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Comment by TameAntelope | Hacker News Reader

It's not racist as it does not support the idea that one race is superior or inferior to another.

A "racist" idea would be that one race deserves more than another because of some inherent flaw or virtue.

The idea of affirmative action is the objective fact that racist policies have already been created, and to decide to "go colorblind" would be de facto support for those racist policies that are already in place.

The position you quoted is explicitly antiracist, because it suggests the racial groups are equals in all their apparent differences.

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The word 'racist' is overloaded and refers to multiple different things. 'One race is superior to another' is a racist belief. Discriminating based on race is a racist action.

Fixing an inequity is not racist, the racism is the creation of the inequity.

This is like saying it's unfair to help someone with a broken leg because it takes time away from people with other injuries. The problem is that someone broke the person's leg, not that their leg needs attention from a doctor.

They're both racist! What you're doing is breaking the leg of some other guy who looks like the original leg-breaker to "make everything even". There were two problems, originally: someone was going around breaking legs, and someone had a broken leg. Now you're cheering on the next leg-breaker, and there's more broken legs in the world.

Your justification for being racist doesn't prevent your actions from being racist.

They're not both racist, and no; giving a qualified person a spot at a prestigious university is not "breaking the leg" of "some other guy", when that "other guy" has many, many other opportunities to excel in their life, whereas the qualified student being admitted to Yale may have no other opportunities at the kind of life a Yale graduate might receive.

Going to Yale is not the focus here, it's "being granted chances to excel in life."

You continue to ignore the actual problem here (that minorities are disproportionately failing to excel academically and in society), and I'm beginning to wonder if you even see that as a bad thing...

> Going to Yale is not the focus here

You can’t say this after claiming someone “admitted to Yale may have no other opportunities at the kind of life a Yale graduate might receive.” What evidence do we have that this is uniquely enabling for a person of one race and not another? Yes, it may be uniquely enabling for the affirmative action candidate. But that doesn’t rule out it being uniquely life changing for someone else.

> I'm beginning to wonder if you even see that as a bad thing

Shoddy form. (And self defeating.)

I can absolutely say that Yale being the only opportunity for some folks makes this bigger than “going to Yale”, in fact that’s exactly what I’ve been saying this whole time. For the affirmative action kids, Yale is a big deal, for the kids AA bumps out, Yale is not nearly as big of a deal.

And yes, we’re dealing in aggregate. Trying to cite specific counterexamples to the statistics is a waste of time because the whole point is that it’s, overall, better. Nobody is arguing that it’s strictly better 100% of the time… but you knew that, and made your argument anyway.

Fundamentally, do you care that certain minorities are massively underrepresented in many aspects of prosperity or not? There’s nothing self defeating about wondering if you’re one of the many people on the Internet who don’t care. You’re acting a lot like you don’t care, so the question is valid.

> for the kids AA bumps out, Yale is not nearly as big of a deal

This is a massive, life-changing assumption you’ve made.

> do you care that certain minorities are massively underrepresented in many aspects of prosperity or not?

Yes. The consistent counter argument is this is a destructive way to address that problem.

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