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Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by tomschlick on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @05:11PM (#21130704)
> but the justification is that these classes are/have been historically discriminated against and constitutional admissions which take race into consideration are a temporary measure to right these historical wrongs by leveling the playing field.

So under that thought process... when does the temporary measure end? Is there a specific goal? Or is it something unachievable like "when income inequality is fixed".

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by bigendian1234 on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @07:48PM (#21132126)
FWIW, I'm a white person who used to think of affirmative action as unfair discrimination. That was true until I spent time volunteering teaching technical skills to kids in poor immigrant neighborhoods. Now that I have had an up close experience with these communities, I'm here to tell you institutional racism is real and we're far from it making sense to end these programs.

There simply is not a quick easy solution and those who are not oppressed simply have no real frame of reference to understand the problem. I encourage every person who feels these programs are unfair to spend time volunteering in poor minority communities.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by JPKab on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:45PM (#21132442)
Do you think the kids in poor immigrant neighborhoods are in worse positions than poor kids in eastern Kentucky? Because the current policies treat white kids from trailer parks like white kids from fancy suburbs. And they treat FOB Asians like they are doctor's children. And black kids from fancy suburbs are treated as if they came from poor ghettos.

The idea that "oppression" is limited to dimensions of race and gender, rather than ethnic/economic/geographic/etc is as juvenile as it is political useful.

You have had up close experience with one kind of disadvantaged community, and act as if that is the only group that has it. The difference between urban communities and places like Clay County, Kentucky is that volunteers like you won't ever get sent to Kentucky.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by shadowgovt on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @11:21PM (#21133193)
> Do you think the kids in poor immigrant neighborhoods are in worse positions than poor kids in eastern Kentucky?

Your line of reasoning did a dodge there, swapping out between geographic demographics and racial demographics.

I don't think all kids in poor immigrant neighborhoods are in worse positions than poor kids in Eastern Kentucky. I do think that all the white-looking kids in eastern Kentucky, regardless of other factors stacked against them, will never be denied a job, loan, or rental opportunity based on the color of their skin. I can't say the same for the kids from any of those regions who don't look white.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by nilkn on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @12:05AM (#21133339)
It’s almost 2020, not 1940. We have major cities that are majority nonwhite. We have entire statewide school districts that are mostly nonwhite. We have huge metropolitan areas that are mostly nonwhite. You can walk into an expensive luxury apartment complex in an immigrant heavy city and find tons of nonwhite people.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by Volundr on Thursday October 03, 2019 @12:25AM (#21143697)
The Little Rock Nine was 1957. What do you believe happened to all those people who protested and threatened violence against those children? What do you think they taught their children?

The idea that we have somehow magically eradicated racism over the course of a single generation astounds me.

Seriously, it's almost 2020. You should get how close to the 1960s that is.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by JPKab on Sunday October 06, 2019 @10:49PM (#21176902)
Just want to point out that in the same time period, Asians were heavily discriminated against in northern California.

And yet there is no trace of it now. I doubt you have set foot in Arkansas, because your implication that the attitudes haven't changed much is grossly inaccurate.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by widowlark on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @12:59AM (#21133554)
And yet the data still shows widespread economic disparity due to discrimination
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by webgoat on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @02:12AM (#21133791)
The data also shows widespread economic disparity due to geography, yet Harvard doesn't give the poor kids an extra 200 points on their SAT. If Harvard actually cared about this issue they would create additional scholarship programs that review people on a case-by-case basis rather than a blanket policy.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by mlevental on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @08:12AM (#21135531)
geography isn't a protected class. it's not a class at all. it's a set of circumstances. your skin color and the privileges or liabilities incurred are inescapable.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by thaumasiotes on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @11:19AM (#21137388)
> geography isn't a protected class

Frequently it is. Many laws specifically protect "national origin".

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by shadowgovt on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @11:42AM (#21137656)
Kentucky isn't a "national origin."
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by f1refly on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @12:31PM (#21138286)
Kentucky doesn't has the support a specific national origin might have because there are no laws about that yet. It's an analogy.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by shadowgovt on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @12:58PM (#21138543)
If you think "being from Kentucky" should be treated the same as "being from Ireland," you're welcome to make a case to your Congressperson.

Good luck.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by throwaway_law on Thursday October 03, 2019 @09:13AM (#21146534)
>Many laws specifically protect "national origin"

What laws? The US Constitution provides significantly greater protections to US Citizens than foreign nationals, as many of rights are not extended to non-citizens.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by mlevental on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @02:36PM (#21139438)
i love this kind of red herring: we're very obviously talking about intranational geography. as the person below me quips: kentucky isn't a nation of origin.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by DuskStar on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @01:17PM (#21138717)
> And yet the data still shows widespread economic disparity due to discrimination

The data shows widespread economic disparity. It does not show the cause, which may or may not be discrimination.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by strathmeyer on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @03:26PM (#21139922)
It's not fair to hurt people just because you think others have been hurt. You're just furthering the abuse. Many white people have been denied housing, education, and jobs because of their skin. You can't solve ignorance with more ignorance. You're literally talking about ruining peoples' lives because of your racism.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by shadowgovt on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @05:00PM (#21140698)
> Many white people have been denied housing, education, and jobs because of their skin.

[citation needed]

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by fromky on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @04:04AM (#21134257)
This is actually factually incorrect. White kids from different economic backgrounds are treated identically != race-conscious admissions policies as they are currently described in the ruling. And FOB Asians is not an economic class, so I am not sure what argument you are trying to make. Is FOB Asian supposed to be poor? Because you need them to visit some places like Vancouver and Waterloo.

I think your point that oppression is not only racial but socioeconomic is not misguided. But as I understand it, the ruling does not preclude adjustments based on the access and opportunity limitations you refer to, which are not strictly limited to a particular race.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by throwaway_law on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @08:33AM (#21135657)
>Do you think the kids in poor immigrant neighborhoods are in worse positions than poor kids in eastern Kentucky?

You have to distinguish affirmative action (in hiring/employment) and race based factors in college admissions.

Most colleges that use race/minority status as a factor in admissions also generally also use socioeconomic status as a factor. However, I am not familiar with any employment/hiring based affirmative action that looks at socioeconomic status.

Just as an example, I went to a top 50 (at the time) public high school in the country, the school is located in a large city (hint: where Jeff Bezos went). I had a 4.0 GPA and was the 50th percentile of the class, approximately #750 out of 1500 kids in my class. Colleges take that into account and I would never have made it to an ivy league (I did get 1 offer, but because I was an athlete and they wanted me to compete for them), but all things being equal if I came from that poor rural area you reference I would be looked at like a scholar, maybe even #1 in the graduating class vs #750, and I might have had multiple Ivy league admissions.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by thaumasiotes on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @11:18AM (#21137370)
> I would never have made it to an ivy league (I did get 1 offer
[dead]
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by tamizhar on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @10:21PM (#21132926)
> Asians adolescent academic performance is a worse predictor of this than for Europeans.

Why do you think this is the case?

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by autokad on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @09:48PM (#21132775)
> "those who are not oppressed simply have no real frame of reference to understand the problem"

Yet somehow you think you are enlightened by a little volunteer work. as far as immigrants in America go, Asians make more money than whites. When you compare Chinese, the difference is starker.

FWIW, I don't think you were really that poor. I grew up white, male, and poor from Appalachia. I promise you, there was no privilege in that. Its a crime against humanity that someone's test scores are worth less than another's simply because they were not born with enough pigment in their skin.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by fromky on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @04:11AM (#21134300)
On the other hand be happy you were given the poor white from Appalachia scale for your test scores rather than the middle-class Asian from New Jersey scale.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by murgindrag on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @07:18AM (#21135202)
Institutional racism is real. That doesn't make these programs right, or even a solution. Ivy+ schools carefully pick out minorities who didn't grow up in poor neighborhoods. Most of these programs act as institutionalized racism, and give the appearance of doing something without the reality.

If you pick out students who had real disadvantage -- growing up with horrible schools, having uneducated parents, not speaking English, being poor -- I'd be 100% for them.

That's not what we've got.

We've got a system where Harvard will bring in black people from the "right" neighborhoods, and white people if their parents went to Harvard, taught at Harvard, or donated to Harvard.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by berberous on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @11:22PM (#21133198)
So two wrongs make a right?

I think America largely fails its poor, black and marginalized communities, and that a ton more can and should be done, but that doesn't mean affirmative action is the right (both effectively and morally) solution, or that it's not systemacially unfair to other groups.

[dead]
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by shadowgovt on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:43PM (#21132435)
Education is not a zero-sum game.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by WillPostForFood on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @09:51PM (#21132793)
College admissions are zero-sum
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by shadowgovt on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @09:57PM (#21132821)
Not if we keep building colleges, no.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by legostormtroopr on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @10:18PM (#21132910)
Except there is only one Harvard University. You could spend billions making a new University next door that has just as high standard of teachers and facilities, but it wouldn't be Harvard.

Not that being "Harvard" would make it better, but to a lot of people the prestige of the name is important.

So to that effect, it is a zero sum game.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by shadowgovt on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @10:34PM (#21133000)
Does Harvard maintain that lauded reputation if it's known to admit a racial monoculture? Especially in, say, the technology fields, where we've seen the negative impact of such monoculture in the quality of software developed using machine learning algorithms?
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by paggle on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @03:42AM (#21134158)
All of the biggest software companies have almost no black engineers and relatively few female engineers. They still manage to make money hand over fist, looks like their software is good enough to do the job.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by shadowgovt on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @09:13AM (#21136007)
So you're satisfied with "makes money, but has known biases against people's inborn traits."

In general, we is a society (in America at least) have decided that's not good enough. It hasn't been good enough since the time there was one facility for the whites and one facility for the coloreds.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by rohit2412 on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @10:25PM (#21132944)
So it's either 1) accept affirmative action and we'll increase spending on education, or 2) reject affirmative action and we would spend this money somewhere else (maybe whatever else gets the votes)?
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by ummonk on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @12:37AM (#21133467)
How do we magically give new colleges Harvard-level endowments?
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by mlevental on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @08:18AM (#21135573)
> my ancestors were not oppressing either latinos or Africans. I'll make my voice heard by not voting for Democrats.

so I guess you're making up for lost time? or setting the precedent for your own progeny? because I'm like 100% sure that during the era of slavery the same arguments were made by slavers - "my ancestors didn't participate in the crusades so I'm morally absolved..."

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by wavefunction on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:35PM (#21132393)
This Judge was confirmed by the Senate which has been in Republican hands for some time.

You should go start your own Harvard and you can exclude or admit anyone you want.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by koolba on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @09:13PM (#21132607)
> This Judge was confirmed by the Senate which has been in Republican hands for some time.

The judge was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by a Democrat controlled Senate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allison_Dale_Burroughs

Federal judgeships are lifetime appointments so the current makeup of the Senate, short of impeaching her, has no relevance.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by jrs235 on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:36PM (#21132395)
I'm like you. White and use to think the same. Love him or hate him, the last chapter, A Jamaican Story, in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers really pierced my heart. I can't fathom what it must be like. I think those that despise affirmative action take things personally. They are right, sometimes it's not fair since they busted their butt, paid their dues, etc but lose out possibly because the color of their skin. It sucks and I'm sorry.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by throwaway_law on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @05:19PM (#21130798)
I suppose its not far from the SCOTUS 1st Amendment cases of porn/obscenity, they can't quite define it, but they'll know it when they see it.

Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) (link: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/539/306/)

>The requirement that all race-conscious admissions programs have a termination point "assure[s] all citizens that the deviation from the norm of equal treatment of all racial and ethnic groups is a temporary matter, a measure taken in the service of the goal of equality itself." Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S., at 510

>But such measures, the Convention instructs, "shall in no case entail as a consequence the maintenance of unequal or separate rights for different racial groups after the objectives for which they were taken have been achieved." Ibid.; see also Art. 1(4) (similarly providing for temporally limited affirmative action); Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Annex to G. A. Res. 34/180, 34 U. N. GAOR, 34th Sess., Res. Supp. (No. 46), p. 194, U. N. Doc. A/34/46, Art. 4(1) (1979) (authorizing "temporary special measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality" that "shall be discontinued when the objectives of equality of opportunity and treatment have been achieved").

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by rtkwe on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:09PM (#21132244)
For starters I'd say when the racial wealth gap has closed and when racial outcomes in education even out. So many of the factors that feed back into keeping those gaps alive can be traced directly back to racist policies like red lining that only ended less than a human life time ago.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by shadowgovt on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:42PM (#21132428)
Who says fixing income inequality is unachievable?
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by JPKab on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:53PM (#21132496)
Are all of your coworkers equally productive? Neighbors? Relatives?

The answer for all 3 for me personally is no. I have family members who make decisions based on different priorities which change their income. My coworkers differ radically in their abilities and work ethic. How can they have equal incomes in this scenario? There is a way to do this, and it hasn't worked any time it's been tried.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by jqgatsby on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @10:03PM (#21132852)
I don't think "fixing income inequality" needs to mean that everyone is paid the same amount. It's reasonable to believe that <insert billionaire here> isn't a million times more productive than their median employee, and that factors other than pure merit allowed them to amass that much wealth. Even if you did think that they were that meritorious, you could still make an argument that "fairness" should involve balancing both merit and utility (in this case referring to the diminishing marginal utility of money).
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by tomschlick on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @10:18AM (#21136705)
> It's reasonable to believe that <insert billionaire here> isn't a million times more productive than their median employee

If a normal employee at say walmart brings in $100 worth of value a day to the company, and the CEO executes a few big multi-million dollar deals that month, then the CEO in fact would be significantly more productive (in terms of capital to the company) than the average employee.

> and that factors other than pure merit allowed them to amass that much wealth.

Yes like taking the risk of starting such a business to employ others and putting down the capital which might be lost.

I also don't know who you think would enforce some kind of "fairness" limit on how much money someone makes. The government doing so would likely be ruled unconstitutional and wouldn't likely ever be passed in the first place through congress.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by Konnstann on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @04:04PM (#21140237)
Just to play devil's advocate, if you put a normal Walmart employee in a CEO position, or maybe just an "executive" position with decision-making authority, how far off would they be in terms of productivity from someone normally in that position? Say the employee was 1/10th as productive as that executive, that would still be thousands of times more productive than that same employee at their regular minimum wage job.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by shadowgovt on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @05:02PM (#21140719)
> If a normal employee at say walmart brings in $100 worth of value a day to the company

If all the normal employees quit and Walmart can't replace them, how much money does Walmart lose?

Perhaps we should calculate value to the company based on that sort of reasoning.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by shadowgovt on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @09:56PM (#21132815)
I mean, "universal basic income" would be a good start.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by tomschlick on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @10:10AM (#21136613)
Until everyone's cost of living goes up because they have an extra $1k/mo and landlords / retailers know it. The same thing happened with guaranteed student loans. When people have money to burn the market will react by increasing prices.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by shadowgovt on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @11:42AM (#21137669)
It might, but it turns out macroeconomics isn't that simple.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by big_chungus on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @08:56AM (#21135854)
Adding one thousand to most statistical measures will either not change it or shift it by one thousand.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by BrandonM on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @10:11PM (#21132881)
In a given time period, let's say a year, you may personally work harder or smarter than in some other year. Do you believe that you should be compensated the same regardless of how hard or smart you work in a given year?

If you're a self-employed craftworker who produces hammers, should your income be the same each year, without regard for the quality or quantity of hammers you produced that year, and without considering the world's need for the sorts of hammers you produced? How would you go about achieving that outcome?

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by shadowgovt on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @10:37PM (#21133018)
I don't think fixing incoming equality means zeroing out differences in income. It means shortening the gap between the bottom quartile and the top quartile, which is currently huge.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by balls187 on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @06:05PM (#21131242)
> So under that thought process... when does the temporary measure end?

Difficult to answer, and honestly not at all a priority to have an answer.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by tomschlick on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @06:09PM (#21131284)
It is when the courts say as a temporary measure its ok. You have to define temporary or else it just becomes de-facto permanent.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by balls187 on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @06:37PM (#21131615)
> You have to define temporary or else it just becomes de-facto permanent.

Perhaps, once it becomes settled law. However given Roe v Wade is still up for debate means that defacto permanence is not really a problem.

The answer then is "When the supreme court decides that the argument presented is sufficient to warrant no longer allowing race-concious admissions is a factor."

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by vageli on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @07:27PM (#21132004)
> > You have to define temporary or else it just becomes de-facto permanent.

> Perhaps, once it becomes settled law. However given Roe v Wade is still up for debate means that defacto permanence is not really a problem.

> The answer then is "When the supreme court decides that the argument presented is sufficient to warrant no longer allowing race-concious admissions is a factor."

Are new Roe v Wade like cases being heard by the court? There's a chilling effect to people bringing these cases to consider.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by mlevental on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @08:22AM (#21135601)
https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/fede...

I'm sure you're aware that like 10 other states have similar cases working their way through the court system

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by vageli on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @11:34AM (#21137568)
Ah, I was aware of a couple of suits in states. None yet heard by the Supreme Court, though (or slated for hearing). I wonder if the court would even hear arguments on what they consider to be settled case law.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by smashthepants on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @05:39PM (#21131000)
Income inequality is only "unachievable" exactly because of thinking like this. If people were genuinely invested in equality they would be asking "what can i do to get us there faster?" instead of being defeatist and calling it unachievable because you didn't personally create the problem.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by mikelyons on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @05:59PM (#21131187)
Income equality is outcome equality, which is unenforceable.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by maehwasu on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @07:53PM (#21132150)
It’s very enforceable. It’s just that it really, really sucks to live in a society that implements that enforcement.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by mikelyons on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:46PM (#21132444)
I don't believe you, can you give some examples?
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by maehwasu on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @09:19PM (#21132636)
Khmer Rouge killing lots of intellectuals is one classic example, although most socialist revolutions had their own variants.

I suppose you can do a No True Scotsman and say that those weren’t truly enforcing equality of outcome since there were people at the top of that society doing the enforcing, but most would find that argument pretty strained.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by chii on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @07:56PM (#21132172)
it should be opportunity equality, rather than outcome equality.

Everyone should have the chance at getting educated, but not everyone needs to pass or excel - it is up to the individual to succeed, but it is up to society to provide the opportunity to succeed. That is why schooling (primary, secondary and tertiary) should be free for everyone.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by BubRoss on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:18PM (#21132288)
And why school funding shouldn't be based on the neighborhood it is in.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by asdf21 on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @05:57PM (#21131172)
You didn't answer his question, created a strawman, put words in his mouth, implied he doesn't care about equality (isn't treating people equally, regardless of race equality?)... goodness.
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by smashthepants on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @06:03PM (#21131224)
He explicitly said income equality is unachievable. I didn't put those words in his mouth.

You can't answer the question of "when" if a person has already decided the goal is unachievable. Again, those were his words not mine

The temporary measures will end WHEN people are genuinely interested enough to help regardless of whether they created the problem. That is my answer. You just don't like it. And that's ok....

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by tomschlick on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @06:08PM (#21131268)
When, in the history of humanity, has income ever been at an acceptable level of equality?

If you/the people who support such a policy can't define an explicit goal then I'd say that's pretty unachievable.

[dead]
Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by tomschlick on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:06PM (#21132225)
There will always be rich, there will always be poor. That's simple economics. There has not been a society in human history that hasn't had those. Pretending that you can magically wish that away is crazy.

Our system is based on equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. If there are issues with the opportunity then we should work to fix those (like is already being done in inner cities cleaning up the drugs/pushing out gangs/preventing fatherless homes/etc). But pretending that you're going to fix those socioeconomic issues by giving preferential treatment to people based on race is just pulling other problems into the mix and is blatantly racist.

Re:Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions... by smashthepants on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @08:19AM (#21135576)
The problems were created by giving preferential treatment based on race, but the solution is to ignore race?

No one is advocating wishing anything away. If you want to focus specifically on equality of opportunity you can't do so without recognizing that race directly affects which opportunities are available to whom. Any solution that ignores that is just more of the same. And doing more of the same only extends the timeline of "when" that the original comment took issue with.