US politics: just for you

[Week]

2 minutes ago, IFR said:

I agree. Fighting racism with racism literally doesn't make sense.

The former, I'd argue, is fighting the result of systematic racism and the latter is not racism. It's not even "Reverse racism" which is also not a thing.

[Week]

Well, well, well -- some good news

Except that this fool is responsible for 3 unelected hacks on the SC. 

[IFR]

1 minute ago, Week said:

The former, I'd argue, is fighting the result of systematic racism and the latter is not racism. It's not even "Reverse racism" which is also not a thing.

I would call it racism. Removing opportunities from qualified Asian-Americans specifically because of their race is what I would call racism.

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, Larry of the Lake said:

I'd consider an argument against affirmative action to be in better faith if the person started out criticizing  legacies and worked down to the racial angle afterwards.

I don't think I've ever met anyone who defended legacy admissions and this includes even the people whose children would stand to benefit if the legacy system was kept in place. However, there is no Constitutional amendment that explicitly forbids legacy admissions and in fact our whole system is rife with nepotism to the point where the universities are arguably more meritocratic than the rest even with the legacies.

[Week]

1 minute ago, IFR said:

I would call it racism. Removing opportunities from qualified Asian-Americans specifically because of their race is what I would call racism.

So giving an opportunity to a qualified black or brown or Latino candidate is racist? There are only so many seats and it isn't AA that is moving the needle on more than a handful of seats in the most selective schools.

I'll have to take a look back but IIRC asian students are over-represented in many of these schools when compared to the general population and, in some in California, are a larger share of the student body than whites 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

12 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

There are a number of issues with legacies. One I've heard about from a number of professors is that when they give legacies an F their parents call their bosses and bitch because in their minds they're buying their kid a degree. No academic system should ever allow that to happen.

The problem is these schools are just too expensive which is why they justify needing the donations that wink, wink, let underachievers in. 

Oh this is not just limited to parents of legacies.  Welcome to the entitled cohort.

I don't know about that, again, distinguishing between private and public universities. On the one hand we expect elite private universities to pay living wages to staff (except adjuncts, who apparently aren't human - that's another issue), have buildings that are gold LEED certified, fund research, give back to their local communities and also apparently educate students.  That is not cheap. And while there are certainly the clickbait headlines about schools installing lazy rivers or whatever else, most of the capex at schools is, in fact, necessary - physical plant does not improve or restore itself, and frankly a lot of the "omg this dorm is too nice" renovations are usually bringing dorms up to code.  Students aren't going to camp - they are living in a place for four years.  So yeah.  That's expensive.  Is there some "wasteful spending"?  Sure.  True with most big organizations.  But "it's too expensive?" for a private school?  I dunno. 

And again, based on the (pretty good as it turns out) information that I have, at elite institutions there are more than enough legacy children who are academically qualified, just like there are more than enough rich applicants period.  They don't need to let in underachievers.

I'm a big fan of public universities btw, and really think that democratic processes that have ended up gutting their funding in several states is a big public policy botch.  But here we are.  

And I'm not personally a big proponent of "free college for all."  (But I am a huge proponent of universal free preschool).  

[IFR]

55 minutes ago, Week said:

So giving an opportunity to a qualified black or brown or Latino candidate is racist? There are only so many seats and it isn't AA that is moving the needle on more than a handful of seats in the most selective schools.

I'll have to take a look back but IIRC asian students are over-represented in many of these schools when compared to the general population and, in some in California, are a larger share of the student body than whites 

I think we're in agreement that the desirable outcome is equal opportunities for all. I will tell you frankly that my position on AA being discriminatory towards Asian-Americans is based on my memory of reading a few articles that addressed this and provided admission data that heavily indicated discrimination (I believe it was either the New York Times or Washington Post). I don't have time to hunt for the articles right now, however.

If you can provide data to indicate that Asian-Americans are not discriminated against based on race, that would be effective in persuading me to your position in favoring AA.

[Gaston de Foix]

2 hours ago, Week said:

Well, well, well -- some good news

Except that this fool is responsible for 3 unelected hacks on the SC. 

I too would like this to be true, but there seems to be some skepticism about this report.  Big if true, obv. 

[James Arryn]

I used to be entirely against AA (and I guess on paper still am) because it is racism by definition and that’s what we’re trying to move away from. I eventually came around because;

 

1) no one else has thought of anything that addresses the issue more effectively.

2) data seems to show that a lot of bigotry decreases just by proximity, so over time AA should erode it’s hold.

I’m still in the same place. In an academic sense I think it’s all wrong, it’s raising lines along walls we want to lower, but I have yet to find anything else that works. I used to place a lot of hope in technology making people more anonymous, ie remote working, etc. but studies show that more remote people often foster the harshest prejudices and don’t get the interactions that reduce it, so if anything I’m more AA now when so many seem to be saying things I said decades ago. It’s not an easy problem to fix, and I had been somewhat unaware of Asians suffering the downside of it, so that complicates it more. I’ll say this, getting rid of AA with nothing substantial to replace it is imo a retrograde. Letting the perfect get in the way of the good. If it was being phased out in favour of a new approach I’d find it more interesting, but this seems to be more of the plurality doing away with something that doesn’t favour itself, for that reason. 

Edited June 29, 2023 by James Arryn

[Larry of the Lawn]

2 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

, but I have yet to find anything else that works. 

I'm have different thoughts on your [post] overall, but just wanted to highlight this part.  Well put. 

Edited June 29, 2023 by Larry of the Lake

[Zorral]

. . . in the WaPo, from one Robert P. Coutinho:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/28/supreme-court-independent-state-legislature-theory-trump-2024/

Quote

 

The MAGA Republican lawmakers are not idiots, as Liz Cheney claims; they are insidiously evil. They are working towards their true objective. It is just that (former) Representative Cheney does not want to believe that their objective is not to keep the USA strong, vibrant and prosperous. The MAGA Republicans (and right now, that means all Republicans, since all of them are supporting the MAGA agenda) want to destroy the USA by any and all means possible. They wish to do this so that they can install themselves as autocratic or plutocratic rulers (possibly of smaller entities).

Consider, if you will, how you would go about doing this, if you were a political party. You would attempt to bankrupt the country, check. You would sabotage every Federal Department. State Department, check. Department of Energy, check. Department of the Interior, check. Post Office, check. IRS, check. FBI, check. Homeland Security, check.

When you did not hold the presidency, you would attempt to claim that anything the president was doing was bad for the country--regardless of its merits. You would, of course, take credit for all the good stuff, so that you could get re-elected, that way you could continue to vote against, and rail against all the good stuff the ruling party wanted to enact. You would hold countless hearings on stupid stuff, designed to sow doubt in people's minds about the trustworthiness of the government.

You would always claim that the government does not work. You would try to ensure it does not work.

 

~~~~~~

As far as the AA ruling -- colleges games their admissions policies most heavily by zip code. Thus all those Asian American students with very high grades, etc. -- like the rich white legacy students, they share zip codes.  Black and Latino also have zip codes that tell the admissions board they don't live where rich people live, by and large.  Thus we need AA.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Zorral

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 minute ago, Zorral said:

. . . in the WaPo, from one Robert P. Coutinho:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/28/supreme-court-independent-state-legislature-theory-trump-2024/

 

Robert Coutinho is the guy starring in Scorsese's new flick right?  The biopic about Captain Obvious?

[IFR]

21 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

I used to be entirely against AA (and I guess on paper still am) because it is racism by definition and that’s what we’re trying to move away from. I eventually came around because;

 

1) no one else has thought of anything that addresses the issue more effectively.

2) data seems to show that a lot of bigotry decreases just by proximity, so over time AA should erode it’s hold.

I’m still in the same place. In an academic sense I think it’s all wrong, it’s raising lines along walls we want to lower, but I have yet to find anything else that works. I used to place a lot of hope in technology making people more anonymous, ie remote working, etc. but studies show that more remote people often foster the harshest prejudices and don’t get the interactions that reduce it, so if anything I’m more AA now when so many seem to be saying things I said decades ago. It’s not an easy problem to fix, and I had been somewhat unaware of Asians suffering the downside of it, so that complicates it more. I’ll say this, getting rid of AA with nothing substantial to replace it is imo a retrograde. Letting the perfect get in the way of the good. If it was being phased out in favour of a new approach I’d find it more interesting, but this seems to be more of the plurality doing away with something that doesn’t favour itself, for that reason. 

I agree with Larry, this was well argued.

Edited June 29, 2023 by IFR

[Gaston de Foix]

1 hour ago, James Arryn said:

If it was being phased out in favour of a new approach I’d find it more interesting, but this seems to be more of the plurality doing away with something that doesn’t favour itself, for that reason. 

Well argued, but the judicial process (rightly) doesn't design policies it simply ensures those policies comply with the constitution.   It's not for the Supreme Court to prescribe policy, and we don't want them to walk down that road.  They have enough power as it is.  

It is quite clear that elite colleges are experimenting with a number of policies to ensure the number of black and latino students remains at comparable levels.  We'll see how much the decision moves the dial, and how much follow-up litigation ensues as a result.  

I will say this: the extent to which elite universities and colleges shamelessly fundraise off their students and alumni (including while they are still students!) is a unique feature of US academia.  If you are repeatedly asked for money, well you want something in return sooner or later.  Abolishing legacies/preferential treatment would lead to a (significant) drop in fundraising.  I'm not saying Harvard will go hungry or anything, but unwinding decades of pernicious practices is not straightforward either. 

A lot of that money is wasted, to be sure, but from my own time at uni in England, it's quite clear that the extraordinary wealth of US universities allows them to buy an insane amount of talent from around the world.  Oxbridge will probably not be in the top 20 global universities in 30-40 years time.  Indeed, for a number of fields which are truly international in nature, they are already at the edge.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 hours ago, Larry of the Lake said:

It does though.  If the purpose of affirmative action is to limit racism, but through implementation ends up discriminating against qualified Asian American students, I think there's plenty of room for a discussion about it creating its own kind of racism.  

We're only talking about this because fighting racism does have its own racism in this case.  I'd probably use a different word than "inculcated" but the point stands.  

The purpose is to correct historical wrongs based on race. And this ruling didn't do that because...

Quote

Re: legacies - I don't want to get too into the weeds on this but maybe the idea that Harvard produces someone materially better qualified for whatever than a decent state school is also a large part of the problem.  There's a monetary value to the Harvard degree that probably doesn't represent an equal value in the actual quality of education.  

You have to get into the weeds. Legacies at the schools are mostly white and their affirmative action wasn't touched. 

4 hours ago, IFR said:

I agree. Fighting racism with racism literally doesn't make sense.

Edit: in case my phrasing was confusing, my grammar was off. I meant "by systematically inculcating" or in other words codifying racism into the screening process. If that clears my meaning up.

It's not racism to try and help underprivileged groups. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

And I'm not personally a big proponent of "free college for all."  (But I am a huge proponent of universal free preschool).  

You touched on too many subjects to respond to without having to write an essay. 

I benefitted from pre-k, every kid should as well and I agree, free college for all is not the answer. However, at the university level things have gotten out of hand and today's ruling won't improve much for most students. 

Edited June 30, 2023 by Tywin et al.

[Zorral]

However the fuckin' justices are hypocritically talking out of both sides of their mouths, as they made an exception for the military and cop dept.

[Wilbur]

4 hours ago, James Arryn said:

I used to be entirely against AA (and I guess on paper still am) because it is racism by definition and that’s what we’re trying to move away from. I eventually came around because;

 

1) no one else has thought of anything that addresses the issue more effectively.

2) data seems to show that a lot of bigotry decreases just by proximity, so over time AA should erode it’s hold.

I’m still in the same place. In an academic sense I think it’s all wrong, it’s raising lines along walls we want to lower, but I have yet to find anything else that works. I used to place a lot of hope in technology making people more anonymous, ie remote working, etc. but studies show that more remote people often foster the harshest prejudices and don’t get the interactions that reduce it, so if anything I’m more AA now when so many seem to be saying things I said decades ago. It’s not an easy problem to fix, and I had been somewhat unaware of Asians suffering the downside of it, so that complicates it more. I’ll say this, getting rid of AA with nothing substantial to replace it is imo a retrograde. Letting the perfect get in the way of the good. If it was being phased out in favour of a new approach I’d find it more interesting, but this seems to be more of the plurality doing away with something that doesn’t favour itself, for that reason. 

I agree with James Arryn on this, and I would extend this same argument to something like the draft.

I am intellectually against the draft.  I think that of all the things Milton Friedman ever thought or wrote, the chapter on "Why Not a Volunteer Army" is the most rigorous logic.  And eventually the armed forces of the USA moved to that position.

But in doing so, the armed forces (hereafter AF) became a volunteer body made up of two types of people.  Type A is the disadvantaged, who see the AF as a means to economic success.  Type B is, and I am stereotyping here, young suburban white guys who lack a strong life goal, so they join as a means of going on an extended physical education class and do fun stuff like shoot things or jump out of aircraft for a couple of years.

As a result, the male US population has lost an opportunity to live with, eat with, work with, people of different backgrounds.  One thing a lot of old war movies got right was the mix of types and backgrounds in an AF unit, with the meme of a New York City boy, a farm boy, a California boy, an "ethnic" boy, and a southern boy in a unit coming together to work as a team.  My dad had never seen tacos before he was pre-positioned prior to leaving for the Vietnam War, but as a result of this mixing, I literally eat them every morning for breakfast.  And with US society discarding the draft, most young people today don't have that exposure to people from different backgrounds, and it makes the growth of idiot silos like MAGA easier.

The loss of AA in a higher education setting may have a good intellectual basis, but in practice, I don't know of a better way of building relationships in our university between kids from different backgrounds.

[Darzin]

I welcome this decision; a little racial discrimination as a treat was never going to be the permanent answer to America's underperforming minorities. I think @James Arryn made some very good points and if it was 1968 I'd be in 100% agreement with introducing it for the next 25 years.  But I think now it's time to sunset affirmative action. Not because America's racial problems are all fixed but because first it is racial discrimination and we should be careful with that even for good and historical reasons, but more importantly because affirmative  action has served as a band aid to hide serious structural problems in America. 

Black and Latino students massively underperform in test scores in college attendance rates in income and virtually very other category you can think of. In a large part because schools that serve primarily black and brown students are worse and particularly inner city schools have failed to the point where any education at all is extremely hard. The average white family has more than $100,000 dollars in assets the average Black family has less than $40,000. As long as these things persist we are not going to see a natural balancing of college admissions, at least not at elite institutions.

And these ivy league schools are specifically engaged in elite production they are by definition highly exclusive. You can't make elite colleges "equitable and egalitarian" It cuts against their very purpose which is to create a highly exclusive elite. Take the best students, give them the best education, and then they go on to the best jobs. This is by definition a hierarchical  and exclusionary system there is a gaping chasm between an Ivy league education and equity. Now they don't take the best students that's the whole point of affirmative action and legacies to get a mix that looks like America mix them  with some old money and connections (legacies) and create a class of Ubermensch to go out and conquer. I'd argue it'd be better for society as a whole if the Harvard graduating class had Asians wildy overrepresented because it would be more meritocratic but also it would lead to more drawing of the elite from other institutions the kind the other 99.99% of Americans can aspire too. 

This careful Byzantine gerrymandering to get the right racial balance creates tons of weird externalities and effects. Imagine telling a Laotian kid (whose community performs on par with Latinos) That he can't get into Harvard because the Chinese, Vietnamese and Japanese kids do very well and they are all lumped in as Asian. And it doesn't even do what it wants. The number of black students at Harvard from average Black families is still essentially zero. The Black students are drawn from the winner class of Black and America and increasingly African immigrants. An extremely smart and driven  white or Asian kid from an average white or Asian family can likely get into an Ivy, an extremely smart and driven black kid from an average black family likely can't even with affirmative action. 

If we really want to be equitable we should open up the ivy's and help everyone who has the ability get an excellent education. Since we can't do that we should at least get rid of these racial quotas and let the chips fall where they may.

Edited July 7, 2023 by Darzin

[IheartIheartTesla]

Unfortunately college education is one key path for upward mobility, so I'm not sure I would frame it as "improve everything else and college admissions would become more equitable", which I think is precisely backwards. 

I also would suggest that "AA leads to anti-Asian discrimination" assigns too much causality to the former. What we can say for a fact is that removing AA leads to increased Caucasian and Asian admissions into colleges (based on historical data I think from California etc), but as others have pointed out, for elite universities that zero-sum math only happens because the ADLC admissions cant be touched.

The real anti-Asian discrimination is from the admissions committees and all the biases they bring to their choices (one of the key complaints is how they look at Asian applicants as having 'sameness' and using weasel words like 'quiet' and 'humble' to discount leadership abilities)