re-leaglize. It was legal until the 90s. When it became illegal, the diversity on campus dropped significantly.
There is an argument to be made that the race-based admissions help make up for prior injustices.
There is an argument to be made that the race-based admissions help make up for prior injustices.
A good "Church of Satan" reaction to these policies in California would be a university that set the bar higher for Black applicants, with the justification that other policies have in fact over-corrected for past injustices, and now the injustice of that over-correction must be righted.
The thing to keep in mind is that the justification for some of the worst racism in history has been injustice or past injustices. We should learn from history and pre-commit as a society to react hyper-negatively to any policy that involves racial discrimination. Get it the hell out of the Overton window.
Do you have a better plan for dealing with systemic racism[1], that does not have the drawback you cite? Do you believe that systemic racism doesn't exist? Or do you believe that it does exist, but we shouldn't do anything about it?
Which of those three options are you championing?
[1] I understand that the mere mention of this concept is a dogwhistle for negative karma.
Get rid of all the bullshit administrators to lower the cost of college back to what it was 50 years ago so that poor people can go without getting into a lot of debt.
Which of these three options do you propose?
so it was legal until then but didn’t make a dent in inequality? but i’m sure it’ll work this time!
It did make a dent in inequality.
It didn't end it, but then it wasn't around nearly as long as the structural disadvantages that entrenched inequality, and it was a much gentler push than those it sought to mitigate the effects of.
It's either to take the top students, bar none, or it is to educate and uplift poorer students (economically and educationally). Mixing these two doesn't work.
Alas, university doesn't work that way: students continue to be measured throughout their tenure, and those measures are an important component of the next phase of their life, be it work or further education.
The evidence is unequivocal: lowering the admissions standards for some section of the student body, results in those students doing poorly relative to students who were subject to the full standards.
This shouldn't be surprising, and no, it doesn't seem to matter why the standards were lowered, affirmative action, legacy preference, or otherwise.
That is in fact exactly how admissions at the UC schools work. The first 1/2 of the class is admitted on test scores and grades alone, the second 1/2 is admitted via reading of their essays and considering other factors, such as extracurriculars, economic circumstance, and, until the 90s, race.
The very definition of what a "top student" is varies a great deal.