If being color blind upholds, and being color biased upholds. What should we do.
There’s a separate issue that if you think there isn’t systemic racism against Asian Americans then you may want to practice empathizing. So if there’s historic systemic racism against certain groups, isn’t it worse to identify some groups and turn the screws on them? A vengeance based social policy will be difficult to implement as the perpetrators already got theirs out of the education system and it will likely have lots of negative consequences and lead to a worse society.
I realize I've practically described affirmative action. But there's varying ways to implement this system that avoids certain complaints. Let's say Harvard always admits 5000 students a year, they could add a bonus pool of 1000 students set aside for this. On the other hand if they're concerned about overwhelming their faculty they could admit 4000 students through normal means and 1000 from the special set aside.
One of the objections to this is it's unfair to the 4000 or 5000 students who will now receive a lesser education because of some wrongs that they weren't responsible for.
I'd like to propose it's equally unfair that students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds because of explicit decisions that these institutions made are denied a similar education. In this case should our institutions take no action to avoid upsetting the status quo and maintain a "color blind" ideal, or should they take active actions to rectify historic wrongs that continue to create inequality in the current day?
It’s like poking out a random person’s eye because racists blinded someone. Yes it helps the person who can now see, but the person who lost their eye will likely be bitter.
The best program I’ve seen is the dedicated funding to expand new positions and try to target the expansion toward underrepresented. So while the ratios are still weird, people aren’t being excluded.
Of course this is the most expensive option, especially in zero sum games like Harvard admissions. It’s easier to target some less visible vulnerable population and reallocate the positions.
I do agree that being truly color blind keeps populations lacking 100 years of opportunity locked in a cycle. But perhaps we can get more precise with targeting based on income, or social determinants, or factors that are not specific to race and are more likely to provide opportunity to need. Of course many populations also share social determinants like income, parents education, country of birth, etc.
The problem is not "compounding returns", it is genetics and, to a lesser extent, culture.
Until this fact, which most educated people know but are terrified to say aloud, is admitted and reckoned with, no progress will be made. This will hurt non-asian minorities the most.
Replace 'genetics' with 'astrological sign' and you see how absurd this argument is.
The consensus amongst neurobiologists is that adult IQ is somewhere between 70-80% based on genetic factors. I invite you to read "The Neuroscience of Intelligence" by Richard Haier, and the many studies cited therein.
Comparing this scientific work with astrology is clownish, on par with young earth creationism.