The Affirmative Action Blues | Hacker News Reader

The Affirmative Action Blues

facebook.com

25 pointsexolymph9 comments

> No one who is concerned about the well-being of black students, in the legal academy or elsewhere, should welcome public scrutiny of the relative academic performance of those black students who are benefiting from the practice of affirmative action at elite universities! And yet, this is what the pillorying of Amy Wax will surely lead to. I promise you, as someone who knows a thing or two about what's going on at the most selective academic institutions in this country, no good can come of that.

I'd kind of like to know what would come from that, and how it would be detrimental to "the well-being of black students".

Ideally, the confrontation of economic realities that America is long overdue for.

I did not like reading this and won’t defend it on a general basis. It suffers from the same problem that undermines all identity related political efforts: a failure to acknowledge the integral role of capital disparities in every area of our lives.

It’s tough, and somewhat pointless, to debate the effects of affirmative action unless it can be isolated from the circumstances it seeks to defeat. We have by and large failed to accomplish that.

Isolating the maps of our societal relations (culture, tradition, economy, geography) is incredibly difficult, until we can offer equal opportunities in life, we will be fools to expect equal outcomes in particular segments.

Let us be humble and consider that Democrats are equally challenged in these considerations.

> I did not like reading this and won’t defend it on a general basis. It suffers from the same problem that undermines all identity related political efforts: a failure to acknowledge the integral role of capital disparities in every area of our lives.

I thought the author did their very best to steer clear of actually going into the affirmative action issue itself, instead focusing purely on Penn’s reaction to the debacle. He even says as much, at one point:

> I will not state here whether I agree or disagree with Amy Wax's controversial opinions about affirmative action, about bourgeois culture, or about what are the appropriate remedies for past racial wrongs.

Seems to me like there is little room in this article to (fail to) acknowledge anything about the merits of affirmative action.

In fact, reading between the lines of that one paragraph, i would wager he does agree with you. But he doesn’t want to give anyone the satisfaction of getting him to say it.

Edit: rest of that paragraph, for context:

> I won't say, because it's completely irrelevant to the points I'm making here; and, because to state that "I certainly don't agree with Wax on A, B, or C, but ..." would be to concede far too much to the thought police. It would be a transparent attempt to gain credibility with them before criticizing their reactions to Wax, and I refuse to acknowledge their authority over me in that way. […]

Hear, hear.

All good points. I just wanted to be cautious but it’s probably not fair for me to imply his stance was stronger than you describe.

The following is pure speculation, and may not align with Professor Loury's intent, but I think seems plausible:

There is some portion of the population who view the visibility of an action as a signal of its virtue. In other words, actions conducted "secretly" are "bad", and actions which are "good" may conversely always be conducted publicly. (Somewhat analogous to the familiar "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.")

To this group, "secretly" advantaging one group of students over another is a signal that doing so is intrinsically wrong, and that if such an action is a good one, the university would do so openly and transparently. These negative perceptions, over time, may result in a backlash by this group against a well-intentioned policy meant to increase "the well-being of black students."

Basically, there are two different explanations for why black students find it hard to get into college.

(1) Racism. The white people in charge of college admissions just don't like black people, and let too few of them into college.

(2) Performance difference. Black students, on average, are less academically capable than white students.

A person who truly believes in meritocracy would say that if the explanation is (1), then it's an institutional problem that needs an institutional solution which involves supporting or boosting black students in some way. If the explanation is (2), then it's a problem with the individual student; black students need to improve their average level of study skills, talent, maturity, preparation, hard work, and all the other things that go into academic success.

The author's saying that he believes the evidence, in the form of grades by race, points toward explanation (2). If this is the case, and that evidence becomes public, meritocrats will turn against programs that help black students. Since they want to protect students from racism, but (by the definition of meritocracy) don't want to protect students from the consequences of their inability to perform academically, even if that means certain racial groups become underrepresented.

That might actually be what Loury was getting at (I was honestly as surprised as OP at that line). However, there does seem to be a third, midway option, which the author even alludes to: black people have been socially and economically disadvantaged for centuries (to put it mildly), resulting in overrepresentation in lower socio economic groups. That, in turn, would lead to lower academic performance (regardless of race), because of less support and encouragement from the environment. In broad strokes: Option 3 is a combination of 1 (but societal, not just in academics), leading to 2 (but correlation, not causation).

The idea of affirmative action then (assuming #3) being: giving black people more space in the academic race will eventually help break that chain.

There are a lot of assumptions here, but I don’t see how this would be incongruous with either the author’s earlier statements or affirmative action as a whole.

However I doubt this is actually true, because the author (an expert, unlike me) seems to know something I don’t.

There is also (3) different initial state. If for instance schools in areas where majority of black people live are lower quality. Food. Or perhaps the presence of crime. Culture of disdain for education might be a thing as well.

These are institutional causes similar to (1) that are not racism but demand an institutional solution too.

Policies of equality of outcomes are inherently discriminatory. If black people are positively discriminated for then asians are being negatively discriminated against. Since spaces in college are limited when you give one space to someone you take it away from another.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com