EPTSCOTUS case: Fisher v. Texas (Affirmative Action) - Page 3
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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ZeaL.
United States5955 Posts
On November 02 2012 07:37 sevencck wrote: Because culture is important too, and as I've said, culture and socioeconomic conditions are symptoms of race to a significant degree in the U.S.A. The only argument of any value regards what extent AA should be considered valid. I'd argue that if 85% of the seats available are based on academic merit that's fine, because promoting the opportunity for higher education among those who come from cultures or socioeconomic conditions that put them at a significant disadvantage is more important than the remaining 15% of seats being based on merit. You're decrying this as "racist," but race is easily the best yardstick for cultural development and socioeconomic condition. Why aren't you decrying your society as racist where blacks and Latinos are struggling disproportionately (which fundamentally is the basis for AA in the first place)? How is it the best yardstick by any measure? Of the black people I met in college there were guys from the suburbs from rich families, international students from Africa, students from inner city neighborhoods, and a few from rural areas. Completely different backgrounds but all black. Why should they all be elevated to some degree because of their color? And just because I don't believe that AA should be implemented doesn't mean that I think its an injustice that there are such differences amongst racial groups. I have no qualms with focusing efforts to improve the prospects of those in the worst conditions but I do not think affirmative action is the appropriate way to address things (or even effective at all). | ||
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Caihead
Canada8550 Posts
On November 02 2012 07:44 Myles wrote: Charity and altruism are not something to be legally enforced, imo, as it ceases being charity and altruism. And at this point I guess we're better off stopping since I believe it's wrong to discriminate even if it's for 'good' reasons, while you seem ok with it. This isn't a "necessary evil" argument, it's fine to remove affirmative action pertaining to race in the US specific to these college policies because they are in fact just discriminating with out actually accounting for existing phenomenon. If you truly want to level the playing fields of a society after long periods of discrimination, say for example the oppression of women and the ensuing poverty of children, you absolutely have to compensate it by discriminating for women. There simply isn't a way around it, in the vast majority of cases with out any action taken the cycle of poverty and discrimination simply perpetuates itself. Ideally affirmative action is supposed to just give the people a basis for a level playing field according to the deficits that are being perpetuated and stop when it's no longer relevant. | ||
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sevencck
Canada705 Posts
On November 02 2012 07:46 ZeaL. wrote: How is it the best yardstick by any measure? Of the black people I met in college there were guys from the suburbs from rich families, international students from Africa, students from inner city neighborhoods, and a few from rural areas. Completely different backgrounds but all black. Why should they all be elevated to some degree because of their color? And just because I don't believe that AA should be implemented doesn't mean that I think its an injustice that there are such differences amongst racial groups. I have no qualms with focusing efforts to improve the prospects of those in the worst conditions but I do not think affirmative action is the appropriate way to address things (or even effective at all). I just edited yardstick to hand-in-hand. I wasn't really happy with the word yardstick. It is a pretty good yardstick in contemporary U.S.A. though. Yeah, some people are gonna get what might seem an unfair advantage. No system is perfect. 100% merit-based admission isn't perfect (because it's hard to define "merit" without looking like a moron). But again, it's going to depend on what extent you implement an AA bias in terms of the total percent of admissions. Am I arguing 100% of admission be based on AA? No. Further, what you've written isn't inherently an argument against AA, it's an argument for more comprehensive attention to candidates for admission. Prejudice is bad, discrimination is good. People in favor of merit based admission are in favor of discriminating grades. I'm in favor of factoring in more of life to help discriminate candidates, and culture and socioeconomic condition are two important parts. | ||
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SiroKO
France721 Posts
They're not adapting their ideology to reality, they're re-creating a reality in accordance with their ideology. At this little game, I consider eugenism to be a much saner process. | ||
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JKM
Denmark419 Posts
Also defining merit is not as simple as looking at grades (and SAT's in USA?). Especially in a system with weighed grades I could imagine that some schools have otherwise smart kids scoring outside top 10% because there happen to many smart kids on that school. | ||
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xavierofsparta
United States84 Posts
 ) said that due to the plaintiff's meager (in comparison to the usual minimum admission for the 25% non-top 10%ers) SAT scores and and another admission criteria (it may have been for the fact she was not in the top 10% of you class), she would not have been admitted regardless. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States45678 Posts
The problem here is that results have shown this doesn't actually happen (those who have been given that opportunity with their low scores and racial/ background preference are far more likely to drop out anyway), and so their seat is essentially wasted when it could have been given to someone who has already shown the behavior indicative of someone who is motivated and hard-working. You can't quantify a race or a gender or a religion anyway. What makes a Native American with a 2.5 quantifiably equal to that of an Asian with a 4.0? It puts much more value on your genetics than on your education, and since you have no control over your genetics but you can work hard in school, that's hardly fair. (It's also important to note that socioeconomic status has the largest correlation with education and intelligence, not race.) Now, the general argument for AA is that some places that stereotypically have minority families also have poorer schools, and thus can't compete at the level of white and Asian students because the money isn't there. Two big problems with that: 1. That's not true with every minority (or non-minority) kid. An Asian kid living in a poor area is doubly hurt (by AA and by lack of resources). A rich black or Hispanic kid is doubly helped by AA and extra resources. (Interestingly enough, white people don't get harmed by AA as much as Asians do, although they tend to live in nicer places than minorities.) 2. AA doesn't solve the problem of unequal education. It's a lazy man's solution to education. A proper solution would be to work on making sure that secondary (middle/ high) schools receive the proper funding and educational needs that they require, so that every school could compete at the same (top) level, so that it could be safely assumed that all student opportunities across the nation were the same (a hefty goal, but something to always move forwards to). That way, only results would matter on college applications. As someone with a master's degree in education and pursuing his doctorate in education, this is a topic I frequently discuss with my friends and professors. I don't know of any educators who really support AA. | ||
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Durdenjr
26 Posts
On November 02 2012 20:14 xavierofsparta wrote: A closer examination of AA and race in admission probably does need to be had, but in this case, race did not play a roll in the plaintiff's non-admission. I was listening to I believe NPR on this case when it was first brought to the Supreme Court. In the new report, the head of admission's at THE University of Texas (screw you A&M and Tech ) said that due to the plaintiff's meager (in comparison to the usual minimum admission for the 25% non-top 10%ers) SAT scores and and another admission criteria (it may have been for the fact she was not in the top 10% of you class), she would not have been admitted regardless.Based on what shes going to court for, this is all that matters. The top 10% rule gives unfair advantages to students from underperforming schools. Throw out the sat's for arguments sake, and shes right (imo). I went to school in texas, we had close to 1100 students in our grad class, and to be in the top 10%, basically required a 97/100 gpa. Many of the top 10% (across the state) did not make more then 70/100 because their schools were bad. Conversely many of the top 10% from the bad districts also failed out quickly once in college because their grades had been inflated (if you live in texas you know what im talking about). Now, i agree with the concept of the top 10%, to help people further their education, but you cant have terrible students from preschool to high school then sit them down in college and expect magic. The problem in texas is the fucked up education system. Many school districts have kids doing poorly, who cant do jack shit. Thats where these resources theyre spending at the college level need to be redirected to, elementary/middle/highschool grade students. Then if theyre worthy students, and you have a difference in race being the only different factor for admissions, and want to promote diversity, boom, go for it, i can understand that to an extent. But its easier for some jackass to make money off these kids at the collegiate level so i doubt anything good will happen. | ||
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Jonoman92
United States9108 Posts
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Dknight
United States5223 Posts
On November 02 2012 20:29 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: The vast majority of educators and educational experts disagree with the concept of Affirmative Action, as it replaces merit and concrete results for prejudicial selection in hopes that those who have previously underachieved will make it on their own, now that they've been given a "fair shot". The problem here is that results have shown this doesn't actually happen (those who have been given that opportunity with their low scores and racial/ background preference are far more likely to drop out anyway), and so their seat is essentially wasted when it could have been given to someone who has already shown the behavior indicative of someone who is motivated and hard-working. You can't quantify a race or a gender or a religion anyway. What makes a Native American with a 2.5 quantifiably equal to that of an Asian with a 4.0? It puts much more value on your genetics than on your education, and since you have no control over your genetics but you can work hard in school, that's hardly fair. (It's also important to note that socioeconomic status has the largest correlation with education and intelligence, not race.) Now, the general argument for AA is that some places that stereotypically have minority families also have poorer schools, and thus can't compete at the level of white and Asian students because the money isn't there. Two big problems with that: 1. That's not true with every minority (or non-minority) kid. An Asian kid living in a poor area is doubly hurt (by AA and by lack of resources). A rich black or Hispanic kid is doubly helped by AA and extra resources. (Interestingly enough, white people don't get harmed by AA as much as Asians do, although they tend to live in nicer places than minorities.) 2. AA doesn't solve the problem of unequal education. It's a lazy man's solution to education. A proper solution would be to work on making sure that secondary (middle/ high) schools receive the proper funding and educational needs that they require, so that every school could compete at the same (top) level, so that it could be safely assumed that all student opportunities across the nation were the same (a hefty goal, but something to always move forwards to). That way, only results would matter on college applications. As someone with a master's degree in education and pursuing his doctorate in education, this is a topic I frequently discuss with my friends and professors. I don't know of any educators who really support AA. It's not about quantifying race or gender. It's allowing those races and cultures who have been in a position of disadvantage to improve upon their life, mostly due to the fact that they have been actively suppressed throughout US history. The fact that they are in this position to begin with is a result of discriminatory practices by the dominant, white society. You need to take into consideration that these inner city/majority ethnic schools also receive far less funding and support than other schools in the suburbs and other areas. So Asians, who have access to better education, will do better than say blacks living in inner Philadelphia who's dilapidated school probably has a drop out rate of a third and majority black. The other goal of AA is to ensure that the school's population is heterogeneous and a meltingpolt of cultures. Segregation in public schools is still a huge issue and is even worse in private institutions. While you may call it a lazy's man solution, your alternative is far cry from reality. While I agree it should happen (and needs to), it isn't a practical view considering the state of the economy and the education budget. As someone who is also getting his doctorate from a public university, I know there are many educators who support AA up here in the northeast. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States45678 Posts
On November 02 2012 20:54 Dknight wrote: It's not about quantifying race or gender. It's allowing those races and cultures who have been in a position of disadvantage to improve upon their life, mostly due to the fact that they have been actively suppressed throughout US history. The fact that they are in this position to begin with is a result of discriminatory practices by the dominant, white society. You need to take into consideration that these inner city/majority ethnic schools also receive far less funding and support than other schools in the suburbs and other areas. So Asians, who have access to better education, will do better than say blacks living in inner Philadelphia who's dilapidated school probably has a drop out rate of a third and majority black. The other goal of AA is to ensure that the school's population is heterogeneous and a meltingpolt of cultures. Segregation in public schools is still a huge issue and is even worse in private institutions. While you may call it a lazy's man solution, your alternative is far cry from reality. While I agree it should happen (and needs to), it isn't a practical view considering the state of the economy and the education budget. As someone who is also getting his doctorate from a public university, I know there are many educators who support AA up here in the northeast. I already explained how generalizing by races and minorities isn't useful all across the board, especially since being a minority doesn't mean you're poor, nor does being a non-minority mean you're necessarily from a high-income family. As far as being "actively suppressed throughout US history" is concerned, generations paying for that now because of things in the past like slavery and unequal treatment is absolutely absurd. You don't cause reverse racism now to "balance" the intense racism that existed years ago (although obviously prejudice still exists today too). Reverse racism is still racism. You're only piling on the hatred by telling whites and Asians that they should dislike their minority classmates because they can get away with fewer achievements and lower GPAs and still get into the same (or better) colleges. Or do you really think that every school is all-white or all-black? Furthermore, as I said before, the "dominant, white society" isn't even being hurt by AA as much as the Asian population is. Here's a link to plenty of sources showing how blacks and Hispanics get boosted 40-90% in Ivy Leagues alone, compared to the overall acceptance rate, whereas Asian acceptance goes down considerably and "Asian-Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores of 1550 to have the same chance of being accepted at a top private university as whites who scored 1410 and African-Americans who got 1100": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_United_States#Class_inequality . While my alternative is not something that can be done immediately, even you agree it is something that should be actively pursued, and invoking Affirmative Action allows the government to literally stop pursuing active changes in education and funding because they may feel that this racism helps balance out everything. Note- again- that just by giving less educated minorities a free college acceptance letter doesn't make them any smarter. As I said before, they're still more likely to drop out of college than those who were better prepared, so we still need to properly fund them and educate them before they hit college age. You can't just throw an acceptance letter at them and assume they'll make it on their own. They don't have the foundation. It's called Mismatching (a student to a college he can perform well in): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action#Mismatching . | ||
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Velocirapture
United States983 Posts
On November 02 2012 07:04 ZeaL. wrote: It boils down to the fact that you are treating groups differentially based on their skin color, i.e. you're force all asians to work harder to get in your school than white kids simply because they're asian and other asians do well. By simply being born into a certain race a criteria is placed on you where it isn't placed on others and that is wrong. Blacks/hispanics do suffer disproportionately from lower socioeconomic status and on average gain poorer quality education but I know plenty of Asians who are poor as fuck too. Should they have to settle for a lower quality school or no college than their black friends simply because of color? Edit: If the goal is to bring more opportunity to those races which are historically underperforming in school, treat the disease at the cause, not through awkward things like AA. AA is a compromise. The hugely disproportionate academic success between races is the statistical legacy of our historical brutality. All anecdotes aside, the game was rigged for a very long time and there is no better indicator of children's success than the success of their parents. It would simply take too much money and be too brutally unfair to the current generation to reset the game such that all races fall within a normal variance, so we put in place AA in the hopes that it would slowly shift the their numbers until they fairly represent the reality that whites, blacks, asians and all other minorities are equally capable of leading healthy and productive lives. In other words, this does fix the cause, just incrementally over many generations. I would also like to say that It strikes me as strange that people keeps saying "race shouldn't matter just take the most qualified". Race is a qualification. Certain fields such as psychology and sociology can't be properly learned without a diversity of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds in the class to challenge concepts as they are presented. You may disagree with this personally but it is a valid view. | ||
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NoobSkills
United States1603 Posts
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imallinson
United Kingdom3482 Posts
On November 02 2012 21:46 NoobSkills wrote: Affirmative action... A rule put in place, to afford minorities who were "held back" a chance to have equality to those white folks who abused them in the past. In strictly the black/white and slavery part of this. No black person was ever held back, even through racist times. No matter what the education was better here for than in Africa. I think the best person should always get accepted. Their color should never be a consideration. And if every college has every race in it except white people, so be it. I'd say that black people aren't being held back by any major organisation, like a university, now so affirmative action policies like this aren't as necessary as they were back when they were first introduced. Saying that black people have never been held back though is just wrong. Black people were given so few opportunities throughout most of the 20th century, which is why affirmative action policies were required in the first place. | ||
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NoobSkills
United States1603 Posts
On November 02 2012 22:10 imallinson wrote: I'd say that black people aren't being held back by any major organisation, like a university, now so affirmative action policies like this aren't as necessary as they were back when they were first introduced. Saying that black people have never been held back though is just wrong. Black people were given so few opportunities throughout most of the 20th century, which is why affirmative action policies were required in the first place. Again compare the lifestyle, medicare, education at any moment in time between US and Africa, and African Americans were never at a disadvantage when compared to native Africans. Even during slavery. Now, if we want to talk about current place are all people equal, then yes affirmative action was needed up until the early 90's. | ||
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meadbert
United States681 Posts
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imallinson
United Kingdom3482 Posts
On November 02 2012 22:23 NoobSkills wrote: Again compare the lifestyle, medicare, education at any moment in time between US and Africa, and African Americans were never at a disadvantage when compared to native Africans. Even during slavery. Now, if we want to talk about current place are all people equal, then yes affirmative action was needed up until the early 90's. Saying that they weren't disadvantaged compared people living in Africa doesn't mean they weren't disadvantaged as all. Also during slavery it would be hard to argue that they were in an advantageous position compared to people in Africa. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States45678 Posts
On November 02 2012 07:03 Caihead wrote: The principle of affirmative action is to overcome an existing discriminatory / unfair disadvantage based on irrelevant characteristics, often the only way to do that is to offer advantages to the least advantaged. The degree and implementation is up to debate but the principle isn't wrong at all, people only cry about it when they feel that they themselves are being inconvenienced. No body is up in arms about charities helping those in poverty by giving them money or housing for free. That's clearly not the same as Affirmative Action, because you don't have the same houses and money (much like college acceptance spots) being stolen from better applicants in favor for others' races (not even socioeconomic status, mind you, but race). It's more akin to saying, "Oh, Asian guy who has fantastic credit and is hardworking and has shown a high degree of motivation in the past with several previous general life achievements (like holding down a steady job and having a nice, stable family), I'm going to decide to ignore your request for this house that you can afford, and instead give it to this black guy whose resume is far worse than yours and has a decent probability of not being able to pay the mortgage, only because blacks are stereotypically poorer and so I think he might need a hand (even though I've never met him- I just know he's black) and so you don't deserve it as much as he does. Affirmative action tries to make up for previous prejudices with its own prejudice and assumed stereotypes. | ||
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NovaTheFeared
United States7232 Posts
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