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Comment by lainga | Hacker News Reader

Equivalent Bloomberg article [0] mentions that the ACLU has taken Harvard's side, and they state [1]:

While the DOJ’s brief does not challenge Supreme Court precedent granting universities the right to freely select their own student body—presumably because it cannot do so at this stage of the litigation—the Trump administration has advocated for “race-blind” policies, which Harvard and virtually all other universities have found are demonstrably insufficient to achieve meaningful diversity, given the reality of historic and continuing racial discrimination in this country.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/doj-backs...

[1] https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-statement-department-justice-...

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I find the ACLU's statement wholly unsatisfying. There is a tradeoff here: is unquestionable racism against Asian-Americans justifiable to increase advance African-American participation in higher education? There is also surely a legal question at play.

The ACLU, instead of addressing either matter, launches a political statement announcing its stance without justification. Lost some respect for them here.

The ACLU has historically taken the philosophy of defending fundemental rights by defending them for unpopular people (eg. they would defend the right of Nazi's to march in a Jewish neighboorhood).

I don't know if I am looking at their past through rose colored glasses, but their new direction is disturbing. It seems like they are increasingly okay with sacrifing our fundemental rights in favor of short term expediancy.

Having said that, this is still just the start of a change in course. They still do a lot of good work, and they might find their way again.

The bigger problem is that liberalism is dying in the US. The ACLU is the last major liberal public group/movement and they seem to be turning away from it.

They have already codified a full reversal on that historic position.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-aclu-retreats-from-free-exp...

It annoys me how every official statement from institutions supporting affirmative action doesn't seem to acknowledge that racial discrimination is happening and is actively harming individuals.

Any reasonable person would at least acknowledge the trade-off between racial discrimination and racial diversity.

I'm not sure I understand the ACLU's statement. Is Harvard's discrimination against Asian-Americans for their race not racial discrimination to the ACLU? Or is it OK because it benefits worse-off races? I'm open to alternatives, I'm not trying to establish a false dichotomy here.

That argument is plausible, in general. In this specific case, I don't think it is. Harvard admissions policy benefits at least as many white applicants as non-Asian minority applicants.

Yeah, that is bonkers. Let’s use some actual racism to fix some other deficiency, which we assume is the result of some previous racism.

If the deficiency is not the result of previous racism, what is it the result of?

Take a completely random sampling of 1 million people from populations all across the world. And in fact, take them from the day of birth to avoid any sort of early biases (actually 'harbor' the parents from the day of conception to avoid any sort of prenatal differences). And now put all of these million people on a completely homogenous and equally fertile chunk of land on an island. Raise each and every single one of them identically until they are of an age to take care of themselves. Give each and every one of them the exact same amount of starting 'capital' and set them free to achieve as they will.

200 years later, with a population that's multiplied several magnitudes over - would you expect to still see a completely equal people? I wouldn't. People are different. And each child that is born is different, even when born to the same parents. Even identical twins are no longer completely identical by the time of birth. These differences express themselves in different ways (and wow was that the most tautological statement ever), but the point is that I think it's highly illogical to expect to see equality.

Out of genuine curiosity, do you disagree?

> 200 years later, with a population that's multiplied several magnitudes over - would you expect to still see a completely equal people? I wouldn't

I would. South Koreans are 2-3 inches taller than North Koreans, plus a miriad of other biological differences, in a relatively short span of time. This is for the same ethnicity, yet alone race.

For me, that alone is proof we are much more similar than we think, and environmental factors, which your hypothetical scenario accounts for perfectly, has a much greater impact on us compared to genetics.

Which is why, for perfectly randomly selected humans raised identically for 200 years, I would not expect significant differences.

The short of it is that the ACLU consider affirmative action a form of just racism. This form of racism corrects for past transgressions, helps achieve diversity targets, and "keeps the doors open" for minorities, so they consider it not only morally justifiable, but commendable.

Their position paper on affirmative action is available here: https://www.aclu.org/other/affirmative-action-aclu-position-... and I think it illustrates not only their rationale, but the tone of their support for that philosophy.

Fair disclaimer that I am obviously opposed to this approach and have been cautiously skeptical of the ACLU for a while now.

Actually it's a form of racial discrimination that is countering racism.

...what separates racial discrimination from racism?

Your race

My view on it is that all ethnicities are necessarily equal (no race is smarter than any other) so large scale differences in admissions are the result of cultural and historical circumstances. By picking off most metrics you will get a "better" student body by those metrics but you are also responsible for perpetuating those biases. In addition to this philosophical reasons there is the practical reason that diversity can increase access to new ideas (and generally overall team performance) and can also make it much easier to recruit a wider set of people so it's not an absurd goal from a practical standpoint.

> My view on it is that all ethnicities are necessarily equal (no race is smarter than any other)

I'm curious as to why you think that should necessarily be the case.

I'm referring to things that affect ability (things like skin color are different but not unequal in this regard). Even if certain small communities had some variations they become meaningless once you reach the scale of "asian", "european", or even just "chinese" so once your are talking about a group of any significant size it averages out. I used the term "necessarily" because by statistics on that large of a sample they will be equal unless there is a reason to think the underlying distribution between those groups is different (which I don't think there is on a large scale).

I'm skeptical. There are clear physical distinctions between different races. Africans clearly have blacker skin, a different facial structure, and different hair types compared to Nordics.

Unless one is going to argue that there are no genetic differences between individuals in the brain, it seems unlikely to me that different races don't have different brains in some fashion.

Lack of compelling statistical evidence that explicitly shows otherwise when taking into account different environmental and societal backgrounds.

Sure that is a nearly impossible to accomplish considering how convoluted this equation is so we have to step back and it becomes a question of belief, and in this world of belief I can really only condense it into two categories.

1. If it exists, it doesn't matter 2. It exists and does matter ("does matter" in my mind precludes equality, one must be superior)

To me it is really a question of whether I personally choose be racist or not, racism being defined as "prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior".

I'm going to cut this short at that I do not believe someone can both believe a specific race is superior and act without prejudice. Again a lot of assumptions, but if wanted to keep going down the ladder of explanations I'd write an essay or a book.

Disappointed in ACLU's stance. Why not apply the same logic to other parts of admission and ensure Asian students receive equal share of sport scholarships.

Harvard doesn't offer sports scholarships.

But they offer admission based on ability to play sports, so they can mandate meaningful diversity on their sports teams that reflects the greater student body.

Along with other school propaganda like "MIT doesn't do legacy", "Ivy League doesn't offer sports scholarships" is essentially false. The implication is that the ivy leagues don't give a "free pass" to students for athletic reasons, when they do.

To their credit, they aren't willing to sacrifice all pretense of "student-athletes" compared to some other schools. But there are definitely plenty of students that only get admission due to their athletic ability.

Disappointed in what the ACLU has become. I don't think their fundamental intentions are off, but in order to raise money in an anti-Trump era, they've definitely veered off course in practice.

EDIT: For those downvoting me, you should give this a listen: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/podcasts/the-daily/aclu-n...

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