Affirmative action before the SCOTUS today

[Sunburn74]

I don't see a thread on this so I will start one.

Basically affirmative action is being debated in front of the SCOTUS today. The ruling will affect both public schools and private schools.

I'm a bit puzzled as to how the SCOTUS can tell a privately run school who it can and cannot accept. I mean when I think of religious schools (for example catholic private high schools) or all women's school's that specifically accept/reject candidates for religious reasons or sex based reasons, it seems fine. Yet somehow the government can tell Harvard who it can and cannot accept?

 

[sactoking]

Almost all colleges accept federal education money. That comes with accepting the terms the federal government applies, like no race based admission preferences.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Almost all colleges accept federal education money. That comes with accepting the terms the federal government applies, like no race based admission preferences.

and yet there are charities that accept federal funds and discriminate based on things like religious affiliation or sexual orientation/gender identity.


i wouldn't expect affirmative action to survive this SCOTUS

 

[manly]

and yet there are charities that accept federal funds and discriminate based on things like religious affiliation or sexual orientation/gender identity.


i wouldn't expect affirmative action to survive this SCOTUS

Correct, this court is pretty extreme (to put it mildly) and if I read it correctly, the slightly moderate Chief Justice Roberts did not sound sympathetic to maintaining affirmative action. I honestly don't know his personal history, but I do wonder if Justice Thomas would have ascended anywhere near the USSC if not for affirmative action?

 

[kage69]

More christofascist Calvinball, coming up.

 

[UNCjigga]

Affirmative action unfortunately needs to die at SCOTUS for any real reform to happen. The law as implemented has been problematic at best, and I begrudgingly agree that it’s impossible to know if/when it’s working and what impact is having.

As I understand it, nothing should change much at private universities. If they truly value diversity and wish to see it represented in a diverse student body, they can come up with any number of criteria and programs to establish said student body without specific quotas on race.

The real issue will be at public state schools like UNC, where conservative politicians now wield considerable influence and will look to establish a school system that values higher tuitions and higher revenues vs. one that’s more inclusive of disadvantaged North Carolinians.

 

[fskimospy]

Affirmative action unfortunately needs to die at SCOTUS for any real reform to happen. The law as implemented has been problematic at best, and I begrudgingly agree that it’s impossible to know if/when it’s working and what impact is having.

As I understand it, nothing should change much at private universities. If they truly value diversity and wish to see it represented in a diverse student body, they can come up with any number of criteria and programs to establish said student body without specific quotas on race.

The real issue will be at public state schools like UNC, where conservative politicians now wield considerable influence and will look to establish a school system that values higher tuitions and higher revenues vs. one that’s more inclusive of disadvantaged North Carolinians.

But they don’t have quotas on race?

 

[Jaskalas]

I've historically been adamantly opposed to including race in our decision making process. This requires opposing affirmative action.

Yet, in human nature, bias towards one self does exist. Bias towards those similar to you and against those who are different. It is universal behavior, and all humans of all types not only feel it, we act on it. Inherent bias is what creates racially segregated neighborhoods throughout the US. Inherent bias is what any majority will do to harm any minority, whether they will it or not. Whether through conscious decisions or not. The biased behavior is going to result in a biased outcome. Minorities will be harmed one way or another through inherent bias.

It takes a rather lengthy and fundamental understanding to start with. To then examine the problem and determine a solution. That there must be a small nudge in the other direction. In favor of minorities, to overcome human nature. Simple as that. I cannot deny the need for affirmative action, in some form.

But so long as this is a dog-eat-dog society, so long as we are rats racing to the top of the rat pile... our primary motive will be to sabotage one another, to ensure our position above others. A competitive society where we struggle to meet our basic needs is going to result in a hostile people who only look out for themselves. Who look at affirmative action as something of value being TAKEN from them. It will be destroyed under the weight of our competitive drive. Compassion and understanding cannot prevail in a society burdened by failing basic needs.

To open the hearts of our people, we must first neuter their killer / tribal instinct by providing a Basic Income. By providing Housing. To ensure stability WITHOUT a rat race. Without having to shiv everyone else standing in the way. Who take up valuable slots for an achievement that is viewed as required for your very survival. Sweep the legs out from under our base motives, and some day a majority might ensure that we have the compassion to understand the needs of others and help them prevail against such things as inherent bias.

But until we even try to do that.... it is every man for himself. And we have a 2nd amendment.


TL;DR, I've come to realize affirmative action has its place, but a better society is required for it to exist.

 

[alien42]

Justice Jackson recused herself from this case, unlike Justice Thomas in election and J6 related cases.

 

[Dave_5k]

This court will almost certainly very broadly strike down using race as a factor in college admissions.

I'd expect (and hope) universities switch to weighting for the socioeconomic disadvantaged getting a preference ~ which in many ways would be superior to current admission methods which almost exclusively heavily favor the reinforcement of existing social & economic stratification. Providing a new focus on helping those disadvantaged but with potential to overcome it, rather than focusing on admitting the children of the rich.

 

[Sunburn74]

I've historically been adamantly opposed to including race in our decision making process. This requires opposing affirmative action.

Yet, in human nature, bias towards one self does exist. Bias towards those similar to you and against those who are different. It is universal behavior, and all humans of all types not only feel it, we act on it. Inherent bias is what creates racially segregated neighborhoods throughout the US. Inherent bias is what any majority will do to harm any minority, whether they will it or not. Whether through conscious decisions or not. The biased behavior is going to result in a biased outcome. Minorities will be harmed one way or another through inherent bias.

It takes a rather lengthy and fundamental understanding to start with. To then examine the problem and determine a solution. That there must be a small nudge in the other direction. In favor of minorities, to overcome human nature. Simple as that. I cannot deny the need for affirmative action, in some form.

But so long as this is a dog-eat-dog society, so long as we are rats racing to the top of the rat pile... our primary motive will be to sabotage one another, to ensure our position above others. A competitive society where we struggle to meet our basic needs is going to result in a hostile people who only look out for themselves. Who look at affirmative action as something of value being TAKEN from them. It will be destroyed under the weight of our competitive drive. Compassion and understanding cannot prevail in a society burdened by failing basic needs.

To open the hearts of our people, we must first neuter their killer / tribal instinct by providing a Basic Income. By providing Housing. To ensure stability WITHOUT a rat race. Without having to shiv everyone else standing in the way. Who take up valuable slots for an achievement that is viewed as required for your very survival. Sweep the legs out from under our base motives, and some day a majority might ensure that we have the compassion to understand the needs of others and help them prevail against such things as inherent bias.

But until we even try to do that.... it is every man for himself. And we have a 2nd amendment.


TL;DR, I've come to realize affirmative action has its place, but a better society is required for it to exist.

The problem is you can use culture as a reason to accept/deny someone and culture and race are too closely intertwined to separate.

Almost certainly its dead but its sad because
1) there is no real reason to do this. For all the complaints about affirmative action, our colleges are as poorly diverse as ever
2) the logic they use isn't actually based on the literal or historical interpretation of the US constitution.
3) it will have reverberations beyond just college admissions. Basically any sort of federally associated diversity program for anything (be it employment, scholarship, etc etc) would basically be dead. I think this is the real problem: it basically hamstrings the government in terms of its ability to identify racial groups that are struggling and specifically target them

 

[sportage]

I honestly don't know his personal history, but I do wonder if Justice Thomas would have ascended anywhere near the USSC if not for affirmative action?

The black Thomas or the white Thomas?

 

[m8d]

The black Thomas or the white Thomas?

Clarence Thomas is just a good house ni$$@. He does what masta tells him to do.

 

[HurleyBird]

Yet, in human nature, bias towards one self does exist. Bias towards those similar to you and against those who are different. It is universal behavior, and all humans of all types not only feel it, we act on it. Inherent bias is what creates racially segregated neighborhoods throughout the US. Inherent bias is what any majority will do to harm any minority, whether they will it or not. Whether through conscious decisions or not. The biased behavior is going to result in a biased outcome. Minorities will be harmed one way or another through inherent bias.

Definitely. But you can also have cultural and societal biases that transcend our innate tribal biases. People in Asian countries getting eyelid surgery to look more Caucasian, for instance. If you go far enough left, it's entirely possible to find white people with an anti-white bias.

It's easy to say that we should work to eliminate our in-group biases, and I think for the most part I agree with that, but it brings to mind two questions:

1) Should minorities or disadvantaged groups work to eliminate their in-group biases also? I'm not sure at all on this one. My gut says, maybe at the extreme end, but a mild in-group bias could be healthy and help grow communities.

2) Is it better to try and nullify each individual's in-group bias, or to aim so that the mean of the group's bias as a whole is as close to 0 as possible. In other words, you're on IMDB and you see a show with an 8 rating that you think should be a 6. Do you rate it a 6, or do you rate it a 2 to move the average more to what it "should be"?

TL;DR, I've come to realize affirmative action has its place, but a better society is required for it to exist.

Here in Canada our main disadvantaged group is native Americans, or as we call them, first nations people. The differences between all other groups pale before any of those groups and first nations. It's really, really bad, and I imagine it might be similarly bad in the US but for whatever reason they just don't get much attention from US media.

In any case, as far as I understand it (admittedly, it's not something I've looked deeply into), they get pretty significant affirmative action, but it's more about scholarships, financial assistance, services (eg. free ambulance rides, free legal representation*), tax breaks, and so on. First nations people, if they get into college, basically have a free (or close to it) ride. But I don't think we really lower the criteria for admissions, or at least not by much. Granted, things also don't seem to be getting much better up here, but especially the higher education angle seems like a much better, less divisive way to go about it. Eg. don't lower the bar for those who otherwise wouldn't have made it, but do remove as many obstacles as possible when they do.

*In Canada, a lawyer will not be provided to you if you cannot afford one. We don't have public defenders. Probably the most backwards thing about us.

 

[fskimospy]

If these colleges are interested in continuing affirmative action they can switch to other proxies for race pretty easily.

If you listen to the oral arguments they are very stupid and show that like with the football coach case the right wing justices are inventing a new fact pattern to justify their decision that has little relation to, you know, the facts of the case.

 

[brycejones]

Clarence Thomas is just a good house ni$$@. He does what masta tells him to do.

That master being the pussy of a crazy white woman.

 

[Maxima1]

The problem is you can use culture as a reason to accept/deny someone and culture and race are too closely intertwined to separate.

Almost certainly its dead but its sad because
1) there is no real reason to do this. For all the complaints about affirmative action, our colleges are as poorly diverse as ever

What does diversity bring? They were like anyone else to me. Why is there no real reason? The admissions process should be reasonably related to education. Colleges should match people better with rigor. Continuing AA, we're talking about people born after 2000. Damn this is dumb.

2) the logic they use isn't actually based on the literal or historical interpretation of the US constitution.

This? It's completely whack to think they were intending perpetual advantages until groups aligned in income and wealth.

That they were, in fact, trying to
ensure that people who had been discriminated
against, the freedmen in -- during the
reconstructive -- reconstruction period were
actually brought equal to everyone else in the
society.

3) it will have reverberations beyond just college admissions. Basically any sort of federally associated diversity program for anything (be it employment, scholarship, etc etc) would basically be dead. I think this is the real problem: it basically hamstrings the government in terms of its ability to identify racial groups that are struggling and specifically target them

Many of those displaced are Asians and whites with lower SES background. None of this fixes the actual problem of downward mobility and black students doing poorly.

Rich, Black, Flunking | East Bay Express | Oakland, Berkeley & Alameda

Cal Professor John Ogbu thinks he knows why rich black kids are failing in school. Nobody wants to hear it.

eastbayexpress.com

https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/working-papers/2011/wp-10

Traditional measures of intergenerational mobility such as the intergenerational elasticity are not useful for inferences concerning group differences in mobility with respect to the pooled income distribution. This paper uses transition probabilities and measures of “directional rank mobility” that can identify interracial differences in intergenerational mobility. The study uses two data sources, including one that contains social security earnings for a large intergenerational sample. I find that recent cohorts of blacks are not only significantly less upwardly mobile but also significantly more downwardly mobile than whites. This implies a steady-state distribution in which there is no racial convergence in income. A descriptive analysis using covariates reveals that test scores in adolescence can explain much of the racial difference in both upward and downward mobility. Family structure can account for some of the racial gap in upward mobility but not downward mobility. Completed schooling and parental wealth also appear to account for some of the racial gaps in intergenerational mobility.

https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2021-elder.pdf

With the exception of the “internalizing problem behavior” scale, racial gaps in these measures are large
throughout the elementary school years. After conditioning on detailed controls
for home and school environments, the gaps at the end of third grade are roughly
one-half to three-fourths as large as the analogous test score gaps studied by Fryer
and Levitt (2006), which uses a similar set of controls.
Second, the estimated gaps are remarkably stable across birth cohorts. For exam-
ple, the unconditional Black-White gap in the measure of approaches to learning is
0.524 standard deviations among third graders in the ECLS-K:2011 cohort, com-
pared to 0.545 standard deviations for the ECLS-K:1999 cohort. This finding mir-
rors those shown in the literature on test scores, with studies such as Neal (2006)
and Magnuson and Waldfogel (2008) concluding that the Black-White test score
gap has remained roughly constant since the early 1990s.
Third, and perhaps most troubling, we present evidence that our baseline esti-
mates substantially understate true Black-White differences in noncognitive skills.

 

[K1052]

If these colleges are interested in continuing affirmative action they can switch to other proxies for race pretty easily.

If you listen to the oral arguments they are very stupid and show that like with the football coach case the right wing justices are inventing a new fact pattern to justify their decision that has little relation to, you know, the facts of the case.

Somehow simply lying about the facts to get the outcome they want is a more honest and transparent way to go about ruling America than inventing new bullshit doctrines whole cloth.

 

[HomerJS]

SCOTUS is about to rule on affirmative action. The following is why AA is still needed in this country. The White House is one of the most prestigious internships in the country.

This picture is Barack Obama's last intern class.

This picture is Donald Trump's 2018 intern class.

Obamas class is the result of AA
Trump's class is business as usual in America

 

[Paratus]

SCOTUS is about to rule on affirmative action. The following is why AA is still needed in this country. The White House is one of the most prestigious internships in the country.

This picture is Barack Obama's last intern class.

This picture is Donald Trump's 2018 intern class.

Obamas class is the result of AA
Trump's class is business as usual in America

You know implicit in the 1st amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances is the ability of the government to actually redress grievances.

AA was such a small redress for the biased actions our government took. It’s ridiculous (but not surprising) how much hate the right throws at it.

If you don’t want the government putting its fingers on the scale for minorities then they shouldn’t have allowed it to put its finger on the scales for the majority. A response is required to the damage done and to push things back towards equality under the law.

 

[Jaskalas]

SCOTUS is about to rule on affirmative action. The following is why AA is still needed in this country. The White House is one of the most prestigious internships in the country.
....
Obamas class is the result of AA
Trump's class is business as usual in America

You are not wrong.

But so long as our society is based on "chaos is a ladder", humans will suffer and in their suffering look to blame others. If anyone else is getting a handout, they will be met with hatred. The act of helping others is despised by far too many, based on who we are as a people. We must broaden our social programs in general, reduce the competitive drive for survival, and only then will our hearts be open for others.

 

[thilanliyan]

Justice Jackson recused herself from this case, unlike Justice Thomas in election and J6 related cases.

She shouldn't have....must play by the same rules as the GOP double agents to have a shot at winning.

 

[UNCjigga]

Kinda somewhat hilarious that one of Clarence Thomas’ first jobs was at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—and that’s where women learned to avoid him.

That vindictive SOB will only be so happy to screw over the group that helped advance his own career. FYGM.

 

[alien42]

SCOTUS is about to rule on affirmative action. The following is why AA is still needed in this country. The White House is one of the most prestigious internships in the country.

This picture is Barack Obama's last intern class.

This picture is Donald Trump's 2018 intern class.

Obamas class is the result of AA
Trump's class is business as usual in America

While I love that photo comparison, it doesn't show the result of AA, just the need for it. . The racism of the Republican party is on clear display here.

 

[Dave_5k]

While I love that photo comparison, it doesn't show the result of AA, just the need for it. . The racism of the Republican party is on clear display here.

It's not racism, just purely random chance that 99% of republicans aren't black... (edit: although I really do wonder about the sanity of that other 1%)