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The article presents an interesting fact. The article claims minority (presumably non-Asian) enrollment drops 23% when AA is banned. The converse of this is tha

The article presents an interesting fact. The article claims minority (presumably non-Asian) enrollment drops 23% when AA is banned. The converse of this is that 23% of non-Asian minorities are only there due to affirmative action, and would not be there under a meritocratic system. I was previously told it's racist to believe things like this. The article also begs another question: “The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” But that decision was only 12 years ago, and the data suggests that we’re still a long way from having proportional minority representation on large public college campuses. Supposedly AA and similar programs were supposed to solve this problem, and colleges have been engaging in them for many years. At what point can we conclude that perhaps goals like getting a critical mass of minority students will simply not be effective, and conclude that the real problem lies elsewhere (and out of the control of college)?

Steko 11y ago
Yes it's racist to hold one race down for centuries and then claim the system is entirely meritocratic.
- tadfisher 11y ago
  Please be careful with your attribution; the GP presumably does not own slaves and did not prop up Jim Crow.
  - kefka 11y ago
    Good point. How long does it take for us to rid the sins against blacks by our ancestors? 3 generations? 5 generations? Never?
    - Steko 11y ago
      It has nothing to do with getting rid of sins, it's about counteracting systemic racism, you stop doing it when the need is gone.
      - kefka 11y ago
        At least regarding higher education (where SCOTUS is reviewing), how is it systemic? It seems to be much more of an economic issue, where family income, local society income, and students' school budgets should be controlled and watched for rather than "black". It seems to me that saying, "hey you, who live in the ghetto, your school budgets are linked to your poverty. Hope you get the education you deserve" is so much more wrong, as education should be granted to everyone, equally in our public system.
rmxt 11y ago
"The converse of this is that 23% of non-Asian minorities are only there due to affirmative action, and would not be there under a meritocratic system." AA and meritocratic systems are not mutually exclusive. Some combination of the two is what is currently used in most college admissions processes. It is inaccurate to say that none of the people in question would be there were it not for AA.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  It is inaccurate to say that none would be there without AA. It's completely accurate to say that only 77% of those currently present would be there without AA. It's true that AA is a non-meritocratic hack on top of an otherwise meritocratic system (modulo other small hacks, e.g. large donations and alumni preferences).
  - rmxt 11y ago
    Your two sentences are contradictory. If some members of those 23% would be there without AA, then some amount greater than 77% of those currently present would be there without AA.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      You are confused. No members of the 23% would be there without AA, according to the article, but all members of the 77% would be.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > It's true that AA is a non-meritocratic hack on top of an otherwise meritocratic system I'm not sure that's true, and am fairly certain its not supportable as true. While the exact models used in admission have evolved, even fairly recent studies have shown that many of the objective factors considered in admission aside from AA and contributor/alumni preferences have fairly weak predictors of success, and some of them (particularly standardized admissions tests) are measures which are very strongly tied to race/ethnicity, disadvantaging traditionally-disadvantaged groups when they are used. (Now, some schools have adapted their admissions processes to eliminate some of the more problematic factors, but that leaves them with systems that are unproven -- which is an improvement over systems that are proven to be biased rather than meritocratic, but not the same as demonstrably meritocratic.)
dghf 11y ago
> The article claims minority (presumably non-Asian) enrollment drops 23% when AA is banned. The converse of this is that 23% of non-Asian minorities are only there due to affirmative action, and would not be there under a meritocratic system. That assumes that without AA the system would be meritocratic, and not biased in favour of people from particular backgrounds.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Yes, that's because building systems like this is pretty easy. Just use a point system based entirely on grades/extracurriculars/SAT/etc. For example, google the old U-Mich point system - it was entirely meritocratic except for the +1.0 boost to GPA given to non-Asian minorities, a much smaller alumni preference and some "women in engineering" boost.
  - taco_emoji 11y ago
    Is that what meritocracy looks like to you? Kids whose circumstances are highly negatively correlated with grades and test scores get shafted?
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      Yes, "meritocracy" and "no one has a hard life" are different concepts. A person having bad parents and therefore having bad grades has less merit than a person with good parents and good grades. It sucks that some people have bad parents (or whatever the specific issue is), but that's a different problem than lack of meritocracy.
      - dghf 11y ago
        Well, that kind of depends on how you define merit. One could argue that someone who gets reasonable but not stellar grades in spite of bad parents, a deprived background, etc. displays more merit than someone from a privileged background with every advantage who attains perfect grades.
taco_emoji 11y ago
> The converse of this is that 23% of non-Asian minorities are only there due to affirmative action, and would not be there under a meritocratic system. Your curiously unstated but obviously logically necessary premise that non-AA systems are already magically meritocratic is what's racist. Hope that clears it up for you.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Non-AA systems primarily look at grades, SAT, extracurriculars and the like. They tend to also include small alumni preferences and the occasional "this guy's dad donated $20M" preferences. Why do you believe they are not predominantly meritocratic?
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Why do you believe they are not predominantly meritocratic? What is the concrete merit being assessed, and where is the evidence that the measures used provide a race, ethnicity, and gender-blind predictor or measure of the that concrete merit?
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      To check that such measures are race, ethnicity and gender blind, just run the following unit test on your admission procedure: allow_admission( x.copy(race=a) ) == allow_admission(x.copy(race=b))
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        That proves that your admission procedure does not consider race separately from the measures (and could be extended to do the same for gender and ethnicity, mutatis mutandis), it does not prove that the measures themselves are race, ethnicity, and gender-blind measures of the concrete merit which they are designed to assess. If you want to make the case that they are meritocratic, it would be more convincing with a concrete definition of the merit they are intended to measure, evidence that they do measure that merit, and evidence that the manner in which they do is not sensitive to race, ethnicity, and gender. Assuming that there is an objective, measurable merit being addressed, these are all empirically testable, and the claim can be assessed based on the evidence for it; if there is no such merit being addressed, the claim that they are meritocratic is empty.
anigbrowl 11y ago
This assumes that alternative systems (eg ranking people by SAT scores) is meritocratic, and not subject to structural biases. I like standardized testing myself, but that's because I perform well in those situations. I'm not so sure it's necessarily a good way to measure merit; I perform less well in more open-ended contexts, for example.

Steko 11y ago

Yes it's racist to hold one race down for centuries and then claim the system is entirely meritocratic.

tadfisher 11y ago
Please be careful with your attribution; the GP presumably does not own slaves and did not prop up Jim Crow.
- kefka 11y ago
  Good point. How long does it take for us to rid the sins against blacks by our ancestors? 3 generations? 5 generations? Never?
  - Steko 11y ago
    It has nothing to do with getting rid of sins, it's about counteracting systemic racism, you stop doing it when the need is gone.
    - kefka 11y ago
      At least regarding higher education (where SCOTUS is reviewing), how is it systemic? It seems to be much more of an economic issue, where family income, local society income, and students' school budgets should be controlled and watched for rather than "black". It seems to me that saying, "hey you, who live in the ghetto, your school budgets are linked to your poverty. Hope you get the education you deserve" is so much more wrong, as education should be granted to everyone, equally in our public system.

rmxt 11y ago

"The converse of this is that 23% of non-Asian minorities are only there due to affirmative action, and would not be there under a meritocratic system." AA and meritocratic systems are not mutually exclusive. Some combination of the two is what is currently used in most college admissions processes. It is inaccurate to say that none of the people in question would be there were it not for AA.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
It is inaccurate to say that none would be there without AA. It's completely accurate to say that only 77% of those currently present would be there without AA. It's true that AA is a non-meritocratic hack on top of an otherwise meritocratic system (modulo other small hacks, e.g. large donations and alumni preferences).
- rmxt 11y ago
  Your two sentences are contradictory. If some members of those 23% would be there without AA, then some amount greater than 77% of those currently present would be there without AA.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    You are confused. No members of the 23% would be there without AA, according to the article, but all members of the 77% would be.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > It's true that AA is a non-meritocratic hack on top of an otherwise meritocratic system I'm not sure that's true, and am fairly certain its not supportable as true. While the exact models used in admission have evolved, even fairly recent studies have shown that many of the objective factors considered in admission aside from AA and contributor/alumni preferences have fairly weak predictors of success, and some of them (particularly standardized admissions tests) are measures which are very strongly tied to race/ethnicity, disadvantaging traditionally-disadvantaged groups when they are used. (Now, some schools have adapted their admissions processes to eliminate some of the more problematic factors, but that leaves them with systems that are unproven -- which is an improvement over systems that are proven to be biased rather than meritocratic, but not the same as demonstrably meritocratic.)

dghf 11y ago

> The article claims minority (presumably non-Asian) enrollment drops 23% when AA is banned. The converse of this is that 23% of non-Asian minorities are only there due to affirmative action, and would not be there under a meritocratic system. That assumes that without AA the system would be meritocratic, and not biased in favour of people from particular backgrounds.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
Yes, that's because building systems like this is pretty easy. Just use a point system based entirely on grades/extracurriculars/SAT/etc. For example, google the old U-Mich point system - it was entirely meritocratic except for the +1.0 boost to GPA given to non-Asian minorities, a much smaller alumni preference and some "women in engineering" boost.
- taco_emoji 11y ago
  Is that what meritocracy looks like to you? Kids whose circumstances are highly negatively correlated with grades and test scores get shafted?
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    Yes, "meritocracy" and "no one has a hard life" are different concepts. A person having bad parents and therefore having bad grades has less merit than a person with good parents and good grades. It sucks that some people have bad parents (or whatever the specific issue is), but that's a different problem than lack of meritocracy.
    - dghf 11y ago
      Well, that kind of depends on how you define merit. One could argue that someone who gets reasonable but not stellar grades in spite of bad parents, a deprived background, etc. displays more merit than someone from a privileged background with every advantage who attains perfect grades.

taco_emoji 11y ago

> The converse of this is that 23% of non-Asian minorities are only there due to affirmative action, and would not be there under a meritocratic system. Your curiously unstated but obviously logically necessary premise that non-AA systems are already magically meritocratic is what's racist. Hope that clears it up for you.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
Non-AA systems primarily look at grades, SAT, extracurriculars and the like. They tend to also include small alumni preferences and the occasional "this guy's dad donated $20M" preferences. Why do you believe they are not predominantly meritocratic?
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Why do you believe they are not predominantly meritocratic? What is the concrete merit being assessed, and where is the evidence that the measures used provide a race, ethnicity, and gender-blind predictor or measure of the that concrete merit?
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    To check that such measures are race, ethnicity and gender blind, just run the following unit test on your admission procedure: allow_admission( x.copy(race=a) ) == allow_admission(x.copy(race=b))
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      That proves that your admission procedure does not consider race separately from the measures (and could be extended to do the same for gender and ethnicity, mutatis mutandis), it does not prove that the measures themselves are race, ethnicity, and gender-blind measures of the concrete merit which they are designed to assess. If you want to make the case that they are meritocratic, it would be more convincing with a concrete definition of the merit they are intended to measure, evidence that they do measure that merit, and evidence that the manner in which they do is not sensitive to race, ethnicity, and gender. Assuming that there is an objective, measurable merit being addressed, these are all empirically testable, and the claim can be assessed based on the evidence for it; if there is no such merit being addressed, the claim that they are meritocratic is empty.

anigbrowl 11y ago

This assumes that alternative systems (eg ranking people by SAT scores) is meritocratic, and not subject to structural biases. I like standardized testing myself, but that's because I perform well in those situations. I'm not so sure it's necessarily a good way to measure merit; I perform less well in more open-ended contexts, for example.