Affirmative Action and the Supreme Court

[marshwiggle]

Which brings me to a less appreciated dark side of current affirmative action in higher ed.  Affirmative action is really relevant only for highly selective schools. And those schools are not choosing poor Blacks to fill their self imposed quotas. They are choosing well off Blacks.

Wasn't part of the original idea that there were good students who weren't white males that would get overlooked and so the intent was to make sure more of those got in? I'd guess that the days when there were academically strong but "invisible" students are long gone, and so now most of affirmative action will be just bringing in students of under-represented groups who wouldn't be admitted for academic reasons otherwise. To the extent that that's the case, it won't have a lot of positive effect.

There is debate, obviously, but supporters of AA can point to all sorts of numbers that seem to prove that AA has had a positive effect.

The whole question is whether the conditions that might have given it value historically still exist. Thought experiment: Suppose you picked a random selection of non-"marginalized" students who are below the normal grade cutoff and admitted them. Would you expect a significant number to succeed? If discrimination isn't the thing that's actually holding lots of students back, then any form of "affirmative action" isn't going to help them.

[dismalist]

Which brings me to a less appreciated dark side of current affirmative action in higher ed.  Affirmative action is really relevant only for highly selective schools. And those schools are not choosing poor Blacks to fill their self imposed quotas. They are choosing well off Blacks.

Wasn't part of the original idea that there were good students who weren't white males that would get overlooked and so the intent was to make sure more of those got in? I'd guess that the days when there were academically strong but "invisible" students are long gone, and so now most of affirmative action will be just bringing in students of under-represented groups who wouldn't be admitted for academic reasons otherwise. To the extent that that's the case, it won't have a lot of positive effect.

The whole question is whether the conditions that might have given it value historically still exist. Thought experiment: Suppose you picked a random selection of non-"marginalized" students who are below the normal grade cutoff and admitted them. Would you expect a significant number to succeed? If discrimination isn't the thing that's actually holding lots of students back, then any form of "affirmative action" isn't going to help them.

I remember a Philosophy professor from undergrad, maybe 1968, who enthusiastically supported exactly that -- find the invisible qualified students, the rough hewn stones. He had actually worked on the looking part at his previous job at a different college. Of course, I too, thought this was a brilliant idea, 'ya know, budding economist, more information,  more efficient, etc., etc.

That was the year of the Cornell riots by Black students. They spilled over to my college in a small way -- disruptive, not threatening. I felt physically strong at the time. What are these boys doing, I wondered.

My inference was that nobody had been looking too hard. And nobody has looked since. Affirmative Action has become a racial spoils system. Not that this was intended at the outset. There was Senator Hubert Humphrey stating that he would eat his hat if the Civil Rights Act of 1964 turned into a quota system. It wasn't exactly the 1964 Act that did it, but along the ways various laws and decisions have.

What we now have is worse than a quota system! To the extent it helps Blacks, it helps only well off Blacks. Other groups, such as Iranians, are trying to get themselves classified as non-white, so they, too, can benefit from the spoils system. Many so-called Asians would be better off it they were classified as White! And of course the quotas have to be imposed beyond college, for AA beneficiaries  in college marks them as inferior on average.

This is a very sick state of affairs.

[mahagonny]

Not only is all that not going as intended, there has been some complaining on Twitter (now deleted) from one Ibram Kendi that white students can get into Harvard aided by their self-reporting of their race as black. What Harvard, et al should do, if they were both honest and serious about this, is lobby their pals, the democrats in Congress, to push for mandatory DNA testing of all Americans so it there can be an valid, transparent way of knowing who belongs to a historically oppressed group and who does not, with racial identity as the only criteria.

I guess I like to see (or fantasize about?) things getting settled.

[marshwiggle]

Not only is all that not going as intended, there has been some complaining on Twitter (now deleted) from one Ibram Kendi that white students can get into Harvard aided by their self-reporting of their race as black. What Harvard, et al should do, if they were both honest and serious about this, is lobby their pals, the democrats in Congress, to push for mandatory DNA testing of all Americans so it there can be an valid, transparent way of knowing who belongs to a historically oppressed group and who does not, with racial identity as the only criteria.

I guess I like to see (or fantasize about?) things getting settled.

Interesting. A few times in the past couple of years there have been stories in the news about people whose claims to Indigenous ancestry were investigated and found to be unfounded, (or at least unable to prove). As above, there have been calls for more rigorous standards for claiming "Indigenous" identity because of the benefits it confers, such as access to certain diversity initiatives.

The more concrete benefit there is to identity categories, the more this is going to happen. (Note the sharp contrast to "gender identity", where self-identification is defended as the only necessary and sufficient criterion which is to be accepted without question, even though people can game the system such as male inmates getting placed in female prisons and committing rapes there.)

[mahagonny]

But Kendi deleted the tweet. The current arrangement, simply having the option to label certain individuals 'obviously white' is working fine for his agenda. He was also getting some serious ribbing from Wilfred Reilly et al for complaining that interlopers were cutting in line for some juicy Black privilege.
Bottom line.
In order to sustain and build up the perception of the 'white supremacy' threat, they need three things:
1. No access to any method to deny being white
2. White people are still either the majority of Americans, or the largest group; therefore they are known as 'the system' (easy access to abortion helps)
3. The white people have enough more financial equity and tangible success so it can be claimed that  they benefit unfairly  from invisible or non-conspicuous forces that favor them.

Regarding 'equitable outcomes' You wouldn't go after Asians who live and work here, for their ill-gotten wealth, because they are not numerous enough to be the 'oppressing system.'
You wouldn't go after recent Nigerian immigrants for their ill-gotten wealth. Without a race card to play, there's no traction.

[Wahoo Redux]

NBC: How Asian-led student groups are continuing affirmative action fight at Harvard and UNC

Lower Deck:

Asian American students at UNC and Harvard, two schools at the center of a Supreme Court hearing this week, fear the end of affirmative action would mean a drastically different campus for future generations.