Wow - this sets a bad precedent. This might now encourage companies to now discriminate against Asias in hiring as well.
There are already murmurs in the Valley about how there are too many Asians in tech.
There are already murmurs in the Valley about how there are too many Asians in tech.
Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the intended spirit of this place more to heart? We'd appreciate it.
I understand the point of the argument; systemic oppression comes from power. The argument just seemed odd though.
The California legislature (for example) is less than half white.[1]
You could argue white males are overrepresented in some circumstances, but claiming white males hold institutional power exclusively (which is what you inferred) is just plain wrong.
[1]https://www.library.ca.gov/Content/pdf/crb/reports/CRB_2017-...
At least for Silicon Valley though, white people are, oddly enough, underrepresented relative to the US as a whole. Though that's less because white people are discriminated against, and more because there are a LOT of Asian immigrant tech workers.
The law only matters inasmuch as it can be enforced. If judges decline to enforce the law when they believe it’s in the interest of diversity to discriminate against a specific race like Asians, it could equally apply to employment where similar diversity initiatives are taking root.
There is a difference between general admission and "programs or activities that receive Federal financial assistance". While I'm not saying this is right, it appears to be the current letter of the law. If, for example, race were a determining factor in who works on one of the R&D projects at Harvard that is funded by federal money it would be different than this situation.
Does each student at Harvard get federal financial assistance through Harvard? Not state financial assistance but federal. The different matters to the letter of the law.
It looks like the devil is in the details.
There are only a few conservative religious schools that are exceptions. They refuse all federal funds to prevent such laws applying. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grove_City_College_v._Bell
> However, the Court also held that the regulation would apply only to the institution's financial aid department, not to the school as a whole.
> The decision by the Supreme Court was effectively overturned when the United States Congress subsequently passed the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987, which specified that recipients of federal funds must comply with civil rights laws in all areas, not just in the particular program or activity that received federal funding.
I just read the full decision, and there's a pretty decent number of citations of existing case law discussing what does and doesn't count as discriminating by race, specifically within the context of college admissions. It's in the last 1/3 of the document after the findings of fact and discussions of statistical analyses.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mzqBPL57yCRWHZGE7A6U6re3cGX...
You might disagree with the reasoning of the decision, but there's already case law separating education from employment. Past that we get into slippery slope territory that this decision specifically avoids.
Judges in the future may rule that tech companies can pass strict scrutiny if they are discriminating against Asians in favor of other races, using similar arguments to those in education law.
This area of law is slippery because the text of Federal civil rights law doesn’t allow for discrimination, but case law (and arguably the original intent of the law’s authors) does.
There is currently a large movement in favor of “diversity” programs in hiring and I can see judges upholding them.
Absolutely reading the decision will be informative to everyone though.
Hiring =/= college admissions. Just because they both contain 'discrimination' in the complaint doesn't mean they are logically all that linked.
https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/
Diversity efforts sit in a gray area that is nowhere close to race quotas.
https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1000,_Affirmat...
You'd be more right if it was passed, but it's not.
The trick is that affirmative action is sold as an effort to negate other discrimination.
Ask pretty much any Asian(-American) I know, myself included, and none of them would choose to switch places with a Latino or Black friend who went to the same college and has a similar job, because we all know the problems are overall worse on the other side.
Racism against Asians in the US gets less coverage because it's generally less bad.
Whatever the reason for one group having more violent crime over another - I guarantee you that the more violent groups' activities will be more closely covered due to the "bleed" factor.
If anyone is caught discriminating on employment based on race it's directly against federal law.
Even if it weren't, it should be obvious something wrong is happening...