SCOTUS case: Fisher v. Texas (Affirmative Action) - Page 23

On July 19 2014 01:08 andrewlt wrote:


I agree with you about legacy admissions. In a way, affirmative action balances that out, though imperfectly.

The issue with black names is not just race, but class. There was (is still?) a trend among poorer black mothers, many of whom are single mothers, to create made up names when naming their children. So when people see those names, race preferences get mixed in with class preferences. Middle class and above don't really use those names as much.

On July 19 2014 03:42 GreenHorizons wrote:


All names are 'made up' haha? I presume you mean unique. If so, yes. But see how even you can inadvertently debase one group of people over another just based on name preference (suggesting that poorer black mothers 'make up' names as if that's not how all names came into being). And if we are going to talk about the historical nature of a name like Mary or John you can bet 'Tangilique' wouldn't be any better off if her name was 'Funmilayo' or 'Deshaun' as 'Olaudah'.

On July 19 2014 01:08 andrewlt wrote:


I agree with you about legacy admissions. In a way, affirmative action balances that out, though imperfectly.

The issue with black names is not just race, but class. There was (is still?) a trend among poorer black mothers, many of whom are single mothers, to create made up names when naming their children. So when people see those names, race preferences get mixed in with class preferences. Middle class and above don't really use those names as much.

On July 21 2014 04:44 Chocolate wrote:

AA does a poor job of balancing legacy because then poor and middle class whites get the shaft.

Is there any reason we don't just look at income for affirmative action? What if a particular student had a replaced name and no listed race, but his parents' income and non-retirement assets? Seems more fair

On July 21 2014 12:58 Livelovedie wrote:


AA isn't really about balancing legacies. The purpose is to have a semi-representative cross section of society at the school and has been historically used to correct past injustices.

On July 21 2014 13:50 Chocolate wrote:

I don't really think it is about having a semi-representative cross section of society though. Rather, I think it's more about the diversity (and only one or two very specific applications of it) buzzword. Not only do universities commonly have commissions and departments on diversity, but for whatever reason society sees fit to complain when certain definitions are not met. Recently: see USA today making a fuss over big software companies not hiring a lot of women and non-asian/whites.

Also, is there any research done that actually shows that diversity benefits a student population more than it hinders it (when diversity is reached at the expense of the overall merit of the student body)? I can only tangentially think of that one study where they put people in broken elevators.

On July 21 2014 14:01 deth2munkies wrote:
Affirmative action is merely a shitty remedy to a real problem: the inequality of the education system. Poor predominantly black areas have high dropout rates and overall crappier high schools which make them less likely to get into college. The overall costs associated with college and the related cultural stigma against college in extreme poverty areas all stacks the odds against black people going to college.

Fixing the underlying problems is a lot harder than saying "give us your undereducated black students so that we may hopefully be able to educate them". Anecdotal conversations with several admissions faculty members (including one at UT) also point out another ugly truth: affirmative action students typically do significantly worse in classes than those accepted on the merits.

Affirmative action is just a way to alleviate white guilt and make people feel better when in reality the underlying problems in the education system go unfixed. Comparatively few people that end up getting into college solely on affirmative action grounds end up doing well and making the most of their education. I'm all for burning the education system to the ground and fixing it again, but I'm in the minority. In the meantime, cut this shit out.

On July 21 2014 14:00 Livelovedie wrote:


I would think there is some importance of having students who come from different backgrounds who can share their experiences living in their respective community. In addition, these communities will more likely be represented in the higher levels of academia, the workforce, and politics after college.

Here is some research about the value of diversity in higher education.
http://www.aaup.org/NR/rdonlyres/97003B7B-055F-4318-B14A-5336321FB742/0/DIVREP.PDF

On July 21 2014 14:07 Livelovedie wrote:


That isn't an option, the options are end affirmative action and have shitty inner city schools or continue having affirmative action and have shitty inner city schools.

But yes, in general first-generation college students fare much worse in schools, and a lot of those students are URM's. Schools who provide special resources, which is what a lot of schools are starting to do, to these students can help change this.

On July 21 2014 14:01 deth2munkies wrote:
Affirmative action is merely a shitty remedy to a real problem: the inequality of the education system. Poor predominantly black areas have high dropout rates and overall crappier high schools which make them less likely to get into college. The overall costs associated with college and the related cultural stigma against college in extreme poverty areas all stacks the odds against black people going to college.

Fixing the underlying problems is a lot harder than saying "give us your undereducated black students so that we may hopefully be able to educate them". Anecdotal conversations with several admissions faculty members (including one at UT) also point out another ugly truth: affirmative action students typically do significantly worse in classes than those accepted on the merits.

Affirmative action is just a way to alleviate white guilt and make people feel better when in reality the underlying problems in the education system go unfixed. Comparatively few people that end up getting into college solely on affirmative action grounds end up doing well and making the most of their education. I'm all for burning the education system to the ground and fixing it again, but I'm in the minority. In the meantime, cut this shit out.

On July 21 2014 14:01 deth2munkies wrote:
Affirmative action is merely a shitty remedy to a real problem: the inequality of the education system. Poor predominantly black areas have high dropout rates and overall crappier high schools which make them less likely to get into college. The overall costs associated with college and the related cultural stigma against college in extreme poverty areas all stacks the odds against black people going to college.

Fixing the underlying problems is a lot harder than saying "give us your undereducated black students so that we may hopefully be able to educate them". Anecdotal conversations with several admissions faculty members (including one at UT) also point out another ugly truth: affirmative action students typically do significantly worse in classes than those accepted on the merits.

Affirmative action is just a way to alleviate white guilt and make people feel better when in reality the underlying problems in the education system go unfixed. Comparatively few people that end up getting into college solely on affirmative action grounds end up doing well and making the most of their education. I'm all for burning the education system to the ground and fixing it again, but I'm in the minority. In the meantime, cut this shit out.

On July 21 2014 23:45 docvoc wrote:

Except from what I've seen, affirmative action isn't just a shitty remedy, it also exacerbates the problem. Instead of looking at a students background, it puts their race as the focal point. Instead of seeing if they come from a problem area or if they are impoverished or if there are other things that place stumbling blocks in their path, it looks specifically at racial diversity in a lot of cases. A quota if you will. That quota gets filled up by the best "minority" students, rather than the ones that truly need help getting into college in many cases. Much like the national achievement scholarships (National Merit but only for people who are Black), the people that end scoring high enough to get the scholarship are not people from problem areas, but really smart kids who went to the best schools and aren't, nor have ever been, truly underprivileged. In short, affirmative action doesn't do very much to help those kids you say need help, but it does give a convenient excuse for universities to create the ecosystems they want based on race rather than other factors.

On July 22 2014 02:00 GreenHorizons wrote:


Quotas are a bulllshit myth. Any use of quotas is just lazy people being lazy and has nothing to do with the law. What are you even talking about with universities creating ecosystems based on race? People hear whacko stories about what affirmative action is and they just accept them as gospel, without having a clue it seems?

For the first 200 years of this country black people were property and then just above property. That whole time white people poor and rich enjoyed privilege that was explicitly banned for black people (and others) It's been less than 60 years of Black people being legally human and (at least on paper) treated close to equally, and it's been nothing but whining the whole damn time. Complained about how freeing slaves was going to hurt the white man, how letting black people read was endangering the white man, how black people being able to vote was going to ruin democracy, how allowing black people to go to the same school was dangerous for white folk, how the world would end if black people could eat at the same lunch counters, how interracial marriage was the death knell for the white race, how it's welfare queens sucking the budget dry, how black people have 'lost the culture of hard work', and the poor white students who perform equally to a black person and lose their spot to that equally qualified student. What I say to people who complain about AA is 'cry me a river, then build a bridge and get over it'. I can't walk around the streets of New York without having my civil rights violated or being murdered in broad daylight, so pardon me if I don't give a shit about the horrible situation of losing a seat in school to someone who is equally qualified to ones white self.

I'd trade every social program and every affirmative action type law in a heartbeat for 1 year of 'slave like' law. Hell I wouldn't even care if white people didn't actually do any slave work. Just the change in law would be enough to do more to reset the balance than every previous law combined.

It never fails the same people offended by affirmative action are the same ones who want to white wash America's history. The Forbes 400 is full of people who inherited more wealth than most black people will earn in a lifetime and they inherited it from companies and people who indirectly/directly benefited from discriminating/slavery much worse than any AA law. That legacy remains well beyond the Forbes 400. So as long as we don't mind letting people keep that dirty money it's only fair to balance it out a bit with a law like AA. Could it be updated? Of course. Just not by the half-wits in congress. So as was mentioned before, we could have an imperfect law like AA or we could have nothing. I certainly prefer the prior. I could see how a group who benefited massively from the 200+ years of reverse AA wouldn't want a law like that and could see it as unfair though...

On July 22 2014 04:28 L1ghtning wrote:

So, what you're saying is that you view whites and blacks as separate groups, and that any injustice against someone in the black group could be countered by creating an injustice for someone in the white group. This is your so called fairness.
To you, fairness is not about justice for every single one of us, rather it's about creating categories arbitrarily and then slicing them into evenly sized chunks.

You're also overlooking the fact that many blacks are descendants from white slave owners and that a lot of white ppl don't have relatives who were slave owners and that a lot of very wealthy cultural groups, like american jews and east asians are as successful as whites today, and they immigrated to the country after slavery was abolished. Asians need higher grades in america to enroll at universities, compared to all the other cultural groups, simply because they're asian. If you don't think this is unjust, you don't know what justice means.
The only crime of the asian americans is that they're hardworking. You want to punish them for this.

Also, there's no such thing as "slave work". Slavery occurs when someone by force from some kind of indisputable authority, takes away your freedom of self. The only indisputable authority in a civilized country is the government, so it's only through the government that you can create and maintain slavery in a lawful society.

On July 22 2014 02:00 GreenHorizons wrote:


Quotas are a bulllshit myth. Any use of quotas is just lazy people being lazy and has nothing to do with the law. What are you even talking about with universities creating ecosystems based on race? People hear whacko stories about what affirmative action is and they just accept them as gospel, without having a clue it seems?

For the first 200 years of this country black people were property and then just above property. That whole time white people poor and rich enjoyed privilege that was explicitly banned for black people (and others) It's been less than 60 years of Black people being legally human and (at least on paper) treated close to equally, and it's been nothing but whining the whole damn time. Complained about how freeing slaves was going to hurt the white man, how letting black people read was endangering the white man, how black people being able to vote was going to ruin democracy, how allowing black people to go to the same school was dangerous for white folk, how the world would end if black people could eat at the same lunch counters, how interracial marriage was the death knell for the white race, how it's welfare queens sucking the budget dry, how black people have 'lost the culture of hard work', and the poor white students who perform equally to a black person and lose their spot to that equally qualified student. What I say to people who complain about AA is 'cry me a river, then build a bridge and get over it'. I can't walk around the streets of New York without having my civil rights violated or being murdered in broad daylight, so pardon me if I don't give a shit about the horrible situation of losing a seat in school to someone who is equally qualified to ones white self.

I'd trade every social program and every affirmative action type law in a heartbeat for 1 year of 'slave like' law. Hell I wouldn't even care if white people didn't actually do any slave work. Just the change in law would be enough to do more to reset the balance than every previous law combined.

It never fails the same people offended by affirmative action are the same ones who want to white wash America's history. The Forbes 400 is full of people who inherited more wealth than most black people will earn in a lifetime and they inherited it from companies and people who indirectly/directly benefited from discriminating/slavery much worse than any AA law. That legacy remains well beyond the Forbes 400. So as long as we don't mind letting people keep that dirty money it's only fair to balance it out a bit with a law like AA. Could it be updated? Of course. Just not by the half-wits in congress. So as was mentioned before, we could have an imperfect law like AA or we could have nothing. I certainly prefer the prior. I could see how a group who benefited massively from the 200+ years of reverse AA wouldn't want a law like that and could see it as unfair though...

On July 22 2014 07:25 Ghostcom wrote:
You are going to have to explain that one to me Livelovedie.

Dr. Kaplan’s points are backed up by a number of studies. For instance, research has shown that minority doctors are more likely to work with underserved and indigent populations (for a summary table, see pages 2-3 of the Commonwealth Fund’s report on disparities). These are the same populations who bear disproportionate rates of disease and who have the most limited access to care. (For more, see the CDC Health Disparities & Inequalities Report.)