7 ms·

More like "because of Affirmative Action". Just treat people as fairly as possible. The other way doesn't work.

rayiner 9y ago
We're going to play poker. Everyone will start with a randomly determined number of chips. But people whose HN handles start with A-H will get, on average, 40% less to start with. Aside from that tiny nit, it'll be a totally fair game.
- tomp 9y ago
  The "fair" solution is to make sure that A-H folks start with the same amount as the rest. The "reverse discrimination" solution is to take, after half of the game, the winnings of P-W folks and give them to C-J folks.
  - spraak 9y ago
    But when in reality does that actually happen? I'm not trying to incite you, I just really don't see evidence of "reverse discrimination"
    - todd8 9y ago
      As a big proponent of civil rights and the whole civil rights movement I hope that I'm not misunderstood. Reverse discrimination refers to discriminating against say non-hispanic white males because they are non-hispanic white or male. It seems obvious to me that making admission choices to increase minority representation at universities is tautologically decreasing the representation of other groups and is reverse discrimination. The question to me is, "Is this a good thing?". Here in Texas, it works in a way that is not quite obvious. The University of Texas as Austin is a desirable state University. It was once all white (1950), clearly race was being used to discriminate against minority applicants--an unfair and condemnable practice. By 1996, the University, in an attempt to increase minority representation, had been using race as one of the factors in admission, blacks with lower academic scores were admitted ahead of whites with the same scores (clearly reverse discrimination). In 1996, Federal Appeals court ruled against the University and for a white student that made that claim. The University stopped considering race, but minority representation started to drop and the University found a way in 1997 to discriminate between applicants to change the minority representation again, this time without explicitly mentioning race. It automatically admitted the top 10% of every high school graduating class, regardless of actual academic achievement. This discriminated against the high schools with high performing students. Since these schools were usually found in more expensive suburban neighborhoods that had well funded school districts and mostly white student bodies (so although there was no longer any explicit reverse discrimination, it still produced the same result, minority students were being admitted with lower test scores, etc). This practice of admitting students based on where they went to high school helped but didn't completely achieve the goals that UT had for the make up of it's student body. In 2003, UT began to use race in addition to the 10% rule and now discriminates in favor of minorities that do not automatically qualify under the modified top 7% rule, this has resulted in a number of law suits that race based discrimination is happening, which it clearly is. I have mixed feelings about all of this. I detest the idea that race is used to discriminate against anybody including groups like Jews, Asians, and whites. I live in a school district that has a very high performing public high school. A friend recently got perfect scores on the SAT and I believe that he got very close to a perfect score on the ACT. He had a very high GPA and was a varsity athlete on a top rank team. He now attends Stanford, but was only around the top 13% of his graduating class. He didn't even bother to apply to the University of Texas. No one needs to feel sorry for him, he's a genius going to Stanford; I feel sorry for so many of his classmates that would have been very successful at an affordable University that can't get in despite working so hard in high school.
  - mattnewton 9y ago
    Please, college acceptance here is more like giving the C-J folks a pass on their first 2 blinds. College acceptance isn't like we're taxing people based on race.
- aianus 9y ago
  So give everyone the same number of chips; don't compensate by changing the rules so that a black straight beats a white flush.
  - jacalata 9y ago
    Now translate "chips" into "systemic and generational advantages" and include detail on how to give everyone the same number.
    - aianus 9y ago
      Childcare, subsidized/free tutoring, mentoring, etc. I'm on board with practically anything other than lowering the admission bar. Edit: admission to good public schools based on standardized tests instead of family real estate would be a good start
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - adjkant 9y ago
        And what of studies that give evidence for racial biases in standardized testing? Your suggestions are all well and good, but do you see any of those happening soon? It's not like anyone is even remotely discussing this anywhere and with the current administration, it sure isn't happening soon at a federal level. The question becomes if affirmative action is better than nothing at all.
- fiter 9y ago
  Is the alternative that we play poker and after every N rounds the chips are redistributed so that everyone has the same amount? At what point(s) should redistribution happen? At what point(s) should it stop to allow better decision making?
  - evanlivingston 9y ago
    There's your problem: you assume that redistributing every n rounds means that decision making suffers.
    - fiter 9y ago
      I grant you that this example is contrived, but I'd play poker very differently if that was the case!
      - evanlivingston 9y ago
        Word, but I think it underlines a real problem. For some people with low chances of losing in the game (trust fund, property, stable family, no prior convictions, etc) life can be a game about maximizing gains. For others it's toothe and nail. When the rules of the game are historically set by people who are already too stable to really lose, it's the "weaker" players who get exploited.
        adjkant 9y ago
        I would add to this that making the system fairer will inherently decrease the chances for the higher starting players. That is because they had a higher chance to start with. The lowering of their chances is not a bad thing, it is perfectly just. But it's hard to get those players to accept that when they are starting from that position of power.
        fiter 9y ago
        When you phrase it that way, it sounds like you think it's hopeless to have a system with objectively fair rules. Notwithstanding the probably uninspired resulting college environment, I think it would be hypothetically fair to admit people solely based on their standardized test scores without any other consideration. The admission standard while somewhat arbitrary would be clear, such that anyone who wants to get admitted could work towards it. If someone is provided with a substandard K-12 education, it would make it harder to work towards admission. In that case, maybe we should look into the K-12 environment. Maybe it turns out that it's not as much the K-12 environment, and it's actually home life. Maybe home life issues are related to incarceration or maybe they're hereditary. I think this is what an effort to root-cause the problem would look like. When you find the root causes, then you could provide help for anyone with that root cause problem.
- alexandros 9y ago
  If only it was so easy in real life to cleanly figure out who "starts out with less". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
  - ftlio 9y ago
    Target: Don't subjugate people to work agriculture. You know about slavery of the past and the labor practices of big agriculture today yeah?
- briholt 9y ago
  Every individual black/Hispanic person is born with exactly 40% less wealth than every white/Asian person? It's time to re-evaluate your life choices when you think it's a good thing to promote blanket race-baiting stereotypes.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    > people whose HN handles start with A-H will get, on average, 40% less to start with
    - briholt 9y ago
      So you're saying individuals' wealth may differ from the average of other people sharing their skin color? Too bad we can't measure a person's wealth directly and have to rely on racist hysteria as a proxy.
sanjeetsuhag 9y ago
> Just treat people as fairly as possible. Wow, man, you just like, solved racism and discrimination.
- Danihan 9y ago
  Discrimination can't be "solved" because 1. People are genetically different and 2. Anyone can have biases about anything. I could shut down every interviewee with big ears, or beady eyes, if I wanted to. Again, all you can do is treat people as fairly as possible by basing admissions policies on merit and standardization, rather than sloppily basing them on perceived group identity.
  - malchow 9y ago
    +1; and, even if poster above had a proposed methodology for proving discrimination, he couldn't show how such discrimination, over a population of hundreds of millions over decades and over trillions of minute decisions, nets out, since discrimination runs in all directions at all times.
  - HarryHirsch 9y ago
    I encourage you to teach a science course for non-majors at a local university that serves minorities. Unless you are intentionally blind the experience will be enlightening. The variation in quality of high schools in the US is astounding and needs to be experienced first-hand. Where does the talk about genetic variation and unconscious bias even come from? It's not relevant in this context.
    - Danihan 9y ago
      That's like saying I need to go live in a bad neighborhood to understand they are bad. Or that I need to do opiates firsthand to understand they feel good. I 100% realize that there is massive variation in high school quality. It doesn't astound me. [1] What does that have to do with making college admissions fair and standardized? [1] http://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/6-baltimore-schools-no-students-proficient-in-state-tests http://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/6-baltimore-s...
jacalata 9y ago
What other way? The one where some people have enormous structural disadvantages due to decades or more of discrimination? We agree it doesn't work, but many people get angry and defensive when we try and create systems that are fair enough to take this into account, like affirmative action policies.
- Danihan 9y ago
  Because you can't fight bias with more bias, it's hypocritical.
  - evanlivingston 9y ago
    You understand the problem with color-blindness, yes?
    - Danihan 9y ago
      Blind-hiring worked to remove the gender gap in orchestras. Why wouldn't it be good to use in college admissions? http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact... http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact....
      - adjkant 9y ago
        Because the input of applicants is the original problem. Affirmative action is intended to select more from the limited applicants, which in the end is a small effect in comparison to getting more black/hispanic students who are able to go college at all. Solving that takes a lot more, and affirmative action is attempting to stopgap for that.
      - evanlivingston 9y ago
        Of The cuff; a whole slew of reasons. Entry into an orchestra isn't something that is cost prohibitive for an economic class of individuals. Applicants to orchestras likely enjoy a certain level of affluence given how demanding the required practice is for performers. Musical performers enjoy slightly less systematic discrimination throughout their careers and technkal musical ability is something that is largely self-taught meaning that the applicants to orchestras are more likely to share similar levels of abilities at the stage of auditioning for an orchestra whereas college applicants are more likely to express difference at the time of application due to systematic discrimination throughout their educational trajectory. Playing in an orchestra doesn't share the same grave weight of attending college in careerist society where college is increasingly necessary. The demand is higher for college, and the supply can reflect that. Orchestras arnt a part of a massive industry tied to sports, science, defense, state subsidies etc...

We're going to play poker. Everyone will start with a randomly determined number of chips. But people whose HN handles start with A-H will get, on average, 40% less to start with. Aside from that tiny nit, it'll be a totally fair game.

tomp 9y ago
The "fair" solution is to make sure that A-H folks start with the same amount as the rest. The "reverse discrimination" solution is to take, after half of the game, the winnings of P-W folks and give them to C-J folks.
- spraak 9y ago
  But when in reality does that actually happen? I'm not trying to incite you, I just really don't see evidence of "reverse discrimination"
  - todd8 9y ago
    As a big proponent of civil rights and the whole civil rights movement I hope that I'm not misunderstood. Reverse discrimination refers to discriminating against say non-hispanic white males because they are non-hispanic white or male. It seems obvious to me that making admission choices to increase minority representation at universities is tautologically decreasing the representation of other groups and is reverse discrimination. The question to me is, "Is this a good thing?". Here in Texas, it works in a way that is not quite obvious. The University of Texas as Austin is a desirable state University. It was once all white (1950), clearly race was being used to discriminate against minority applicants--an unfair and condemnable practice. By 1996, the University, in an attempt to increase minority representation, had been using race as one of the factors in admission, blacks with lower academic scores were admitted ahead of whites with the same scores (clearly reverse discrimination). In 1996, Federal Appeals court ruled against the University and for a white student that made that claim. The University stopped considering race, but minority representation started to drop and the University found a way in 1997 to discriminate between applicants to change the minority representation again, this time without explicitly mentioning race. It automatically admitted the top 10% of every high school graduating class, regardless of actual academic achievement. This discriminated against the high schools with high performing students. Since these schools were usually found in more expensive suburban neighborhoods that had well funded school districts and mostly white student bodies (so although there was no longer any explicit reverse discrimination, it still produced the same result, minority students were being admitted with lower test scores, etc). This practice of admitting students based on where they went to high school helped but didn't completely achieve the goals that UT had for the make up of it's student body. In 2003, UT began to use race in addition to the 10% rule and now discriminates in favor of minorities that do not automatically qualify under the modified top 7% rule, this has resulted in a number of law suits that race based discrimination is happening, which it clearly is. I have mixed feelings about all of this. I detest the idea that race is used to discriminate against anybody including groups like Jews, Asians, and whites. I live in a school district that has a very high performing public high school. A friend recently got perfect scores on the SAT and I believe that he got very close to a perfect score on the ACT. He had a very high GPA and was a varsity athlete on a top rank team. He now attends Stanford, but was only around the top 13% of his graduating class. He didn't even bother to apply to the University of Texas. No one needs to feel sorry for him, he's a genius going to Stanford; I feel sorry for so many of his classmates that would have been very successful at an affordable University that can't get in despite working so hard in high school.
- mattnewton 9y ago
  Please, college acceptance here is more like giving the C-J folks a pass on their first 2 blinds. College acceptance isn't like we're taxing people based on race.
aianus 9y ago
So give everyone the same number of chips; don't compensate by changing the rules so that a black straight beats a white flush.
- jacalata 9y ago
  Now translate "chips" into "systemic and generational advantages" and include detail on how to give everyone the same number.
  - aianus 9y ago
    Childcare, subsidized/free tutoring, mentoring, etc. I'm on board with practically anything other than lowering the admission bar. Edit: admission to good public schools based on standardized tests instead of family real estate would be a good start
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - adjkant 9y ago
      And what of studies that give evidence for racial biases in standardized testing? Your suggestions are all well and good, but do you see any of those happening soon? It's not like anyone is even remotely discussing this anywhere and with the current administration, it sure isn't happening soon at a federal level. The question becomes if affirmative action is better than nothing at all.
fiter 9y ago
Is the alternative that we play poker and after every N rounds the chips are redistributed so that everyone has the same amount? At what point(s) should redistribution happen? At what point(s) should it stop to allow better decision making?
- evanlivingston 9y ago
  There's your problem: you assume that redistributing every n rounds means that decision making suffers.
  - fiter 9y ago
    I grant you that this example is contrived, but I'd play poker very differently if that was the case!
    - evanlivingston 9y ago
      Word, but I think it underlines a real problem. For some people with low chances of losing in the game (trust fund, property, stable family, no prior convictions, etc) life can be a game about maximizing gains. For others it's toothe and nail. When the rules of the game are historically set by people who are already too stable to really lose, it's the "weaker" players who get exploited.
      - adjkant 9y ago
        I would add to this that making the system fairer will inherently decrease the chances for the higher starting players. That is because they had a higher chance to start with. The lowering of their chances is not a bad thing, it is perfectly just. But it's hard to get those players to accept that when they are starting from that position of power.
      - fiter 9y ago
        When you phrase it that way, it sounds like you think it's hopeless to have a system with objectively fair rules. Notwithstanding the probably uninspired resulting college environment, I think it would be hypothetically fair to admit people solely based on their standardized test scores without any other consideration. The admission standard while somewhat arbitrary would be clear, such that anyone who wants to get admitted could work towards it. If someone is provided with a substandard K-12 education, it would make it harder to work towards admission. In that case, maybe we should look into the K-12 environment. Maybe it turns out that it's not as much the K-12 environment, and it's actually home life. Maybe home life issues are related to incarceration or maybe they're hereditary. I think this is what an effort to root-cause the problem would look like. When you find the root causes, then you could provide help for anyone with that root cause problem.
alexandros 9y ago
If only it was so easy in real life to cleanly figure out who "starts out with less". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
- ftlio 9y ago
  Target: Don't subjugate people to work agriculture. You know about slavery of the past and the labor practices of big agriculture today yeah?
briholt 9y ago
Every individual black/Hispanic person is born with exactly 40% less wealth than every white/Asian person? It's time to re-evaluate your life choices when you think it's a good thing to promote blanket race-baiting stereotypes.
- rayiner 9y ago
  > people whose HN handles start with A-H will get, on average, 40% less to start with
  - briholt 9y ago
    So you're saying individuals' wealth may differ from the average of other people sharing their skin color? Too bad we can't measure a person's wealth directly and have to rely on racist hysteria as a proxy.

sanjeetsuhag 9y ago

> Just treat people as fairly as possible. Wow, man, you just like, solved racism and discrimination.

Danihan 9y ago
Discrimination can't be "solved" because 1. People are genetically different and 2. Anyone can have biases about anything. I could shut down every interviewee with big ears, or beady eyes, if I wanted to. Again, all you can do is treat people as fairly as possible by basing admissions policies on merit and standardization, rather than sloppily basing them on perceived group identity.
- malchow 9y ago
  +1; and, even if poster above had a proposed methodology for proving discrimination, he couldn't show how such discrimination, over a population of hundreds of millions over decades and over trillions of minute decisions, nets out, since discrimination runs in all directions at all times.
- HarryHirsch 9y ago
  I encourage you to teach a science course for non-majors at a local university that serves minorities. Unless you are intentionally blind the experience will be enlightening. The variation in quality of high schools in the US is astounding and needs to be experienced first-hand. Where does the talk about genetic variation and unconscious bias even come from? It's not relevant in this context.
  - Danihan 9y ago
    That's like saying I need to go live in a bad neighborhood to understand they are bad. Or that I need to do opiates firsthand to understand they feel good. I 100% realize that there is massive variation in high school quality. It doesn't astound me. [1] What does that have to do with making college admissions fair and standardized? [1] http://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/6-baltimore-schools-no-students-proficient-in-state-tests http://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/6-baltimore-s...

jacalata 9y ago

What other way? The one where some people have enormous structural disadvantages due to decades or more of discrimination? We agree it doesn't work, but many people get angry and defensive when we try and create systems that are fair enough to take this into account, like affirmative action policies.

Danihan 9y ago
Because you can't fight bias with more bias, it's hypocritical.
- evanlivingston 9y ago
  You understand the problem with color-blindness, yes?
  - Danihan 9y ago
    Blind-hiring worked to remove the gender gap in orchestras. Why wouldn't it be good to use in college admissions? http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact... http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact....
    - adjkant 9y ago
      Because the input of applicants is the original problem. Affirmative action is intended to select more from the limited applicants, which in the end is a small effect in comparison to getting more black/hispanic students who are able to go college at all. Solving that takes a lot more, and affirmative action is attempting to stopgap for that.
    - evanlivingston 9y ago
      Of The cuff; a whole slew of reasons. Entry into an orchestra isn't something that is cost prohibitive for an economic class of individuals. Applicants to orchestras likely enjoy a certain level of affluence given how demanding the required practice is for performers. Musical performers enjoy slightly less systematic discrimination throughout their careers and technkal musical ability is something that is largely self-taught meaning that the applicants to orchestras are more likely to share similar levels of abilities at the stage of auditioning for an orchestra whereas college applicants are more likely to express difference at the time of application due to systematic discrimination throughout their educational trajectory. Playing in an orchestra doesn't share the same grave weight of attending college in careerist society where college is increasingly necessary. The demand is higher for college, and the supply can reflect that. Orchestras arnt a part of a massive industry tied to sports, science, defense, state subsidies etc...