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Comment by spacephysics | Hacker News Reader

The underlying important question is what do you define as equality?

Equality of outcomes, or equality of opportunity?

This is a very slippery slope when some definitions are not equal, or stated, as we’ve come into a recent crisis of definitions being rewritten unnaturally (I understand the meaning of words change over time, but there have been recent inorganic changes, I’d argue)

The classic opportunity of outcome is proven to be doomed, and is not aligned with your imperfect world assertion.

I can get behind equality of opportunity, which I’d argue affirmative action’s impact was antithetical to this vision.

We’ve come to a point where the new generation is being held accountable for something they had no hand in.

We shouldn’t be trying to treat these diversity reports as a checkbook that needs to be balanced.

I heard something that resonated with me, and will probably get me downvoted to oblivion (if it hasn’t already happened):

those that want to look for racism, will find it.

Once a certain area is solved so to speak, some groups tend to look even harder, and we get to a point now where we have this ever-widening definition of what racism is, the goal posts ever expanding, and this endless loop is our culture eating itself alive.

I shouldn’t have to say this, but this doesn’t imply racism doesn’t exist. But it does imply that our definitions of it have radically evolved, and perhaps is being used for ulterior motives outside of “equality”

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This is fundamentally the only thing that bothers me about the entire post-modern left narrative. If the goal posts were “equality of opportunity” (as they historically have been) then I’d have no problem continuing to fight until opportunity is provably equal. But if you move the goal posts to “equality of outcome” (what people mean when they say “racial equity”) and say “look we’re still a racist society” I just can’t get behind that definition and framework.

The hard reality is that we have made a lot of progress and it’s almost impossible to argue that we’re missing equality of opportunity anymore. We’ve been legally equal for at least 3 generations. Yes, there are still some poor and intensely disparaged communities of predominately minority populations. I have no problems with people coming together to help those communities. But we can’t let racial equity seep into our legal framework or we’ll literally be discriminating based on race all over again and all the way down. No horrors of the past justify that level of wrongness. It’s hopeless and fruitless to try and design a “racially equitable” society, and you’re going to always just be an angry person if you set out on that path.

All that said, as always with these situations, I ask “what is the end goal and how can I help get there”. 9 times out of 10, there is no end goal and that’s where I draw the line in lending my valuable time, my money, my vote, and/or any mental space for stress and concern to a proposed cause. If you came to me and said every white person has to pay e.g. $5000 this generation, 4k the next, then 3k, and so on to balance out slavery and then we’re done talking about race and we can move on I would pay up immediately even though I disagree with the idea of reparations and holding future generations accountable for the sins of their fathers. I would do it because there’s a clear goal (correct for the past) and path to achieve it (pay money).

What I can’t get behind is being perpetually discriminated against as a white person under a framework of ever-evolving goalposts chasing racial equity of outcomes into the sunset.

LBJ gave the commencement speech at Howard more than 50 years ago and said:

That beginning is freedom; and the barriers to that freedom are tumbling down. Freedom is the right to share, share fully and equally, in American society—to vote, to hold a job, to enter a public place, to go to school. It is the right to be treated in every part of our national life as a person equal in dignity and promise to all others.

But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.

Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.

---

It's gonna take a very long time. Reparations are valued in the trillions. Truly insane violence has been perpetuated on racial minorities in America. It's gonna take more than ~60 years of Jim Crow-free America to make things right.

Then why have the goal posts moved? That’s my only challenge to the status quo. Presumably they’ve moved because moving them is the only way (or at least the only cheap/easy way) to maintain a narrative of injustice. Shouldn't we be able to pursue this vision without frivolously chasing a metric we have absolutely no understand of let alone control over?

It’s subtle but the motives are very different: if you want to maintain a narrative of injustice, then you will find ways to do that. OTOH, if you want to build a narrative of equality, success, and support, then you need to be open to the outcome that racial undertones and the victim status of minorities will fade into history. Thats the entire goal, right?

I think the problem is obviously a racial hierarchy is motivated to pretend that minority status is already faded into history, especially if it isn't faded right now. Similar to how my boss says that his kneecapping my career is in the past now, there's a new peer review quarter and I have new opportunities so why should I be mad? Maybe sure 10 years from now it'll be whatever, but he just sabotaged me last quarter. Of course to him it's water under a boat, he has every motivation to pretend it to be so, and to say my pointing out that I'm still a harmed party to be goalpost moving or whatever nonsense he wants to come up with to say it doesn't exist anymore and therefore he doesn't even have to lift a finger to make it up to me.

It’s important for me to be very precise and clear here: I am not arguing that speaking up and pointing out that you were actively wronged is moving the goalposts. It’s literally not and I’m not trying to silence you or discourage the royal your initiative to do so! I think your boss should probably be fired and you should get a bonus.

There are, however, people making the argument that we need to focus on equality of outcome as the solution (vs firing your boss and paying you damages). And followers of this idealogical doctrine have made political inroads in schooling and government. It’s this behavior specifically that I’m criticizing.

Yes, part of the problem is that we’re such a binary society so these nuances get bucketed into larger issues and it’s all really hard to sort out.

The goal posts never moved. They were always:

- People of color don't experience special violence

- People of color don't experience special rates of poverty

- People of color aren't specially diverted from the pursuit of happiness

We're so far away from this goal that we can only hazily imagine achieving it. For example, white high school dropouts have higher home ownership rates than Black college graduates [0]. Either you think Black people are just bad with credit cards (which would be racist) or you think there's some structural cause.

I think people want a number, like a number of years or an amount of money so we can finally say, "we did it, we made things right." It's even in this opinion. I don't think that's a useful way of looking at it, because no metrics really capture what it's like to be in a marginalized group. Hell we can't even agree on metrics for software engineers; we definitely can't get it right for this.

What we should do instead is create race conscious policies that address inequalities when we find them. We should do this for everyone btw: white people who have been victimized by the opioid epidemic, women who've experienced violence, etc. etc. Race-conscious admissions programs were doing this work for college admissions, but sadly not anymore.

[0]: https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Umb...

I think you jumped to a poorly argued conclusion with:

> What we should do instead is create race conscious policies

Of course, the goalposts you mentioned are good goals. But it’s far from clear that face conscious policies are appropriate or effective.

Appropriateness is, of course, a matter of opinion, but the Supreme Court has decided that the policies in question are unconstitutional. But effectiveness is an empirical matter. For example, in 1996, California banned most affirmative action in public universities. (To be clear, a lot of very well intentioned people at the universities supported affirmative action. Source: personal knowledge.). It took a few years for the situation to settle down, but the results of removing affirmative action seem to have been a pretty clear benefit to black students at the University of California campuses.

It turns out that, just because a policy is well intentioned, it does not follow that it is effective at achieving its good intentions. I could rattle off quite a few examples of policies that fail in this regard.

https://archive.is/bjv8J

> the results of removing affirmative action seem to have been a pretty clear benefit to black students at the University of California campuses

This is incorrect; removing affirmative action was real bad for Black students [0]. The article you cite references the discredited "mismatch" theory also pushed by Justice Thomas. Mismatch theory was never supported by data, and the studies that do seem to support it have huge problems [1]. No serious person thinks it's real.

Race-conscious admissions were an unqualified good for millions of minority students. They're probably only second to Social Security as a US anti-poverty policy. There's no amount of weirdo reasoning or fact twisting that can obscure that.

[0]: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/137/1/115/6360982?guest...

[1]: https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/studies-supporting-mi...

I don’t see the “mismatch” reference. I admit that article is not great. I found a much better article at one point but can’t find it again.

I admit I’m dubious about the study [0]. It says:

> I show that ending affirmative action caused underrepresented minority (URM) freshman applicants to cascade into lower-quality colleges.

This seems like a potentially problematic metric. Drawing conclusions from this depends on the assumption that the applicant pool did not change. It appears that much of UCLA’s post-Prop 209 strategy involved programs to improve their applicant pool. I haven’t found good data, but it’s entirely plausible that the outreach works, the applicant pool has a larger (and less under-represented?) fraction of “URM” applicants, that a comparable number but smaller fraction are admitted, that a larger number and a larger fraction go to the lower-tier schools (Cal State and community colleges, for example), and that this is all a good thing.

IMO, society does not benefit when a too-small proportion of qualified minority high school students apply to top-tier schools and a too-large fraction of the applicants get in. (Of course, any admission scheme whatsoever ought to benefit those who are admitted, at least so long as second-order damaging effects from a problematic admission scheme don’t make going to the university in question worse than the alternatives and so long as the university is worth going to in the first place.)

It does appear to be the case, based on terrible but official data that I found, that the fraction of the UCLA student body that is black is similar now to what it was before Prop 209. But I could be misinterpreting what I found. (The recovery was very slow, which is unfortunate.)

The article quotes Heriot referencing Mismatch theory here:

> By eliminating racial preferences, Heriot wrote last week, the 1996 amendment did away with the pressure to admit minority students to competitive institutions their credentials hadn’t prepared them for.

> I haven’t found good data, but it’s entirely plausible that the outreach works, the applicant pool has a larger (and less under-represented?) fraction of “URM” applicants, that a comparable number but smaller fraction are admitted, that a larger number and a larger fraction go to the lower-tier schools (Cal State and community colleges, for example), and that this is all a good thing.

The paper is more or less about minority enrollment going up at non-UC schools, so UCLA's outreach is irrelevant here.

> IMO, society does not benefit when a too-small proportion of qualified minority high school students apply to top-tier schools and a too-large fraction of the applicants get in.

Why?

I would challenge you to cite any government program in history in any country that has successfully achieved "equalization of outcome for racial groups." For those advocating extreme measures and philosophies, the burden of proof should be very high.

> It's gonna take more than ~60 years of Jim Crow-free America to make things right.

Agreed, but as the parent comment said, what's the end-goal? What are the metric(s) whereby we can say "things are now right", or even, "things are approaching the direction of right-ness"?

p25, p50, p75 wealth among Black and white families for starters.

>It's gonna take more than ~60 years of Jim Crow-free America to make things right.

How does this work, in practice? Look at the comments here; do you think one half of the population is going to vote for politicians who want to implement a special tax that sees money from their pay check going to their neighbors, based on race? That will never happen.

I wholly agree with everything above the dashes/hyphens, but I partially disagree with the bottom part and a related position I suspect you hold. Maybe we will end up dedicating trillions of dollars through solid reform, but that figure shouldn't be based on historical reckonings of damages. The history of oppression and inequality in the US is gross and tragic, but the past isn't the present isn't the future. There are enough actual issues to solve already. Now, onto attacking a stance you may or may not hold. While certain groups (I won't deign to be imprecise with wording) are heavily disadvantaged heavily from historical racism, it still ultimately remains the sole responsibility and capability of each individual to forge their own path. If the culture is flawed, so too may the people not sow healthy crops to reap. To be sure, this may not turn out to be a significant issue, but it's something to be mindful of throughout reforms. Truly though, I hope for the best.

> 9 times out of 10, there is no end goal and that’s where I draw the line in lending my valuable time, my money, my vote, and/or any mental space for stress and concern to a proposed cause

Is ending systemic injustice that hard to grok? Certain races in the United States face discrimination on a daily basis, and in addition to the social effects of this they are also significantly disadvantaged on education and family income. You can measure things like "how many people in your family went to college," as well as family AGI and do breakdowns by race. You can draw a direct line to racist social policies, even ones less extreme than slavery or Jim Crow. Ones that come to mind include redlining, the historically rough medical treatment of black folks, and, I don't know, the frequent shooting of unarmed colored people by police?

> If you came to me and said every white person has to pay e.g. $5000 this generation, 4k the next, then 3k, and so on to balance out slavery and then we’re done talking about race and we can move on I would pay up immediately even though I disagree with the idea of reparations and holding future generations accountable for the sins of their fathers.

The problem is you want a "clear goal" a.k.a simple solution when there just isn't one. This is a multi-faceted issue that requires thoughtfulness. Yours is the same mentality missionaries bring to Africa -- "just give them clothes, food, and shoes" with no regard to the more important things like building an economic engine that lets people self-sustain, contribute, and compete.

There are a _lot_ of kinds of reparations that could happen beyond affirmative action (e.g. better investment in black-majority communities via schools, favorable loans, etc) and they don't have to come out of just white folks' pockets (just spend taxpayer money so we all share the burden).

> The hard reality is that we have made a lot of progress and it’s almost impossible to argue that we’re missing equality of opportunity anymore.

Opportunity is a function of preparation and people taking chances on you.

- Preparation costs time and money and racial minorities have measurably less time and money on average.

- People taking chances on you requires network. Folks from historically disadvantaged races don't have the benefit of legacy, or even role models (consider being a mexican high schooler visiting Google campus -- would you think becoming a software engineer there is attainable for you?) The psychological impact of stuff like this is profound.

A black friend I met in college went through high school assuming that would be the end of his education because that was just how it was in his mostly-black neighborhood -- is that something you can internalize at all? Is that not evidence against "equality of opportunity" ??? The year was 2010 for pete's sake. This is a frequent thing.

> What I can’t get behind is being perpetually discriminated against as a white person under a framework of ever-evolving goalposts chasing racial equity of outcomes into the sunset.

As a white person, your individual chances of going to Harvard are not meaningfully affected by the presence of affirmative action. Consider their admission rate of 0.04, then consider affirmative action affects 10% of applicants. Your chance of admission is now 0.036, which at the end of the day is basically the same. You have a 96.4% chance of not being admitted vs 96% chance.

More importantly, as a white person _you started with a better dice roll_ so you should compete against folks who started with similar dice rolls. Affirmative action doesn't mean black folks get guaranteed admission to harvard; they still have to compete against other high-achieving people of the same race.

I'm Asian -- affirmative action is technically worse for me than you because Asian-american immigrants historically have optimized against college admission metrics very well. But I fully support it, because the continuing legacy of slavery and race-based discrimination in this country is too egregious to do nothing about. Equality of opportunity is the long term goal, but to get there you need to create less-unequal outcomes to prime to pump. It's just too lopsided as it is. My child will do fine at a solid state school if their 0.036% chance at Harvard doesn't pan out.

Take yourself out of it for a second: consider whether your child will be more or less discriminated against than an average black person's child. They have some solid advantages: they won't get killed for calling the police, they have you as their parent (you're posting multiple paragraphs on hacker news about paying $5k+ in reparations, so you're probably doing fine), they probably won't have problems booking an AirBnB or with a doctor treating them like they're 5 years older, and they probably won't do jail time for smoking marijuana or even doing coke if we're being honest.

> You can measure things like "how many people in your family went to college," as well as family AGI and do breakdowns by race. You can draw a direct line to racist social policies, even ones less extreme than slavery or Jim Crow. Ones that come to mind include redlining, the historically rough medical treatment of black folks, and, I don't know, the frequent shooting of unarmed colored people by police?

Of course you can measure this stuff, that's the point!

> The problem is you want a "clear goal" a.k.a simple solution when there just isn't one. This is a multi-faceted issue that requires thoughtfulness. Yours is the same mentality missionaries bring to Africa -- "just give them clothes, food, and shoes" with no regard to the more important things like building an economic engine that lets people self-sustain, contribute, and compete.

I presented that hypothetical solution rhetorically. I actually don't think that paying money is a real solution. But I want to get to the point where someone advocating for the cause can say "these are the acceptable end conditions".

> In college one of my black friends went through high school assuming that would be the end of his education because that was just how it was in his mostly-black neighborhood -- is that something you can internalize at all? Is that not evidence against "equality of opportunity" ??? The year was 2010 for pete's sake. This is a frequent thing.

I had white and black and brown and yellow friends in college from low income neighborhoods who all experienced this. Yes, it's something I'm able to consider compassionately.

> I'm Asian -- affirmative action is technically worse for me than you because Asian-american immigrants historically have optimized against college admission metrics very well. But I fully support it, because the continuing legacy of slavery and race-based discrimination in this country is too egregious to do nothing about. Equality of opportunity is the long term goal, but to get there you need to create less-unequal outcomes to prime to pump. It's just too lopsided as it is. My child will do fine at a solid state school if their 0.036% chance at Harvard doesn't pan out.

I am well aware of the dynamics of AA.

> Take yourself out of it for a second: consider whether your child will be more or less discriminated against than an average black person's child.

Where's the framework for evaluating as much? Where's the audits to confirm that any temporary cheap discrimination is actually priming the pump and not causing more harm (and yes there is evidence that affirmative action isn't all that you're cracking it up to be). All I'm asking for is to be objective and calculated about these things and not emotional and sloppy.

---

Look, you and I are different people with different tolerances for discrimination.

I am hypothetically okay being discriminated against in the short term (as you are) if it provably corrects a clear issue and we have an agreement in place to evaluate the program as it's happening, make sure it's contributing to the desired outcome, and to stop the discrimination once clear end conditions are met.

Of course I'd rather not be discriminated against explicitly since I think that's a sloppy proxy solution and instead I'd rather address the actual problems even if they're more expensive and more difficult programs to execute--everyone should share the load of building the society we want to live in.

In general, you're okay hearing about the atrocities of the past and allowing yourself to be discriminated against on the loose grounds that any discrimination serves to correct the atrocities. You feel guilt about the wrongs of the past and are thus able to justify discrimination as a form of atonement.

On the other hand, I am not okay allowing myself to be discriminated against because of past events I had no control over or participated in, despite arguably indirectly benefitting from them loosely based on the color of my skin. I do not feel guilt or the need to atone for those previous wrongs. I do feel responsibility to contribute to correcting any outstanding issues that still exist today.

Therefore I am not phased by an argument that lists all the bad things that happened and concludes "oh you must still atone". And it is not justification outright for introducing discrimination to me or my children today.

I am swayed by logical assessments of the current situation and well thought out proposals on how to address remaining problems. I want equality of opportunity and I very much disagree we'll achieve it by focusing on equality of outcome. I don't think that's the right path. AA has primed the pump as you say of the opportunity engine for generations now. Let's assess the situation and move on.

We share a desire for the same goal, but we are different in our approaches. If that makes me an asshole and you not, well that's outside of either of our control. I can assure you my stance isn't some cheap sensational response to this headline or something. I have spent more time than I'd wager most have considering these issues and determining how I wish to engage.

> I am hypothetically okay being discriminated against in the short term (as you are) if it provably corrects a clear issue and we have an agreement in place to evaluate the program as it's happening, make sure it's contributing to the desired outcome, and to stop the discrimination once clear end conditions are met.

Do you consider it discrimination that disabled folks get to park in special spots? I don't consider discrimination. Some people just need more help to get where they're going, and some of us will be just fine using the legs we were born to walk with. In the same vein, I don't feel like I'm being discriminated against by affirmative action. And I'm not worried about my kid even if those policies remained in place.

Nobody thinks affirmative action is perfect. For example if I could make a change myself I'd focus on the economic part of socioeconomic more so that it's not mainly privileged people of color getting priority. But you have to start somewhere. With systems governing people it's just not that realistic to ask that everything be perfectly measurable or that there is a neat objective function to optimize.

> Therefore I am not phased by an argument that lists all the bad things that happened and concludes "oh you must still atone". And it is not justification outright for introducing discrimination to me or my children today.

You're very focused on yourself. Nobody is asking you as an individual to "atone" for anything because you didn't do anything. What we are discussing is _systemic changes_ designed to help folks who are disadvantaged _also without having done anything_. Broad, high-level changes like affirmative action just don't have the impact on individuals in the majority that you are making them out to have. They do however have outsized impact on folks in the minority.

In general I find it gross to be so focused on what you're calling your own discrimination when it totally pales in comparison to the experiences of folks who face actual discrimination. You say you're able to consider others' experiences compassionately, but that's clearly just lip service, otherwise you wouldn't be calling affirmative action "discrimination."

> Some people just need more help to get where they're going, and some of us will be just fine using the legs we were born to walk with.

This is exactly the issue at play. There's a fundamental difference between _unending_ affirmative action and temporary 'help'. If you believe in equality of outcome then you will never be satisfied and we will always be 'helping' the disadvantaged group achieve various metrics forever. Eventually people deserve the dignity of a level playing field, otherwise you seem to be saying they're incapable of handling a level playing field which would be.. racist (by definition).

Your example of handicaps is disturbing, I know you didn't intend it in a racist way, but read what you wrote from the perspective of an African immigrant. Just because a person is black does not mean they're 'handicapped'!

> Your example of handicaps is disturbing

Being born a certain race is a disadvantage in the same way being born with physical disability is a disadvantage. They're not the same but that was the point I was trying to make: we look out for disadvantaged folks in some societal contexts. Why are y'all complaining about systemically disadvantaged people getting some help? Is it because you can't trace the taxpayer dollars we spend on things like Section 8 housing back to your wallet, but you can trace back your rejection letter from Harvard to accursed affirmative action?

> If you believe in equality of outcome then you will never be satisfied

If you re-read what I wrote earlier, I said equality of opportunity is the north star. But just because you believe in that north star doesn't mean you can't see the value in skewing the current state by other means until you're there.

There's another thing here: affirmative action isn't something that keeps going much past your college graduation, and it doesn't directly remedy the brokenness of the K-12 education system, where de-facto race segregation is commonplace and you can start 3 grades back just by being born in the wrong town. Even diversity programs at big companies are typically only aimed at new grads. These are limited programs that just try to boost folks who typically haven't had the necessary support to achieve their full potential. At the end of the day the free market will do its work.

Folks claiming the little boost from affirmative action is "discrimination" need to get their heads out of the sand.

> you seem to be saying they're incapable of handling a level playing field which would be.. racist

No, I'm saying colored folks _are_ capable of achieving the same things as white folks if given the same advantages and privileges. But they don't get those advantages and privileges because society is broken. Affirmative action is one tool we can use to help put more colored folks in places of power in society. Without this, we will never sniff equal opportunity -- the north star we all seem to agree we want. Having people who look like you in places of power is important because they can advocate for you and surface areas where the opportunity is decidedly _not_ equal.

Calling race a handicap is itself pretty clear racism. Maybe reconsider how you consider these things.

Being born black is a disadvantage to your life outcome in the current system. That's the main point.

The comparison to how we treat the physically handicapped is just asking folks to consider why we are okay with helping people at cost to ourselves in one case and not another.

> Being born black is a disadvantage to your life outcome.

You're sick and your mind is diseased. I'd like to see you try to tell this to a black child.

We’re okay helping handicapped people because it’s not racist. Duh. I’m okay helping disparaged kids get into college by subsidizing them with financial aid programs and creating compassionate admission standards. Why limit it to black people?

The supreme court seems to agree that it’s time to move forward and focus on the real issues, not the racial scapegoat.

> You're sick and your mind is diseased. I'd like to see you try to tell this to a black child.

First of all, I'm not going around talking to random children. Secondly, black parents _totally_ have to say at some point to their kid, "hey you have to be careful around cops because they won't treat you the same as they treat your white friends."

I don't understand where you got this "you're sick and your mind is diseased" bit. The point was just that the playing field's not level and you're willfully missing it.

> Why limit it to black people?

Because the scale of systemic injustice to black folks is so big that it should not be controversial. The legacy of slavery in this country looms large. To be clear I also fully support measures to reduce overall economic inequality as well, it's just not the topic being discussed here.

I’m not missing anything. I understand exactly what you’re parroting. I’m telling you that you’re perpetuating a racist worldview of victimhood in an effort to signal your guilt and remorse to random peers (likely not even black people). I fundamentally believe your worldview and savior complex do more harm to the very people you think need saving than good. I consider you to be reducing complex nuanced reality to skin color, which is racist. There is nothing you can say to me right now that will change the fact that I don’t feel one ounce of guilt over the history of slavery in the US. There is no possible moral framework where I am responsible for things that happened hundreds of years ago. All I can do is treat people equally moving forward and help people in need. There’s a reason people say dwelling on the past is unhealthy.

> I'm telling you that you’re perpetuating a racist worldview of victimhood in an effort to signal your guilt and remorse to random peers

I'm anon and not even white (my parents are immigrants) -- who am I signaling to or guilty about? The only effort being made is an effort to reason with other anons on the interwebs, so take it or leave it.

You can also keep calling me racist for pointing out systemic racial inequity but last I checked racism is a byproduct of ignorance, and I'm sensing a whole lot of that from you. So, right back at you.

> I fundamentally believe your worldview and savior complex do more harm to the very people you think need saving than good

I get that this is a difference between us. I fundamentally believe that your worldview is faulty because it turns a blind eye to how tilted the status quo is and doesn't consider the status quo to be unethical. Characterizing a desire to level the playing field as a "savior complex" is unfair -- it's not a savior complex to feel that something is wrong and want to fix it, it's just called being conscientious.

> I don’t feel one ounce of guilt over the history of slavery in the US.

Dude nobody cares if you feel guilt or not, you're missing the point. Guilt doesn't help anyone, systemic policy changes do. Why are you making it sound like anyone cares about what you feel as an individual?

> All I can do is treat people equally moving forward and help people in need.

You can also acknowledge the legacy of past inequities, how they persist in the systems we live in today, and work to remedy them. If you step into a colored person's shoes and think about what bullshit they STILL have to face today (which you don't have to, as a white person), you might begin to see the desire for reform less as "identity politics" and more just "advocating for equal ass treatment."

Thanks for acknowledging these man and being a voice of reason. So many ignorant opinions and deliberate attempts to ignore injustice in this thread.

Nobody is ignoring injustice, they’re just arguing that future solutions should not be anti-white. Or are you implying the only solution to supporting black people is to treat them differently based on the color of their skin?

I suspect you’re not very familiar with the progenitors of anti-racism.

Anyway, I’m talking over your head because I assumed you have explored the structural foundation for your assertions that dominant cultures are systemically problematic. Ignore my comments about white guilt and the like, they’re not really apropos, we both agree.

(If you care: see it’s a problem in and of itself that you responded to my argument with a long speech about how black people are victims and should be treated differently even still today and about how I simply don't understand and empathize with black struggle enough. And how my morally bankrupt white culture is unjust and needs dismantling. Oh and we should listen to this anon because they’re asian. Like, you’re already talking past me. I never said anything to that tune. And it’s why I responded so harshly, because 1. i think race-based laws are racist despite past struggles agree to disagree, and 2. it comes from a place of arguing that whiteness confers guilt, whether you’ve explored it that deeply or not.)

Let’s be clear: nowhere did I say we shan’t acknowledge the legacy of past inequities or do our part as humans to make a better world. I simply said that the solution to any remaining problems today must be colorblind. The court agrees.

You said, well no they can’t be colorblind because black people are (charitably) “disabled” because of history and so they must still be propped up.

We can just leave it at that.

Personally I’m only interested in engaging further on these topics when the dialog is not about atoning for past sins via identity politics and race-based policy, and instead the solution is a burden carried by all, not just white people. Come what may.

Give it for a white person to talk about guilt and race, as if everything had to be centered around how white people feel. That exactly itself is racism. It’s pretty simple, injustice was perpetuated by the dominant group against other groups. It still exists today as well as its effects. The dominant group got to dictate the prestige culture, the policies, the norms, enforce its ways.

If you want to support good goals and justice, you must be in support of policies to combat this injustice. And it begins with acknowledging that by being part of a dominant group there are benefits, and being part of a marginalized group there are disadvantages. If you refuse to acknowledge these things, it’s similar to choosing to ignore injustices happening currently.

How did we get from “I disagree with race-based legal policy” to “I don't acknowledge privileges”? Thats’s exactly the type of rhetorically bankrupt leap SJWs make all the time. It’s silly and simply not true. Quit it with the thought-terminating cliches, please…

These ad hominems don't help your point, they just alienate - probably time to take a break from affirmative action commenting for a moment :)

I think we're equivocating with kajecounterhack on what 'disadvantage' means, and they chose an unfortunate analogy to illustrate their idea of disadvantage that is perhaps more fundamental to the disadvantaged person than they were going for.

The point is that 'disadvantage' does not take away opportunity, and disadvantage in the US no longer comes purely on racial terms, at least not when it comes to opportunity for education and financial success. You can get a degree by studying hard for the SAT and better your circumstances for a well placed $20 in high school, or you can join a trade school and say screw it to higher education and still better your circumstances. These opportunities exist for pretty much every black kid as long as they don't break the law and avoid addiction. They are in no way 'disabled' and have agency over their own destiny.

> I think we're equivocating with kajecounterhack on what 'disadvantage' means, and they chose an unfortunate analogy to illustrate their idea of disadvantage that is perhaps more fundamental to the disadvantaged person than they were going for.

Yeah I do regret drawing this analogy even if I still think it's apt, since it's distracting from my point instead of reinforcing it.

> These opportunities exist for pretty much every black kid as long as they don't break the law and avoid addiction. They are in no way 'disabled' and have agency over their own destiny.

I wasn't saying black folks are disabled. I was trying to express that some folks have disadvantages in life that start from birth, and color qualifies as one of those because of the way society at large has and continues to discriminate against folks with darker skin. This particular discrimination deserves addressing through efforts like affirmative action because its impact on life outcomes is profound.

You could say that the ability to buy an SAT book is all it takes to get a degree, but this doesn't track with reality. Preparation for college education starts from youth, and in the US public school quality is related to where you live. The legacy of slavery and Jim Crow extend to where we live today. An emphasis on education as a means to better yourself is also commonly handed down by your family -- but what if your family traces back (it's not that far) to an era where black folks were discriminated against when it came to education?

There are other interesting ways to slice it (e.g. how many of your parents went to college is a predictor of whether you'll go to college and also whether you succeed if you go; being poor at harvard means you actually don't get the same experience as folks who are better off).

> They are in no way 'disabled' and have agency over their own destiny.

I 100% agree with this statement, I just think that agency can only get you so far. You need supporting infrastructure, otherwise in the aggregate we will continue to perpetuate inequities (which unfortunately also reinforce discriminatory viewpoints).

I think I agree with this entirely. The problem is these disadvantages don't justify a policy of race-based affirmative action. To do this, you'd need to do one of three things:

1. Say that the affirmative action policy is temporary based on a time frame. This is tricky because any time you come up with will seem pretty arbitrary.

2. Say that the affirmative action policy is temporary based on a metric. This is also tricky because that metric is arbitrary (worse - it may never be accomplished).

3. Say the affirmative action policy is merited indefinitely which is in my opinion racist, because this is saying there's something fundamental about this group that makes them incapable of handling a level playing field. I simply don't believe this is true.

I think we need to come to terms as a society with the hard reality that all three above cases are morally and logically bankrupt, for any meaningful length of time. Arbitrary race-based criteria for determining 'disadvantage' just don't work. People have to be given the dignity of mastery over their own fate and it's patronizing (borderline racist) any other way, unless extremely limited in scope.

> Being born a certain race is a disadvantage in the same way being born with physical disability is a disadvantage.

No it's not! That's the most goddamned racist thing I've ever heard. Holy shit.

You should listen to Thomas Sowell, a "disadvantaged" black person, respond to your argument since you clearly won't listen to me: Discrimination and Disparity https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/36222735

To summarize Sowell: telling a bunch of young black children that they're handicapped is the exact opposite of lifting up and supporting those in need. Perpetuating victimhood is not the solution. This worldview is poisoning kids minds and fucking them beyond repair. It is so goddamned unhealthy it's destructive and only serves to reinforce the false narrative that minorities are victims.

How do you propose to lift up and support those in need if you can't even agree that the playing field is uneven and that when you're born black you face systemic injustices?

_That's_ racist.

Oh and I'm not going to read a book by a guy who defended Trump as being "not racist." While we're out here recommending books, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_the_World_and_Me exemplifies my point: a father telling his son the hard reality of our broken system.

You are certainly free to ignore logic and play identity and association politics. I doubt it will actually get you very far in an intellectual understanding of the nuanced point Sowell argues, but that’s your prerogative.

Welp we're at an impasse because your "logic" doesn't track for me either. I don't think any solution starts with talking to disadvantaged children. Fixing the broken systems they live in should have some impact though.

There's too much bullshit out there for me to read every jamoke's book without doing some filtering based on whether this person is likely to be credible or improve my understanding of a situation. It's not identity politics, it's self-preservation.

> You're very focused on yourself. Nobody is asking you as an individual to "atone" for anything because you didn't do anything. What we are discussing is _systemic changes_ designed to help folks who are disadvantaged _also without having done anything_. Broad, high-level changes like affirmative action just don't have the impact on individuals in the majority that you are making them out to have. They do however have outsized impact on folks in the minority.

Maybe not broad impacts, but there are definitely impacts on the margin. Lowering the admission bar for one person means that, all things equal, someone better qualified is excluded. People want the best for their children and will generally prioritize their outcomes over others', regardless of past or present ill treatment of those others.

AA is a violation of the 14th as judged by Scotus. There may well be a 5th Ammendment case if folks are looking for compensation (iirc the amendment that abolished slavery explicitly stated no 5A compensation would be granted to slave holders), but whichever solution is chosen still needs to abide by the current laws that prohibited the past behaviors.

> Lowering the admission bar for one person means that, all things equal, someone better qualified is excluded

This assumes there's some objective way to stack rank high school students by potential, and there's not. At some point exclusive schools like Harvard just shape their student populations to an arbitrary standard. How do you compare GPAs at 10,000 different schools for example? Is a 1550 student who started a company more or less valuable than a 1600 student who won a science fair?

Agreed, ranking is not purely quantitative. However, your example strives to compare two different dimensions of achievement. There is no achievement in immutable characteristics. There may be achievement based on overcoming obstacles that present due to immutables, but the immutable is not evidence enough of achievement.

Any prospect can achieve either of your two examples. People can't do anything to boost their chances if we boost based off of skin color.

> stop the discrimination once clear end conditions are met

I think it's interesting that no one is willing to address this part.

It’s exactly as I said, they don't want to achieve them, they want to maintain victimhood status because it’s a popular and powerful social utility.

> As a white person, your individual chances of going to Harvard are not meaningfully affected by the presence of affirmative action. Consider their admission rate of 0.04, then consider affirmative action affects 10% of applicants. Your chance of admission is now 0.036, which at the end of the day is basically the same. You have a 96.4% chance of not being admitted vs 96% chance.

I can’t follow your math at all.

Something like 30% of the student body, per the opinion, is black or Hispanic. If you assume that all of those people were admitted solely as a result of affirmative action (which is obviously not the case), that creates a 30% reduction in available slots, which will reduce the admission rate of everyone else (assuming the same people apply) by 30%.

This is made up, but I don’t see where your 10% comes from.

It's a made up number assuming _all_ black harvard students are in on the basis of affirmative action.

30, 10, it doesn't matter, my point is your chance of getting into Harvard is already vanishingly small (4%) and even if it's a 30% reduction in slots, your chance goes from 4% -> 2.8% which is a similar order of magnitude.

It's also a biased process in a thousand other ways even without affirmative action, so why are we sweating this small thing. You're likely to be squeezed out by some ultra-privileged person whose parents could pay for essays to be written, SAT coaching, and exclusive extra-curriculars to pad the resume. Not some poor hispanic kid who grew up with nothing and would have scored 200 points better on the SATs with the right coaching.

I’d never pay that. Because the money would go into someone’s pockets, sure, but not the disadvantaged. Just some fat cats of the “right” color running the group collecting the money. I mean look at what happened with Black Lives Matter.

> Yes, there are still some poor and intensely disparaged communities of predominately minority populations.

And there are poor, intensely disparaged communities in majority populations. A great example is “American Hollow”, a 1999 documentary by Rory Kennedy about an Appalachian family, their life with poverty, and making ends meet in the mountains.

Generational wealth exists, and Blacks are certainly affected, but I’m not convinced that trying to “shift” wealth so unnaturally (and especially in such racist ways) really helps anything.

I mean yeah it was a rhetorical device. You’re paying for people to stop making everything about race, was the point.

I agree that the goals and means to get to them are fuzzy and it feels frustrating at times, and things like affirmative action felt like trying to make two wrongs equal a right. But it also feels shitty and callous to say "Sorry about the whole segregation thing, hopefully everything evens out in a few hundred years or so.."

I think the hard part is that "Equality of Opportunity" is either so strictly defined that it is pointless, or it very quickly becomes really squishy and feels like "Equality of Outcome".

Most college applicants today are going to be something like 2 - 4 generations removed from official, legally sanctioned segregation (a situation I think most people would agree doesn't count as equality of opportunity). Would you argue that the average white student and average black student have equality of opportunity today?

Is attending a prestigious college an outcome or an opportunity?

If, at population level, you don't have equality of outcome, then either you don't have equality of opportunity or 'there is something fundamentally wrong' with whichever population is failing - which I'm sure we can agree is not the case.

We should not force equality of outcome, but we should observe it and use it as a guide to whether or not we are being successful in providing equality of opportunity.

This only holds under a homogenous monoculture. What if some population doesn't value success the same way as another? You’ll see variance of outcomes for completely normal and acceptable reasons.

That’s just false. One doesn’t follow from the other.

> If, at population level, you don't have equality of outcome, then either you don't have equality of opportunity or 'there is something fundamentally wrong' with whichever population is failing

Do Indian people massively disproportionately own hotels because other ethnic groups don't have the same opportunities? Is there something fundamentally wrong with non hotel owning ethnic groups? It's not systemic Indian supremacy, it's just historical accidents compounded through network effects. Noticeable differences between populations frequently occur by random chance, they're usually evidence of nothing at all.

For population level differences to be proof of discrimination, you'd have to presume the sameness of background/culture, spread of abilities and spread of interests, which is absurd on its face.

the problem with chasing "equality of opportunity" is that it's basically impossible to quantify.

And when you do quantify it, you end up usually looking at something that is an outcome.

Example: assume that a) whether or not your parents are married when you are born and b) how rich your parents are affect your opportunities for success.

These assumptions seem reasonable to me, but please tell me if you disagree with them.

In order to equalize opportunity for a new generation across different groups of people, you need to equalize outcomes amongst the current generation.

More generally, drastically unequal outcomes can often point to unequal opportunities earlier in the pipeline.

Assuming intelligence and conscientiousness, the two traits most correlated with success, are more or less equally distributed across all gene pools, then it does seem likely that if some groups tend to be less successful than others, it may be a cultural thing, because as a far amount of data has shown, having rich parents greatly increases the chances that you end up rich.

See for example all the legacy admissions at Harvard.

Of course, if you can reasonably show that, much like say the genes that make for good sprinters (lots of fast twitch muscle fibers), the genes for intelligence are not evenly distributed, then you could argue that a an imbalance of outcomes does not necessarily imply an imbalance of opportunities.

In practice, however, I do no think that American society is equal opportunity.

I'm a heterosexual white male, and honestly I think I've had an easier life as a result of it than I would have with pretty much any other set of gender/skin color/orientation.

Equality of opportunity after centuries of slavery and then legal discrimination in a society that allows (and even outright promotes) inherited wealth and opportunity is not possible.

Imagine my ancestors stole all of your ancestors stuff and I still get to keep it all and anything I've built using it. We've stopped stealing your stuff now, though, so we have "equality of opportunity."

This example is about generosity. In this case you don't owe anything to your less fortunate peer, but not sharing it is greed and when greed is the driving force of our society, it's not surprising nobody wants to share his wealth. In a society of a far future that will run on generosity, being obsessed about possessions will be seen as a weakness. It seems that some proponents of the "affirmative action" sense that future society, and try to implement it here, but since they poorly understand human nature, and since their own nature is imperfect, they pervert the high ideal.

That's a very good way of framing it: Opportunity is largely inherited, therefore there cannot be real equality of opportunity.

You're changing the definition of opportunity here to still mean outcome I think.

> <Outcome> is somewhat inherited, therefore there cannot be real equality of <outcome>.

The US used to be a land of 'opportunity' for poor immigrants. They came to the US and worked hard to overcome their circumstances and make a better life for themselves and their children.

It would be insulting and demoralizing to them to say that opportunity is impossible because they're poor, because their uncle doesn't own the bank down the street. The point of opportunity is that it's _possible_ to succeed, the scales are not unfairly weighed against you by law or societal prejudice.

Many things make achieving outcomes hard - poverty, mental health, bad luck - these are sometimes affected by the past too, but they don't necessarily take away opportunity in that the hope in success is still possible. This hope is important to the soul is it not? This is why opportunity is so important, it's essentially hope.

Opportunity is not a boolean "have" vs "don't have". It's a probability distribution, and much of that probability is inherited.

The son of an investment banking executive has much greater opportunity to also become an investment banker than some rando dude from the street, even if it is remotely possible. That opportunity delta is real, and it's largely, almost entirely, due to family ties.

I would not say that I have the opportunity to become a billionaire, even though it is technically possible, but astronomically unlikely.

I agree that opportunity is a spectrum but I disagree that it's inherited in our country because I disagree with your definition of opportunity. It's a spectrum in the sense that people can succeed regardless of societal prejudice or discriminatory laws, even though they'd have more opportunity if that prejudice didn't exist. Equal opportunity does not necessitate an equal outcome, nor does it imply it.

Immigrants don't have the opportunity to become president of the US because of US law, but any natural-born citizen of the country does have that opportunity regardless of the likelihood. The US has always had immigrants achieve boundless success here which is why it was considered the land of opportunity, not because everyone did - or because it was 'fair', but because it was possible.

It’s reasonable but then you learn that poor Asians do well. They inherit nothing, go to poor schools, but then do well.

Asians are not a homogenous group. For example, Filipino and Vietnamese outcomes did not do as well as Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese immigrants in the wave from the 60s.

There are lots of factors that contribute to an ethnic group's relative success in playing the economic game, some of which are unique to that cohort and not the ethnicity itself. Past results do not guarantee future performance.

One example: the communist revolution expelled professors and academics from China, thus many Chinese and Taiwanese-american immigrants from that generation had scholarly backgrounds which obviously translates well. Compare to a history where your people were enslaved and your cultural background entirely erased.

Another example: getting an H1B as an Indian person today is super competitive / hard, but much easier if you're another ethnicity. What does that mean for future generations of Indian-Americans? There's going to be a selection bias.

> Asians are not a homogenous group. For example, Filipino and Vietnamese outcomes did not do as well as Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese immigrants in the wave from the 60s.

There's some variation, but even so they still perform better than "white" people with the same socioeconomic status - even among Filipino and Southeast Asians: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4060715/

>Imagine my ancestors stole all of your ancestors stuff and I still get to keep it all and anything I've built using it.

Yes, I agree!

But what if my ancestors did not steal your ancestors stuff? Am I still responsible, because I have the same skin color as the folks who harmed you?

If you are part of a majority group you benefit or are at least not impeded by the cultural dominance asserted by the majority group’s control of policies, power, laws, etc. equity is about justice. People were not treated justly and still aren’t, this is why we are discussing this topic.

> 'majority group', 'cultural dominance', 'control of policies'

This is fundamentally a race-based conception of the world, a conception that defines power along racial lines, which groups and analyzes people fundamentally based on race.

We have the benefit in the last 50 years to move past this way of looking at the world, many of us have come to the realization that race isn't a useful way to group people, period. Any disadvantage you see in society that appears 'race' based can be better explained via other means. If people aren't treated justly, it's not because of racism except in vanishingly small amounts, in obscure and backwards parts of the US.

'Structural racism' falls prey to correlation is not causation, a misguided explanation for group differences, an oversimplification, and it won't generate progress as long as the cause is incorrectly ascribed.

No you’re just ignoring racism if you ignore the groups that exist. This is well known hence why the idea of someone being “colorblind” is erroneous because it is trying to ignore disadvantages and pretend the field is level.

Here’s a misunderstood concept: race is a result of unfair policies. “Black” as a racial group does not meaningfully exist without the historical racism and oppressive policies enacted on black peoples. Without distinction between groups, there would be unity. But we know, for example, black people were treated unfairly and still are in many aspects today in the US, so the construction of the black race occurs because of these differences. Aka, the marker “black” for a person identifies someone who faces systemic racism in the US. It’s not just about the wavelength of light a person’s body reflects. Racial groups are the result of history, culture, policies, and present day attitudes.

Now imagine being from neither group, which would be the majority of Americans. Maybe we could limit the debate to descendants of slave owners and slaves? Also imagine that opportunity changes over time as society becomes more equal. the US 2023 is a lot different than the US 1865.

Not like Chinese Americans had it easy in the past, why aren't they adjusted upwards instead of downwards?

Fundamental issues I have with aiming for basically equal outcome by artificially tipping the scale until some metric evens out:

- Which dimensions do we make adjustments based on? is it just race or do we consider wealth etc?

- How much do we adjust? Black Americans had it tougher, boost by 10, Hispanics by 7? Chinese by -5 because they somehow succeeded without tipping the scales?

- Where does it end? We tip the scale for 200 years and if things are still out balanced keep adjusting?

>The underlying important question is what do you define as equality? Equality of outcomes, or equality of opportunity?

On an individual level, the obvious answer is opportunity, but how do you measure that? Generally via outcomes. If two groups are equally capable and have equal opportunity, you would expect similar outcomes.

> If two groups are equally capable and have equal opportunity, you would expect similar outcomes.

No, because this assumes that different groups have equivalent values. This is plainly false. There are some broad similarities for sure, but each gender, ethnicity and culture values different things which will inevitably produce different outcomes.

This is why obsessing over outcome equity is doomed from the start. It implicitly relies on either enforcing homogeneity, thus erasing cultural uniqueness, or outright discrimination in preferring some groups over others to overcome any cultural values that might impact outcomes so the final numbers look pretty.

> No, because this assumes that different groups have equivalent values.

Values are not intrinsically tied to your race, they just correlate to some degree like income and geography. Saying we shouldn't compensate for your parents values is like saying we shouldn't compensate for your parents income or zip code. That's fine, and it's not immoral to believe that, but just make sure you're being logically consistent in the things you believe we should and shouldn't control for.

But what empirical historical example of "outcome equity" has proven as harmful in scale and magnitude as slavery or other oppressive, authoritarian social orders? How much of this concern is founded in actual history? Even one example would help ground such a hypothetical concern.

Who said anything about harm? Harm is not the only consideration.

We could reduce harm to indigenous peoples living in the Amazon by forcibly moving them into cities with proper healthcare, but this would destroy their culture and violate their right to autonomy.

My parent comment explicitly said that AA is harmful, and I see it like how people abstractly state that communism is harmful to the social fabric or something. Now give a relevant empirical example. Even a scientific study would suffice. Stop playing lazy abstract word games unbefitting of STEM experts. And please carefully reread the upthread remakes before joining replying, Naasking.

No your parent comment said no such thing. I think you're confused.

I doubt there is such an example that fits; there certainly is a lack of significant historical evidence for actual harms of affirmative action. I think we would agree that some (many?) detractors of affirmative action give the impression that they believe affirmative action is an evil on the approximate level of slavery, warranting maintenance of the status quo. Still, slavery is an unfairly high bar to establish injustice, and I agree with other AA detractors in that the outcome of AA is morally dubious. I firmly believe that AA doesn't tackle the root of the problem and thus has dubious efficacy, too. I hope everyone embraces reform along the lines of reduced or nullified college tuition and better public school and health infrastructure to lift all communities up. Money shouldn't be an issue at this time, except for the backwards society that we live in. The fine game of nil, indeed!

I think there's no contradiction that AA doesn't tackle the root of the problem (I think that is a half truth) and AA is actually what universities morally ought to do on their part, and that it is neither proven nor disproven that AA policy could actually accelerate reparations through intergenerational effects.

Noam Chomsky points out that in poor countries such as Brazil and India, there is much more affirmative action (e.g. to compensate for wrongs of the caste system). It's America--a rich, powerful, and unequal country--that is so ideologically opposed to this.

I note your mention of other countries, though progress still seems slow there. There still seems to be plenty of corruption. I think the reforms I've mentioned are far more promising, though if AA is to be implemented in a way, I should think that framing it based on actual economic status is both more correct and more defensible; people need money in most things and a reasonable demonstration of merit can justify generous financial accomodations.

Equity is about justice. It’s an ethical issue. If you cannot understand justice, you cannot understand equity. Very simply, when a majority group uses its power and position to enforce its cultural norms and policies on the rest of society, they benefit or at least are not harmed, and further their own group. And this becomes so embedded in the society that the injustice becomes “invisible” it is just accepted as fair. Something as simple as where a highway is built heavily skews to minority neighborhoods being negatively affected.

Understand this. Then you will understand equity is fundamentally about justice and if we don’t seek to establish justice then we have failed.

> Equity is about justice. It’s an ethical issue.

I understand you think it's ethical, and I disagree for the reasons I laid out in the post you just replied to, among others. It doesn't seem like you've engaged with the points there so I have nothing further to say.

My previous comment did engage with your points. It’s not about making everyone the same, it is about reducing the unfair aspects and power games that the majority group continues and has in the past, exerted on the marginalized.

If Someone says that siding with an oppressor is justice, I think they should relearn ethics.

> It’s not about making everyone the same, it is about reducing the unfair aspects and power games that the majority group continues and has in the past, exerted on the marginalized.

And the methods by which it attempts to do so enforces homogeneity or discrimination. The ends do not justify the means.

In favor of affirmative action, one argument that doesn't even require comparing "equality of outcome/opportunity" between individuals, is that the university should have some say in the makeup of its incoming class, and should have a right to minimize its homogeneity. You might argue that race is not an attribute upon which homogeneity can legally be measured, but that won't change the fact that it's a proxy for life experience. All else being equal, two people of the same skin color will have more in common with each other than two people of differing skin colors, by definition of "all else being equal." So if you're an admissions office building a freshman class with the goal of optimizing the learning experience for each member of it - which includes the learning experience from interacting with classmates - then which would be the better outcome: (a) one where everybody looks the same and has a large degree of overlapping life experience simply due to shared skin color, or (b) one where each student has a chance to meet another student with a completely different upbringing from their own?

Now, I'm personally against race-based affirmative action, but I also recognize that a freshman class composed entirely of students of the same skin color is not an ideal outcome. The fact of the matter is that everyone in that class would have some degree of similarity in their life experience, because their skin color is unavoidably something upon which people notice and discriminate (e.g. dating preferences, subconscious stereotyping, etc.).

I think the ruling also understands this, and it emphasizes that university admissions offices are allowed to consider upbringing in their evaluations of applicants. So if they want a class with some poor kids and some rich kids, and some musical geniuses and some athletes, and some boys and some girls and some gay people and straight people, then they should be allowed to consider all those factors. And perhaps naturally this will result in a class with a heterogenous racial makeup. But what they can't do is work backwards from that, and assume the racial composition of their class must be a proxy for all the other axes along which they want to minimize its homogeneity.

I'm not sure about the underlying logic, and I think it's possible it just shifts the problem - because there is always some human element in admissions, and I'm not sure it's possible to minimize group homogeneity along an axis without discriminating along that axis when evaluating an individual - but I do feel that explicitly discriminating evaluations of individual applicants based on race is clearly wrong.

As a final point: It's also worth considering that even when discriminating on race, the universities were still discriminating along other axes arguably not "in the spirit" of affirmative action - for example, a black person from a boarding school would receive more "benefit of the doubt" than a black person from a public school. And isn't that institutionalizing whatever biases led one applicant to a boarding school but kept another at home? Maybe a positive outcome of this ruling is that it will force universities - who rightfully strive to minimize homogeneity of their incoming classes - to actively seek metrics for measuring diversity instead of lazily depending on skin color while ironically institutionalizing the same biases that affirmative action sought to eliminate.

"the university should have some say in the makeup of its incoming class, and should have a right to minimize its homogeneity." If they don't take federal funding, I could understand that. Both Universities involved in this case do, so are subject to the Constitution of the United States.

> Both Universities involved in this case do, so are subject to the Constitution of the United States.

No, accepting federal funds doesn’t make them government actors, nor does it subject them, particularly, to the Constitutional provision here (which binds neither private parties nor the federal government, but only the states.)

They are bound by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, though, and the Court has a history of interpreting the language of that statute through the lens of its 14th Amendment jurisprudence regarding similar language, which it followed (while altering the guiding jurisprudence) in this case.

I agree with you; however, the federal government is of course a government actor and cannot continue to give funding to these schools if they continue to use affirmative action. Without the funding, the school essentially closes its doors or offers severely curtailed services.

> I agree with you; however, the federal government is of course a government actor

Not one affected by the restriction on state action in the 14th Amendment.

> and cannot continue to give funding to these schools if they continue to use affirmative action.

Yes, it can (this is obvious, since the decision itself explicitly allows the federal government itself use race-based criteria in its own admissions at the schools it runs, notably, the military academies) and it can change the terms of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 so that the interpretation of the 14th Amendment limits on state action that the Supreme Court imported to it due to textual similarity are not imposed on recipients of federal funding.

I'll consider myself outplayed as I am not going to take the time to research a response that may just end with me saying "I'm wrong" :)

Either way I'm happy with today's ruling and look forward to everyone getting a little more equal treatment under the admissions process.

But race discrimination should (in theory) be illegal regardless of federal funding status. So if it's already illegal, and the assertion is that universities don't have the right to minimize homogeneity in their classes (presumably along legal, non-racial axes), then taking that logic to the extreme, why should admissions offices have any discretion at all? Should every university that accepts federal funding be required to follow a standardized rubric when evaluating applicants?

Standardized metrics are one of the constraints that made affirmative action a problem in the first place, because when evaluations are limited to standardized metrics like test scores and GPA, the top universities have enough applicants to fill their class a dozen times. So they need to discriminate on some attributes. Maybe one alternative is a standardized baseline and a lottery system for the remaining spots. But when you're at the point of removing discretion from the process, and imposing government designed rubrics on every school, the process starts to look a bit Soviet...

Is it soviet or is it meritocratic? I think the Soviet Union was inherently corrupt and would wager that more discretionary decisions were made there than in the US today. I would be fully on board with your suggestion of a baseline and companion lottery system. I think all discretion should be removed. Let the most qualified people in based on high school grades and standardized test results. Everyone should have the chance to succeed based on that.

I understand completely that life is harder for some than others, whether due to race, religion, financial history, etc. but to allow for a selection process to use any combination of that and intentionally exclude people due to their race is wrong. This is America, some people have it easy and are born with golden parachutes, but those people are actually few and far between and everyone has the chance to work hard here and succeed. Again the effort involved will vary but the opportunity is always there.

How exactly has equality of outcome been "proven to be doomed"? At the aggregate level, at least?

Equality of outcome is just a fancy way of saying tyranny. Freedom can only exist and only be freedom if you have the right to fail or succeed, if no one can fail or succeed because everyone is made the same there is no freedom, there is no choice.

Those that advocate for equality of outcome desire to make again a slave state, where they as "superior educated white people" can ensure that black people are "taken care of" by ensuring they all have jobs, they all have housing, they all have healthcare, they all have food, and that they have no freedom.

Equality of outcome can only be enforced currently by a tyrannical government. It’s wholly doomed unless we can identify and correct for every hidden variable affecting outcomes.

If the outcome doesn't depend on your actions, there's no point in doing anything. Such a lethargic society cannot function, so to push it into motion the ruler has to use force and cruelty. The people will do the work, not because they hope to get something, for the outcome is always the same - cheap food and 4 hours of sleep - but because they want to avoid punishment.

I don't think anyone seriously suggests "equality of outcome" should mean "regardless of any actions/decisions you take in life". I would treat it as meaning "given two different large subsets of society that differ markedly/measurably on key indicators, there shouldn't be a difference in average outcomes between those born into one subset vs the other". Depending on the indicators/subsets in question that may well be a worthwhile & achievable goal. Particularly if the "outcomes" being measured go beyond just material wealth (e.g. health/wellbeing outcomes).

This premise about large subsets falls apart when you apply it to maples and oaks, even less it's applicable to free willed creatures gifted with intelligence. If you see a difference between two subgroups, it means your understanding of why these groups are the way they are is lacking.

I literally have no idea what you mean. But if we see that, for instance, average life expectancy is markedly lower for the subset of population that identifies as "native American" vs that of those that identify as "white", that's clearly an inequality of outcome that there's reason to be concerned about. Which isn't to say it mightn't turn out to have a genetic basis that leaves us with limited options to compensate for, but it's surely worth ensuring better understanding the causes and doing what we can to ensure there aren't systemic barriers preventing particular subgroups from accessing the same degree of medical care etc. available to others.

Maples and oaks are different species. Humans are all the same species.

Men and women are the same species, yet they are markedly different in many ways.

One issue is there's infinite metrics to measure outcome, and any measurement you choose will have certain groups excel in compared to others. Once we achieve equality in a certain metric we will always have new ones to work on essentially forever. This may be a good goal for people/institutions but it can't contribute to discrimination being indefinite in scope.

Another issue is we're talking about group level outcomes here - which means we're already accepting that there will be biases in measurements, otherwise the group wouldn't be a 'group' (unless it's literally just skin color which is - a pretty arbitrary/racist way to group people all else being equal).

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