What the US can learn from affirmative action at universities in Brazil
theconversation.com
theconversation.com
> The Department of Education in Para, Brazil’s blackest state, attempted to fulfill the decree with a checklist, which leaked to the press. Among the criteria to be scored: Is the job candidate’s nose short, wide and flat? How thick are their lips? Are their gums sufficiently purple? What about their lower jaw? Does it protrude forward? Candidates were to be awarded points per item, like “hair type” and “skull shape.”
It makes taking the SAT look like more fun-- and fairer too.
This is all insanity. Society is short on plumbers and electricians anyway, we should be focusing on those careers, not more Stanford-grad Product Managers.
In the poorer sections of society, most people have to work since their early teens if not younger.
It's hard to cram for standardised tests when you have a full time job, food insecurity, and lack a proper place to study.
People like myself that come from a middle class family can afford private schools and prep schools to get into university and obviously that puts poorer people at a disadvantage.
A long term solution would actually fix the crap public education system, help families keep their children in school so they can get a degree and later a higher paying job, etc.
In this scenario, I see the need for affirmative action to mitigate the problem in the short term. The problem is that the government hasn't done enough to address the root of the problem.
But the idea that it should be based on race is BS. In Brazil, affirmative action should be based on family income.
Is the same true for income-based quotas?
Who has their head so far in the sand that they are offended to see such a commonly held position stated
“Commonly held position” is a terrible metric. Look what the primates are doing to their environment due to commonly held positions.
It was once a commonly held position humans serve god kings. Where do these commonly held social norms come from I wonder? Feels very top down and intentional.
Who cares Harvard even exists is a commonly held belief. People just don’t speak such things because of the abuse they take to maintain society.
Please, primates who are destroying themselves; bleat and bray at me more about your moral high ground.
What doesn't follow is denying they dont exist, hiding them, or censoring them.
This is sticking your head in the ground and pretending to live in an alternate reality.
I think affirmative action is ok only when the time and place a person attended school or looked for jobs has a provable history and policy that negatively affected people of their ethnicity. For example, if a white person grew up in an area where white kids are discriminated against historically and didn't get the same opportunities as others then that person should get an advantage later on to compensate for that.
But blindly using race as a factor to give someome an advantage is something I disagree with.
It is the lazy application of AA that is a problem, not the idea itself.
Change your framing from butting in to sitting down with someone and trying to agree on the penal policy. "do we all agree that incarceration is bad, and should only be used when the alternative is far worse."
Do most people agree that affirmative action is racist? Should we ever allow racist government policy? If so, what are the limits for when the ends justify the means?
And that someone would be right and that's why it should be avoided as much as possible. Because people refuse to have this discussion, imprisonment is applied at a far larger scale than necessary.
Legacy admissions, allowing dangerous additives in our food & drink, being a ruthless, tax-avoiding capitalist...the list goes on.
Affirmative action is a cover for acting with a racial bias