That certainty is a sign of ignorance and therefore I am ignorant because I am certain is false because that argument is circularly invalid. This statement: "If you are certain about something, it's time to re-examine your assumptions." Seems pretty certain to me.
Ha, I love the meta-cognitive logic judo! It's a fair point, but I hope the subtext of my entire meta-point is that I regard my opinions with little certainty. Even my defense of affirmative action as a policy is measured, because I think it's a very complex issue that I'm not an expert on. Maybe a better way to put it would've been: "When I'm certain about something, I find that it's generally time to re-examine my assumptions."
But again, what I take issue with is that your argument starts with the premise that college admissions should be about past performance.
However, I do fully grapple with the opposing arguments that are in favor of Affirmative Action. I just reject them. I understand their side, I've just been lead to believe it is suboptimal.
If you did, I missed it. AA is about equal opportunity. It's about providing opportunities to people who are circumstantially impoverished of them.
I don't know and I don't care because to me it is racist to favor or disfavor one group based on race.
From behind Rawls's veil of ignorance and with the premise that education leads to higher wages, one's race should have no bearing on whether they can get into college. If one race is systematically denied that opportunity, then it's racist to not address that systematic oppression.
Now there are plenty of premises there to argue with, but I didn't see you argue with any of them. You instead talked about certain consequences that you perceive from affirmative action that you find suboptimal. But suboptimal increase in tensions between sub-cultures is not something affirmative action was meant to address. Also:
If they are wrong, then their competitors are able to get black graduates cheaper, and, at the margin, grow faster.
It sounds like you're saying that companies that don't subscribe to us vs. them will then outperform companies that do, so it'll sort itself out.
So, what's the problem, then?
I apologize for resorting to ad hominem, I didn't mean to. The last thing I want is to start a flamewar. I should've phrased my response more carefully. The reason I brought up my meta-point is that I read a tone of certainty in your prose. I recognize both that that's subjective and that sometimes it's enlightening to stake a hard-line position and defend it vigorously.
No, you're just perpetrating rhetorical nonsense like “intolerance of intolerance is intolerance (and therefore my intolerance is OK)”.
That certainty is a sign of ignorance and therefore I am ignorant because I am certain is false because that argument is circularly invalid. This statement: "If you are certain about something, it's time to re-examine your assumptions." Seems pretty certain to me.
But I'll cede that I do struggle with the complexities. A couple months ago I wrote this: http://zachaysan.tumblr.com/post/11602694501/on-economics where I outline past beliefs and why economic policy is hard to study empirically. To me it fundamentally comes down to ethics.
However, I do fully grapple with the opposing arguments that are in favor of Affirmative Action. I just reject them. I understand their side, I've just been lead to believe it is suboptimal.
"[I]f there's nothing genetically wrong with black people, then blacks should be demographically represented in colleges. "
That sounds like you are projecting your way of western thinking onto a subculture you probably don't fully understand. Maybe blacks culturally value things that we don't, like exercise or leisure. I don't know and I don't care because to me it is racist to favor or disfavor one group based on race. Furthermore it is an affront to liberty to force another institution to commence a transaction they do not want to do (allow a substandard applicant to join).
"Why should employers take into account how someone got into Harvard, instead of judging them solely on their performance at Harvard?"
I'm not saying they should, I'm saying that they do. If the side effect of them doing so (if their rational ends up being right) is that they get higher preforming workers then they will grow and this system of discrimination will grow with them. If they are wrong, then their competitors are able to get black graduates cheaper, and, at the margin, grow faster.
Alan Greenspan only hired female economists because he was convinced that they were just as smart as men, and he could pay them less. Of course his firm ended up being wildly successful.
I'll end with saying that Canada does not have an Affirmative Action policy, And I saw absolutely no systemic intellectual difference between them and the rest of the school.
"The things that you (I presume) and I (I'm Asian) take for granted, many black people cannot." Thomas Sowell, a world class economist, the black son of a poor single mom agrees with me on Affirmative Action. I go with appeal to authority because it is my only defense against an Ad hominem.