I’m an Asian and I’m okay with affirmative action. But it’s worth noting that over 60% of Black people think race should not be even a “small factor” in college admissions: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/25/most-americ...
Insofar as the public might not want race-based preferences, there are things we can do that are putatively race-neutral but will disproportionately advantage Black people. One of the most effective things we could do is baby bonds: https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/how-baby-bonds-could-help-a...
Fixing that disproportionately negatively affect Black people, such as criminal justice reform, would help. Police reform-not just to reduce brutality, but also to reduce crime in Black communities—would help.
Any distinction in a decision is discrimination. What is more relevant is it (legally or ethically, depending on context) impermissible discrimination.
The question is whether or not this is justifiable discrimination.
Those are much more difficult to game. Why not use those things instead of something like race?
Technically? Technically?!?!
As a person in the discriminated against group of the DOJ complaint, I am against the DOJ motion. I agree Yale probably violated the law, but I don't view AA as inherently immoral.
Downvote time: my solution for Yale to serve the least empowered historically groups in this country, descendants of slaves and equally disempowered groups through generationally unfair/racist laws (e.g. interment camps, 3/5 compromise, Jim Crow, red lining, etc) is to say if you can trace your family history to any of these events, you get a boost. Same effect, not race based.
Fortunately, you don't need a pity circus to figure out who needs help today and going forward. IMO that's not only a less incendiary angle from which to approach the problem, it's much easier to correctly implement, much more productive, and much less prone to back-and-forth escalation.
Part of the assumption behind equalizing outcomes is that it might illuminate negative discriminatory behavior, and allow the system to equalize on it's own faster than it would without any intervention. I'd love to hear more about when & whether this works. If it does help fix racism, maybe it's worth some temporary action. If it doesn't help fix the underlying issue, then maybe the Justice Department is doing the right thing.
Instead, you fight racism by A) stomping it out where you see it, B) instituting policies that help poor and disadvantaged people in general. Strategies like that are much more foolproof than trying to fight racism with racism. Also much more expensive, which is why there's a temptation to kid ourselves that fighting racism with racism could possibly work.
What does it mean exactly to stomp it out where you see it? How do we see it and how do we stomp it out? What if it's hard to see, or difficult to stomp out?
Are there cases I can read about where these strategies have been proven foolproof, has it worked in other countries to eliminate racism by helping the poor?
I'm an engineer. Systems theory is how I interface with these ideas. It has notions of "gain margin" and "phase margin" -- i.e. how hard you can push (or how long you can delay feedback, the two are somewhat interchangeable, which is often under-appreciated) before your attempt to build a self-correcting airplane wing, power delivery circuit, rocket that points up, etc stops being self-correcting and turns into a wildly oscillating self-destructive mess that you should count yourself lucky if it only destroys itself without taking its surroundings with it.
In society, we can't calculate gain margin and phase margin, but we still have to decide how hard to push and if we push too hard, the system will still punish us. All of us. Nobody likes to hear "push more softly for the cause you believe in." I sure don't. But having screwed up this choice in an engineering context, I respect the possibility of screwing it up in a social context, and I see it as a strong argument for exercising restraint.
> What does it mean exactly to stomp it out where you see it? How do we see it and how do we stomp it out? What if it's hard to see, or difficult to stomp out?
We've stomped out most of the blatant, obvious racism that was easy to see, so from here out it's largely going to be difficult. That is: option B, above. That's how we go after the systemic racism: ensure that the system shrinks the influences of the past rather than growing them. In particular, we need to figure out what kind of support is necessary to give the next generation of kids a fair shake at life and give it to them. Even more specifically I'm thinking about federally funded health care, housing, and primary/secondary education. It's going to cost a lot. It's not going to let us indulge in fantasies of somehow canceling out the racism of yesterday. But it might let us fix tomorrow.
What examples are you thinking of? When has that happened?
> We’ve stomped out most of the blatant, obvious racism that was easy to see
Are you sure about that? Why are you sure about it? There are a lot of metrics that still show wide inequalities by race, such as pay and wealth, access to health care, and last but not least education. Police treatment differing by race obviously still exists.
I think this has been the sticking point, that some people will only “see” obviously oppressive or racist behavior as something we should stomp out, but when it comes to outcomes, even though outcomes clearly shows racism exists, there’s a flood of fierce debate like this one that we shouldn’t do anything about it, in the name of being anti-discrimination.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/04/economic-...
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2018/02...
https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/06/27/1-demographic-tre...
If the policy is to look at race and give/take points, that's racism in the most literal way possible.
If the policy is to look at SES, it's not racist, even though there's a correlation.
At some point correlations become strong enough that it's difficult to disentangle concepts, but I don't think this is an example of that. In particular: would giving points based on SES have screwed Asians in the way that trying to balance races did? Probably not. It's a better formulation of the problem.
You won't get many responses to this question. Stated plainly: If we aren't allowed to engage in some form of positive discrimination, we aren't allowed to compensate at all. To some people, that's how it should be. I don't agree, but I understand why they may feel that way. We all just want the best for ourselves and our respective groups, I guess.
The "historical" part is only useful so it doesn't happen again.
Attempting to compensate one race by taking from another race, one that had nothing to do with the harms inflicted on the first race, is robbing Peter to pay Paul. No amount of rhetoric can hide that.
Compensate all you want, just not at the expense of Asians.
My main question, without disagreeing with the hypotheses given by the Justice Department, is this: if it's true that blacks are still being discriminated against, and nobody is allowed to compensate for that by taking action, what else can we need to do to solve the pre-existing discrimination, assuming that it's cultural and difficult?