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It's my understanding that these universities aren't selectively admitting people because they are required to due to "protected class," but rather they desire to not have the admissions "overrepresent" certain highly qualified groups (asians and Jews being the biggest groups that are overrepresented iirc).

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

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Sure, and racial discrimination is presumptively illegal. Affirmative action is the acceptable carveout to this presumption. These no presumption of legacy admissions being illegal, however...

> Affirmative action is the acceptable carveout to this presumption.

Note that this is pretty much an urban legend, with little to no basis in law. "Affirmative action" when originally introduced as a standard was very clearly defined as acting to ensure that racial discrimination would not occur. Non-discrimination is, and has always been, the overall goal.

That may have been the goal, but it was never the metric that was measured.

Can confirm, official guidance from the U.S. government says "equal employment opportunity is the goal, affirmative action is the tool to get there."

"Affirmative action" originally meant just that it wasn't enough to say "okay, we won't discriminate" - employers had to take some active measures to ensure discrimination didn't happen, but it didn't prescribe particular measures. That sounds vaguely reasonable. But over time affirmative action warped in most peoples' minds into establishing racial preferences.

> Affirmative action is the acceptable carveout

Well this is likely to change. Affirmative action is zero sum: it’s impossible without discriminating against some group on the basis of a protected class.

> affirmative action is zero sum

Not sure that’s the definition of zero sum. Presumably it’s correcting for some existing discrimination. Maybe it over corrects, maybe it under corrects. Highly unlikely that the balance remains the same afterwards.

Not what GP was referring to, but discrimination is not signed. Injustice cannot be "corrected" with more discrimination, it only increases.

Zero sum meaning it you give one seat to a group then you have to subtract one seat from the other groups. It has nothing to do with history

Indeed, Harvard in particular institutes their anti-Asian racism by systematically rating Asians lower on "personality" in order to get their numbers down. And that's according to the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollme...

I mean, they say openly that the desire is to have more of certain groups such as Black and latinx people. But you suspect the decision-makers at universities are really thinking "we want fewer Asians and Jews", and just pretending that they want more of other ethnic/racial groups as a cover?

This is really a different conversation than "legacy admissions" (the name for letting the children of former graduates in preferentially, possibly especially when the former graduates are donors) -- which are so far understood as completely legal because there are no legally protected clases involved is what the GP was pointing out, I think, but which constitute a pretty significant % of some university's admissions, and which are disproportionately certain racial-ethnic groups too.

There is no difference between telling me you want more Black and Latino people and telling me you want less White and Asian people when the game is zero-sum.

If you think it makes no difference, why would you insist on saying it the one way?

Meanwhile though, back to legacy admissions... so acknowledging it's a zero sum game, increasing "legacy" admissions means saying you want fewer students who aren't children of alumni. This means fewer first-generation college, fewer people from working class backgrounds (including white working class backgrounds, of course), and fewer Black and latino people.

If you also want to increase the number of students who are children of donors (which happens) -- it means decreasing most of those categories even more so.

How about if you restrict the number of admitted students who will need financial aid to attend so many total dollars of aid -- this is done completely openly and admitted, most colleges do not practice "need-blind admissions", meaning it's easier to get in if you can pay the full cost, which, as you say, acknowleding the zero sum nature of it, means they want fewer people who they believe will need financial aid (by not offering admission to those who they think do, they don't get the opportunity to figure out how to pay for it)

Are people upset about "affirmative action" equally upset about these things, which, as you say, are telling us that colleges and universities want, and are acting upon that desire, fewer first-generation students and fewer students from working-class and poor backgrounds, as well as fewer Black and latinx students?

Why or why not?

2+2 is equal to 4

But when I want to say 4 I do not say 2+2. Because despite being equal, one is easier to understand

They both admit more blacks and fewer Asians. I assume Jews are lumped in with other whites.

Funny that we seem to be heading further away from just admitting 'students' and more into categorisation. Working as intended?

The goal is to increase diversity and support marginalized groups, not to “reduce overrepresentation” of socially dominant groups.

What's the difference?

East Asians are socially dominant in the US? That’s news to me.

Whites and East Asians are socially dominant in many professional fields (e.g., relevant to this forum, computer programming) compared to some other groups, though you can certainly also find plenty of racism vs. East Asians in the USA.

though you can certainly also find plenty of racism vs. East Asians in the USA

Harvard’s admission’s office, for example.

Hollywood as well, there's a notable dearth of East Asian male leads in Hollywood movies. (Latino male leads as well. Hollywood uses Black actors for to meet their diversity quotas, and largely ignore other minority ethnicity.)

Yeah, Amazon's LotR Rings of Power was pretty remarkable for casting a Latino guy as a central character in the role of an Elf. It worked out pretty well, but I would have preferred if his hair was long.

AA does the latter.

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