending back lots of money. Schools want money like vacuum cleaners want dirt.
Question: Why aren't schools satisfied with the money they first receive for educating people? Do I keep sending money to a chocolate company after I've eaten one chocolate bar?
Being set on the idea
Of getting to Atlantis,
You have discovered of course
Only the Ship of Fools is
Making the voyage this year,
As gales of abnormal force
Are predicted, and that you
Must therefore be ready to
Behave absurdly enough
To pass for one of The Boys,
At least appearing to love
Hard liquor, horseplay and noise
Except they didn't eliminate race based affirmative action, they just restricted it back to Legacies. Universities who explicitly barred students of color from attending in the past are still legally allowed to prioritize the children and grandchildren of those WASPs who they did matriculate, while the progeny of students of color who were prevented from attending solely on the basis of their race have no claim to Legacy status explicitly because of that past bigotry. So long as Legacies are allowed to continue in admissions we have race based affirmative action. For white people.
Just a thought…suppose a college indicated it wanted to institute a reparations program to make up for previous policies that excluded minorities. And suppose they reserved a proportion of admissions per year for students whose ancestors would have been excluded and designate them as “legacy” admissions and make that number align with actual legacy admissions. Would that pass the Supreme Court’s guidelines?
That is an _excellent_ question! I don't know what their ruling would be, but for myself I endorse it enthusiastically.
No. There are no real guidelines that Roberts and pals will use. Roberts will use whatever tortured logic is necessary to disallow this policy if it should be attempted. Roberts, Alito and Thomas want outcomes,they are not bound by precedent, laws or even their own prior rulings.
Yep it's called "Grandfathering".
Kids these days have all the skills they need… twerking on a police car! That’s definitely on their application for college as an extracurricular activity.
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/cpd-investigating-video-of-3-women-dancing-on-top-of-police-cruiser/
It’s the newest trend among the needy teens in Chicago. Hilarious.
So does this also kill affirmative action for government contractors? Is there no way to ensure companies and schools are doing enough outreach to promote diversity?
https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/hiring/affirmativeact
The Robert's doctrine strikes again: "the best way to end racial discrimination to pretend it doesn't exist". No surprise the four privileged white guys were comfortable with this approach. Nor the bitter old black guy who benifited from affirmative action but is happy to pull the ladder up behind him.
That and the "little lady" doing what she's told.
The big problem with defending affirmative action today is that it was from the beginning a likely violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That law is very clear:
"It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer—(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." Similar language exists for educational programs (with some exceptions and variations with respect to sex).
Doesn't say, "unless you're doing it to redress an historical wrong." Doesn't say "unless you have an institutional interest in promoting diversity."
It says, you can't do it. So any time you have a fixed-sum game - only so many positions to fill - and you use one applicant's Black race to discriminate in their favor, you are discriminating against every one who is not Black, because of their non-Black race.
Generations of folks have convinced themselves that affirmative action is the right thing to do, and it may in truth be the morally right thing to do. But it was never consistent with our national law.
Would you mind quoting the actual bit of text where you say " Similar language exists for educational programs ..."
ScentOfViolets
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the primary education law that protects people from discrimination based on race, national origin, or color in educational programs or activities. The educational programs or activities that are covered by Title VI are those that receive federal financial assistance.
I ask again: Could you quote the relevant text, please?
middleoftheroaddem originally quoted from Title VII, which dealt with employment. He later noted that Title VI, dealing with education, had essentially the same language. The relevant text is "No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." This is currently 42 USC § 2000d.
Early court decisions determined that "receiving Federal financial assistance" includes any student who participates in any Federal loan or grant program, so it applies to all colleges except those that specifically exclude students who participate in these programs. This organization identifies 22 such colleges, although I can't vouch for its completeness or accuracy.
https://deanclancy.com/a-list-of-colleges-that-dont-take-federal-money/
_Thank You_ I really appreciate the fact that you provided documentation. Arequest seldom honored by certain people, as you may have already noticed.
The big problem with defending affirmative action today is that it was from the beginning a likely violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That law is very clear:
Justice Powell wrote in Bakke (1978) that affirmative action for purposes of achieving racial diversity was consistent with both the US Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (title 6). So in fact the issue you raise was addressed 45 years ago. This is from the Wiki article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_University_of_California_v._Bakke
Jasper_in_Boston - your observation is accurate but likely incomplete.
1. In Bakke, there was a discussion of a timeframe, 25 years, for the application of this concept. I believe this clearly signals legal indigestion over the affirmative action concept. In the recent briefs Harvard stated there is now no time frame: the university wanted to use affirmative action indefinitely.
2. Kennedy is no longer a sitting justice.
The irony of course is that Bakke was probably not accepted to med school because he was white, but because he was too old. At the time med schools were not so interested in reentering students, but preferred whiz meds who could go from HS to BS to MD in 8 years, and in a few cases 6 years. None of this wasting your time on "life experiences", they wanted kids dedicated to getting that piece of paper that said MD ASAP. Fortunately, this has changed over the years, today the general feeling is older students with more life experience are more likely to make good physicians.
You are correct that the 1978 Supreme Court found that affirmative action (which was never required by any federal law, regulation, policy, or executive order) was allowable to achieve racial diversity. This required deliberately ignoring the actual text of the Civil Rights Act. It's the same level of sophistry that led the 1896 Supreme Court to conclude that "separate but equal" did not violate the 14th Amendment.
Given that nobody who authored or voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 thought that this new law outlawed actions that corrected for current and/or historical discrimination, your claim is hard to believe. The law certainly doesnt state that corrective actions are outlawed.
I realize that the current effort to claim that up is down, left is right and black is white is a popular approach to justify the recent attempts to gut civil rights laws, but your claim is ridiculous on its face.
The ridiculous dishonesty runs rampant:
To address unfair discrmination is to discriminate unfairly!
Discriminating against race is the same as addressing the impacts of those discrimination (these can only be addressed for maybe a few years, lol)!
Civil rights legislation demands that addressing the impacts of discriminatiom is illegal!!
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was sneakily written to ensure that existing and future methods of addressing discrimination were illegal!
The Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment might have been used by the authors to address current and historical discrimination and they may have written those laws to create legal justification for those efforts, but many decades later we ACSHUALLY know that their laws say the opposite of what they thought!!
Lol, of course.
In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor notes how eagerly the Activist/Grifter Supremes are to allow the use of race when it burdens a minority race. Up is down, left is right, etc...
You claim "nobody who authored or voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 thought that this new law outlawed actions that corrected for current and/or historical discrimination". Do you have any substantiation for this claim? I don't suppose you can vouch for all 362 legislators who voted for it, but can you name a few who stated such things?
Affirmative action in its current form has been going for over 50 years now. You apparently think it's still needed. Do you think there could ever be a time, or circumstances, when it would not be needed?
You are arguing that the people who voted for the civil rights legislation intended for this legislation to bar attempts to weigh and correct for historical discrimination? But they made no attempy to enact these measures, nor did they end existing affirmative action policies, nor did they make any specific mention in the legislation? Thats claim is hard to take seriously and i certainly am not tasked with disproving this idea you have invented.
Why would we randomly select a timeframe? What a foolish question.
The drive and spirit of both the 14th amendment and major civil rights legislation do not expire after a period of time.
If historical discrimination no longer plays any role and we can say that with certainty, i can understand the argument that there is no longer a need to address historical discrimination. Choosing a random time period makes no sense.
Imagine how stupid it would be to argue that certain religious or gun meaures should expire after 25 years because why not 25 years?! There may be no support in legislation or the constitution and there is no discussion of changing the actial laws, but lets run with this random time frame that i have chosen!
This is that stupid.
Well, you made a very specific claim - I thought you might have some justification for the claim.
The relevant legislation is, as you noted, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Part of the text is "No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." This is still the law, incorporated in the US Code as 42 USC § 2000d. By my reading, this does bar racial preferences of any type. Do you disagree?
You claim that it didn't affect "existing affirmative action policies". What policies would those have been? Affirmative Action could be taken as starting with Kennedy's Executive Order 10925 of March 1961, but this applied only to employment practices of government contractors. I'm not aware of any other government "policies" related to Affirmative Action prior to 1964. Are you referring to college policies in operation before 1964? Do you have any knowledge of such policies? If so, what were they? Did they comply with the Civil Rights Act as written? Assuming such policies existed, is there any reason to think that the text of the Civil Rights intended to protect them?
I brought up the idea that there might someday be a time, or some set of circumstances, where you might say that racial preferences would no longer be needed. By your response, I assume your answer would be "No - unless you can prove the unprovable, racial preferences must be maintained forever."
No, that's not what he said, and no it's not on him to predict the future. When (if?) affirmative action is no longer needed.
This isn't a good look on you, my man. Just to be clear, You don't get to interpret his words literally or not as it surits you.
By the way, there's nothing new under the Sun; Daved Friedmann was known for employing those type of tactics baci in USENET days.He poisoned a lot of groups, among them, alt.solcial.history among them (IIRC).
I admire the incandescence of your righteousness. But you could read more carefully.
He said "nobody who authored or voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 thought that this new law outlawed actions that corrected for current and/or historical discrimination". That was the claim I asked him to substantiate. It doesn't involve predicting the future.
My question whether there might ever be a time or situation when he thought affirmative action would not be necessary was a different topic. If you think my summary of his response was unfair, why?
Incandescenc? Righteosness? Blink.
Actually, your're right. Let me explain. I'm a mathemtatician and yes, I know Boolean algrebra. I've taught it, after all.
And before I left university, I used to teach statistics.
Finally, I've worked in the private sector for and still do. Guess what my specialty is? Yes, that's right, statistical analysis (whch involved a lot of ETLing. In SAS.)
Why the credentialling, the windiness?
Let's just say I know when to interpert something. And when not too.
If I said, 'no one seriously believes the Earth is flat', do you prang me (your'e doing that right now with jdubs), demand documentaion? Or would you in this case not take the literal meaning of my words. And really, it's considered common courtesy to ask them if that's really what they meant _first_ before going off on a rant. No, don't tell me that's precisely what your're doing.
If you re-read my response to jdubs, I acknowledged that he couldn't certify every legislator who voted for the CRA, but asked if he could cite any legislators who were on record as supporting his claim. However, to give him generous interpretation, he said that (1) there were existing affirmative action programs in place in 1964, and (2) the intent of the CRA was to protect these programs. I claim that both of these claims are false, and asked him to demonstrate them. I further claim that a simple reading of the relevant text of the CRA falsifies his claim (2), and ask why he disagrees.
How does any of this qualify as a "rant"?
I like the way you argue, sir 🙂
Well, i'rant' lives on the same plane as, say, 'incandescent righteousness'. So I reckon that we're just about even on that score ;- }
I responded to your rediculous claim that the people who wrote the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights act of 1964 intended for these laws to sunset at a randomly chosen date.
Your insistance that i disprove this ridiculous idea is a bit silly, isnt it? My evidence is that there is no evidence that your claim is correct. How would i provide evidence of the fact that there is no evidence for your claim?
I am only claiming that the people who wrote the legislation intended for the legislation to carry forward in the future and assuming that they wanted sunset provisions was a ridiculous assumption given the total lack of evidence that anyone wanted sunset provisions on particular policies.
If you have evidence to the contrary, by all means bring it.
But you cant do that, can you?
Sorry, never addresed the main point, which is this: I don't really have a problem whose reasons are not mint. It's cool. Internally inconsistent statements OTHO, are another thing. Especially if you do it reapetedly even after the inconsistency has been pointed out to you many times. The same for data, of course, exept if it's the wrong data.
TL;DR: (And I shudda said that firs) My comments on inconsistency and bad or poorly interpreted data have nothing to do with the actual discussion.
They're grades.
I doubt I’m telling anyone here anything new when I point out that race based affirmative action is unpopular. From Pew:
“The survey – conducted from March 27 to April 2, 2023, among 5,079 members of the Center’s American Trends Panel – finds that Americans are more than twice as likely to say that the consideration of race and ethnicity in admissions decisions makes the overall admissions process less fair (49%) rather than more fair (20%)”
Even when the results are viewed just among Democrats, only the barest majority comes out in support of this policy. And even then, my own suspicion is that a lot of those DEMs claim to support affirmative action because they see it as part of their tribal identity (and as something their opponents dislike) rather than as a policy they actually agree with.
Because, after all, when the “affirmative action” terminology is removed, I think we get a better sense where people actually stand. Ruy Teixeira recently wrote about a USC Dornsife survey:
“The survey also asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements about race in America. One was a classic statement of colorblind equality: “Our goal as a society should be to treat all people the same without regard to the color of their skin”. This Martin Luther King-style statement elicited sky-high (92 percent) agreement from the public, despite the assaults on this idea from Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the likes of Ibram X. Kendi and large sectors of the Democratic left. In a fascinating related finding, the researchers found that most people who claim to have heard about CRT believe CRT includes this colorblind perspective, rather than directly contradicting it. Perhaps they just can’t believe any theory that has anything to do with race would reject this fundamental principle.”
The DEMs had best move on from race based affirmative action. If they try and die on that hill, that’s exactly what’ll happen: they’ll die.
Trolling, of course, but I was going to reply anyway. Then common sense rode to the rescue and I refused to address anything in its post. He's a well-known troll already and there is no point in 'boosting its profile' as it were.
?
Scent of Violets does love to accuse persons not of the same opinion of being Troll etc.
Not to take any position in re Leo1008 other than not a username handle that rings a bell
Indeed, outside of the BoBo Left, it is clearly not a popular policy. Right or wrong, it is clearly something that requires a pivot regardless to some different approach, as like economic, which while evidenlty imperfect, is more likely to generate broader buy-in and even address some of the Democrats lost political territory amongst the lower economic ranks of the "historical majority'
This is literally the worst argument ever to support the 'legal' maneuverings of the activist Roberts court.
That 'it isn't popular' might be good rationale to support legislatures trying to change laws or even the Constitution. It is not a reason for a court to overrule established law. Especially when the topic is related to equal protections for minorities.
But it’s not equal protection. AA went beyond equal protection and granted extra consideration based on race. That’s the point.
If we are required to select the fastest runner for the olympic team, do we consider only those who crossed the finish line first and assume everyone started in the same place at the same time?
Is creating a starting line or watching the starting point unfair, extra consideration?
If we are selecting runners for the training program, do we only look at where the runners are standing right now? Or do we consider more?
If you start at the halfway point, is it unfair extra consoderation for someone to consider where you started, where you ended and how fast you might run in the future?
Clearly not.
The tears of the poor mistreated plantation owners are an odd spectacle.
A fun fact that came out during the review of Harvard's admissions policies a few years ago: More than half of white undergrads at Harvard were admitted on some basis other than merit. Yes, really. Athletic scholarships, legacy admissions, children of faculty, and "Dean's choice" (read: children of donors) accounted for more than 50% of white undergrad admissions at Harvard. And the Court did not strike this down.
Affirmative action is legal if it favors white people.
It's not obvious to me that the admissions policies you cite favor white students over non-white students. You haven't said what fraction of non-white students were also admitted on some basis other than merit. For instance, if the faculty is racially representative, then one would expect admissions of children of faculty to also be racially representative. I also have the distinct impression, though I am willing to be corrected, that athletic scholarships tend to go disproportionately to non-white students.
It seems at least plausible that white students admitted for reasons other than merit are admitted at the expense of other whites who are denied admission as a result.
Google the Grandfather clause. It's an age old Jim Crow trick.
Regarding this:
"More than half of white undergrads at Harvard were admitted on some basis other than merit."
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that this statement is true. The situation you describe still does not justify racial affirmative action. Nor does racial affirmative action justify the situation you describe.
By all means, let's get rid of every admissions consideration that you mention: athletic scholarships, legacy admissions, children of faculty, etc. But, while we're at it, let's also get rid of race-based affirmative action. And then, hopefully, we'll be closer to a system that really is fairer towards everyone.
Fair is not as simple as you think. Is it fair to evaluate a minority student who went to a crummy inner city high school with a privileged white kid who went to a prep school by the same criteria? How can it be fair if the playing field is not level? Maybe that's part of the reason we have so many mediocre white guys in positions of power?
Oh, the troll refuses to mention test scores weighted just for that, let alone have a rational discurssion. Of course. Goddammit, why doesn't Kevin implement an ignore function?
The anti-choice crusaders and their apologists tried the exact same misdirection with abortion prior to it being demolished by the same extremist Supreme Court.
Of course we will work hard and long on all of those wonderful ideas to promote women and childrens health. Of course we should be addressing all of the various issues that get wrapped up in the decision to pursue an abortion. But we will get to those right after we ban abortion. But right away. Real quick. Dont worry we will work on it soon! LOL, SUCKER!
None of that is based on race. Not sure what your point is.
The point is, when SCOTUS cites the Equal Protection Clause, it does so selectively and exclusively when it comes to race:
The Equal Protection Clause does not exist when it comes to familial legacy, athletic exceptions, and it does some squirrelly twists and turns around religious beliefs to support Christianity.
The troll refuses to acknowledge his daughter has the advantage of 'prepping' to get good scores on the usual standardized tests and sees nothing wrong with that when it comes to college admissions. It goes ballistic when it comes to trans athletes competing against his daughter for an athletic scholarship.
That's pretty much all you need to know about Atticus. Is anyone surprised that he's totally down with legacy admissions?
You are the only one that “goes ballistic”. And you do so frequently because you can’t handle differing opinions. Sad.
I don’t know what you mean about my daughter prepping for exams. Maybe you’re confusing me with someone else. But, if, someone does pay for rest prep, of course they have an advantage. That’s why they do it. A university shouldn’t negate that advantage by giving extra consideration to someone who didn’t prep for the exam. That would be ridiculous.
Chuckle. I don't give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell. You've said before that going to an elite prep school and getting additional coaching just to do well on the entrance exams is not an unfair advantage over someone who scores five poinst lower on the exam but goes to a terrible public school and has to work after school to help support his family.
True or false?
Thus it follows that if your daughter had that coaching and training it would not be an unfair advantage.
True or false?
You also got extremely upset with another poster 'ballistic' as you say when they insisted that trans athletes should be allowed to compete in women's sports, something having to do with some sort of sporting scholarship that was on the line. This, you said was an unfair advantage, in fact, extremely unfair.
True or false?
And your totally down with retaining legacy admissions.
True or false?
Your own words condemn you, fool. But yeah, let's deflect and say I'm the troll because I'm 'going ballistic' over a simple disagreement when in fact what I despise is the inconsisties in your arguments.
Might be interested in: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/6/30/legacy-scrutiny-sffa-harvard/
So you can't use race. OK.
But aren't there many things you CAN use that strongly correlate with race?
From note 4 in Roberts' decision:
A literal reading of the Equal Protection Clause would normally directly contradict this note from Roberts.
But as we all know, when SCOTUS claims equal protection under due process, it means to exclusively interpret what the authors of the Constitution meant at the time, as a White Male Christian nation.
Thomas went to Yale and called AA the reason why he went there
He made several speeches regarding AA calling it a "critical" program etc....
1 - its hypocritical
2 - Or is it "I got mine but you can't have yours"
3 - as a beneficiary of the program should he have recused himself?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/06/30/clarence-thomas-affirmative-action/
Even if reason was a perfect process, which it is not, its outcome would not necessarily be valid. That's because a process has an input. Telling people that the input to the "reason" process is perspective is like telling a fish about water and getting a "Water? What's water? I have no idea what you're talking about" response.
To paraphrase Susan B. Anthony, I distrust those people who know so well what reason tells them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
To be more specific, the correct perspective is that which is in the best long-term interest of the country as a whole, and irrespective of any short-term impact on interests within the country. Clearly, no one is asking the "From what perspective?" question. Clearly, SCOTUS as a collective is not asking that question. If they were, I can't say for sure where they'd end up, but I suspect their conclusions would align with those of Justice Jackson.
Today we see the Court striking down Biden's student loan forgiveness program.
As I thought yesterday what is really going on here is an effort to prevent education, to make it more costly, more difficult, and focused exclusively on vocational areas where you can explain to the bank that you'll eventually come up with enough money to pay it all off.