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I may get a lot of hate for this... But I think affirmative action has opposite the desired effect. The majority groups are dicriminated against by design. I don't think this does anything to fix the tensions causing racism in the first place. I think it makes them worse.

The government should find a way to benefit minorities without outright descrimination against those that doesn't fit their definition. My personal favorite idea is improving schools. If we diverted enough money and resources to primary schools in poor areas, we could achieve similar outcomes to affirmative action without just switching the groups we discrimate against.

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AIUI, it’s even worse, as the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action are well off members of the minority group (e.g. the kids of doctors and dentists) rather than students whose SES would be significantly improved by a degree from a prestigious institution. This is because admission is the first hurdle, not the last, and being well off removes potential sources of stress.

AIUI: As I understand it SES: Socioeconomic status/situation

I recently learned most Ivy League African-Americans are either biracial like Obama, or from Caribbean parents.

I've been catching whiffs, of a cultural tension between descendants of black families that immigrated from places like Africa and the Caribbean in the mid-20th century, who in my experience seem to benefit those most from affirmative action policies, and black Americans whose families either arrived decades before the civil rights movement, or descended directly from black slaves, and bore the brunt of America's apartheid policies.

I wonder if we'll see a major political bifurcation along those lines in the next decade.

Some have been advocating "American Descendants of Slavery" (ADOS) as an identity specifically for those whose ancestors were victims of slavery in the United States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Descendants_of_Slaver...

The Caribbean has a history of African slavery not unlike the U.S.

That is true. However, the US immigration system seems to select for the affluent, the skilled, and the already the successful. Many of them come to the country with existing contacts in positions to aid them through the process, and with specific plans. That means that many of these migrant are able to leapfrog many of most insurmountable structural barriers that black Americans face in terms of capital, debt, skills, policing, and access to an affluent social network by the simple act of being from anywhere else than America.

When they (the affluent ones to whom I'm referring) establish themselves and settle down, they're then in a position to shelter their children from many of the structural inequities faced by the black community writ large, such as access to quality schooling, housing, and living in overpoliced areas.

This does not mean that the descendants of black migrants are immune to racism in the US. Indeed, even the most affluent family can scarcely hope to protect their children from the overt, and even covert acts of conscious and unconscious racism perpetrated by both individuals and our institutions.

But affluence does open doors, and can be used as a buffer against the most systemicly insidious elements of America's segregationist past.

Is that something that Caribbean nations should address, rather than USA? Frankly I don't see how policies that don't benefit ADOS meet the ethical burden that USA universities (especially those such as Ivy League universities who historically benefited from slavery in USA) would seem to have.

If you think about it, it's not really surprising. Harvard is not going to take a kid who reads at a 6th grade level, no matter what. They will take an underrepresented minority kid who is probably just short of being an outright admit. And where are those types of kids most likely to come from? The higher income end of the minority group, of course.

If you look on LinkedIn you'll see the vast majority of "African-American" Ivy League alumni are actually African immigrants. It seems without fail when I run into someone black that's a successful doctor or lawyer they often turn out to be an African immigrant. They're often quite coy about it and will only tell you when you ask them directly.

There's nothing wrong with immigrants but it seems as though immigrants are benefiting from programs meant to help the descendants of African-American slaves. The only question is if the Ivy League universities care about this or not.

> programs meant to help the descendants of African-American slaves. The only question is if the Ivy League universities care about this or not.

Where is it communicated that this is the intent of these programs? My understanding is that the criteria is simply race (and to an extent, economic conditions).

Should it matter if you’re an immigrant or not if the program is designed to provide an advantage solely on race and economic circumstance? If so, it sounds like the program should come right out as indicating reparations are the intent.

> If so, it sounds like the program should come right out as indicating reparations are the intent.

My (lay) understanding is that universities are (were?) doing a careful dance around Regents of the University of California v. Bakke[1], which permitted them to consider the race of an applicant in order to provide the educational benefits associated with a diverse student body, but did not permit them to use their admissions as a tool for administering reparations.

It's also my understanding that their compliance here is more littoral than spiritual, given the widespread on-campus support for reparations in general.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_Univ._of_Cal._v...

TIL! Thanks for sharing this.

A lot of children of African immigrants are actually outperforming the US population as a whole in regards to education.

The ethnicity with the highest fraction of PhDs is Nigerian.

That is true in pretty much every country with immigrants.

You have a completely different disposition to education if you see it as a chance instead of something you have to endure with respective results.

Given, that doesn't apply to everyone, but is definitely a common occurrence.

I disagree. I think the primary beneficiaries are the universities themselves and their alumni networks. Employers, particularly elite employers, know about affirmative action - and not just racial affirmative action. Job candidates are sometimes judged by employers in the context of advantages they might have received - employers are known to "unconsciously" penalize candidates who list diversity clubs, fraternities (legacies), and sports teams - three signals that a candidate may have received a non-academic boost in college admissions. In the United States, the right sometimes calls this effect w.r.t. race the "Clarence Thomas effect," as he famously struggled to find any law firms that would employ him, despite having a law degree from Yale. Many universities with affirmative action, including elite universities also have a racial gap in the graduation rate and average GPA exiting university - suggesting that some of those black C-GPA Harvard students (well, black C-GPA Princeton students, Harvard doesn't really give Cs) could have B or A students at Carnegie Mellon or Emory and had an easier time finding employment after graduation. So while some members of the minority group may benefit from affirmative action, I'd argue that many more members of the minority are actually hurt by affirmative action, either because they're forced to compete slightly above their abilities or because they're evaluated as if they received unfair advantages by employers after college.

>My personal favorite idea is improving schools. If we diverted enough money and resources to primary schools in poor areas, we could achieve similar outcomes to affirmative action without just switching the groups we discrimate against.

The problem is student outcomes aren't linked to how much money and resources the school has, they're linked to how much money and resources the parents (and the network of the parents) of the children have. Networking is the primary benefit of top tier schools, and so unfairly giving a chance to those without the network is the only way for them to move up the ladder as a group.

This will necessarily displace individually who might deserve to be there more, but the problem is an intractable one due to the outsize gains of being part of that network.

I am not endorsing affirmative action, or discrimination against certain "successful" minorities, simply offering a chain of reasoning for it.

It would probably be more than schools. We would have to divert significant amounts of money to helping poor communities.

I think the government adopted affirmative action instead because it was a much cheaper way to placate the masses

Or what we realized was the right idea a long time ago... mixing everybody up by force. (Busing)

I believe it has been proven that as communities become more integrated, outcomes improve for all parties — and not just academically.

One Source, since people seem to disagree: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/10/23/...

Something more academic: https://gsppi.berkeley.edu/~ruckerj/johnson_schooldesegregat...

But the problem we realized, after trying out forced busing, was that in the long term all parents with resources would simply opt out of the public school system to avoid it.

Practically, going a long way to school on a bus every morning blows

Because schools are a reflection of the students they get. Private schools do better not because they teach any better, but because they keep out the ones that aren't there to learn and thus the teacher can actually spend their time teaching a group of kids at the same level.

Affirmative action was almost certainly the least bad solution--it broke the back of the rampant discrimination in this country, something that would have been very hard to do anywhere near as fast by other means.

The problem is that it's already produced all the benefits it's going to, now it's pure burden with no benefit.

> The problem is student outcomes aren't linked to how much money and resources the school has, they're linked to how much money and resources the parents (and the network of the parents) of the children have.

The consistent positive outcomes of disadvantaged students in KIPP Academies would suggest this is not always the case.

There is likely significant selection bias happening at KIPP schools - and all charter schools.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIPP

---

The authors of The Charter School Dust-Up said that KIPP's admission process self-screens for students who are motivated, compliant, and come from similarly motivated, compliant and supportive families. The 2010 Mathematica Policy Research study found that KIPP schools had a "lower concentration of special education and limited English proficiency students than the public schools from which they draw".[22]

Some KIPP schools show high rates of attrition, especially for those students entering the schools with the lowest test scores. A 2008 study by SRI International found that while KIPP fifth-grade students who enter with below-average scores significantly outperform peers in public schools by the end of year one, "60 percent of students who entered fifth grade at four Bay Area KIPP schools in 2003–04 left before completing eighth grade",[23] although research on attrition at one KIPP school in Massachusetts differs.[24] The SRI report also discusses student mobility due to changing economic situations for student's families, but does not directly link this factor into student attrition. Figures for schools in all states are not readily available.

Of course KIPP selects for motivated students. But it also selects for severely disadvantaged students. So while it's true that we can't assume KIPP's results can be generalized across the entire population, we know that additional school resources works in a subset.

It is always good to make this clear. It is "how", not "how much".

The American system would benefit a great deal from a systematic reshuffle without a dime extra being spent.

A few realigned incentives here, a little more competition there, and voila... The system pulls itself closer to your goals as it iterates, rather than further down a path that appears to satisfy no one except those whose interests are entrenched.

My SO taught in public schools. One was a 'standard' public school, the other was a 'charter' school [0]. I have some second hand knowledge here.

The parents make all the difference.

Yes, poverty is a huge factor, but some parents are more in touch than others, in spite of the poverty.

At the 'standard' school, it was a mess that I won't burden the reader with. One key metric that I found interesting was that the teacher drop-out rate was ~80%. This gives an idea of the quality of the school.

At the 'charter', every single graduate has gone to college in some form. They are quite proud of this metric, as they should be. The 'charter' was richer on average, yes. But many of the kids were opting out of the 'standard' school and going to the charter. The income of those kids' parents was similar to the 'standard' school. The population of 'poor' kids that went to the 'charter' school was much less though.

[0] It's publicly funded, but still a charter. The local district is not like most. Every parent/guardian is forced to rank the schools for their child to go to. All are open for enrollment. City Bus passes are provided for every child for free in lieu of school busses. It works, but still has a lot of issues, like most places.

Increased spending does not seem to help much; perhaps the money is not being well allocated.[1][2][3]

[1] http://www.npri.org/imgLib/20110228_Fed_ed_spending_vs_resul...

[2] https://rogerkerr.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/derugy-column-...

[3] http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/edgraph.html

I don't think this does anything to fix the tensions causing racism in the first place.

The purpose of affirmative action isn't to cure racism, broadly defined as racial animosity or something similar. The purpose of affirmative action is to correct the harm caused by previous institutional bias (edit: a given institution previously systematically excluded a group and now is making up for that exclusion). Racial animosity and so-forth should be dealt with in other fashions.

If the justification of affirmative action is to "correct the harm caused by previous institutional bias," how is it justified that it discriminates against Asian-Americans when we've never held institutional power in America?

(I'm not sure if you're defending affirmative action or if you're just outlining its supposed purpose.)

There is zero way in which may post claims discrimination against Asians is justified by purpose of affirmative action and implying that I am doing so is a despicable bad-faith troll. Of course, the truth of the Federal Government's claim various colleges are discriminating against whites and Asians is a different corner of this debate, which is to say it's the thing looking at this would argue.

>> The purpose of affirmative action is to correct the harm caused by previous institutional bias (edit: a given institution previously systematically excluded a group and now is making up for that exclusion).

Asian-Americans were broadly excluded as enshrined by law in Korematsu v. United States, to say nothing of the discrimination that Chinese-Americans dealt with.

So... kinda odd that it is correct to continue to discriminate against them in higher education... isn't it?

Not only that, but it becomes impossible to tell whether someone in a group benefited by AA is in a given position because of AA, or because of their merit. This is harmful to people in those groups.

It's only harmful when people assume that they couldn't have gotten the job or in the school without it and don't look at their merit.

Which is what naturally ends up happening when affirmative action gets out of hand.

I worry about this a lot - my kids are Hispanic (inherited from their Mexican mother), and I honestly don’t know what to tell them when it comes time to check the “race” box for college admissions in a few years. Do they check the “hispanic” box and always wonder if they were just admitted to meet some quota? And no matter what they do, as soon as somebody realizes they have a Hispanic parent, they’ll (reasonably) assume that they did check the Hispanic box.

Check the hispanic box. The system is unfair and racist, but it makes the most sense to take advantage of it.

The Hispanic box was worth literal tens of thousands of dollars to me over my lifetime.

If they're going to fall on that sword make sure it's their own choice and not yours.

I would check it. It's a free advantage in a competitive application process. The government has plenty of misguided programs that people take advantage of. The law is blind to morals and it's clearly a stupid system, so just close your eyes first if it makes you feel better :)

You shouldn't feel any worse than when you try to minimize your taxes. In a broken system there are no bad actors

Research has shown that heavy AA can lead to a mismatch between the putative beneficiaries and their peers. As a result, these students are more likely to end up in the bottom of their class (IIRC, 50% of black students at top law schools ended up in the bottom 10% of their class, and AA beneficiaries who planned to major in STEM were more likely to change to a non-STEM major).

So it is also possible that a preference that helps your kids get into a school could actually end up hurting them if they end up outmatched by their classmates.

I find this a really odd point because you could say the same about people with any sort of privilege. Did Jack Welch succeed because of his intelligence or because of his race/gender? Well, a little of column A and a little of column B. White dudes do have an easier time in the business world. Should we discredit all successful white male businessmen? No, of course not. Why is it any different with minorities and Affirmative Action? Some people have privilege by circumstance and others have privilege by design. So be it.

I happen to agree: the worst penalty is in schooling, and the most bang-for-interventionary-buck is also in schooling.

It's also not visible to peers in adulthood, and thus not a source of jealousy or mistreatment or suspicion, as many AA recipients detail experiencing.

It's also the most moral way to address something which - IMO - deserves addressing, but which currently is addressed quite immorally.

See: the OP article.

If you assume all groups are on average equal but certain groups are underrepresented you must assume that the selection process is flawed. If the process is flawed than correcting the process can be seen as removing bias, not adding it.

Do you feel like any correction at all is discrimination, the correction of is flawed in some specific way, or do you feel like its a matter of overcorrection?

Genuine question: does it make sense to add bias to the selection process if group average differ?

To your first assumption...

It seems unlikely that anything can be subdivided, repeatedly, into arbitrarily many groups by arbitrary criteria whereby comparing all possible groups (i.e. comparing the non-empty members of the powerset) yields statistically insignificant differences for all discernable moments.

Unless the thing is truly homogeneous. Which people are certainly not. For example, I clearly have less than average tact.

I've taken courses is probability and topology where the power set is used, and am intimately familiar with it, but I have no idea what you're talking about

Suppose S is the set of all people.

The powerset of S is all possible ways to subdivide humanity into groups of individuals.

Comparing two members of the powerset of S is comparing two groups of people.

Any criterion by which you can divide people will produce elements of the powerset of S. For example, "people that like jazz" are in there. So too are "people who eat peas with a knife". I am saying that there are many ways to lump people into buckets. What defines the buckets does not matter. They are all in the powerset of S.

If humans are equal, then comparing any two arbitrary groups in the powerset of S should always conclude in equality. At least in some statistical sense.

I am giving a counterexample to equality across arbitrary divisions of humanity (members of the powerset of S). I claim that arbitrary groups of humans are not equally tactful. Because if you measure the tactfulness of any member of the powerset of S where I personally am present it will generally show less tact than members of the powerset where I am not present.

The post you're responding to is ambiguous, and most language is and relies on context, but this doesn't seem like a very charitable interpretation.

I have heard the argument you're making with Jordan Peterson (who I absolutely don't respect - if you're looking for a Christian conservative try Peter Hitchens instead, although I'm not a conservative myself. He's not fashionable these days, but he represents actual long standing conservative beliefs rather than opinions that will fade away in 2-3 years)

I think the parent comment is being deliberately ambiguous in order to skirt around politically sensitive issues.

The ancestor post assumes something and draws a conclusion. The assumption is vague.

What does it mean to be equal?

I am asking for a clearer statement. And I am skirting politics because they would detract from shoring up that statement.

The moment you clarify the statement you end up in a contentious political debate, so the ancestor post is trying to bait others into saying the elephant in the room without putting words in others' mouth: That some groups/ethnicities are more successful than others. The actual discussion will begin when you ask the question "why?"

In response you're arguing against a strawman. No one has _ever_ claimed that everyone must be equal in all possible ways. That's of course ridiculous. The discussion plays out more or less the same way over decades, so to save time at the risk of putting words in your mouth, I'm going to take the liberty of presenting both sides.

Let's return to the question of "why are some groups more successful than others?" If it's because of either direct oppression, or systemic oppression (i.e. policies that favour some groups over others), then affirmative action is justified. This is the position the ancestor comment holds. Once you move past the rhetoric, there's no difference in reality between affirmative action and "oppressing Asians and whites," but the framing as just vs unjust depends on your idea of justice.

The conservative counter-narrative is decades old. It's not exactly racist, but it claims that cultural reasons are primarily to blame for disparities in success. Undoubtedly cultural reasons are partly to blame, and its possible for cultures to be improved. But a narrow focus on cultural reasons detracts from a long history of oppressive laws whose effects are still felt today.

Now we get back to what "justice" means. Does justice mean merely removing the oppressive institutions and returning to a natural law Lockian universalistic liberalism? Or does it mean correcting for past injustices.

Well put.

"Why" is completely irrelevant to this thread.

Returning to where this all started...

> If you assume all groups are on average equal but certain groups are underrepresented you must assume that the selection process is flawed.

Since groups can differ in meaningful ways, for any number of reasons, no conclusion can be made about whether the selection process is flawed. At least not in the ancestor post's framework. The assumption does not hold.

If I'm reading your humor correctly I think I've fallen into some semantical trap instead of a serious critique. In which case, I will play along.

However, the topic at hand is 'equal' in a decidedly subjective sense. Even if you have two identical hydrogen atoms, they still might differ in some sort of property you may or may not find significant to the concept of equality. Location perhaps? Can any two things be "truly homogeneous" while remaining distinct entities? True object homogeneity was not intended by my use of the term 'equal.' Does that satisfy the concern? :)

It does, thank you. What do you mean by equal in your first assumption? How does that choice impact your conclusion?

The funding bill could be crafted so that disproportionately high, or nationally-leveling, funding could be sent to schools in ZIP codes with the lowest average incomes, and the law could exist in perpetuity such that it would always assist the most disadvantaged ZIPs without regard for the ebb and flow of various identity groups over time.

Except throwing money at the schools doesn't do much of anything about the problem. Schools reflect the students they get far more than they make the students.

> we could achieve similar outcomes to affirmative action

Hopefully much better, affirmative action harms even the minorities it attempts to help, let alone others like Asians: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/the-pai...

You are correct because it forms obvious common interest groups. That is at least one factor. Maybe I should scrap the "obvious" since it seems to be beyond elite university staff.

My neighbor looks pretty similar to me but that doesn't mean we get along (My neighbor is pretty cool and doesn't look like me at all, but the concept should be clear).

Regarding schools, I think there is evidence that charter schools and school vouchers have a significant positive impact for the most disadvantaged kids.

Why not both?

Give more money to public schools, and support affirmative action until those network effects start occurring naturally.

Because it isn’t fair.

> The majority groups are decriminalized against by design

I think autocorrect failed here. Did you mean to say "discriminated against by design"?

Haha yeah stupid autocorrect

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