EPTThis kind of "fighting" racism or inequality in general by instituting quotas or selection bias is a special annoyance to me since I saw it day in day out in german academia with respect to the favored choice of women for basically anthing (going so far as the level of this being the deciding factor if some university/institute gets funding or not). It leads to the majority of them who are actually a good appointment being questioned by their peers and themselves not being sure if they actually deserve their position and also to a few that are really "diversity hires" and completely unsuitable. All in a field where the gender ratio is already more or less 50:50. There are also already more female than male professors at my former institute.
US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3467
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justanothertownie
16318 Posts
This kind of "fighting" racism or inequality in general by instituting quotas or selection bias is a special annoyance to me since I saw it day in day out in german academia with respect to the favored choice of women for basically anthing (going so far as the level of this being the deciding factor if some university/institute gets funding or not). It leads to the majority of them who are actually a good appointment being questioned by their peers and themselves not being sure if they actually deserve their position and also to a few that are really "diversity hires" and completely unsuitable. All in a field where the gender ratio is already more or less 50:50. There are also already more female than male professors at my former institute. | ||
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justanothertownie
16318 Posts
On January 31 2022 00:11 micronesia wrote: I don't think a SCOTUS appointment has ever occurred along these lines you are proposing. It's usually, start with a pool of highly capable candidates, then pick one for other reasons, some political, some otherwise. It's occasionally, pick the person who will vote for me so I don't get removed from office, but that's not really the bar Biden should go by, of course. Biden should not have committed early to a black female SCOTUS appointment if there was a chance that there would be zero fully qualified black female candidates available, because then he would be limiting himself to less than fully qualified candidates. He clearly did not think that was a threat, and he's probably right about that. The principles of hiring you are discussing would make sense for hiring into other jobs. This discussion seems to be about choosing the next SCOTUS justice, though. As I said, I never claimed prior appointments were any better. But hey, if it is not possible to have a proper vetting process for one of the most important positions in your country then the US are even more screwed than I anticipated... | ||
micronesia
United States24690 Posts
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justanothertownie
16318 Posts
On January 31 2022 01:00 micronesia wrote: Okay, as long as your point is not "man wtf is Biden doing" but rather "man, all SCOTUS appointments are done incorrectly" then okay. A lot of the discussion here over the past few days was about Biden's actions/words though, not the SCOTUS process in general. Ok, my tldr: The SCOTUS appointing is generally done incorrectly. ALSO Bidens words/actions are at best unhelpful to the general cause they are supposed to serve and at worst racist themselves depending on how exactly he came to his decision. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18005 Posts
On January 30 2022 06:37 Dan HH wrote: Surely you see why you would have to replace "not from NY" to "from [insert a specific state that isn't NY]" for this to be analogous. Although in that case people would assume it's a hint for a particular person rather than a commitment to that particular state. Okay, fine. Lets assume that there had never been an SC justice from Texas, and Biden had committed to picking his nominee from the great state of Texas! Would that really feel like he was "not picking based on merit"? Or would we accept that somewhere in the Texas legal system there were still plenty of people with the right qualifications to be a SC justice, and it was indeed a bit weird that until now they had been skipped over.. and it was about time somebody rectified that? And yes, the population of Texas is roughly similar to the number of Black Women in the US. If you object to Texas which has a slightly higher population, we can stick with Florida, which has a slightly lower population. This whole shitshow over choosing a population of roughly 25m people to pick a judge from is... weird. If there was some reason to suspect he was narrowing his choice to a pool of people among which there was no meritorious individual (e.g. black women from Vermont), you'd have cause for concern, but there's plenty of nations with fewer than 25million people, and we can safely assume they don't have potatoes in their highest courts. I have a lot more sympathy with GH's argument that it's dishonest virtue signalling. Just because a person is black and a woman doesn't mean they have any interest in protecting black people's rights, women's rights or the intersection thereof. You could no doubt find a black woman with the right qualifications who would vote along with the old white men with verve and gusto if you really wanted to. Similarly advocating for black women's rights may be done just as well, perhaps even better, by an old white man who, for some reason or another, has adopted their cause. Nevertheless, I think it's way more likely to find an advocate for black women's rights among black women, than among the population at large. Most old white men won't know what the problems are, why these problems are problems, and what type of solution might work, whereas most (not all) black women will have grown up in society facing these issues. It's no guarantee they care about these issues, but the chance is definitely higher... and even if they don't care, they probably at least understand the issue, which is often the first barrier! | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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justanothertownie
16318 Posts
On January 31 2022 01:50 Acrofales wrote: Okay, fine. Lets assume that there had never been an SC justice from Texas, and Biden had committed to picking his nominee from the great state of Texas! Would that really feel like he was "not picking based on merit"? Or would we accept that somewhere in the Texas legal system there were still plenty of people with the right qualifications to be a SC justice, and it was indeed a bit weird that until now they had been skipped over.. and it was about time somebody rectified that? Yes?! Of course. On January 31 2022 01:50 Acrofales wrote: I have a lot more sympathy with GH's argument that it's dishonest virtue signalling. Just because a person is black and a woman doesn't mean they have any interest in protecting black people's rights, women's rights or the intersection thereof. You could no doubt find a black woman with the right qualifications who would vote along with the old white men with verve and gusto if you really wanted to. Similarly advocating for black women's rights may be done just as well, perhaps even better, by an old white man who, for some reason or another, has adopted their cause. It obviously is virtue signaling (even in the most charitable interpretation, if it is dishonest or not I cannot judge). Otherwise he wouldn't have made a point out of her race and gender in the way he did. | ||
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Dan HH
Romania9122 Posts
On January 31 2022 01:50 Acrofales wrote: Okay, fine. Lets assume that there had never been an SC justice from Texas, and Biden had committed to picking his nominee from the great state of Texas! Would that really feel like he was "not picking based on merit"? Or would we accept that somewhere in the Texas legal system there were still plenty of people with the right qualifications to be a SC justice, and it was indeed a bit weird that until now they had been skipped over.. and it was about time somebody rectified that? And yes, the population of Texas is roughly similar to the number of Black Women in the US. If you object to Texas which has a slightly higher population, we can stick with Florida, which has a slightly lower population. This whole shitshow over choosing a population of roughly 25m people to pick a judge from is... weird. If there was some reason to suspect he was narrowing his choice to a pool of people among which there was no meritorious individual (e.g. black women from Vermont), you'd have cause for concern, but there's plenty of nations with fewer than 25million people, and we can safely assume they don't have potatoes in their highest courts. I have a lot more sympathy with GH's argument that it's dishonest virtue signalling. Just because a person is black and a woman doesn't mean they have any interest in protecting black people's rights, women's rights or the intersection thereof. You could no doubt find a black woman with the right qualifications who would vote along with the old white men with verve and gusto if you really wanted to. Similarly advocating for black women's rights may be done just as well, perhaps even better, by an old white man who, for some reason or another, has adopted their cause. Nevertheless, I think it's way more likely to find an advocate for black women's rights among black women, than among the population at large. Most old white men won't know what the problems are, why these problems are problems, and what type of solution might work, whereas most (not all) black women will have grown up in society facing these issues. It's no guarantee they care about these issues, but the chance is definitely higher... and even if they don't care, they probably at least understand the issue, which is often the first barrier! You're basically asking me to repurpose every single argument to a scenario that doesn't add anything and only subtracts. Yes Biden making a shortlist only from Texas, a conservative state, with the implication of "there you go, now you're represented!" is silly. | ||
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farvacola
United States18828 Posts
I have issues with some of the shortlist names for other reasons, but this fixation on the tortured implications of a few of Biden’s statements with respect to the race of the eventual nominee seems like one big non-sequitur. One should never be surprised that folks near the center will argue endlessly about race though, that’s a big part of what is fueling extremism. | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 31 2022 01:00 micronesia wrote: A lot of the discussion here over the past few days was about Biden's actions/words though, not the SCOTUS process in general. As noted here, part of that is because it's an easier target when the person making the decisions has the questionable judgment to admit to discrimination on record. 90%+ of discrimination will happen either verbally with no record, or behind closed doors with no reason given; you generally have to actually be foolish enough to say it outright on record for such a thing to be provable. If Biden were presented with a broad range of SCJ options, and it just so happened that every single one of the ones on that list that weren't black women were immediately written off from consideration on the reason of "they're not a good fit" - would that be the same thing? Probably, but there would be no way to prove that. When he says it outright, we remove the ambiguity from the equation and can just talk about the discrimination event itself. | ||
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EnDeR_
Spain2696 Posts
On January 31 2022 00:19 justanothertownie wrote: Look, if Biden had the actual person in mind as his best choice (and had to confirm that somehow) all this time then it is of course a slightly different story. But he still handled it extremely poorly in that case because that is not what the general public will understand from this. Just nominate her and say she is the most qualified full stop. This kind of "fighting" racism or inequality in general by instituting quotas or selection bias is a special annoyance to me since I saw it day in day out in german academia with respect to the favored choice of women for basically anthing (going so far as the level of this being the deciding factor if some university/institute gets funding or not). It leads to the majority of them who are actually a good appointment being questioned by their peers and themselves not being sure if they actually deserve their position and also to a few that are really "diversity hires" and completely unsuitable. All in a field where the gender ratio is already more or less 50:50. There are also already more female than male professors at my former institute. Wait: "I saw it day in day out in german academia with respect to the favored choice of women for basically anthing (going so far as the level of this being the deciding factor if some university/institute gets funding or not)" Really? So when a woman gets a job, she got it because she's a woman? You might want to have a think about that one. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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NewSunshine
United States5938 Posts
However, before we know any of that, here we are, losing our shit over the mere announcement that Biden is going to follow through and nominate a black woman to SCOTUS. There's 2 things that are pretty telling for me: 1) For all the fuss we're making here, none of that type of fuss was made when women were previously announced as nominees to the supreme court, or when yet another white man was elected to the post. The one thing that's different here is the race. 2) That said fuss amounts to choosing race over merit, and completely ignores that those two things are not exclusive in any way. Why are we this mad about the "Merit" of the candidate, who we don't even know yet, when we had to struggle tooth and nail to convince people that maybe Brett "I Love Beer" Kavanaugh and Amy "Totally Won't Overturn Roe" Coney Barrett were bad nominees? I know some folks here are mad about both, but methinks some of us are protesting too much about one of them, for reasons that are, forgive me, pretty black and white. The idea that announcing the choice of a black woman necessarily precludes a merit-based choice is pretty fucked up, from where I'm sitting. Black women were essentially the tipping point that gave the election to Biden. He campaigned for them, and he's going to give them representation on the Supreme Court. That's the end of it, as far as I'm concerned. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18005 Posts
On January 31 2022 02:14 justanothertownie wrote: Yes?! Of course. It obviously is virtue signaling (even in the most charitable interpretation, if it is dishonest or not I cannot judge). Otherwise he wouldn't have made a point out of her race and gender in the way he did. You do realise that any measure of "the best" for a Supreme Court Justice is going to be extremely subjective regardless, right? So even if Biden managed to rank every potential candidate nationally, he probably could have heated debates with his wife about why Innovation is the GOAT. Oh, I mean... SCJ. Let alone getting some kind of consensus in the nation. The consensus "best qualified" people are going to be a very big pool of people, such as Maru, MVP, Serral, Rogue, Zest, ... and you could make a decent argument for any of them being the GOAT instead of Innovation. And it really doesn't matter that much if Biden picks the person who in his heart of hearts is the GOAT, or that he picks Zest, because Protoss is historically and currently underrepresented in the GOAT tribunal. Especially as it is essential to actually have diversity and balance in the group. So Protoss are sorely needed! Do you think a balance team would look out for Protoss if it was made up purely of Terran players? E: I may have taken the metaphor a bit far and got it all mixed, but I had fun and think it gets the point across  | ||
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oBlade
United States5609 Posts
On January 30 2022 23:50 Sermokala wrote: People again are greatly missing the framing of this entire thing. Biden ran on a promise that the next court pick SHOULD be a black woman because he was campaigning and made that desire a part of his campaign. Now that he's been elected it has become the mandate for his administration to follow through on that implied desire from the electorate. This is how republics work in a representative democracy. Biden, like any candidate, ran on 100 things, and has contradicted himself at times - winning an election, insofar as it engenders the power to realize that platform, isn't carte blanche to for example do things that are illegal, immoral, or outside of one's power, nor does it imply the people who voted for him have heard or agree with each pledge, nor does it suggest the office holder and citizenry no longer has to think critically about what they're doing, nor does it indeed suggest that the entire structure and process of government is overridden by the campaign whims of the victor. On January 30 2022 23:50 Sermokala wrote: Trying to fight racism isn't racism. I don't know how people can get it in their heads that the only way to fight racism is to just keep selecting based on racist systems that exist today instead of trying to change those systems by taking into the inherent existing racism into account. You seem to have taken for granted that the skin color of SCOTUS justices is an appropriate battleground in the fight against racism, this is a group of 9 people out of 330 million that serve for decades each to uphold and interpret the law and constitution, not be activists for each of the social constructs they were born as. An elementary knowledge of statistics can explain why you should have no expectations of population representation in a sample so small. Any basic scrutiny otherwise would ask how the system can be so healed now by nominating a first black woman (how about someone with mixed heritage like the vice president? Wouldn't two birds with one stone be better?) yet was so broken just 10-30 years ago over two other Democratic administrations and two other minority appointments. You may recall, back when as mentioned Biden was sitting in the Senate doing his duty by voting against Clarence Thomas's appointment. "First" black woman is itself tiring. If she's Christian, will we have to wait to achieve the full diversity of appointing a first black atheist woman to the Court later? How many demographic dimensions can you combine until the fake trailblazing becomes transparent? The simple and obvious explanation is for when Mitch McConnell tries to stonewall, just as he would for any appointment, there can be more beautiful smokescreens of shit flinging about racism and sexism instead of an actual public understanding of the fact that Congress is dysfunctional for reasons that have nothing to do with those distractions. At a time when the people have rock bottom faith in their institutions, if we're to accept previous justices have been selected and confirmed for less than meritorious reasons, wouldn't it be the most important time to restore faith through competence? What if not everything is about racism all the time, and choosing SCOTUS justices is supposed to be about making sure SCOTUS does its job to the best of its ability? Not just "Look racists, OUR team's incompetent political hack is a black woman." Or if one were to suggest black women were more competent, would that not be blatantly racist itself. Isn't this supposed to be the "adults are back" administration... And how did our esteemed president go through the racial calculus to arrive at a black woman? US pop. is 14% black, 18% Hispanic. The court has Thomas and Sotomayor, shouldn't a Hispanic justice get priority? Or an Indian, Asian, Native American, Arab, etc., of which there are none? The court is 9, wouldn't it be most fair to have 4 men, 4 women, and one hermaphrodite? With one of them black, one of them 3/11ths black, one hispanic, one 7/11ths hispanic... The truth is the president's thinking is itself racist and cynical, just like it was in the 70s, and frankly un-American. Short-term cynical things like this are his only hopes at fleeting nods of approval from people who believe in this misguided way of thinking or assume by a cursory judge of the optics that he's doing good. Moreover, how does the thesis, that a system that would allow the confirmation of a black woman is racist, hold water to begin with? It is more damning of Biden himself to admit he wouldn't nominate a minority unless he forced himself publicly. Anyone who isn't racist and took any look at SCOTUS while considering the notion of "diversity" would probably first ask how about someone outside of the circles of Harvard and Yale. On January 31 2022 04:37 NewSunshine wrote: Just throwing this out there, if any part of an argument against Biden consists of "You have Clarence Thomas, what more do you want?", maybe you want to slow down, especially if another part of your argument is that skin color is not a 100% indicator of performance on the racial justice front. Please do this thread the respect of reading thoroughly, and then in that framework explain to me why the Asian or Hispanic communities don't deserve a priority appointment. | ||
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NewSunshine
United States5938 Posts
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Jockmcplop
United Kingdom9657 Posts
Biden says he wants a black woman on the SC, the right gets furious about the idea. Its so predictable. Frankly, for supporters of the party that put Trump in power, talking about merit for important positions is laughable. | ||
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ZerOCoolSC2
8986 Posts
On January 31 2022 04:39 Jockmcplop wrote: You guys realize what the outrage over this looks like from a distance, right? Biden says he wants a black woman on the SC, the right gets furious about the idea. Its so predictable. Frankly, for supporters of the party that put Trump in power, talking about merit for important positions is laughable. Pretty much. It's...pathetic, really. | ||
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Jockmcplop
United Kingdom9657 Posts
I don't really get it. Its not like Republican SC candidates are chosen purely on merit, instead of what is politically expedient for the Republican party at the time. They are often chosen based on their opinions of key issues like abortion. What on Earth does that have to do with merit? I don't see this as Biden fighting racism per se. Black women in grassroots politics organized people and worked their asses off to get him elected. He has seen how valuable that demographic is. Its politically expedient. | ||
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Dan HH
Romania9122 Posts
On January 31 2022 04:13 JimmiC wrote: Do you think it is silly for Black women to want to be represented in the Supreme court for the first time ever? Do you think they think they have been excluded unfairly in every appointment so far and in points that never allowed them to be considered? Do you think they would be wrong? Everyone, myself included, acknowledge from the start that underrepresented minorities exist and this should hold at least some weight. That by itself answers all those questions. You have been this discussion's most active participant and yet you keep making me have to explain its premise after 10 pages. | ||
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