Affirmative action shouldn't ever have been a contest with prizes for the most unfortunate. It was sold as a way to fix the wrongs of slavery. Having been enslaved legally in the US is not a race, it's an atrocity.
The reason we should be paying for foster kids' college is because the state is their parent, so it's our responsibility. In a country that wasn't shit, regular people would be jealous of how kids who were wards of the state lived, and how well-raised they were. There's no clearer illustration of our values than the fact that children who, through no fault of their own, have become the responsibility of the state are treated like unwanted trash. The idea that a society like that could figure out how to ethically treat prisoners or immigrants is laughable.
I agree completely. Something so striking about the situation as well is that on balance, we have a staggering amount of wealth to share with the less fortunate.
Yet these are children, specifically, who deserve every opportunity we can afford them by default. Not “hopeless addicts” or some other group deemed not worth saving by so many of us, but people quite literally the epitome of worth saving. These people need every ounce of reassurance that we care and that they can integrate and function in society. That they deserve opportunity as anyone else does.
If we had to be self serving we could look at it like “each one of these people is statistically far more likely to be a burden on my own children in the future, so a small investment now could save a lot later”, but we seem to fail even in being selfish about it. I find this topic heart breaking.
Do reparations for slavery even make logical sense? Please cut me some slack here, by the nature of the world we live in, I have not uttered these thoughts to another human being, and they might have obvious flaws. It's tough when you can't talk about ideas out of fear of the consequences.
I think nobody argues that it's a vile, morally repugnant thing to enslave another human being. But that was a long time ago, and all those slaves and the people who enslaved them are all dead.
The descendants of those slaves are now much wealthier and better off by pretty much any metric than their relatives who were not enslaved. How do you make an argument that those descendants are victims in need of reparations? No crime was committed against them directly, and they seem to have benefited from the crimes committed against their ancestors.
I must stress that this is not in any way excusing or justifying the wrongs that occurred. But how would you make an argument for reparations, given how things turned out?
One of the basic principles in Western law, stretching back 700 years or so, is that prosecuting people not involved in a crime is unacceptable. The slaves and the enslaved are long dead. No one has legally owned slaves for 150+ years.
How do you apportion the taxes? Do new immigrants owe the same as people here generations? Do the descendants of Irish immigrants owe the same as descendants of slave owners? What about the black descendants of black slave owners, of whom there were over a thousand?
And how far does this go back? The Comanches were extremely brutal. They killed and enslaved many people from many tribes, especially the Apache. Should they be responsible for reparations to the Apache and other tribes they crushed?
If foster children were raised so well that people were jealous, maybe that would create an adverse incentive for people to create more children than they can handle and desert children that they’ve already had?
>The reason we should be paying for foster kids' college is because the state is their parent, so it's our responsibility. In a country that wasn't shit, regular people would be jealous of how kids who were wards of the state lived, and how well-raised they were.
Absolutely. As my mother used to say, parents should (at a minimum) pay for education and therapy (not to mention housing with electricity and indoor plumbing, food, clothes, etc.). Since the government of California is the legal guardian of these children, it's really the least they can do.
Disagree. It is not the states job to raise foster kids. It’s the states job to match them with families that want to take them in and care for them like their own. There’s a line a mine long of people that are desperate to adopt but have to job through endless hoops.
Fix the adoption system and stop needlessly expanding the state and taking on more clients.
It was sold as a way to fix the wrongs of institutionalized bigotry. Unfortunately certain minorities get turned away from AA benefits because the narrative is focused on only one group despite historical slights affecting many more. As implemented, it wasn't even fair to the people it was claiming to assist.
> regular people would be jealous of how kids who were wards of the state lived
Given that the money to do that would have been taken from those parents, you can see why in a democracy parents would object to having their resources stolen for government kids to have better lives over their own.
Affirmative action came in response to Jim Crow. When slavery ended during the civil war, people had the idea that it wasn’t needed. It wasn’t until reconstruction ended and southern states leaned heavily into racist policy making that it became popular.
> In a country that wasn't shit, regular people would be jealous of how kids who were wards of the state lived, and how well-raised they were.
Actually this sounds completely dystopian. In what world should people really wish they were foster kids? Its no wonder people warn against an effort to destroy the nuclear family.
Foster children are not a protected class under the law.
Perhaps foster kids could or even should be a protected class, however unlike most protected classes that have faced historical systematic discrimination codified in law, the general hardships of foster children are not based in unjust laws.
I have worked in Dependency law (ie with children that have been abused, abandoned and neglected) which deals a lot with foster kids.
I favor programs that provide funding for foster kids like this and provide assistance when they “age out” of care, but it is a broad brushstroke and doesn’t take into consideration individual situations as you suggest. In other words foster children are not all alike nor are their situations. Some live in group homes and they are just a number or a check for foster parents, some live in loving and supportive homes, even sometimes in the homes of relatives when parental rights were lost but they are still considered foster children. Some become foster kids at 17 and others are born into it. There is everything in between.
It is about the equivalent in terms of diversity of situations as being a minority/protected class that has historically been discriminated against.
There's another unique aspect to this particular case--if the children "aged out" without being adopted, then they don't have functioning parents to pay for the massive costs of college, which is what the current financial aid and pricing model relies on. Even if the kids had a good childhood, they aren't going to have the financial resources to pay for college themselves.
And even if they have an almost adopted type of situation with their final foster parents, those parents still shouldn't have to pay all the college costs. They may not have even had the children placed with them long enough to save for that.
The issue is the pareto principle. As it is the CSU/UC systems cannot support every applicant that wants to come in. But making it completely free they'd be flooded with most of the country's prospective students.
Also, schools are state funded as well as federally funded. So there's a bunch of issues when it comes to out of state students and who should cover. That exists even with today's crazily high priced tuition.
> what affirmative action should be... helping people out based on their individual situation
Also, just helping them out. Nobody gets hurt. This isn't creating an allotment of seats for foster kids. The selection process, and thus odds, are the same for them and everyone else.
Affirmative action was to address systemic inequalities, not individual ones. Bringing it up in an article about foster kids and then further including the bit about gender feels like flamebait.
In the United States, a lot of times the individual situation is correlated to their skin color.
The condition of being descendants of slaves, or people who faced other forms of official discrimination cited in the prevention of intergenerational wealth such as redlining, blockbusting or unfavorable treatment in the GI bill, etc., is ultimately an individual situation for each individual affected.
The idea that you can dismiss that as not an individual hardship -- though it kind of is for those impacted -- strikes me as pretty much a word game, nothing more. Not unlike the word games American laws started to use when they could no longer punish people de jure for their race.
How many slaves in the family tree should someone have to qualify? Do white slaves count? How far back should we go? Would citizens whose families have immigrated to this country after the deed be also on the hook for reparations? Should reparations only be given to struggling people, or should they be given out regardless of the situation of the descendant of a slave?
It's a lot easier to quantify and equalize the situation here and now rather than to try to make up for a future that could have been, and for which no living being is responsible. The past is complex and blurry, and families aren't a straight line. And generally, people aren't bound by their ancestor's misdeeds.
Poor people should get more help from society in the US, that's a fact: race might be a strong predictor for poverty, but the best signal for poverty remains income and wealth, right here and right now.
Why bother looking at anything else? Are poor whites or asians somehow more blameable for their poverty than poor blacks? Should a successful black person get reparations from a white hobo, simply based on their lineage (that none of them have control on)?
I don't think anyone here is denying that there is a correlation, but there's a very legitimate question over whether policy should target the correlated trait (skin color) or the hardship itself (poverty) when trying to fix the problem.
Being Black in America is actually a specific situation with structural inequality baked in. It is strictly based on skin color and it is backed up by a significant number of studies, as well as observed by its actual victims [1]
Affirmative action is about reinforcing the bottom so it doesn't fall any further. It isn't about supporting anyone for a particular reason, but anyone in a condition they can not control.
pessimizer|2 years ago
The reason we should be paying for foster kids' college is because the state is their parent, so it's our responsibility. In a country that wasn't shit, regular people would be jealous of how kids who were wards of the state lived, and how well-raised they were. There's no clearer illustration of our values than the fact that children who, through no fault of their own, have become the responsibility of the state are treated like unwanted trash. The idea that a society like that could figure out how to ethically treat prisoners or immigrants is laughable.
steve_adams_86|2 years ago
Yet these are children, specifically, who deserve every opportunity we can afford them by default. Not “hopeless addicts” or some other group deemed not worth saving by so many of us, but people quite literally the epitome of worth saving. These people need every ounce of reassurance that we care and that they can integrate and function in society. That they deserve opportunity as anyone else does.
If we had to be self serving we could look at it like “each one of these people is statistically far more likely to be a burden on my own children in the future, so a small investment now could save a lot later”, but we seem to fail even in being selfish about it. I find this topic heart breaking.
slashdev|2 years ago
I think nobody argues that it's a vile, morally repugnant thing to enslave another human being. But that was a long time ago, and all those slaves and the people who enslaved them are all dead.
The descendants of those slaves are now much wealthier and better off by pretty much any metric than their relatives who were not enslaved. How do you make an argument that those descendants are victims in need of reparations? No crime was committed against them directly, and they seem to have benefited from the crimes committed against their ancestors.
I must stress that this is not in any way excusing or justifying the wrongs that occurred. But how would you make an argument for reparations, given how things turned out?
tomcam|2 years ago
How do you apportion the taxes? Do new immigrants owe the same as people here generations? Do the descendants of Irish immigrants owe the same as descendants of slave owners? What about the black descendants of black slave owners, of whom there were over a thousand?
And how far does this go back? The Comanches were extremely brutal. They killed and enslaved many people from many tribes, especially the Apache. Should they be responsible for reparations to the Apache and other tribes they crushed?
whall6|2 years ago
bagacrap|2 years ago
In this utopia you describe, I'd think all kids lived like kings.
nobody9999|2 years ago
Absolutely. As my mother used to say, parents should (at a minimum) pay for education and therapy (not to mention housing with electricity and indoor plumbing, food, clothes, etc.). Since the government of California is the legal guardian of these children, it's really the least they can do.
nemo44x|2 years ago
Fix the adoption system and stop needlessly expanding the state and taking on more clients.
kevin_thibedeau|2 years ago
throwawaysleep|2 years ago
Given that the money to do that would have been taken from those parents, you can see why in a democracy parents would object to having their resources stolen for government kids to have better lives over their own.
seanmcdirmid|2 years ago
themitigating|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
nonethewiser|2 years ago
Actually this sounds completely dystopian. In what world should people really wish they were foster kids? Its no wonder people warn against an effort to destroy the nuclear family.
throwawaycities|2 years ago
Foster children are not a protected class under the law.
Perhaps foster kids could or even should be a protected class, however unlike most protected classes that have faced historical systematic discrimination codified in law, the general hardships of foster children are not based in unjust laws.
I have worked in Dependency law (ie with children that have been abused, abandoned and neglected) which deals a lot with foster kids.
I favor programs that provide funding for foster kids like this and provide assistance when they “age out” of care, but it is a broad brushstroke and doesn’t take into consideration individual situations as you suggest. In other words foster children are not all alike nor are their situations. Some live in group homes and they are just a number or a check for foster parents, some live in loving and supportive homes, even sometimes in the homes of relatives when parental rights were lost but they are still considered foster children. Some become foster kids at 17 and others are born into it. There is everything in between.
It is about the equivalent in terms of diversity of situations as being a minority/protected class that has historically been discriminated against.
morpheuskafka|2 years ago
And even if they have an almost adopted type of situation with their final foster parents, those parents still shouldn't have to pay all the college costs. They may not have even had the children placed with them long enough to save for that.
ttfkam|2 years ago
Squint and we might start looking like college tuitions in Europe.
golemotron|2 years ago
It seems like California is leaving themselves open to a 14th Amendment Equal Protection violation claim, doesn't it?
lotsofpulp|2 years ago
Just make the schools free for all, and collect with higher marginal income / wealth taxes.
It should not be dependent on parents’ status either. I got zero aid due to my parents, but I also got zero from my parents.
WalterBright|2 years ago
johnnyanmac|2 years ago
Also, schools are state funded as well as federally funded. So there's a bunch of issues when it comes to out of state students and who should cover. That exists even with today's crazily high priced tuition.
er4hn|2 years ago
JumpCrisscross|2 years ago
Also, just helping them out. Nobody gets hurt. This isn't creating an allotment of seats for foster kids. The selection process, and thus odds, are the same for them and everyone else.
bushbaba|2 years ago
j45|2 years ago
But then you’d need a K-12 system that doesn’t fail them or set them up for not succeeding by getting them into lower stream courses.
INGSOCIALITE|2 years ago
mmanfrin|2 years ago
lockhouse|2 years ago
asveikau|2 years ago
The condition of being descendants of slaves, or people who faced other forms of official discrimination cited in the prevention of intergenerational wealth such as redlining, blockbusting or unfavorable treatment in the GI bill, etc., is ultimately an individual situation for each individual affected.
The idea that you can dismiss that as not an individual hardship -- though it kind of is for those impacted -- strikes me as pretty much a word game, nothing more. Not unlike the word games American laws started to use when they could no longer punish people de jure for their race.
axlee|2 years ago
It's a lot easier to quantify and equalize the situation here and now rather than to try to make up for a future that could have been, and for which no living being is responsible. The past is complex and blurry, and families aren't a straight line. And generally, people aren't bound by their ancestor's misdeeds.
Poor people should get more help from society in the US, that's a fact: race might be a strong predictor for poverty, but the best signal for poverty remains income and wealth, right here and right now.
Why bother looking at anything else? Are poor whites or asians somehow more blameable for their poverty than poor blacks? Should a successful black person get reparations from a white hobo, simply based on their lineage (that none of them have control on)?
lolinder|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
desireco42|2 years ago
I am almost amazed how they managed to do the right thing...
quickthrower2|2 years ago
TheCoelacanth|2 years ago
VWWHFSfQ|2 years ago
zzzeek|2 years ago
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/11/15/black-ame...
jojobas|2 years ago
Could one be taken away from rich abusive parents with a mandated allowance?
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
Sparkyte|2 years ago
Affirmative action is about reinforcing the bottom so it doesn't fall any further. It isn't about supporting anyone for a particular reason, but anyone in a condition they can not control.
irjustin|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
frankfrankfrank|2 years ago
[deleted]
pbjtime|2 years ago
j45|2 years ago
It can be easy to say what’s good for another and how to solve them when their problems aren’t ones you have grown up or lived through.
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]