Seems like a cop-out to me, especially when dealing with scarce resources (ie. admission slots). The policy of "more inclusion" by giving preferential treatment to one group, ends up excluding everyone else.
edit: reworded "Your policy" to "The policy" to avoid making it about the parent.
I never agreed to artificial scarcity in the form of admission slots, and so I'm not interested in defending any particular consequence of that system.
You're still avoiding the question. Is your position "I support inclusion, only when resources are not scarce?"
You don't admit 100 million students to an excellent school. You make 1 million excellent schools and admit 100 students to each. There is no reason for there to be a scarcity of excellent education in our wealthy, developed country.
I support actions that make the world a more just place in the Rawlsian sense of the word. Affirmative action makes the world a more just place.
No it doesn't -- race-blind admission standards make the world more just, affirmative action make people like you feel as though they make the world more just. Big difference.
There's obviously no evidence to suggest standardized evaluation of academic excellence favor any particular racial genetics. The fact that today in the US, race-blind admission causes over/under representation of certain racial demographics is thus entirely due to social-economical and cultural factors. We can therefore expect that once those factors are equalized, then the results of a standardized race-blind admission process should naturally reflect the racial demographics of the general populace.
Unfortunately, just as those social-economical and cultural factors are the cumulation of damages done by racial oppression over many generations, so too its undoing will take generations to fully accomplish. And yes, that does mean you may likely not live to see that day. But the seemingly easy path of using affirmative action to force an outcome so that you can pretend to live in a just world is entirely the wrong way to tackle this problem, and will only serve to make the world worse for everyone involved.
> Affirmative action makes the world a more just place.
The question you have been dancing around: why is it just to disadvantage Asians in favor of other minorities? What is the mainstream Progressive justification for discriminating against Asians?
Edit: To be clear: what I'm claiming is that the "progressive" position is better associated with improving education overall. It's only through a particularly warped partisan lens does it become this ridiculous squabble over artificially scarce resources.
Right, just as there's no political party/government whose position is runaway inflation. Yet, runaway inflation still happens, usually as a result of some sort of government policy. The fact that no one advocates for it directly is irrelevant. If you advocate for a policy, you're advocating for all of its effects, good or bad.
I'm under the impression that at least for undergraduate education, your average StateU is probably on par with the best name brand colleges. Most of the value of going to a selective school is the signaling/branding aspect, not necessarily the education itself (although it still might be above average). When considering that aspect, you really can't have "1 million excellent schools", because if every school is excellent, than no school is.
That's the system we have now. But you end up running out of students who are capable of receiving an excellent education.
My understanding is that the US, with its uniquely devolved set of educational authorities and standards is alone in the developed world in terms of the inequality of education offered to its children.
In terms of primary and secondary education, absolutely. In higher education, inequality is common across countries, but higher education has a much smaller average effect on actual life outcomes than childhood education. Yet somehow reforming the school system (and the avaricious correlation between property taxes and outcomes) gets a lot less political oxygen.
There is most definitely similar inequality in other countries.
Mass incarceration? Depending on your definition
I want to an artificially elite high school (one of the best in the country), and I would much rather see everyone and not just the presumed elite treated the way I was.
The change to subjective admissions criteria that led to a drop from 73% Asians to under 50% at Thomas Jefferson could be said to be more inclusive of the races that saw increased representation. It's also correct to say that it's more exclusive of Asians.
The overall quality of America's educational system is not fixed-sum. We should be creating a dozen more TJs for every one that currently exists.
To narrow down more surgically on the issue here:
> Many progressives believe in affirmative action, which doesn't say anything about the particulars of the groups that aren't being explicitly included. Nobody at all is interested in exclusion; they are interested in more inclusion.
This is incorrect. Affirmative action is absolutely just as much about exclusion as inclusion. Advantaging one group is the same thing as disadvantaging all other groups. And yes, the mainstream progressive platform is to advantage minorities other than Asians - which is the same thing as disadvantaging Asians.
My company tried to pull this argument when proposing a larger bonus to recruiters for hiring diverse candidates. "Oh it's not disadvantaging any group, it's just being more inclusive towards diverse groups". But it's not. The company phrased is as an extra $250 to ($500 vs $250) to inspire recruiters to be more inclusive towards women and URM. But you could say the normal bonus is $500, but there's a $250 penalty for non-diverse candidates. Advantaging vs disadvantaging, and inclusion vs exclusion. They're all two ends of the same lever.
The reason for disadvantaging Asians (and Jews) is that it has always been fashionable to do so. This was true long before the Chinese Exclusion Act and, in the US, it seems it may always be true.
There is no "mainstream Progressive (sic) justification" for discriminating against Asians, because there is no progressive political platform built on discriminating against Asians.
Here's Eugene Volokh writing about it in 1998: https://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/asian.htm
https://missionlocal.org/2021/03/alison-collins-school-board...
If you have limited open positions and you use race to determine who gets them then you are excluding 1 person for every 1 person you are including.
In a contingency, the inclusion of a group will result in exclusion in other groups.
Many progressives believe in affirmative action, which doesn't say anything about the particulars of the groups that aren't being explicitly included. Nobody at all is interested in exclusion; they are interested in more inclusion.