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Comment by WesternWind | Hacker News Reader

Affirmative action isn't racial discrimination, it's an attempt to correct for racial discrimination.

The figures cited above are with affirmative action. They would be a lot worse without attempting to correct for it.

But of course correcting for historic and systemic inequities is more obvious than just letting the status quo happen. That doesn't make it morally reprehensible, anymore than the status quo, in which white students are advantaged, isn't morally superior.

If you think white students aren't privileged, even now, I suggest you consider the figures regarding folks who get in who are recruited Athletes, Legacies, Donors, of Students of faculty members and staff.

less than 16% of Latino, Black, or Asian students are from the ALDC groups, but 43% of white students are. Of the 43% who are, 75% would have been rejected if treated as white ALDCs.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-harvard-finds-43-...

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It absolutely is discrimination as not all whites are privileged. These days your skin color doesn't matter much, what really makes the difference is the wealth of your parents. A rich black guy is privileged compared to poor white guy.

Yes, MOST African Americans are poorer due to historical discrimination. But similarly some whites are also poorer due to historical reasons beyond their own control. The solution should be support to the poor to help them achieve better educational outcomes, regardless of their skin color.

Just raise taxes and build a system that helps all poor people achieve better educational outcomes instead of racist affirmative action. Scandinavian model provides a good example. Anything else is just nonsense and convenient to the rich elite.

Also, it's possible to make college/university admissions very much anti-discriminatory simply by making them exam-based, and preventing those who check the exams from knowging who did the exam. This is how the system should work.

"Also, it's possible to make college/university admissions very much anti-discriminatory simply by making them exam-based, and preventing those who check the exams from knowging who did the exam. This is how the system should work."

This is assumes you want to treat each individual as an individual. But, to progressives, an individual is just an anonymous 'representative' of an ethnic group.

If you had a system as you described, progressives would calculate the acceptance rate for each ethnic group. If the rate for each group were not equal, they'd consider that prima facie evidence that exam-based admissions are structurally racist.

> Also, it's possible to make college/university admissions very much anti-discriminatory simply by making them exam-based, and preventing those who check the exams from knowging who did the exam. This is how the system should work.

Think about that a bit more, and look at countries that do that and what their higher education system looks like. Consider for example Mexico what percentage of students by ethnicity get into UNAM, what the exams look like, where the exams are offered and where the exam preparation schools are, how much the prep schools cost, if there are ways around it that favour certain groups. Many countries do this, do they have a better or fairer representative sample of students in their higher education, or just students who have been competently trained to pass an exam? An exam is one potential way in which students can shine, but it's unlikely that the person ranked at position 1 is Pareto dominating the person at position 2 on literally every axis.

First, I commend you on wanting to do something about poverty. I also feel that policies that help all improverished folks and bring more people into the middle class are important and necessary.

That said, the idea that Black people only have issues because of historical discrimination does not reflect the data, and thus I feel affirmative action would still be needed to address those inequities.

That is to say both Black and White differences, and rich and poor differences need to be addressed in my view. You can't simply ignore one or the other.

There's a rich body of observational and experimental research into racial discrimination, which shows racial discrimination continues to exist in health care, hiring and careers, apartment rentals, punishment in schools, etc.

Black babies have worse health care outcomes with white doctors than black doctors. White babies show no difference. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/17/black-babies-s...

Black boys were watched more in an eye tracking study by teachers https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-black-b...

Black and Hispanic names are significantly less likely to get a response when inquiring about renting a property. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29516/w295...

People with Black names are less likely to be hired as per this meta analysis of studies https://www.pnas.org/content/114/41/10870

Those are just a few examples.

We also know that household income affects exam results, FYI, so your exam solution would disadvantage poor folks. https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat-scores-and...

> Affirmative action isn't racial discrimination, it's an attempt to correct for racial discrimination.

It's very obviously both these things.

It's an attempt to try to compensate for implicit/less visible racial discrimination, with very explicit racial discrimination enshrined into policy.

Not saying it's always a terrible idea, but pretending that it's not racial discrimination is exactly the kind of gaslighting discussed in the article.

How do we know if AA is actually solving the issue? At what point will AA have solved the issue (approximate date)?

Either AA solves racism by $deadline and becomes obsolete, or it doesn't solve racism and is discarded in favor of something better. Either way there is no reason to have indefinite AA beyond $deadline

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