Race in the US tends to be a proxy for class. Instead of using race as a factor, they can just use family income as a factor.
Is "race" (and its manifestations) is a protected class? I'm not sure what the law says. If so technically you're not supposed to use it, because the 14th amendment (which is what AA is based on) mandates "equal protection." Reverse discrimination isn't equal protection.
That said, racial politics in the US are all weird. First there was no such thing as race, then suddenly everyone was using race for everything, and now only white people can't use racial terms. WTF?
As a POC, I'm always amazed at how well advocates manipulate everyone to get what they want. Liberal white people are ridiculously easy to guilt trip, and they keep falling for the same old shit time after time. It's pathetic.
Targeting poverty/income as oppose to race seems like such a no brainer to me. It still solves the same problem, except that it wouldn’t ever discriminate and if there was equal equity in poverty you’d expect equal equity in targeting it.
“Liberal white people are ridiculously easy to guilt trip”
It’s more that they are terrified to talk about it because they risk being fired from their job and losing everything for talking about it. And they’re also not allowed to talk about how they are not allowed to talk about it. So this is the way it comes out.
> First there was no such thing as race, then suddenly everyone was using race for everything, and now only white people can't use racial terms. WTF?
I don’t follow your first assertion. Pretty sure that an “Act concerning Servants and Slaves” aka the original Virginia slave codes first introduced “race” by way of limiting length and terms of indentured servitude for “white Christian” indentured servants. Under these terms, the acts then categorized “servants important and brought… who were not Christians in their native land” as slaves unless they converted to Christianity.
If that’s not explicit enough, the acts pretty distinctly name conditions for “negroes”, “Jews”, “Moors”, “mulattoes”, “Mahometans” and “Christian whites”.
Technically you are right that there was no such thing as race in American politics. But it was literally created by elites to divide working class former indentured servants, natives and Black freedman, ostensibly in response to Bacon’s rebellion where these groups found their common enemy in elites. So really it’s not that weird that things are as they are today in our political system.
I think the problem is that advocates do not believe that race is a just proxy for socioeconomic status. There also seems to be a common belief now that justice for past wrongs means equity of outcome, not only equality of opportunity.
I'm not going to try to defend or argue against these beliefs, but I think a big difficulty in these discussions is that people aren't even understanding each other's arguments and worldviews. Of course, looking at and staying focused on actual data and research would be nice, but frankly that's not easy because social science data tends to be messy and social science research is extremely difficult to do correctly. You also have to be able to at least define and agree on operational goals/outcomes, which might be a challenge in and of itself.
>Liberal white people are ridiculously easy to guilt trip, and they keep falling for the same old shit time after time. It's pathetic.
More than anything, I wish people could speak/write about social/political issues without the spittle directed at whatever the highest level group is that their "enemy" group is a subset of (liberal, conservative, black, white, men, women, etc).
My understanding is that income based affirmative action would actually have little effect on racial demographics. Hence why this isn't really discussed by these top colleges.
In other words, top colleges would just be full of poor whites and asians (instead of middle-to-upper class whites and asians, without affirmative action).
Is "race" (and its manifestations) is a protected class? I'm not sure what the law says. If so technically you're not supposed to use it, because the 14th amendment (which is what AA is based on) mandates "equal protection."
This is somewhat confused. The equal protection clause limits what state governments can do. There’s a doctrine interpreting it called suspect classifications, and race is the most important of these. (Gender is quasi-suspect.)
There’s also a series of federal and state civil rights laws that regulate the private sector. These laws create protected classes, of which race is one.
There is some confusion about the definition of "affirmative action". The original definition from Kennedy's Executive Order 10925 requires that government contractors "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin".
What the supreme court is poised to do would in a sense reaffirm the original principle of affirmative action.
> Is "race" (and its manifestations) is a protected class? I'm not sure what the law says.
It's listed explicitly in the Civil Rights act of 1964, except I don't think it mentions something that applies to this situation - the phrase "affirmative action" was created just to get around it. I guess this will be about whether it applies/should apply here in addition to the rest.
> As a POC, I'm always amazed at how well advocates manipulate everyone to get what they want. Liberal white people are ridiculously easy to guilt trip, and they keep falling for the same old shit time after time.
I don’t think you’re giving liberal white people enough credit. They’re playing a smart game. If it wasn’t for conservative and moderate POC going along with them, white liberals would be a political minority: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/02/27/5-facts-abo...
They turn up the dial on racial conflict to keep that coalition together. Who put Joy Reid on MSNBC to call half the country racists every day?
White liberals use POC the same way they used “blue wall” Midwestern voters. They don’t care what any of those groups thinks—which becomes apparent whenever the dominant view within one of those groups contradicts white liberals, whether on social issues or even on affirmative action. They’re objects of white liberal benevolence.
> First there was no such thing as race, then suddenly everyone was using race for everything, and now only white people can't use racial terms. WTF?
Not only that, but the way that "Whiteness" is obsessively referenced in so-called "liberal" discourse as some kind of master oppressor status is outright disgusting and can only be fairly compared to the very worst kinds of Nazi propaganda. There are significant amounts of white people in the U.S. today whose ancestors were serfs kept in bondage, and this state of things persisted even longer historically than the enslavement of people of African descent in the U.S. and Caribbean.
Admissions everywhere should be blind to color and privileged influence. There's no way to apply affirmative action without racial discriminating. Scholarships though should be weighted towards those who actually need it.
My expectation is 5-4 with kavanaugh dissenting to majority to keep affirmative action in place. Kavanaugh explicitly has only female clerks in order to help resolve the systemic inequality, so ideologically I would expect him to go for it.
Most courts try to limit the scope of their rulings as much as possible though. If the case before them only concerned the question of race/ethnicity, and the issue of gender or sex never came up, then Kavanaugh could probably find enough wiggle room to justify joining the other conservative judges and striking it down.
Note that Title VII, banning discrimination in employment, doesn’t apply to judiciary employees, which law clerks are. Since the Harvard case involves Title VI (a parallel provision relating to discrimination in education) that’s a significant distinction.
Interestingly, he only brings on pretty girls, to the point where people advise interviewees to sex themselves up a bit for interviews with him. Thank God he's fighting systemic oppression.
Worth noting by the way that legacy admissions are themselves racist in favor of the types of people who were allowed into those schools several generations ago… i.e. white people.
Legacy admissions are a major benefit of getting into those colleges in the first place. They aren’t just educational institutions but rather signifiers in the American class system, which is partly hereditary.
It makes sense to start with overt discrimination, that's a lot more clear cut
I'd actually go further and say that banning nebulous forms of bias really just makes work for consultants and other rent seeking that tries to craft arguments that some statistical result is or isn't biased. If an organization wants to do that, fine, but government and law should not go down the road of making general rulings on handwavy stuff. In a specific case, the courts are always an option.
Unfortunately science and politics are not actually separable things. People, including the courts and politicians, use biological arguments to justify their policies and opinions. Scientists have to be aware of the political ramifications of their work, and how their work is being used and mis-used.
Honest question: why don’t universities use socioeconomic status (SES) alone for admissions? Don’t they get IRS docs for financial aid? And given that disparities tied to SES affect child development and opportunities.
Wow this is the worst comments section I have seen in the history of HN.
How about people take a minute to look at what the actual effects of affirmative action at universities had been instead of just trotting out tedious talking points?
All the comments about "I thought Nature was a science journal" are so silly. Sociology is a science.
Since people keep getting the implementation of affirmative action wrong, it should be scrapped and replaced with something else. Most people's experience and opinions of affirmative action are based on bad implementations.
You aren't supposed to hire candidates based on any form of quota or race or protected class. This is what keeps happening and has sowed disdain across all society. The guidance is lacking and the people with power to change it are all afraid of talking about it.
There is going to be a certain percentage of the voting population who is going to be very upset in a few years after they found out just how much AA has been helping their admission numbers [1].
The nature article, moreso political opinion, fails to point out: The supreme court isn't even ruling on this opinion take.
The supreme court has already ruled its illegal if an unqualified person receives benefits over a qualified person. Which is an important point the article completely fails to address.
The current case is in such situations where that law was violated. Which is common knowledge now. Affirmative action placing unqualified people into schools they should not be in, leads to them racking up debt and flunking out of the school. This has been detrimental to the minorities they propose to be helping.
The large problem of racism is when you ban the racist, they imagine a new legal way to harm minorities. These racists need to be stopped and banning affirmative action is how you do it.
It’s going to be really cringy watching liberals call out Thomas for having “internalized white supremacy” for agreeing with the majority of Black people that race should “not be a factor” in college admissions: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/25/most-americ...
[+] [-] manv1|3 years ago|reply
Is "race" (and its manifestations) is a protected class? I'm not sure what the law says. If so technically you're not supposed to use it, because the 14th amendment (which is what AA is based on) mandates "equal protection." Reverse discrimination isn't equal protection.
That said, racial politics in the US are all weird. First there was no such thing as race, then suddenly everyone was using race for everything, and now only white people can't use racial terms. WTF?
As a POC, I'm always amazed at how well advocates manipulate everyone to get what they want. Liberal white people are ridiculously easy to guilt trip, and they keep falling for the same old shit time after time. It's pathetic.
[+] [-] s1k3|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] renonn|3 years ago|reply
It’s more that they are terrified to talk about it because they risk being fired from their job and losing everything for talking about it. And they’re also not allowed to talk about how they are not allowed to talk about it. So this is the way it comes out.
[+] [-] thelock85|3 years ago|reply
I don’t follow your first assertion. Pretty sure that an “Act concerning Servants and Slaves” aka the original Virginia slave codes first introduced “race” by way of limiting length and terms of indentured servitude for “white Christian” indentured servants. Under these terms, the acts then categorized “servants important and brought… who were not Christians in their native land” as slaves unless they converted to Christianity.
If that’s not explicit enough, the acts pretty distinctly name conditions for “negroes”, “Jews”, “Moors”, “mulattoes”, “Mahometans” and “Christian whites”.
Technically you are right that there was no such thing as race in American politics. But it was literally created by elites to divide working class former indentured servants, natives and Black freedman, ostensibly in response to Bacon’s rebellion where these groups found their common enemy in elites. So really it’s not that weird that things are as they are today in our political system.
[+] [-] nerdponx|3 years ago|reply
I'm not going to try to defend or argue against these beliefs, but I think a big difficulty in these discussions is that people aren't even understanding each other's arguments and worldviews. Of course, looking at and staying focused on actual data and research would be nice, but frankly that's not easy because social science data tends to be messy and social science research is extremely difficult to do correctly. You also have to be able to at least define and agree on operational goals/outcomes, which might be a challenge in and of itself.
[+] [-] mensetmanusman|3 years ago|reply
This doesn’t seem to be a case in the top universities, which usually fulfill their diversity requirements by pulling from the elite class.
There is very little class diversity in our institutions and that is ripping the country apart.
[+] [-] happytoexplain|3 years ago|reply
>Liberal white people are ridiculously easy to guilt trip, and they keep falling for the same old shit time after time. It's pathetic.
More than anything, I wish people could speak/write about social/political issues without the spittle directed at whatever the highest level group is that their "enemy" group is a subset of (liberal, conservative, black, white, men, women, etc).
[+] [-] argonaut|3 years ago|reply
In other words, top colleges would just be full of poor whites and asians (instead of middle-to-upper class whites and asians, without affirmative action).
[+] [-] bradleyjg|3 years ago|reply
This is somewhat confused. The equal protection clause limits what state governments can do. There’s a doctrine interpreting it called suspect classifications, and race is the most important of these. (Gender is quasi-suspect.)
There’s also a series of federal and state civil rights laws that regulate the private sector. These laws create protected classes, of which race is one.
[+] [-] jwarden|3 years ago|reply
What the supreme court is poised to do would in a sense reaffirm the original principle of affirmative action.
[+] [-] Izkata|3 years ago|reply
It's listed explicitly in the Civil Rights act of 1964, except I don't think it mentions something that applies to this situation - the phrase "affirmative action" was created just to get around it. I guess this will be about whether it applies/should apply here in addition to the rest.
[+] [-] rayiner|3 years ago|reply
I don’t think you’re giving liberal white people enough credit. They’re playing a smart game. If it wasn’t for conservative and moderate POC going along with them, white liberals would be a political minority: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/02/27/5-facts-abo...
They turn up the dial on racial conflict to keep that coalition together. Who put Joy Reid on MSNBC to call half the country racists every day?
White liberals use POC the same way they used “blue wall” Midwestern voters. They don’t care what any of those groups thinks—which becomes apparent whenever the dominant view within one of those groups contradicts white liberals, whether on social issues or even on affirmative action. They’re objects of white liberal benevolence.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] zozbot234|3 years ago|reply
Not only that, but the way that "Whiteness" is obsessively referenced in so-called "liberal" discourse as some kind of master oppressor status is outright disgusting and can only be fairly compared to the very worst kinds of Nazi propaganda. There are significant amounts of white people in the U.S. today whose ancestors were serfs kept in bondage, and this state of things persisted even longer historically than the enslavement of people of African descent in the U.S. and Caribbean.
[+] [-] UberFly|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endisneigh|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwthere|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CamperBob2|3 years ago|reply
Well, that could certainly be one reason.
[+] [-] yieldcrv|3 years ago|reply
It doesn't mean
a) that he agrees with the system
b) that he can't find another way to reach the same result in a new system
[+] [-] miffy900|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scarmig|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tylermenezes|3 years ago|reply
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/20/brett-kavana...
[+] [-] pjc50|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yanderekko|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nverno|3 years ago|reply
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2022/10/30/lega...
[+] [-] kevinventullo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philwelch|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stale2002|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] version_five|3 years ago|reply
I'd actually go further and say that banning nebulous forms of bias really just makes work for consultants and other rent seeking that tries to craft arguments that some statistical result is or isn't biased. If an organization wants to do that, fine, but government and law should not go down the road of making general rulings on handwavy stuff. In a specific case, the courts are always an option.
[+] [-] rdtwo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kennywinker|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nerdponx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vkou|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goodrubyist|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hikikomori|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leoh|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dig1t|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] greenthrow|3 years ago|reply
How about people take a minute to look at what the actual effects of affirmative action at universities had been instead of just trotting out tedious talking points?
All the comments about "I thought Nature was a science journal" are so silly. Sociology is a science.
[+] [-] yieldcrv|3 years ago|reply
You aren't supposed to hire candidates based on any form of quota or race or protected class. This is what keeps happening and has sowed disdain across all society. The guidance is lacking and the people with power to change it are all afraid of talking about it.
[+] [-] wnevets|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-uncomfortable-t...
[+] [-] incomingpain|3 years ago|reply
The supreme court has already ruled its illegal if an unqualified person receives benefits over a qualified person. Which is an important point the article completely fails to address.
The current case is in such situations where that law was violated. Which is common knowledge now. Affirmative action placing unqualified people into schools they should not be in, leads to them racking up debt and flunking out of the school. This has been detrimental to the minorities they propose to be helping.
The large problem of racism is when you ban the racist, they imagine a new legal way to harm minorities. These racists need to be stopped and banning affirmative action is how you do it.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rayiner|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LatteLazy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 015UUZn8aEvW|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway29439|3 years ago|reply
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