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Comment by cercatrova | Hacker News Reader

But isn't that how you achieve systematic equality? For example, say there are two races X and Y. X is the overachiever (doesn't even have to be a majority, there could be a 50/50 population), while Y is the underachiever, for whatever historical reasons these two groups faced. So, to get Y on the same level as X and restore a meritocracy, you must admit more of Y, even if X does better in some cases. Meritocracy only makes sense if everyone starts off with the same advantages. Otherwise, the populations must converge until such a point is reached. It becomes an argument for shortchanging certain populations for the greater good of society, to undo the disparity of the past. Is that not why AA exists?

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It's absolutely fine to give extra advantages to people with low incomes. That's economic progressivism.

It's wrong to give extra advantages based on genetics, essentially saying that some people "genetically poor" or "genetically rich", which is what Affirmative Action does.

There are clearly multiple axes of inequality in our society beyond the economic, including race and sex. A fair and equal admissions policy should account for all of those.

Affirmative action is quantifiable and blatant racism/sexism.

> multiple axes of inequality in our society beyond the economic, including race and sex

is not clear or quantified at all.

Since affirmative action is provably bad because it is literal sexism/racism, the supposed inequality that AA offputs must be proven and quantified

That's exactly why affirmative action exists:

It's wrong to give extra advantages based on genetics. Therefore, giving an extra advantage to someone who is not given those other extra advantages, evens the score.

Affirmative action will prefer a middle-income black person to a low-income white person. It 'evens the score' for some poor people, but not for others.

There are plenty of systems that benefit some areas of society and not others. It sounds from your comment that you're all for an even distribution of rewards across society. Is that a fair characterization? Why is this case particularly egregious to you compared to other inequalities?

Race is being used as a proxy for income.

Why not just use income?

There won't be glaring unfairness in the system where an upper middle class black kid gets preference over the child of poor, uneducated Fujian immigrants who can barely speak English

If there's an imbalance along racial lines, any reversal to that trend is better than nothing. The ideal world is one where there's no glaring unfairness, but maybe we can address at least some of that unfairness.

I'm of the opinion that university should be free.

How does "disparities of the past" account for modern-day disparities between e.g. Latinos and Indians? Both relatively recent to the US in large numbers; Indians seem much more represented in tech than Latinos. The proposition that all modern day population disparities are explained by historical "evil white people" seems tenuous at best. Kicking deserving top 30% people out of middle class life tracks because you insist reality must adhere to your sense of statistical proportion seems unjust to me.

Yes, it is not 'just' from a Kantian perspective, where the suffering of one is always bad, but this is just from a utilitarian perspective, that the ends justify the means. Indeed, that percentage of people are kicked out for a proportional percent who are accepted, but after some time, there is proportional equality. Some must suffer in the short term for the benefit of many in the long term.

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