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Comment by okwubodu | Hacker News Reader

The second order effects of affirmative action's repeal are going to be very entertaining. You can get a sneak peek by taking a look at the student body at a school like UT Austin where, by law, 75% of students must be in-state and automatically admitted according to class rank (GPA). https://admissions.utexas.edu/explore/freshman-profile

You'll notice that when comparing Harvard and UT's student bodies to the US and Texas' demographics, respectively, Harvard's system was closer to the mark in terms of black and white representation. https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics

Most interesting is UT's 40/60 M/F gender ratio. Remember: that 40% of males is almost certainly being boosted by the 25% of admits UT has any real control over. Once AA is overturned, that's it—hands off the scale. I think half the population suddenly realizing they were beneficiaries of affirmative action this whole time—and subsequently understanding the nuances of discrimination in this country—will ultimately be a good thing.

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As a STEM academic, I can say that I've never seen or heard of ongoing AA for men in any STEM program in any institution whose policies I'm acquainted with. So it seems to me to be misleading to claim, or at least hard to believe, that very many men in college have been beneficiaries of AA for men.

Not in STEM departments, no. Why would you run a pro-male affirmative action programme in a department where men were already over-represented?

But there's affirmative action for men in nursing, teaching, social studies, and similar female-dominated departments. There are active campaigns to recruit more male nurses - and male teachers are more likely to be promoted.

I also know first-hand that vocational ballet schools recruit equal numbers of boys and girls, so they can teach partnering - despite the fact they probably get 30 female applicants for every male applicant!

Of course, a male might find it unfair that the pro-male affirmative action is only applied in areas like ballet and nursing which they're not interested in - but that's the whole point of affirmative action.

And if you find it unfair that the pro-male affirmative action for female-dominated jobs only provides low-paid, low-status jobs - then feminists are very much in agreement with you about the unfairness of the situation :)

Isn't the goal of a nursing school to provide the best possible nurses to the healthcare industry?

If we assume that:

Whatever merit based metrics the school uses to determine admission are predictive of eventual performance

and that men are admitted with lower performance on these metrics than some women

Then removing the affirmative action should result in the school graduating nurses who perform better, right? Why wouldn't we want that?

> Why wouldn't we want that?

Because it's possible to have multiple goals at the same time. Reality is a co-optimization problem.

The points that you have made above are why there are still many more female nurses -- it's not like they will accept every single man, there's simply a lower threshold than there is for women.

I think a lot of the arguments about whether AA makes sense at all should really be reframed as discussions about how much AA makes sense. How do goals like diversity, inclusion, and minimizing inequality weigh against other objectives like rewarding merit and maximizing productivity outcomes? Surely the balance-point is not zero, but it's conceivably much closer to zero than today's policies would imply.

> Because it's possible to have multiple goals at the same time. Reality is a co-optimization problem.

And one thing to consider is that people don't choose colleges just based on academics, they also choose them based on social environments, and as such universities have an incentive to try to create amicable social environments to attract the best students.

Case in point: I decided not to go to a good engineering school because it was more than 80% male and in a small town. The social environment was desperately bro-ish. I backpedaled and went to a liberal arts college primarily because of vastly superior social environment.

> I decided not to go to a good engineering school because it was more than 80% male and in a small town. The social environment was desperately bro-ish. I backpedaled and went to a liberal arts college primarily because of vastly superior social environment.

I dont think many people have such a privilege

I assume you're referring to the fact that liberal arts colleges are usually private and more expensive, which is true, but I paid for it with loans, so to the extent that one would be advised to go massively in debt for college, it's possible.

My parents had only saved enough for me to go to a state school, which got me through one semester at a private college, and the rest were student loans, and working often multiple part-time jobs (and full-time in the summer).

The best individual components don't necessarily result in the best system.

There may well be benefits to diversity that are not easily quantified at the individual level.

The classic example of the development team that created a computer vision system that didn't work well at all with certain skin tones but they were unaware of this until feeling it live at a conference comes to mind. They didn't have anyone on their dev teams or QA teams with that skin tone.

There are numerous studies showing that diverse teams come up with better solutions. Diversity pays dividends at the group level, and assessments that only consider things at the individual level may miss that

> There are numerous studies showing that diverse teams come up with better solutions.

There are also numerous studies that show diversity has either no effect or even negative effects on various measures of group performance - the academic literature on this issue is a total mixed bag. Here's how the OECD's [1] summary of the literature on diversity and firm performance:

> "Contrary to the often assumed, direct positive impact of diversity on business performance, research shows that at the firm level, the business case for diversity is not particularly strong. However, while the impact of diversity might be small, there is a strong economic argument against discrimination and non-inclusion based on the sizeable cost associated with it. Finally, the chapter notes ethical reasons for fostering a just and equitable labour market alongside the economic argument for diversity."

The literature also suggests the effects of diversity on group performance, whether positive, neutral or negative, are situation specific, depend on your measure of 'performance', and your definition of 'diversity'. Again, from the OECD:

> "A number of studies make a difference between ‘highly job-related diversity’, such as educational background, job position or function in the company, and diversity aspects that are ‘less job-related’, e.g. gender, ethnicity or age. Measurement of team performance includes multiple indicators, such as efficiency, creativity, innovation and productivity. Findings are somewhat mixed, but impacts of gender, ethnicity or age diversity are found to be either very small or insignificant. Some meta-analyses find no significant impact of gender composition, ethnicity or age on team performance (Horwitz and Horwitz, 2007[19]; Schneid et al., 2016[20]), while others find negative, but very small impacts (Bell et al., 2011[21]; Joshi and Roh, 2009[22])3. Most studies do, however, find a positive relationship between team performance and having teams with different professional backgrounds and other task-related characteristics (Bell et al., 2011[21]; Horwitz and Horwitz, 2007[23]; Joshi and Roh, 2009[22]). Overall, these findings from meta-analyses seem to suggest that team diversity in terms of gender, ethnicity or age do not matter much for team performance. However, there is some evidence that demonstrates the importance of situational settings by examining under what specific conditions diversity dynamics may unfold and how."

[1] https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/5f8c1531-en/index.html?i...

I suppose one argument is that men in general are stronger, and it's probably a good idea to have strong nurses around, especially with the current obesity rates. I'm absolutely making things up though, not sure if any studies on that kind of thing have been done recently.

Yes male nurses already get drafted into lifting the heavy patients, and dealing with the ornery patients, just because they're male, so it's no surprise many men nope out of nursing.

True but if female nurses are having issues lifting patients that would then be an opportunity for private enterprise to invent machines/tools that assist with this

>an opportunity for private enterprise to invent machines/tools that assist with this

I think those machines/tools are called "orderlies."[0]

[0] https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/what-is-a...

Any metric that is not the true metric that is optimized on will lead to worse results if overfit. You need to make sure there's at least a reasonable amount of variance.

> If we assume that:

> Whatever merit based metrics the school uses to determine admission are predictive of eventual performance

This seems a questionable assumption.

Some patients might prefer a doctor/nurse of the same gender.

> if you find it unfair that the pro-male affirmative action for female-dominated jobs only provides low-paid, low-status jobs - then feminists are very much in agreement with you about the unfairness of the situation :)

This is an interesting point, how much of the salary is determined by presumably impartial market forces, and how much of it is just status and social signalling.

We know status and social signalling play a significant role, otherwise behavioural economics and marketing wouldn't exist.

We also know that the diffrence between salaries of rank and file staff and C-suit executives have increased 15x in the past 20 years, without any corresponding increase in productivity

There is good reason to believe that if you could magically shove high-status men into nursing; nursing salaries would go up. But it's hard to see how it would happen unless we'd have equivalent of the draft for low status jobs.

> There is good reason to believe that if you could magically shove high-status men into nursing; nursing salaries would go up.

All else equal, if you shoved high status men into nursing they would only serve to increase the supply of workers, thereby reducing bargaining power and thus incomes would be more likely to fall.

High status men become high status because they find places to go where supply is extremely constrained (naturally or artificially). When you are one of few people able to do something that is desired then status and income follow.

The CEO gets there by first being one of a very select number of people who has built trust with the board. The board certainly isn't handing the keys to the kingdom of a multi-billion dollar operation to any random Joe off the street for obvious reasons. When the supply is nearly non-existent and the demand is nearly insatiable, price goes to the moon and so too does status much the same way.

>There is good reason to believe that if you could magically shove high-status men into nursing; nursing salaries would go up.

What is this inherent quality of high status for men?

Generally, status follows the possible utility one can provide for another, whether it be from being able to earn a lot of money, or having connections, having characteristics associated with positive stereotypes, or some other in demand quality.

Higher pay will increase status for whoever gets it, whether it be men or women or majority or minority. But the status follows the utility (or money in this case), not the other way around.

> Higher pay will increase status for whoever gets it

Drug dealing and Escort / prostitution provide significant income and poor status. Aristocracy had high status and sometimes little income.

They are not one and the same

>We also know that the diffrence between salaries of rank and file staff and C-suit executives have increased 15x in the past 20 years, without any corresponding increase in productivity

Seems like evidence against the claim that status plays a significant role in setting salaries, unless their status has also increased massively in that time.

Thanks for providing more context. However, the original claim I was reacting to was that "half the population ... [are] beneficiaries of affirmative action", i.e. that all men in college are beneficiaries of AA. I agree there are exceptions, but I stand by my claim that very few college-attending men benefit from AA for males.

For technology focused universities, women usually have higher admission rates than men: https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/can-your-gender-give...

Because there are many programs deliberately designed to benefit women - as in, their public stated goal as well as taking direct (as opposed to indirect, i.e requiring height or strength) steps to limit their benefits to women.

The same is true of many minorities.

if women are a minority doesnt that make a mockery of the term?

Minority isn't just numerical, it can also mean having a minority of power. For example, in South Africa Black people were (and still are in many ways) a minority even though they were a numerical majority.

One would be pretty hard-pressed to argue that women hold "minority of power. For several decades now, women have had higher college enrollment rates. And among the two youngest generations, the gender pay gap has actually reversed with women out-earning men [1]. One could very well make the argument that discrimination favoring women isn't affirmative action, but rather "punching down" so to speak.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/aug/29/women-in-20s-e...

Only 30%ish of US state legislators are women. Abortion rights we're just taken away in a number of states. That's a pretty naked display of power.

> Abortion rights we're just taken away in a number of states. That's a pretty naked display of power.

A policy change that women are actually more likely to support than men. If it's a naked display of power, it's power of a group that's actually slightly overrepresented towards women.

1. https://www.vox.com/2019/5/20/18629644/abortion-gender-gap-p...

My Alma matter literally does everything in their power to boost female admits. It’s grown from 1:4 to roughly 1:3 after a decade of new majors, new scholarships, lower admission scores. This all comes at the cost of well qualified Asian and white males.

Multiple studies found White woman are the biggest benefactors of affirmative action.

And, it'll be awesome. In the short term, the few black kids and women who end up in engineering will get respect for making it into the program.

And, hopefully a few years later, they'll no longer be looked at as diversity hires.

I can illustrate one way that "diversity" hiring has affected perceptions of a demographic. In the 1980s, I worked around engineering departments a lot. Women were rare, but it seemed to be widely assumed that any woman in engineering would be exceptionally capable and driven.

These days, when I hear discussion about inclusive hiring, regardless of whether people are for or against it, there is a common assumption that allowances will have to be made for employees of lesser ability.

My impression is that this change in attitude started in the mid-1990s.

Oh, certainly. A few years is all black kids and women need to overcome racial and gender prejudices in this country. Or how about we don’t assume all black kids and women are diversity hires now, and maybe, I don’t know, treat each one as an individual and judge them based on the content of their character instead of the color of their skin or the number of their X chromosomes?

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. You can make your substantive points without that, and it's in your interest to, because it will give your comments more persuasive power.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This comment is a perfect microcosm of the title.

Of course the issues you raise are real, and there is a whole constellation of systemic racism issues that specifically affect black people in a unique way. But when it comes to affirmative action there's a fundamental issue that goes beyond privilege narratives:

> Or how about we don’t assume all black kids and women are diversity hires now, and maybe, I don’t know, treat each one as an individual and judge them based on the content of their character

That's a nice sentiment, but it overlooks the fact that AA introduces this doubt, the doubt is in fact real, and can't be papered over with good intentions and turning a blind eye to cause and effect. The question is whether the net good in counter-balancing other systemic racism is worth the cost. That's not an easy question to answer. Some individuals would be more than happy to take any advantage they can get, and others want to be judged purely on their individual character.

> That's a nice sentiment, but it overlooks the fact that AA introduces this doubt, the doubt is in fact real, and can't be papered over with good intentions and turning a blind eye to cause and effect.

Hey, I'm well aware of the doubt. As an Asian male who went to an elite university, I had doubts about everybody. Black kids, Native Americans, Latinos, women... definitely AA, it goes without saying. The jocks of course got in on their ability to hit balls rather than books. And the private school lifers who've been groomed like show horses since kindergarten are merely highly polished legacy turds. But wait, I think that one white kid from Alaska only got in so the school can say they have students from all 50 states. And the guys from rural Ohio and Nebraska? You know they're the token farmers of the class. The kids whose parents were professors? Nepotism of the intelligentsia. Really, the only legitimate admits beyond suspicion were the other Asian males. Well, except the ones who were the first generation to go to college in their families. You know they got in on some sob story. And the fresh off the boat Asians? They barely speak English, so don't tell me they got 760 on the SAT verbal. Immigrants getting special treatment again. And forget all those Asians who only got in because their parents had an Ivy League fetish. They're just grinders with zero intellectual spark. Perfect for a life as some kind of joyless doctor, just as their parents always wanted.

All these elite schools should not only get rid of AA, but they should only accept Asian guys who have perfect grades and SAT test scores, hail from one of the major coastal cities, have parents who went to non-elite universities, are not athletes, play no instruments, attended public schools, are not first generation immigrants, have no bullshit "altruistic" extracurriculars, and have no disabilities. They would be the only ones who are truly academically qualified without any doubt.

You are joking, but the higher average aptitude of the Asian male in uni mainly comes from them being discriminated against.

If you remove that discrimination, you'll let more of them in, and regression towards the mean will kick in.

For comparison, if you have a 'rich people' club, and they let blue people in when they own more than a million dollars, and green people only when they own more than a billion dollars, the green people in the club will be richer on average.

If you change the requirement to let anyone in who owns at least two million dollars, the gap in average wealth of admitted people from either group will narrow.

It won't necessarily disappear, because the underlying distributions of wealth might be weird. For all we know, after the change the average admitted blue one might be richer than the average admitted green.

You can build some real world example using data from https://www.statista.com/statistics/201426/the-richest-peopl...

Fun fact: a club that only admits Americans owning more than 150 billion USD would be 50% African American.

It's not just immigrants from Africa or those who share their racial identity, but its also, and probably more importantly, about the lineages who were kidnapped from Africa as slaves and their families who were stolen from for generations which left very little in their communities to pass to their present day ancestors. It's not good enough to have black faces in high places, because there are people who have been systemically destroyed and their visibility is being obscured by those who happen to look like them. We don't need to give even more opportunity to relatively wealthy African immigrants, some of whom hail from families who profited from American slavery.

Compare also Irish people? Of course, in eg Poland it's even more complicated.

There are many parallels around the globe but the point is that there is a lot of nuance to consider if AA is to be effective at what I think was the original intention was: to increase equity among those marginalized for the sake of creating a system most closely resembling a meritocracy.

I'm not even sure there's a single 'original intention'. Political projects are always pushed by a coalition of people, everyone with their own agenda.

> AA introduces this doubt

Maybe. Every once in a while we have someone I consider an AA-only hire, but they don't stick around. OK, I'll be honest, the most recent one I was wrong - even though they lacked experience, they were clearly better than the (white male) person they replaced... and they're still here so I'm happy.

I'm going to imagine a world without "AA hires". I think people still get judged based on their skin color. That's the way rascism works.

So, damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Anyway, when an incompetent colleague sticks around for years... I wish I could blame affirmative action and feel good, but nope - instead I'm going to blame management.

I dream of a world where people like you are not comfortably making such casual judgements about people like them but there is no justice in this world

If you lower admission standards for any group, say blue people, than statistically speaking blue people will have a lower average.

Just like when you see the the son of the CEO working at the company, there's a certain probability that he didn't get in based on his performance alone.

Of course, as you suggest, there are sons of the CEO who really are the most qualified candidate for whatever job they are holding. But there's also nepotism.

> overcome racial and gender prejudices

The titular point of the article was that class is really where the discrimination happens nowadays. Race and gender prejudices still exist but have taken a back seat to class inequality. The article also suggests the primary driver for this--deterioration of public primary schooling. It's very easy to see how wealth can allow some families to leap over this problem.

edit: sorry it sounded like you were being sarcastic? Now I can't tell after your other comment

Without affirmative action, all thats left is meritocracy and nepotism.

So, I imagine an increasing number of black people and women (or anyone else perceived as less deserving) will be seen as "friend of the boss" or "the boss is doing them a favor". Either way, those can be easily addressed and therefore better than being forever labeled as a diversity hire (aka naturally inferior).

> they'll no longer be looked at as diversity hires

Only racist losers assume I'm a diversity hire. And I'd actually rather they seethe at the "diversity hire" who just happens to somehow magically drive high-impact projects at every company he's ever worked at culminating in a career that's seen him work on everything from some of the most used apps in the world to self-driving cars.

For that particular brand of loser if it isn't affirmative action it'll be something else:

- Our CTO is from a West African nation, I'm from a West African nation, we bonded over that so actually its neopotism

- Affirmative action may be banned and we dropped D&I but actually the hiring manager has a personal secret agenda to hire blackies

- One of the people that interviewed him was black so obviously they gave me a pass.

But of course let's forget about the legacy admission that landed you in a school, let's forget how you bond with your interviewers over in-office beer kegs and inside jokes from your favorite shows in your shared culture, let's forget about that internship from a family friend, etc. etc.

This isn't a movie I don't think anyone is seething or really cares. They may look at you and wonder where you rank, so it forces you to prove yourself. But in this industry every interview wants you to prove yourself in pointless ways regardless if you have 20 year or 1.

> This isn't a movie I don't think anyone is seething or really cares.

If you think people who assume minorities are diversity hires only exist in movies I'm not sure if you're naïve, clueless, or both.

> They may look at you and wonder where you rank, so it forces you to prove yourself

I mean you want to tell yourself no one cares, but you also want to say that removing AA forces me to prove myself? (actually that's just a really vaguely written sentence, removing AA? or being black? what is "it"?)

Why do white people get so uncomfortable at the thought that other whites can be racist? I didn't say you think of me as a diversity hire, I didn't say any majority of white people think of me as one either, yet you immediately feel the need to start throwing yourself in front of the bullet with statements like "this isn't a movie".

Is this some sort of cognitive dissonance from the people who have these thoughts deep down or something?

I hope you realize that black people are wondering the same thing about you and how unfair it is to black people.

I doubt white people are surprised by other white people can be racist. It is part of mainstream media. What may surprise you is many black people can be racist against other black people too.

> I hope you realize that black people are wondering the same thing about you and how unfair it is to black people.

Interesting... when race hadn't been specified, people wondering that about me was something that only happened in movies.

But the moment I specifically mention white people then "well black people are wondering it too!!!!!"

It's almost like you don't care either way as long as you're running interference for the people I'm describing... but why are you doing that?

Again it's not all white people, not even most, assuming minority = diversity hire, and for that reason I initially didn't mention a specific race at all until the first reply I got was someone in full denial mode...

The only people who should feel the need to defend against what I'm saying are people who hold these thoughts. But I'm sure you don't, right?

> I doubt white people are surprised by other white people can be racist.

Yet, again, you felt confident enough to open a comment with patronizing levels of denial at the idea that there are people who think most minorities can't hack it outside of being a token hire... despite page full of comments essentially saying that!

> What may surprise you is many black people can be racist against other black people too.

Please don't project personal naivety and ignorance onto me. YOU are the one who thinks that someone assuming a minority is a diversity hire only happens in movies, not I.

The western world weaponized racism amongst blacks across the continent I'm from and we're still seeing the results today in places like Sudan. Maybe you should brush up on your social studies if you were not aware.

Who said you were black or that I was white? White, brown, yellow and others live in Sudan.

Do you believe everyone who visits here is white? I would guess half of the people on here have various shades of color.

Your views are white and black and that's not reality. The world is not a movie. Most people in the world are not even white or black. Why are you excluding them?

Why do you think it is fair to let in less qualified black students over more qualified asian and Indian students?

I guess you just decided to jump off the deep end with non-sequitur.

I am black and I didn't say I live in Sudan. Sudan is not in West Africa.

I knew you were white because you said people who think minorities are token hires is something that only happens in movies.

Minorities can be racist, but a white person would be the first to say something so naïve.

> Your views are white and black and that's not reality. The world is not a movie. Most people in the world are not even white or black. Why are you excluding them?

Scraping the bottom of the barrel until your fingers bleed here... I didn't mention your race until you outed yourself with your ignorant remark.

You're white, I'm black, that's the only reason why white and black were mentioned. Which aspect of my original comment relies on a specific race to be true?

> Why do you think it is fair to let in less qualified black students over more qualified asian and Indian students?

When you're out of things to say it's best to desperately shove words into your detractor's mouth.

You know I'm a certain race because the views I presented fit into a category of believes you have? In the end you have shown yourself to be very racist. You should reflect on if judging someone based on race is something you want to promote.

You were scraping the bottom of the barrel but now you're just digging a hole under it.

You're clearly not convinced of anything you just wrote, but you felt the need to say something after being trounced. Unfortunately this wasn't the answer we were looking for.

Maybe just reflect on this conversation and grow as a person.

I can't say I respect anyone for getting into an engineering program. It's sticking through to graduate that matters

Research shows that graduation rates for minorities in engineering programs will likely increase if affirmative action goes away:

> Black college freshmen are more likely to aspire to science or engineering careers than are white freshmen, but mismatch causes blacks to abandon these fields at twice the rate of whites. [1]

1: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/the-pai...

Actually, there may be even higher graduation rates among URM students in STEM fields - this is the claim of some recent research [1]. URM students have lower persistence rates[2] in STEM fields at most universities. Some claim this is due to racism, but the data shows that the persistence rates is actually the same for all races when normalized for academic preparedness. A student with 700s on their SATs is just as likely to persist regardless of white, Asian, Black, etc. Students with 600s and 500s are less likely, again regardless of race. It's just that there's a lot more URM students attending with lower scores.

The expected consequence of eliminating race-based affirmative action is that URM students will instead attend less selective universities where they're more likely to persist. Sure, the university they graduate from may not be as prestigious. But on the flipside, they'll be more likely to graduate in the field they actually wanted to study. They'll also probably save a lot of money, since changing majors partway through usually means that these students take 5 or 6 years to graduate.

1. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w14885/w148...

2. "Persistence rate" means the rate at which students complete their declared major. It's rare for students to drop out of university entirely, much more common is that they change to a less demanding major - that is, they don't persist in their initial major.

> They'll also probably save a lot of money, since changing majors partway through usually means that these students take 5 or 6 years to graduate.

They would also graduate with a STEM major, which would likely enable more lucrative career options.

> this is the claim of some recent research

It looks like this working paper is over a decade old. Was it published recently?

I thought it was published in 2019 - apparently it was actually 2009. The author worked on a similar piece of research in 2016 and concludes that Bar pass rates would be higher without affirmative action: http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/dropout.pdf

I'm not really sure how I feel about this. I'm white, not a woman, and I've been (almost certainly) a diversity hire.

In some ways, someone arbitrarily opening the door for you sheds a lot of load in the short-term. You still need all the grit that a chip on your shoulder gives you in order to succeed in the long run. When you do succeed you'll have to shed that load unless you want to sound like a bitter ass the rest of your life. My point here is, I didn't really need anyone to tell me that I was looked down on (by certain people) for a period of time to know it, and I'm not sure college admissions or jobs that are attracting diversity hires are attracting people who give a shit what you think in the short term.

Your opinion of me will be established long after the initial thought of, "Oh this guy is a diversity hire" has left the space between your ears.

How did you wind up a diversity hire?

Former military. I had been programming prior to being in the military, but after getting out nobody really wanted to hire me. My skills weren't really relevant any more, so I don't blame them. A couple firms ended up giving me a chance in the network and systems space.

Hiring veterans is completely different from hiring for racial diversity - being former military is a strong signal for many positive qualities that employers look for.

Maybe to some degree, but it's not all that different. The way I look at it, for that job and one other, was that I was underqualified, came with a built-in tax break, and preferential resume review. It's still a form of affirmative action, and its purpose is similar. I'm specifically referring to being a campaign badge class, and to a time period in my career that was when I first got out.

People were accusing people of being "diversity hires", or having "slept their way to top", or similar dismissive nonsense long before AA was in wide use.

Well, affirmative action mandates diversity hires.

I don't think affirmative action affects "sleeping their way to the top".

> Well, affirmative action mandates diversity hires.

No, it doesn’t.

Disparate impact jurisprudence does https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-dead...

"Despite this assertion, the development of the Griggs doctrine has proved anything but friendly to meritocratic objectives. Although the Supreme Court has never held that all workplaces must be racially balanced, lower courts and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which is charged with administering Title VII, have firmly embraced the presumption that the racial profiles of particular workplaces should reflect the racial composition of the broader population."

"Recently, prompted by the racially adverse impact of measures of verbal and abstract analysis — areas in which some minority groups underperform — experts have also developed alternative instruments that employ audio or video techniques, or that make use of so-called "assessment center" protocols based on job simulations, real-time problem solving, or actual work samples."

"Although few disparate-impact lawsuits are actually filed, and though defendants win most of those that are, the specter of disparate-impact lawsuits nonetheless dangles like a Sword of Damocles over employers' heads. The prospect of onerous, unpredictable, and protracted litigation provides employers with a strong incentive to find some way to avoid being sued. One temptation is to satisfy diversity targets by relaxing personnel-selection standards across the board. Firms can also switch to more haphazard staffing methods that tend to obscure informal affirmative action or other race-conscious practices. Some of these tactics pose the risk of yielding a less effective work force, while others (such as the use of race-based criteria) are legally suspect or even expressly forbidden under Title VII."

By definition, it means some people were extended offers that would not have absent positive discrimination. Well, I suppose it could be the case that the level of positive discrimination didn't alter the outcomes, but then the affirmative action program achieved literally nothing.

At least, that's with the typical meaning of "affirmative action". It's a nebulous term that some use to encompass things like blind orchestra auditions. In the tech world this could be equated with anonymous resumes and blind zoom interviews with modulated voices. But few tech companies seem to be interested in this type of affirmative action.

> Well, affirmative action mandates diversity hires.

I mean... this isn't what AA does at all.

> "diversity hires", or having "slept their way to top"

Those seem like quite distinct issues, like you might as well lump in 'good at office politics' into it

I recently went down a bit of a rabbit hole and learned about "pre-code" Hollywood. There's actually a 1933 movie called "Baby Face" that features a woman who does basically sleep her way to the top of a company (despite being pre-code, it's still quite chaste by modern standards and much is left to implication, but it's not subtle). So the trope does indeed have some history.

The notion that the reason certain groups of people aren't taken seriously in certain roles is because of "D&I" or "AA" is flatly ahistorical.

Certain people just refuse to accept certain groups of people are capable of accomplishment without outside help or uniquely uncommon circumstances.

But every generation finds some excuse that their prejudices are "rational".

   Certain people just refuse to accept certain groups of people are capable of accomplishment without outside help or uniquely uncommon circumstances.

Sounds like the solution then is to remove that outside help, and thus all doubt. Right?

there won't be any black students, they will get weeded out in elementary school

I don’t see a problem with more women getting into university if they have better grades. They already dominate humanities and STEM won’t be affected anyway, so job outcomes won’t be heavily affected.

If we want to fix that then we need to help boys in elementary school, not dumbing down the admissions process.

Sometimes reality is exactly what society needs to confront.

I have the same view with censorship. I’d rather let the dummies embarrass themselves in public than hiding them in the shadows and pretend they wont all still believe that crap and never having the opportunity to have their ideas challenged.

Taping over problems often hides the root causes while doing nothing to deal with it.

> I think 50% of the population suddenly realizing they were beneficiaries of affirmative action this whole time—and subsequently understanding the nuances of discrimination in this country—will ultimately be a good thing.

I doubt that if they haven't figured out it's a nuanced thing by now that they will figure that out after the second order effects come into play.

Why not take these non-specific, hypothetical people at face value? If they say they want merit based admissions and that's what we get then they should be happy.

Maybe I’m more optimistic than most.

In any case, the gymnastics needed to explain why one was totally wrong and the other is absolutely necessary will bring about an era of US dominance in the sport.

The Supreme Court is not deciding anything with regard to sex-based discrimination right now. I would be surprised if it even mentioned anything in dicta (non-binding comments not necessary to the holding) about this topic.

Also, if/when the question comes up, there is a different standard for sex-based discrimination than race-based. The former is subject to intermediate scrutiny, whereas the latter is subject (in general) to strict scrutiny.

So it is plausible that the Court would determine that some sex-based discrimination is acceptable, and simultaneously determine that no race-based discrimination is acceptable.

The ruling almost certainly would include sex because it's part of the same law that protects against racial discrimination. Title VI of the civil rights act specifically protects these plus religion and nationality. If it applies to race (and it obvious does) it applies to all of them.

It's honestly astounding that anyone finds this racism either moral or legal. It's precisely the same thing that the civil rights act forbids and for good reason.

Nope. Sex is exempt from discrimination protections by law to allow same-sex colleges. (Public colleges cannot consider sex, however).

See https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2891107

It seems ridiculous for it to turn out that way. Let's make sure we have enough men in college, but it's wrong to increase the Black representation?

Sex and race are just treated differently by law. The supreme court wouldn't allow drafting only black people, but it does allow drafting only men.

The rules about sex-based discrimination were not crafted for the purpose of college admissions. This is just how the law has evolved around treating people of different sexes and races differently.

Another consequence of having the looser "intermediate scrutiny" for sex discrimination is that the FBI can have different fitness requirement for male and female recruits. Ditto for armed forces, and for laws relating to pregnancy.

When I was 18 I filled out the section of the form for rural applicants (in the Australian university system), but with the benefit of hindsight I wish I'd left it blank. I'm 95% sure that I would have made it anyway yet the 5% doubt is unpleasant.

There are many, many disadvantages to being educated in rural Australia vs. in the capital cities. Even if you got selected by one of the richer schools who pay for the best teachers and better student/teacher ratios, you are still disadvantages by needing to live away from home (lacking family support) or 4 hours of commuting each day. And it isn't even all about you. Because Universities know about these disadvantages, they know that, on average, a student from a rural area will perform better than an urban student with the same scores. It adds context to the scores.

Unlike, say, when there was a box to tick if you had enough aboriginal blood in your veins. So many people ticked that box for an unfair advantage, completely disconnected and even scornful of the culture but able to claim enough percentage of the race. But lots of students took the money from Abstudy even if it muddied their ethics.

Why does this bother you? Do you assume that the system is perfect, except for this particular benefit you believe it provides to rural applicants?

I assume it's a reocurring thought that maybe the commenter you replied to only got in because of the standards being lowered.

Which is something I have heard of from quite a lot of people who may have benefitted from AA. And it's somewhat frequently paired with a huge amount of self doubt.

I was happy to write an essay about my experiences growing up on a farm for my Harvard admission packet. I couldn't care less about whoever hypothetical NYC chess-playing salutatorian I "beat out".

ISTM these "special" circumstances very rarely contribute the bulk of any incoming class. Any "regular" student who really deserved admissions got it, and only marginal strivers with few must-have qualities complain about getting denied in favor of applicants with special circumstances. It's fine for these people to suggest larger class sizes (certainly in the case of Harvard they are correct; I don't know about the Australian system). Their self-interest is showing, however, when they start making lists of people whose test scores they beat by a few points. There's no reason to trust their judgments over those of professional admissions staff.

That is doubly the case for those of us who may have been admitted for these reasons and then went on to collegiate success. Why the hell would we worry about the opinions of those marginal strivers? They should do their best at their safety schools.

I think there's a bit more to this. A lot of men simply don't need a degree when they take up the family business, go to trade school, or start a military career and that's fairly common in the south. I wouldn't call most of those guys disadvantaged.

Drop out rates for the disadvantaged can be high as well regardless of affirmative action getting them in. The difficulties are cultural and I agree that making this situation clearer is a net good.

This sounds like the argument that women don’t need degrees because they are just housewives or secretaries

As if a man in this day of age would let a woman into his kitchen to make him a sandwich without a degree. One needs qualifications to show ability.

What? Given increased rates of male virginity, it's more as if a man in this day and age would deny a woman from entering the kitchen

While it was intended as a joke about the workplace, you raise an interesting perspective. Indeed, establishing bonds with a homemaker is increasingly considered a risky activity, particularly for men, primary due to the courts establishing precedent for ongoing support payments even after services are no longer rendered. Perhaps increased rates of male virginity really is the result of increased scrutiny?

Certainly in the workplace we've seen increased rates of job vacancies, yet employers will do everything in their power to try and avoid hiring you. This is especially apparent in tech (at least until recently) where companies couldn't hire fast enough, but also put the Leetcode screws to you to ensure that they couldn't find anyone to hire. This does suggest that we're becoming increasingly risk averse or that the stakes are higher.

It also depends significantly on where you're talking about. At my college, my class was about 85% male and 15% female. Looks like last year they managed to get it to 68% male and 32% female.

Women outperform men on GPA, SAT reading, and ACT humanities sections. Men do better on SAT math and ACT STEM sections

The difference is pretty small though. Like 30 points on the SAT

Small differences in the means of two normal distributions still result in huge differences at the tails. Suppose the top 10% of SAT math scorers make the best engineers. This population will be overwhelmingly male even if there is only a modest difference in the mean scores.

Small differences in mean generally mean larger differences in number of people above a high threshold.

> Once AA is overturned, that's it—hands off the scale

Or change it so it is not race based. Instead make it geographical.

Say you want to admit 1000 students from the US. Partition the US into 1000 districts, with 1 student admitted per district.

Gerrymander the district boundaries to make sure that you get the racial demographics you want.

Have fun watching the Supreme Court try to explain why that is not OK but it is OK to gerrymander congressional districts to ensure Black people are underrepresented.

Make it geographical or conscious of class, parental income and geography. That would go so much further in the goal of reducing inequality and increasing fairness than classifying people forcibly on something which we used to say wasn't a scientific classification, race.

> conscious of class, parental income and geography.

This is going to be a pain in the ass and you'll just lead to people gaming the system.

How about we just aim to make a high quality collage available to all who want it and extremely cheap and easy to finance so it's available to all?

High quality college should be available to all who want it and who are actually college material. There are a large fraction of college students who don't belong there and only matriculated to meet parental expectations or because they didn't know what else to do. As a taxpayer I am unwilling to finance this waste.

Why not make the goal "providing the best education possible to the brightest?" Why is reducing inequality the goal of an educational system, while taking as an unstated premise that inequality is somehow unnatural or bad?

sounds like the solution is to mandate that black (and asian and so on) people are required to be evenly distributed rather than congregate in enclaves susceptible to gerrymandering.

or, wait. that's not good, is it. or is it?

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