Having a campus that looks like a Benetton ad isn't a compelling state interest
davidlat.substack.com
davidlat.substack.com
I suspect the answer would have been hard to stomach. Something like: marginally more underrepresented population than our peers, and as few east and south Asians as we can get away with, without being incredibly obvious.
If they had said it’s a correction factor for the inherent racial bias of our selection criteria that’s far more compelling. Aka, we want to reward potential students for being on a yacht club/legacy admissions etc, but by doing so we disadvantage some minorities. But elite collages really don’t want to make that arguemnt.
I think the main objection against this kind of affirmative action is that you can't make up for discrimination against one group by discriminating against another group: None of the young, white (and Asian) students that are given a disadvantage today were responsible for the discrimination against black people decades ago – they weren't even around back then.
That's the ethical argument. There's also possibly [1] the economic argument, that this kind of affirmative action is inefficient, i.e., it doesn't fix systemic discrimination, or that all in all it creates more harm than good.
[1] I don't know if that argument is true, but I could see someone making this point.
I would like to point out that, affirmative action does create harm, as it tarnishes the image of people legitimately got selected and got in to the college/program, as there will always be the question in the air: "Did they got in because they are qualified or because of color of their skin?". Also, people who weren't selected because they are not in the affirmative action group will always have the doubt that they weren't selected because of their race/skin color and this always will fuel racist thoughts.
Fixing discrimination with discrimination is not a good idea: two wrongs should not add up to a right. We should fix the systemic issues that cause people in to be in the situation where they are discriminated against, even although it is going to be slow.
I was just referring to affirmative action as it benefits underrepresented black and brown people in the US. Frankly I haven't given it much thought outside of that context.
Maybe the overarching goal should be to achieve a demographic that is roughly representative of the US population as a whole?
I think it's just a lack of serious education on these issues. If you're born into being watching the race after all this has come to pass, without a deep understanding of the historical context and its effects upon the current state of the race, and you see us suddenly pulling up a golf cart next to that disadvantaged runner, and driving them up ahead to compensate for the gap that was created by those shackles, you may think "wow how unfair, why does he get to ride in a golf cart??"
Even more likely if this is in fact a relay race, and you are having the baton passed on to you by an advantaged runner. You have extra incentive to protect your lead and find anger at anyone else getting help.
Here he characterizes the pro-argument as being in favor of diverse aesthetics instead diverse experience, when, if pressed, I would assume he’d admit that the objective of affirmative action is in fact to admit a student body with more diverse backgrounds.
He also acknowledges that the narrow point of the anti- argument focuses on race _qua race_ as a criterion for admission, but then ascribes the characterization of an acquaintance’s grade school admissions consultant of a Manhattan grade school admissions program’s inclination towards ‘visual diversity’ as being, without evidence, the same one at work at the universities in question. I don’t think you can make that leap with solely the hearsay opinion of one third party from another context.
I think he drives by the real argument he should make here, which is that the objectives of affirmative action are laudable but the technique currently used to further its goals is deeply flawed to the point of being useless.
Isn't it more like "have a student body that is somewhat representative of the overall national demographic", on the basis that merit to attend elite institutions is evenly distributed?
That isn't the definition of "merit" that these colleges are looking for. Demonstrated academic performance is a part of it, to be sure, but it's not the ballgame.
e.g. https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/apply/what-we-look
Statistically, advantages along some dimensions are distributed unevenly across racial groups. That would predict differences in performance outcomes for members of racial groups within hierarchies where those advantages are selected for.
Personally, I don't think "ability to get into Harvard" is a particularly useful life skill, but I know opinions differ and I'm OK with that.
This question was directly asked by a justice (I think Alito) in almost exactly those words. The answer he got from the UNC lawyer was "no", followed by a bunch of handwaving.
The central argument from the schools seems to be that ethnic diversity is a priori good, and providing that environment benefits all students. The cost of decreased acceptance rate for Asians is the cost to achieve this good, and is a worthwhile tradeoff because it benefits the Asians who do get in.
I don't find this argument totally specious. But I think it reduces to: "bigotry is acceptable if the benefits outweigh the costs". I don't think the Constitution finds this to be permissible.
I get the feeling that legacy admissions are actually a benefit for other students because it means that powerful families can become part of your social network. That is a big difference from a state school.
MIT is a good counterexample with a large endowment and no legacies.
So while the court is unlikely to force elimination of legacy admissions (no one has asked for that directly, but it is possible that they find some reason to take it to that), they very well might address it and whether or not they believe it to be viable.