"As one expert in an amicus brief supporting the plaintiffs pointed out, the 'Hispanic' or 'Latino' category lumps together such varied groups as Argentinians, Cubans, Mexicans and immigrants from Spain. 'Asian Americans'' include racial and ethnic groups that cover more than half the world’s population, such as Chinese people, Indians and Filipinos, among others. Such distinct groups as Arab Americans, native-born white Protestants and recent immigrants from Bulgaria are all classified as 'white.' 'African American' combines native-born Black Americans with immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. Needless to say, these groups have vastly different histories. Lumping them into a few crudely defined categories makes a mockery of the idea that universities are genuinely pursuing diversity as opposed to engaging in gross stereotyping. Perhaps even worse, the diversity rationale could be used to justify all kinds of racial and ethnic preferences.... For many schools, however, the diversity rationale for racial preferences is likely a smokescreen for the real purpose: compensating minority groups that are victims of long-standing discrimination, particularly African Americans. This justification, which has largely been rejected by the Supreme Court, is much more logically compelling than the diversity theory."
Writes Ilya Somin at "Supreme Court affirmative action cases challenging Harvard, UNC policies are overdue/The Harvard suit features extensive evidence that the school’s admissions system discriminates against Asian American applicants" (NBC News).
Somin says he has has "considerable sympathy" for the alternative rationale, but it's hard to imagine the Supreme Court switching from diversity to compensation for past discrimination, which it rejected as a basis for affirmative action long ago (in the 1970s).
[T]o my knowledge I was the only Russian Jewish immigrant in my class at Yale Law School. Would 'diversity' justify Yale using ethnic preferences to make sure there was another the following year?
The words "make sure" load that question, but I think — as someone who has served on my law school's admissions committee many times — that it would be perfectly fine to read an applicant's file, find yourself on the line between yes and no, see that this person is a Russian Jewish immigrant, and go with yes. And that yes would be based on what the current doctrine requires — a prediction that this person's contributions will be beneficial to the class as a whole. It would not be based on the idea that Russian Jewish immigrants have been discriminated against in the past.
How could I possibly assess all the various harms of the past and funnel the urge to compensate into this one applicant? There's no expertise to defer to. With diversity, there is a notion, however hazy, that the school's file-readers have some special intuition about putting together a good student body and making the classroom lively and full of challenging viewpoints. There's a mystique, a magic, a black box that the Court can decide to leave closed. I know many of you are scoffing at that box. But the easiest answer is to leave it closed, not to move to another rationale for affirmative action.
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71 comments:
All taxonomy is political.
I am still angry that fellow Upstate New Yorker, Lucille Ball was played by an Australian in the biopic.
"For many schools, however, the diversity rationale for racial preferences is likely a smokescreen for the real purpose: compensating minority groups that are victims of long-standing discrimination, particularly African Americans"
Problem is you can't compensate a group in this way. Just an individual, who by all odds is already connected. And at the bottom you flush out some kid who isn't connected. Now it's a white or Asian kid. It used to be a black or Jewish kid. But it will always be some kid.
Prof A: you make exactly the right argument —the only argument— to defend “diversity,” as a magical sprinkling of je ne sais quoi that makes the school’s class truly “special.” How many hours did each admission officer spend over each file, using what rare training and talent to spot the “right ones,” who —quite coincidentally— were on the left end of the distribution, and once admitted had to struggle to survive? But only every time.
The Romantic picture you paint has an element of truth (and admissions is a thankless and impossible task) but it disguises the sad reality, where the schools have abused the license given them by the courts, and constructed a system of secret quotas and shopworn racist hypocrisy. Have you read “Mismatch”? Anything by Thomas Sowell?
For many schools, however, the diversity rationale for racial preferences is likely a smokescreen for the real purpose: compensating minority groups that are victims of long-standing discrimination,
…plus there’s the looting, the Amazon boxes. Without a strong audit it’s impossible to know how much if anything still needs to be compensated…
"Diversity is our strength" is always put forth as a truism, an axiom. It's never accompanied by a logical proof (in part because there is none). The fact that no attempt has ever been made to show that diversity is in itself a force for good to be aimed for as an end rather than a means to an end shows that it's all a fraud. Pretty words to dress up discrimination Administration personnel buying their self-righteousness with someone else's money.
...and the get out of jail free cards…
A diverse student body means you find an oboe player.
And yet, diversity class-building has resulted in the opposite of a “classroom lively and full of challenging viewpoints.” Classrooms are morose with fear, opinions silenced and individualistic thought cancelled.
Rory said...Problem is you can't compensate a group in this way. Just an individual, who by all odds is already connected. And at the bottom you flush out some kid who isn't connected. Now it's a white or Asian kid. It used to be a black or Jewish kid. But it will always be some kid.
Exactly. The problem with "social justice" is that it makes no effort to connect actual reparations with actual harms. It's all about special privileges for favored groups in the name of equity.
here is a notion, however hazy, that the school's file-readers have some special intuition about putting together a good student body and making the classroom lively and full of challenging viewpoints
Because of the increasing "diversity", there are more and more viewpoints that college students may not express.
If it were viewpoint diversity then I could see it, but it's absolutely not being applied this way. It is being applied for ethnic diversity. Diversity began being abused the moment SCOTUS institutionalized it. Now that I think about it, I might prefer the "#systemic diversity" tag better than a "#diversity bullshit" tag.
Is the pursuit of diversity meant to create classrooms of students from different backgrounds, or to send out credentialed professionals from different backgrounds into the real world to increase some notion of 'equity'?
Rastajenk @ 6:26: Why not embrace the healing power of “and”?
I think the schools’ pursuit of diversity is like the efforts of ostensibly profit-oriented corporations to serve not just customers and owners but an endless list of “stakeholders,” including the ancestors of the indigenous peoples who once camped where the factory was built.
These academic and corporate worthies live in a world where success has come almost in spite of themselves; where “brand” is a proxy for value; where they think it is important to please their peers and impress their rivals rather than serve their customers. I happen to think that is a deep conceptual mistake; but they’ve all drunk the Kool-aid and now they’re all quite ill.
I will delete if you try to hijack the thread. The post is an invitation to discuss a NEW topic, so you can't view it as an opportunity to re-say things you always say in this general area. And if you see that I've deleted you, don't put up a comment on the topic of deletions (including anything responding to this comment of mine). Think about the other readers: They have read this post and are in the comments to see how people expand on and react to this NEW subject. I will be hardcore deleting comments who see a post as carte blanche to ride their old hobbyhorse. You are wasting other people's time and taking advantage of a forum you did not create and you do not maintain. At some point, if you establish that you are a person of bad faith — that is someone who *wants* to degrade and screw up this blog — I will delete all your comments.
If you want to discuss *this* comment of mine, you have to go back to the last open thread (café). Don't discuss it here.
Throw the box out.
Any university which receives no federal funding should be free to engage in whatever kind of discrimination it wants to. Any university which receives federal funding should be required to set admissions using that model which takes available inputs and best predicts successful completion of the syllabus.
From Facing Reality (2021), Charles Murray, which I hope some amicus brings to the Court's attention,
The charges of white privilege and systemic racism that are tearing the country apart float free of reality. Two known facts, long since documented beyond reasonable doubt, need to be brought into the open and incorporated into the way we think about public policy: [1] American whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians have different violent crime rates and [2] different [statistical] means and distributions of cognitive ability. The allegations of racism in policing, college admissions, segregation in housing, and hiring and promotions in the workplace ignore the ways in which the problems that prompt the allegations of systemic racism are driven by these two realities.
The problem is........No one knows what diversity means. It’s like fairness.
Of course, all this leads to Critical Race Theory......”you all be racist until I say you are not!”!
As LBJ would say... When you've Lost NBC News.... You've Lost Mainstream Media
Two points. First, random selection is fairer to competing interests than any “black box” or special committee can ever be because the goal of “diversity” devolves into bean counting based on crude superficial characteristics like skin color. None of the competing interests can change their colors but they all did other things scholastic or extracurricular to make themselves more interesting to the committee. Second, the fact that these selection committee’s discount academic achievement for a superficial trait like skin color or crude ethnic categorization proves that higher education has strayed from the goal of creating the best learning environment. To what benefit? Has a college degree stayed as valuable as it was before schools became maniacally focused on race? Why are we subsidizing failure at every level of education?
My undergraduate class of 400 students had representation from more than 30 countries and with the exception of the South African kid all shared a common bond- their families were rich.
I think a better legal attack would challenge the determination that this mystical diversity benefit is a compelling or even important government interest. Where is the science? What was predicted and what have the outcomes been? The point of scrutiny is to force those that want to discriminate to show their work. Well, has the science of diversity moved on at all in the last few decades? After throwing out the studies that were retracted or failed to replicate, what tangible benefits to education can be demonstrated? Giving students and faculty warn fuzzy feelings cannot possibly be a compelling government interest!
The “easiest” answer is not to “leave the magic box closed” but rather to throw out the so called Magic Box of Bullshit because it’s simply that: Bullshit. And the constitution does not allow for Bullshit magic boxes hiding racism and discrimination.
You would never accept a school’s discrimination against women or blacks because the administration said it was a “magic box” in which their “best intentions” were Used to create what they thought was uniquely suited for their educational purposes.
Almost all the comments on this story I've seen have been lampooning blue check twitter's whines about Trump's press hatred. Some just quote with the names changed.
I thought I was being very tactful. A comment only Althouse would understand.
Is it a good idea to have a challenging viewpoint in class?
"random selection is fairer to competing interests than any “black box” or special committee can ever be because the goal of “diversity” devolves into bean counting based on crude superficial characteristics like skin color."
I think AA agrees with you, at least subconsciously. How else can you explain her next post about the toddler who spent $1,800 by randomly clicking buttons on her mom's phone, other than she is putting that up as a probably better alternative than the black box? Of course, she'll deny it, but that's what subconscious means.
Coulter sometimes says the only people for whom she favors affirmative action are African Americans, meaning fairly precisely descendants of slaves. Their situation, generally speaking, is a direct result of injustices inflicted on them by the American majority over generations. Nothing like that is true of recent arrivals, even if their children hear pejorative names at school. There is probably something here that is not supposed to be said: African Americans are not all that diverse compared to "the peoples of the world," so they don't hold out the same promising of enriching the experience of other students. Also it is questionable to have affirmative action at law school for people who had terrible elementary and secondary educations.
The diversity argument is flawed in placing the purported good of achieving diversity above the demonstrable evil of using racial preferences to achieve it. First, do no harm.
The problem with a black box is that it cannot be audited for ideological agenda. It’s a “trust me for my oh-so good intentions” posture, and I have zero basis to trust lefties. Skin color and ethnicity and chromosomes should be remove entirely from the mix of considerations as utterly irrelevant since none of these are choices the applicant made. Rather, the focus should be on those choices and performances within the applicant’s control.
When it comes to a yes/no decision, pick the oboist marathon runner. Pick the polyglot, the former Marine, the kid who performed the Poulenc organ concerto, the physicist, the running back, the scratch golfer.
The pretty Marine officer who lived across the hall from me in the BOQ read French literature in her spare time. She was a hell of an air traffic controller. THAT’s diversity! Skin color is agenda.
- Krumhorn
(my preferred adjectives: brilliant/awesome)
"but I think — as someone who has served on my law school's admissions committee many times — that it would be perfectly fine to read an applicant's file, find yourself on the line between yes and no, see that this person is a Russian Jewish immigrant, and go with yes"
In other words: don't you see, in theory it could work in your favor!
Systemic discrimination is good as long as we're in charge.
The same people who regularly go on about systemic problems are here defending a system's dangerous design just because "the right people" currently are running it. The only explanation that makes sense is that the incumbents think their opponents will never be in charge. For if the tables were turned, and conservatives were striving for the discretion to create public institutions as hostile to progressives as universities are to conservatives, these same people no doubt would oppose it.
Is that defensible to fair minded people?
If it were truly a black box, there would be no reason to expect the same results every year. What one sees is a deliberate and systemic effort that every year reduces the number of Asian enrollees and raises the number of white students.
And that yes would be based on what the current doctrine requires — a prediction that this person's contributions will be beneficial to the class as a whole
In other words, you're going to admit individuals that check various minority boxes primarily for the benefit of the members of the majority in the class, or school, or whatever.
Bluntly, upper middle class liberal whites appear to have recognized fairly early on that affirmative action had relatively little impact on them. They have the resources to work around the restrictions through various means. They also likely intuited that 'mismatch' reduced the pressure that admitting qualified but unconnected whites instead of underqualified minorities would put on the UCM whites that got in.
Now the whole process is being put into overdrive with any suggestion that qualifications should be defined by neutral measurements are being thrown out the window.
"With diversity, there is a notion, however hazy, that the school's file-readers have some special intuition about putting together a good student body and making the classroom lively and full of challenging viewpoints. There's a mystique, a magic, a black box that the Court can decide to leave closed. I know many of you are scoffing at that box. But the easiest answer is to leave it closed, not to move to another rationale for affirmative action."
If I follow what you're saying here, then I agree it would be easier for the court to again validate schools' desire to create a "diverse" student body as basis for upholding affirmative action than it would be to uphold AA by declaring that schools (and perhaps all government-supported institutions) can discriminate against Asians and whites as much as they want, without limitation, as a form of reparations for slavery and Jim Crow.* However, I seriously doubt that this court is remotely interested in doing the latter thing in any event. The real question is whether the court will call BS on the diversity rationale (either in general, or as over-applied by the schools); or if it lets it go for another generation, perhaps with some tightening around the edges.
*I'm really unclear on how the court COULD uphold affirmative action as an overt reparations scheme under strict scrutiny.
Does the left favor discretion when they might lose control over it? All you have to do is look at the school choice debate.
https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2022/01/24/the_left_doesnt_like_school_choice_the_right_doesnt_need_them_to_813304.html
By the time someone is done with high school, most of the opportunity to correct systemic problems have ceased. If we wanted to help people at a disadvantage, it starts at the very earliest ages. Once you fix that, they are in a position to not only fairly compete for coveted positions at elite institutions, but that they will also succeed at those institutions.
But our current educational system favors only those with privileged support. That is why the admissions committees would accept Barak or Michele (or there kids) and think they have advanced the idea of racial equality.
The problem with selection committees is that they have ideological blinders. They already know what they want, a special kind of diversity, a diversity that is all the same. The right kind of diversity.
So we have two issues at hand, an system that rewards those who are already at an advantage (despite the call to redress inequity), and a bias that tends toward group-think.
It would be better if the racial justification was out and proud. Simply size every bucket based on us population, and then put in each bucket every qualified candidate, then randomly select the appropriate number of candidates from each bucket. You will get the best kind of diversity that way. IF diversity was the goal.
The other option is to chuck even the bucket system and put everyone in one bucket and draw. You will get a nice randomized sampling of people and probably a decent level of racial coverage too. Of course, if the qualified candidates skew heavily toward one race (50% Asian, let's say), then that will make the race hustlers unhappy. But of course, that just points to the bigger problem identified in paragraph one which should not be solved by punishing those who worked to overcome their odds in favor of those who did not.
So affirmative action for diversity is problematical, and affirmative action for compensation is problematical. I had thought the country had made a decision in 1964 that discrimination was wrong. Yeah, I was young and naive.
Right now, one is supposed to believe that racial/sexual/ethnic discrimination is wrong and illegal is done by the wrong people for the wrong reasons but good and legal is done by the right people for the right reasons. Then justices and legislators and regulators and commentators can argue about just which is which.
You want diversity at Harvard? Demand Harvard look like American. white catholics and white christians in the Student Body and law school should be equal to their pecentage of the population.
What they should do is make racial discrimination illegal for everybody. And stop looking for hidden racial discrimination that you "prove" via uneven results.
What's most odious about the path that that the federal government has chosen is that overt discrimination against some groups are tolerated, while we're supposed to be super-vigilant about hidden discrimination against other groups that people are doing subconsciously (i.e.not on purpose).
All the obvious racists should put that shit in the closet like the rest of us. What the lawyers should do is set the standard ("racism is evil and wrong and you should stop doing it") and let the secret, subconscious "I'm not a racist" shit slide on by.
Intent is important. Stifle the fucking intentional racists and shut up about accidental racism.
If affirmative action only involved cases where the admissions committee finds itself “on the line between yes and no,” that is, as a tie breaker between roughly comparable candidates, it wouldn’t be very controversial. But in fact AA is a way to put a very heavy thumb on the scale. My prediction is the Court will come up with some convoluted rational that will allow the use of race as a tie breaker. That will complicate life for the Ivies, et al., who are determined to admit x% of black or Hispanic candidates but they will most assuredly figure out some way around it.
[T]o my knowledge I was the only Russian Jewish immigrant in my class at Yale Law School. Would 'diversity' justify Yale using ethnic preferences to make sure there was another the following year?
Lawyers are really stupid when they try to litigate and spell everything out.
The official answer: "We admitted you because of your grades and essays and your SAT score and blah blah blah."
The unofficial answer might be: "We want Russian Jews."
What you want to avoid are people saying the latter out in the open, and people discriminating out in the open. You should be embarrassed to say "We need more Russian Jews at our school." So keep it to yourself.
Of course you can still vote yea on every Russian Jewish applicant, and people might suspect you of pro-Russian Jew sympathies. But don't brag about your racial and religious discrimination. It pisses people off. And it pisses people off because nobody likes that shit when it happens against you.
Conrad said...
If I follow what you're saying here, then I agree it would be easier for the court to again validate schools' desire to create a "diverse" student body as basis for upholding affirmative action than it would be to uphold AA by declaring that schools (and perhaps all government-supported institutions) can discriminate against Asians and whites as much as they want, without limitation, as a form of reparations for slavery and Jim Crow.* However, I seriously doubt that this court is remotely interested in doing the latter thing in any event. The real question is whether the court will call BS on the diversity rationale (either in general, or as over-applied by the schools); or if it lets it go for another generation, perhaps with some tightening around the edges.
*I'm really unclear on how the court COULD uphold affirmative action as an overt reparations scheme under strict scrutiny.
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In my view, you're really close to the heart of the matter. Is it the proper role of a court to make these kinds of public policy decisions? If we as a country are going to have affirmative action in education or the workplace, whether based on diversity or reparations or any reason, that decision should come from Congress, and they should spell out plainly the reason therefor. Then, the Supreme Court can decide if it measures up to the inevitable 14th Amendment challenges.
The Court should not be going through these contortions trying to bail out the Federal legislative branch.
"a prediction that this person's contributions will be beneficial to the class as a whole"
But did anyone ever test that prediction? Do any universities publish data on it?
"With diversity, there is a notion, however hazy, that the school's file-readers have some special intuition about putting together a good student body and making the classroom lively and full of challenging viewpoints."
But selection is not based on viewpoint diversity and liveliness but on racial representation. Progs in higher ed have adopted the SCOTUS rationale to implement their preferred social policy. But their diversity is not SCOTUS diversity.
Does racial diversification in fact produce viewpoint diversity? Since the favored groups tend to be less internally diverse in viewpoint than the population as a whole, perhaps not.
"I know many of you are scoffing at that box"
Actually, no. I think Harvard, as a "private institution," should be free to discriminate. Like Morehouse.
"compensating minority groups that are victims of long-standing discrimination, particularly African Americans. This justification, which has largely been rejected by the Supreme Court, is much more logically compelling than the diversity theory." That does _not_ seem like a good reason to favor a very rich black kid over a poor Asian kid. And very rich black kids are the only kind of black kids who get to apply to Harvard.
Let’s have a diverse Faculty first.
The idea is diversity in universities enables students from extremely different backgrounds to learn from each other, i.e. Black kids. Black students are accepted to create a different POV in the classroom and in university life. Except, they self-segregate eating a the Black table in the dining room, creating their own Black dorms, their separate “Black only” clubs, their separate (orientation before the white “snowflakes” arrive), their own separate commencement, etc., etc.
And, a Conservative Latina student will not feel comfortable speaking out against abortion…she will be shouted down and told to STFU. No diversity for her.
Students must bend to accommodate the Black students and make them feel welcome. Their POV should never be questioned, because you might be a racist. So, what are the other races learning from diversity? They must feel guilty for not being Black.No 18 year old freshman owes any Black kid special treatment. If institutions were guilty of slavery, they should not not try to absolve themselves with AA. No white kid entering college was a slave owner. Plus, many of these Black students come from upper-middle class and professional families. Some come from the best prep schools in the country. The whole AA system is unfair and no one can undo the sins of the past with AA.
How about considering an outstanding white kid from Appalachia whose family does not have the means to send the kid to Harvard, but who deserves to be there based on being gifted and talented. Let’s take the family’s financial situation into consideration no matter what the race. Plenty of outstanding poor white kids who will not be looked at due to their race.
Enough already!
My preferred policy? If you use race, sexual preference, or religious affiliation as a quality in admissions/access or hiring, you can't use federally backed loans, federal grants, etc.
And this would be for all businesses (Masterpiece Cake? No SBA Loans. Harvard? No Student Loans or NSF Grants.) Yeah, a big roll back of public accommodations, but it seems we have overexpanded that to where 'Oh, you offer this? Then you MUST offer THAT AND THAT AND THAT...' too an extreme.
No fuss, no muss. We are not compelling them to accept the money, we are not dictating their business policies. They make the trade offs (as businesses always do).
What galls me is that they use our money to discriminate. Stop that, and I couldn't care less how these intuitions choose their students and profs.
Diversity (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry) is a dogmatic belief of the Pro-Choice religion adopted by the progressive church, synagogue, temple, mosque, corporation, clinic, etc. that denies men and women's dignity, agency, and value, and reduces human life to a negotiable commodity. Diversity dogma is the social justification of "every child left behind" policy. Diversity, inequity, and exclusion is exploited for leverage in pursuit of capital and control over competing interests.
Althouse rightly points out Somin's subtle loading of the question when he says "to make sure" a Russian Jewish immigrants admitted each year.
But I would say that her formulation is similarly problematic, when she writes: "it would be perfectly fine to read an applicant's file, find yourself on the line between yes and no, see that this person is a Russian Jewish immigrant, and go with yes." If all admissions of Blacks were within the range of every other group's "yes or no" (in terms of comparable test scores, grades, etc.) I don't see allowing discretion to admissions committees as being all that controversial, socially or legally.
For many schools, however, the diversity rationale for racial preferences is likely a smokescreen for the real purpose: compensating minority groups that are victims of long-standing discrimination, particularly African Americans.
No, the real purpose is neither of those. The real purpose is to ensure a student body that "looks like America", and thus insulates the institution from attacks by 'equal' opportunity federal law enforcers (DOJ, EEOC, etc.) as well as local 'social justice warriors'. To achieve this, people must be judged by the color of their skin, not the content of their characters.
...it would be perfectly fine to read an applicant's file, find yourself on the line between yes and no, see that this person is a Russian Jewish immigrant, and go with yes.
No, it wouldn't. Ashkenazi Jews are already overrepresented in the professions: "According to a study performed by Cambridge University, 21% of Ivy League students, 25% of the Turing Award winners, 23% of the wealthiest Americans, 38% of the Oscar-winning film directors, and 29% of Oslo awardees are Ashkenazi Jews." More importantly, Ashkenazi Jews fail the most important criterion for diversity: skin color.
Althouse wrote:
“But the easiest answer is to leave it closed, not to move to another rationale for affirmative action.”
____________
No, the easiest answer is to tell the truth: If we have race-blind admission standards, then we will have hardly any blacks here, and very few hispanics, because their groups are really are inferior. But that isn’t the answer anyone will choose.
When did diversity, in the sense of a social goal to be worked towards, become a thing? I don’t really remember it being discussed much before the eighties, but I freely admit the concept could have been going a long time before I noticed it. The first time I remember the word being used in this way was during a Star Trek episode. That would have been about 1968. On the show “Infinite Diversity in Combination” was described as being a tenant of Vulcan philosophy. Now, on the show, the original one anyway, Vulcans were about as undiverse as a group of people could well be. They all thought the same way. They all had the same culture and the same philosophy. The men all had the same haircut. Our university style diversity seems to be much the same. The idea seems to be to use social pressure as the stick and educational inducements as the carrot to make a diverse student body as uniform as possible.
War is Peace
Ignorance is Strength
Freedom is Slavery
Diversity is Conformity
It should seem odd to see such a cause enabled by the Supreme Court and promoted by law professors.
You can be considered a “minority” even if one parent is white and a multi-millionaire living in an exclusive CT town. A boy has a father who is from Argentina (originally Italy) and moved to U.S. The father started his own company and is wildly successful. His son is considered Hispanic and is accepted into MIT. The kid was never a minority in any way. Just on paper and according to the ridiculous AA guidelines. So, he is given the same consideration as a Dominican from a poor immigrant family? Both fall under the “Hispanic” category.
Restrict Ivy League admissions of Jews to a number commensurate with their share of the population and watch how quickly the academic narrative on diversity versus merit changes.
Affirmative Action confirms the opinion on the left that blacks are inferior.
It's that simple.
When did diversity, in the sense of a social goal to be worked towards, become a thing? I don’t really remember it being discussed much before the eighties, but I freely admit the concept could have been going a long time before I noticed it. The first time I remember the word being used in this way was during a Star Trek episode. That would have been about 1968.
Looks like you're memory is pretty reliable. It appears usage of the word started increasing around WWII, but really picking up in the late 60-'s and exploded in the mid-80s.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=diverse%2Cdiversity&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cdiverse%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cdiversity%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Cdiverse%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cdiversity%3B%2Cc0
Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry) denies individual dignity, individual conscience, intrinsic value, and normalizes color blocs (e.g. "people of color"), color quotas (e.g. "Jew privilege"), and affirmative discrimination.
That said, diversity of individuals, minority of one. #HateLovesAbortion
Diversity, inequity, and exclusion occurs long before people... persons reach the university. The merit-based failure occurs at home, in schools, and in popular culture where mediocrity and congruence is normalized as equity and inclusion. Systemic diversity (e.g. racism) affects people of white, people of yellow, people of color... black, and everyone in between on a present and forward-looking basis.
Think Person,
Thanks for bringing that site to my attention. I didn’t know about it, and it looks interesting.
When I look up “Affirmative Action” I see that it rises steeply between 1960 and 1980, then up and down a bit between 1980 and 2000, from 2000 on usage declines steeply, reaching about the level of 1965 at the end of the graph. Putting the two results together, it looks to me like a shift in usage from “Affirmative Action” to “Diversity” took place, beginning in the mid-eighties and really picking up speed around 2000. It’s interesting to see the language evolve in this way, and I suppose, be manipulated.
Well I guess you people think that Clarence Thomas should resign if he is to maintain some sort of intellectual honesty.
No, the easiest answer is to tell the truth: If we have race-blind admission standards, then we will have hardly any blacks here, and very few hispanics, because their groups are really are inferior. But that isn’t the answer anyone will choose.
This ignores the rules of distribution. "The Bell Curve" described it but most people have an imaginary idea of what it said because they did not read it.
Your statement above does describe the beliefs of most leftists.
I was actually a descendant of Russian Jews and was admitted to a top school -- way long ago. I like to think that had some admissions guy told me they were thrilled to have me so I could spice up the dull lives of the WASPs all around me, I'd have said, thanks, I think I'll find a good trade school instead. (I probably wouldn't have said that, but I'd like to think I would have been aware of the number being run on me.) Anyway, I am aware now. And I say get rid of these racial preferences. They were all a lousy idea then and they are poison now.
The thing that these arguments don’t address is that they are lying. They accept their rationales as honest and accurate. It’s not about diversity, and it very clearly has nothing to do with reparations - after all, how does admitting the child of a black multimillionaire, or member of the CBC, help the millions of children of slaves actually suffering to this day from that slavery? Many, if not most, of the minorities admitted to schools like Harvard have had far more exclusive upbringings than the rest of us. The sad reality is that most of the kids who do suffer from the effects of slavery, Jim Crow, etc (all foisted on them by Democrats, of course) don’t have the background to get through junior college.
Think of it this way. Harvard, and several of the other Ivys, along with the to liberal art colleges, really do get many of the best and very brightest. I have met some brilliant people who went there. And for them, having a really smart student body and professors provides them with an education that they probably can’t find elsewhere. But those aren’t the legacies, most of the minorities, many of the athletes, etc. educationally, they would probably do as well at a good state school or mid ranked liberal arts college. They aren’t there for the academics, but for the networking and the name. Did you know that AlGore and Chris (“Fredo”) Cuomo both went to Harvard? Both have mediocre brains, but had very powerful politicians as fathers (as I noted yesterday - one of the best ways to get into Harvard).
The value of a Harvard degree is the doors it opens. That is what is being rationed and auctioned off. In order to maintain this value, the school has to appear to be selective, and for a certain percentage of a class, that is accurate. Too few 4.0 GPAs with 1600 SATs, and the school won’t appear to be as selective. They are the window dressing. But they don’t give the school it’s name for networking. That comes from admitting the children of the Uber rich and of powerful politicians. The problem is that the Black and Hispanic children of these parents tend to often be substantially below the best and brightest in brains and credentials. That is where diversity admissions come in - slots reserved for underperforming or less capable children of the really rich and/or politically powerful. They will benefit from the networking, and the school will benefit from the money that the school will receive, either directly, or through the political process. The problem, as I said, with reparations, is that this group has no need for such, already living above the top 1%. Yet, they are the ones who benefit from the current system, whether the justification is diversity or reparations. In the end, it is a racial spoils system, with one of the prizes divided up being an Ivy League education.
And then the stupid Asians (and the Jews before them) think that they can break into this club based on a lot of extremely hard work, but without the money and connections that the order insiders have. The effrontery.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan please pick up the house phone... paging Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
I have high regard for Ann. This is the most surprising thing I have ever read in her writings:
"With diversity, there is a notion, however hazy, that the school's the school's file-readers have some special intuition about putting together a good student body and making the classroom lively and full of challenging viewpoints. There's a mystique, a magic, a black box that the Court can decide to leave closed. I know many of you are scoffing at that box. But the easiest answer is to leave it closed, not to move to another rationale for affirmative action."
I know that, strictly speaking, Ann is just writing about the choice between the diversity rationale and the compensation for discrimination rationale as the basis to support affirmative action discrimination. However, the shocking part to me is that Ann is suggesting that she actually believes there is this "magic box" where school bureaucrats and educational institution elites have "some special intuition about putting together a good student body and making the classroom lively and full of challenging viewpoints."
She seems to buy this nonsense rather than the reality that the school bureaucrats and educational institution elites are using affirmative action to achieve quotas and to reward well connected minorities with spots in the class. I hesitate a bit in dismissing Ann's suggestion because she has been in the process, but it is hard to think that she is correct, or that such "special intuition" could even exist, if one was willing to assume the bureaucrats were acting in good faith.
I also notice that Ann's piece does not say whether she favors affirmative action, although her acceptance of special intuition and keeping the magic box closed certainly implies she is, also surprisingly to me, in favor of affirmative action. I would have expected her to support changing affirmative action from divisive racial preferences to helping the economically disadvantaged of any color.
I'm also a little surprised at Ann's unhappy comment in thread. I thought these comments were pretty fair argument and almost all on point. But, maybe I am missing entirely what Ann is trying to convey. I thought she was just assessing the two possible rationales for supporting affirmative action and telling us the "special intuition/magic box" diversity rationale is the better of the two as the basis for the court to allow continued affirmative action discrimination. Maybe I'm wrong. Still think it was interesting comment by Ann and interesting thread of comments.
"I'm also a little surprised at Ann's unhappy comment in thread. I thought these comments were pretty fair argument and almost all on point."
Cause and effect.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan please pick up the house phone... paging Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Could you imagine him as a member of the Democratic Party today? How about Joe Lieberman? Or Hell even JFK would be too conservative today.
When my father was in college (Columbia '32) he became aware that the college had its version of "affirmative action": Not too many Jews! He didn't think that was fair, and he raised me that way. I'm a chip off the old block. If my alma mater (H_rv_rd) doesn't want Too many Asians, I say screw H_rv_rd!
For many schools, however, the diversity rationale for racial preferences is likely a smokescreen for the real purpose: compensating minority groups that are victims of long-standing discrimination, particularly African Americans.
Well, see, you've got a little problem here.
If people are defined by their skin color, then the fact that some other black 60 years ago suffered under Jim Crow might have some relevance to your college application
But the fact that blacks are on average far more criminal than whites means that people have every right to look at you askance, and think you might be criminal just because you're black.
And we can go on from there, but you won't like the way we go.
I think it would be far better to have a society where people are all judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. But if you're going to insist people be judged by their skin color, you don't get to complain when they're judged differently than you would have them be judged,
You opened the door
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 brought in an era of the Federal Government discriminating against whites, and in favor of blacks. So, personally, I see no reason why it's legitimate to claim that today's black college applicants are teh "victims of discrimination" who deserve to get "protection".
If your mom was 14 and single when you were born, and has never been able to find a worthwhile guy to marry her, you're going to start out screwed.
But that's not because of "discrimination". And so long as Democrats are defending the culture that creates those tragedies, and pushing government programs that encourage those tragedies, I can see no reason why I should feel any need to give you "plus points" to overcome your screwed up start.
Fix the things that are causing the massive number of young single mothers, THEN we'll talk about what to do with the unfortunate victims
I find it funny that The Godfather writes "H_rv_rd" without the a's, because from what I understand, A's are pretty much the only letter that Harvard grade-inflators hand out. Maybe that's why there are none left to use when writing the name of the school...
I was admitted to Harvard in 1971 and got substantial financial aid, from both Harvard and the federal government (but not my parents), as an underprivileged child from the inner city (viz., the South Side of Chicago), with very high academic credentials. From a couple dozen applicants from my high school, Harvard admitted me and, as I recall, four black students. All my Harvard friends, to this day, were from somewhat similar backgrounds, with varying outcomes: me (a lawyer), a doctor, a biochemistry professor at UCSF, a botany professor, etc.
--gpm
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