3 ms·

This looks like a legit organization but it appears to be a project of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.

jerf 16y ago
So, because it's a conservative thinktank talking about the issue, poor whites are not in fact being discriminated against? I wish I could cancel issues just by getting a partisan organization to talk about it! I mean, the point is simple math. If you have a certain number of people you are going to admit, and you give bonuses to certain groups, you are equally penalizing others. People shouldn't be permitted to pretend otherwise because that's disingenuous; if you're going to do that, do it forthrightly and honestly. The fact that it's a challenge to forthrightly and honestly say "We want to discriminate against poor white people" sounds like a feature to me, not a bug.
- eli 16y ago
  No, it is not that simple. The question isn't "Does a poor white applicant have the exact same odds as a poor black applicant?" The question was, "Are we biased against poor whites?" If you believe, as many do, that there are fewer minority applicants because of institutional racism and therefore you decide to weight their applications higher is that biasing you selection process? Or is it cancelling out bias present elsewhere in the system?
  - chc 16y ago
    If A and B are two rivals that are the same modulo one factor, but A has worse odds than B, then we must conclude that the system has a bias against subjects with that particular set of properties. You may justify it as an attempt to cancel out some other bias, but it seems mathematically incontrovertible that a negative bias exists with a set of numbers like that.
- spamizbad 16y ago
  > So, because it's a conservative thinktank talking about the issue, poor whites are not in fact being discriminated against? Actually, my beef is with Think Tanks in general - I don't care what ideology they ascribe to. I should have made that more clear. Think tanks exist to produce content that promotes the views of various Washington factions. They are arbiters of neither fact nor truth. They're political campaigns for ideologies, except instead of stump speeches you get blog posts and various "white paper" studies. It's not intellectually wholesome content, and skates a very fine line between propaganda and "informational content."
- jbooth 16y ago
  Well, the fact that it's a conservative thinktank doesn't mean that they're necessarily wrong. But it does mean that anything that the publish on race will be feeding into the idea of white victimhood at the hands of minorities. You just have to look at the party registration by race -- obviously that's what they have to publish, whether it's correct or not.
hga 16y ago
Ummm, you are aware the author is discussing and quoting this study http://www.amazon.com/Longer-Separate-Not-Yet-Equal/dp/0691141606/ http://www.amazon.com/Longer-Separate-Not-Yet-Equal/dp/06911... that was done by a couple of Princeton sociologists??? Is this a riff on "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose"? Whatever. It was the Princeton types who said "Excelling in career-oriented activities is associated with 60 or 65 percent lower odds of admission", that is, having a leadership position or having achieved something significant in e.g. 4h, FFA, JROTC was crippling for your admission chances. Let me finish by quoted the final bit from the two eeeevil Manhattan Institute scholars (Neili is from Princeton as well and wrote the first of their two articles on this study): "As Nieli wrote: "The lower-class whites proved to be all-around losers... Having money in the family greatly improved a white applicant's admissions chances, lack of money greatly reduced it." If you read the whole book, the prejudice of the elite schools against poor whites seems clear. As a political issue, this is a sure bet to gain ground." America's ruling class likes to pretend it's a meritocracy but studies like this show it's anything but. And that's indeed going to continue to be a major political issue. Discrimination has ugly consequences.

jerf 16y ago

So, because it's a conservative thinktank talking about the issue, poor whites are not in fact being discriminated against? I wish I could cancel issues just by getting a partisan organization to talk about it! I mean, the point is simple math. If you have a certain number of people you are going to admit, and you give bonuses to certain groups, you are equally penalizing others. People shouldn't be permitted to pretend otherwise because that's disingenuous; if you're going to do that, do it forthrightly and honestly. The fact that it's a challenge to forthrightly and honestly say "We want to discriminate against poor white people" sounds like a feature to me, not a bug.

eli 16y ago
No, it is not that simple. The question isn't "Does a poor white applicant have the exact same odds as a poor black applicant?" The question was, "Are we biased against poor whites?" If you believe, as many do, that there are fewer minority applicants because of institutional racism and therefore you decide to weight their applications higher is that biasing you selection process? Or is it cancelling out bias present elsewhere in the system?
- chc 16y ago
  If A and B are two rivals that are the same modulo one factor, but A has worse odds than B, then we must conclude that the system has a bias against subjects with that particular set of properties. You may justify it as an attempt to cancel out some other bias, but it seems mathematically incontrovertible that a negative bias exists with a set of numbers like that.
spamizbad 16y ago
> So, because it's a conservative thinktank talking about the issue, poor whites are not in fact being discriminated against? Actually, my beef is with Think Tanks in general - I don't care what ideology they ascribe to. I should have made that more clear. Think tanks exist to produce content that promotes the views of various Washington factions. They are arbiters of neither fact nor truth. They're political campaigns for ideologies, except instead of stump speeches you get blog posts and various "white paper" studies. It's not intellectually wholesome content, and skates a very fine line between propaganda and "informational content."
jbooth 16y ago
Well, the fact that it's a conservative thinktank doesn't mean that they're necessarily wrong. But it does mean that anything that the publish on race will be feeding into the idea of white victimhood at the hands of minorities. You just have to look at the party registration by race -- obviously that's what they have to publish, whether it's correct or not.

hga 16y ago

Ummm, you are aware the author is discussing and quoting this study http://www.amazon.com/Longer-Separate-Not-Yet-Equal/dp/0691141606/ http://www.amazon.com/Longer-Separate-Not-Yet-Equal/dp/06911... that was done by a couple of Princeton sociologists??? Is this a riff on "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose"? Whatever. It was the Princeton types who said "Excelling in career-oriented activities is associated with 60 or 65 percent lower odds of admission", that is, having a leadership position or having achieved something significant in e.g. 4h, FFA, JROTC was crippling for your admission chances. Let me finish by quoted the final bit from the two eeeevil Manhattan Institute scholars (Neili is from Princeton as well and wrote the first of their two articles on this study): "As Nieli wrote: "The lower-class whites proved to be all-around losers... Having money in the family greatly improved a white applicant's admissions chances, lack of money greatly reduced it." If you read the whole book, the prejudice of the elite schools against poor whites seems clear. As a political issue, this is a sure bet to gain ground." America's ruling class likes to pretend it's a meritocracy but studies like this show it's anything but. And that's indeed going to continue to be a major political issue. Discrimination has ugly consequences.