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The dirty secret of affirmative action is that schools were not filling their ranks with inner city or low income African American students. They were heavily recruiting wealthy students from Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, the Caribbean, and the UK.
I didn’t go to a top school by any stretch of the imagination but every Black student I met was wealthy and international.
Same here. In our district they have every hbcu, but not even the state local engineering college on their wall of universities.
Something needs to be done but affirmative action isn’t it. It’s just a bad policy.
Unfortunately the other options are worse or impossible…
No affirmative action and we probably wouldn’t be stuck with Clarence Thomas. It’s not all bad.
Ouch, if that isnt the worst truth I’ve heard. I wonder what we can do to fix the massive mess our public institutions have become.
Magoos: SEE! They’re dumb, they were never qualified to begin with!!
They’ll be both racist, and refuse to acknowledge racism. :/
In their minds, it’s not racism. It’s either nature or culture.
No racist thinks their racist. They think they’re right.
I’ve heard people proubly exclaim that they are racist. They exist
“I’m just saying what everyone is thinking.”
No buddy, you’re not. You just lack the ability to imagine other people’s thoughts. (That’s me talking to racists, not you.)
What’s the average, or at least the past few years? How does this compare with other years percentage-wise - is overall enrollment up or down? Maybe it’s usually 20 every other year, maybe it’s usually 200 🤷♂️ mostly useless without context
EDIT: there’s a little more in the actual article, at least
Harvard Law enrolled 19 first-year Black students, or 3.4 percent of the class, the lowest number since the 1960s, according to the data from the American Bar Association. Last year, the law school’s first-year class had 43 Black students, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
“This is the lowest number of Black entering first-year students since 1965,” he added, pointing to numbers compiled by the Center on the Legal Profession at Harvard, where he also serves as faculty director. That year, there were 15 entering Black students. Since 1970, there have generally been 50 to 70 Black students in Harvard Law’s first-year class, he said.
So well under half is a big change.
Racism is working!
What’s to stop them from doing it anyway barring there being a racist on the admissions committee? Even then, a majority vote would rule right? Couldn’t the majority say, “We had exceptionally good black students applicants this year. This is an internal matter”?
Yeah, I feel that this proves 1 of 2 things: either that Harvard’s Admissions Board is in fact racist, or that affirmative action was actually causing an uneven playing field.
P.S. whether or not creating an uneven playing field is right or wrong is an entirely separate issue.
Creating a false dichotomy does nothing but eliminate nuance. The simple fact is that there are more students applying to Harvard than Harvard can let in. Because not this, it means Harvard gets to choose from people they think will benefit the University, an “even playing field” has nothing to do with it.
The university doesn’t benefit the most from getting the smartest or hardest working graduates, they benefit from students who will one day increase their endowment.
The idea of an even playing field is laughable, as we don’t have an equal path to higher education. Someone getting 4.0 from a private highschool who has access to private tutors, isn’t the same as someone getting a 4.0 from a public school and holding down a part time job.
So if the school doesn’t have to acknowledge this, what do you think is going to happen? If the idea of merit is only tracked by how well you can beef up your student portfolio…who do you think is going to win out, the family that spent tens of thousands on private education, or the family who is struggling to pay rent?
Of course affirmative action was causing an uneven playing field. That was the whole point. Our society has screwed over certain marginalized groups, so this is a way to help give them a leg up.
The Wikipedia page literally says affirmative action is sometimes known as “positive discrimination/action”
If there’s hidden segregation in education, as it was with Jews in USSR, then universities doing less of it will become better over time.
(I mean - this effect has sort of receded by now, but in today’s Russia all education kinda slowly rots. There are exceptions, which are mostly connected to specific passionate people.)
And affirmative action is hard to do right, and from what I’ve heard, it’s not done right in the USA.
The right way is similar to support groups and employment help groups.
Having a list of protected groups is wrong for two reasons - it doesn’t protect at all those who haven’t made it into that list, first, and making a group protected also cements its definition, makes an arbitrary border for it, second.
So - applying force, as in such laws, may feel intuitively more powerful, but it’s not.
Also laws meant to protect may actually in obscure ways cement a certain group’s disadvantaged position. The best policy is no special cases and minimization of blocking and gatekeeping, so that if for members of some group things don’t work somewhere, there’s enough alternatives so that they’d find a way. That is harder, but known to work. Unlike preferential treatment.
There is a comment with percentage of Asian students here too, where they are represented more than in population. Is there no racism against Asians? Is there any affirmative action in their favor?
Your theory is sound except for the glaring ommision of the existence of racism. That’s why “”“preferential”“” <–(needs more quotes) exists, because in America, systemic racism absolutely does
Yeah I agree with you.
When they said:
If there’s hidden segregation in education (…) then universities doing less of it will become better over time.
They are totally ignoring the fact that systemic racism is self reinforcing.
E.g. if one group of parents have enough cash on hand to enroll their children in tutoring when they need it, and impressive extra curricular activities when tutoring is unnecessary, then the children of those parents will have stronger university applications than the children that have to work part time jobs. This perpetuates racially inequality.
It’s not difficult to understand. It doesn’t even require racial prejudice.
That would be socioeconomic class more than race, and I completely agree. In fact, race doesn’t have anything to do with it, other than the historical facts of America meaning there’s a racial skew to poverty. Targeting poverty ("wealth privilege) would therefore disproportionately benefit African-Americans, without needlessly excluding the poor from other demographics and continuing to perpetuate the idea that skin colour is somehow the most important thing about people.
In a system where inherent racism didn’t exist that would work, are you assuming that the current system wouldn’t disproportionately skew the beneficiaries to the existing racial bias for some reason ?
That just gives you the same problem, a step down in the chain.
Systemic racism doesn’t start once you hit a threshold of income, targeting the poor will still skew towards whatever biases exist in the system.
disproportionately benefit African-Americans
Either you don’t understand why African-Americans would need additional help or you are framing it that way on purpose.
By what metric are you getting “disproportionate” ?
continuing to perpetuate the idea that skin colour is somehow the most important thing about people
It sounds like systemic racism is over so we can all just go back to seeing everyone as equals. /s
Again, either you have a fundamental misunderstanding or are purposely framing it that way.
To be clear, these measures aren’t “skin color is most important so let’s base policy on that aspect”
they are closer to
“The system is actively using skin colour and ethnicity to detrimentally target people who should really be equal in standing, let’s not pretend that that isn’t happening and try to address it”
To clarify, I don’t believe in the creation of any deliberately biased system, but I believe the main societal issue is overwhelmingly one of wealth disparity.
I’m not assigning a moral value when I use the phrase “disproportionate benefit”. I’m alluding to the disproportionate degree of poverty experienced by African-Americans. Poverty relief should therefore benefit them more. If there was no differential distribution of wealth with respect to race, the benefits of poverty relief would be neutral with respect to race.
Additionally, the person I responded to is very clearly describing a situation related to a student’s socioeconomic status. I absolutely believe some kind of “blind” application process is necessary to minimise the impact of a number of possible prejudices held by the admissions team.
To clarify, I don’t believe in the creation of any deliberately biased system.
As in you don’t believe it’s possible for a biased system to exist or you don’t think it’s possible to do it deliberately, something else ?
but I believe the main societal issue is overwhelmingly one of wealth disparity.
I agree, and the idea of providing a baseline humanitarian standard of living isn’t impossible it’s just very unlikely without some hefty and painful foundational changes to how societies are currently working.
I’m not assigning a moral value when I use the phrase “disproportionate benefit”. I’m alluding to the disproportionate degree of poverty experienced by African-Americans. Poverty relief should therefore benefit them more. If there was no differential distribution of wealth with respect to race, the benefits of poverty relief would be neutral with respect to race.
Additionally, the person I responded to is very clearly describing a situation related to a student’s socioeconomic status. I absolutely believe some kind of “blind” application process is necessary to minimise the impact of a number of possible prejudices held by the admissions team.
Fair enough, it seems i entirely misunderstood what you meant, my apologies.
No worries, thanks for replying. When I say I don’t believe in them, I mean I don’t believe we (i.e. society) should create those systems. Unfortunately I absolutely believe we do create them, both deliberately and inadvertently.
Yes what I described is class but as we agree there is a strong racial correlation of class in America. There is also racial prejudice which makes it more difficult for some racialized people to develop strong university applications, eg less encouragement to participate in certain extra curriculars. Racial prejudice that affected a parent’s career can affect multiple generations.
I’m not a racialized person. My parents are the same age as Ruby Bridges, but didn’t have to face racial discrimination in their careers. In 2018 My parents helped my wife and I buy a house (they gave us a loan against what they expect to leave us in their will, ie when they die we owe the estate $x0,000 dollars plus interest, but our inheritance is expected to exceed that amount). We still have a mortgage, but we were able to buy a house in the city in 2019. This is going to help my children get into university because they are going to be closer to extra curricular activities and summer jobs. This would not have been possible if my parents faced racial discrimination in their careers that suppressed their earnings.
I grew up in an affluent neighbourhood without really being exposed to racism or stereotypes. Also without really meeting people that had experienced racism. I would have agreed that we should focus on class because racism is only historical and will sort itself out when the old people die. I was wrong.
Race and racism divides the working class against itself, we can’t ignore it, but we can’t fixate on it either. We need to simultaneously advance working class interests, AND the interests of people disadvantaged by racism, because we need unity.
I entirely agree!
(Er whoops)
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It’s not difficult to understand, except it’s wrong in experience.
E.g. if one group of parents have enough cash on hand to enroll their children in tutoring when they need it, and impressive extra curricular activities when tutoring is unnecessary, then the children of those parents will have stronger university applications than the children that have to work part time jobs. This perpetuates racially inequality
(Repeated cuz it’s good, and i believe in helping people with special requirements)
Gosh, you’re pretty arrogant huh? Ignorant peeps usually are.
Is “systemic” racism, where the parents have less money because racism is systemic too high a bar for your iq to clear?
Sheesh.
Not every racialized person reports experiencing racism. That can be for various reasons, one of the potential reasons is that they haven’t experienced racism. Although I guess in that case they wouldn’t be a racialized person… just a person of colour.
My comment literally starts with comparison to Jews in USSR. If that’s glaring omission, I think some systemic education issues have already got you.
No, no, don’t give up on me just yet! I need to know how you started off acknowledging racism and then forgetting it by the end of your comment! Please advise my clearly ignorant take
