6 ms·

Good, there shouldn't be any systemic race based acceptance criteria. It only increases racism and skepticism. Imagine you have a Hispanic doctor, but you know

Good, there shouldn't be any systemic race based acceptance criteria. It only increases racism and skepticism. Imagine you have a Hispanic doctor, but you know that the MCAT score for a Hispanic to get into med school is lower than the score an Asian would need. Now you question whether your doctor is as qualified as they should be because of their race, even if they did have an amazing MCAT score. Affirmative action is blatantly racist from all angles.

nova22033 9y ago
now imagine the same resume being sent out to a number of companies: one with a white sounding name and one with a black sounding name. And imagine finding out that the same resume with the white sounding name gets more call backs? I'm going to assume it's the same thing if you replace white with east asian or south asian.
- vowelless 9y ago
  Now imagine that you both may actually be talking about orthogonal issues....
  - unclebucknasty 9y ago
    Can you explain why you think these are orthogonal?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- jostmey 9y ago
  Only imperfect solutions for an imperfect world
- cdiddy2 9y ago
  That doesn't mean that having quotas for different races is the right way to solve that though
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- zeth___ 9y ago
  Now imagine the same thing again, but this time in the interview where one candidate has a mid western accent, and the other a deep southern one. People use race as a proxy for class. But it isn't the only thing. And the more people pretend race is the deciding factor, and not class, the more shitty laws and rules we have in place trying to fix a symptom of a disease everyone wants to pretend isn't there.
  - tylerhou 9y ago
    Race is still hugely important when it comes to success, even after adjusting for class. See: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-c... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/29/upshot/money-race-and-success-how-your-school-district-compares.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/29/upshot/money-... A quote from the first article: > “One of the most popular liberal post-racial ideas is the idea that the fundamental problem is class and not race, and clearly this study explodes that idea,” said Ibram Kendi, a professor and director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. “But for whatever reason, we’re unwilling to stare racism in the face.”
    - zeth___ 9y ago
      I've yet to meet any of these mythical post racial liberals. And your own sources disprove your claim. Black women earn more than white women. At best you're showing that sexism matters more than racism. But it's only sexism when it happens to women, just like it's only racism when it happens to blacks. At any rate, anyone who claims race trumps class has not been paying attention: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/23/521083335/the-forces-driving-middle-aged-white-peoples-deaths-of-despair https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/23/5210833... Unless of course you think the US has suddenly become racist against middle aged white men? Instead of the simpler explanation that race was a good proxy for class from 1940 to 1980 and has completely broken down since, but people whose livelihoods depend on it peddle it like economists paddle trickle down economics.
      - 9y ago
- unclebucknasty 9y ago
  The thing about GP's statement is that it's premised on the idea that it doesn't work in reverse: i.e. that the existing systemic racism that these policies are intended to offset don't likewise rob us of our best and brightest. And, of course, that idea itself rests on the notion of an inherent superiority on one-side. To be clear, I don't believe that's part of the conscious thinking, but I do believe this oversight is illustrative of the kinds of blind-spots that tacitly guide a lot of thinking on these issues. That's an unpopular thing to say but that doesn't make it any less true.
cdiddy2 9y ago
Some data to back up differing MCAT score acceptance rates by race https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/157998/factstablea24.html https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/157998/...
bytematic 9y ago
I agree, but know they still had to get through med school same as anyone else.
mattsfrey 9y ago
Agreed, I think a lot of people at this point are tired of identity divisions period and just want everyone to be treated the same regardless. It comes down to your principles in the end, I'm really hoping the culture moves in this direction though. Even though some minorities will not receive the same successful outcomes, I feel that indiscriminate treatment of people regardless of their race, gender, background at all levels of society and it's institutions is the only way forward as a collectively multicultural population.
fossuser 9y ago
The reason this is a hard problem is how do you fix it when the admissions people are racists? Part of the reason these policies are based on race and not some other socioeconomic standard was to get around the problem that the people making the admission decisions were racist (or at least biased).
s2g 9y ago
I don’t actually question, because she still went to 4 years of medical school, exams, residency, etc... Racists probably question.
jdavis703 9y ago
The government and private organizations have a history of using race to penalize and constrain certain specific groups in the U.S. Many of these race-based policy decisions continue to give compounding returns to groups who benefited from discrimination against blacks, Hispanics, Asians and indigenous people. Until the issue of compounding returns is fixed (i.e. equalized), having a "color blind" attitude will continue to uphold the effects of systemic racism.
- prepend 9y ago
  This is a really good point that should not be ignored. If being color blind upholds, and being color biased upholds. What should we do. There’s a separate issue that if you think there isn’t systemic racism against Asian Americans then you may want to practice empathizing. So if there’s historic systemic racism against certain groups, isn’t it worse to identify some groups and turn the screws on them? A vengeance based social policy will be difficult to implement as the perpetrators already got theirs out of the education system and it will likely have lots of negative consequences and lead to a worse society.
  - jdavis703 9y ago
    I don't know the specifics of what Harvard's history of discrimination is. Let's say that Harvard historically blocked 1000 Asian students from an education. What they should do is open space for 1000 Asian students and stack rank all the students who apply for these slots so the ones who best match the criteria can come in. I realize I've practically described affirmative action. But there's varying ways to implement this system that avoids certain complaints. Let's say Harvard always admits 5000 students a year, they could add a bonus pool of 1000 students set aside for this. On the other hand if they're concerned about overwhelming their faculty they could admit 4000 students through normal means and 1000 from the special set aside. One of the objections to this is it's unfair to the 4000 or 5000 students who will now receive a lesser education because of some wrongs that they weren't responsible for. I'd like to propose it's equally unfair that students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds because of explicit decisions that these institutions made are denied a similar education. In this case should our institutions take no action to avoid upsetting the status quo and maintain a "color blind" ideal, or should they take active actions to rectify historic wrongs that continue to create inequality in the current day?
prepend 9y ago
Alternatively, I suppose this can help you select a doctor. Especially if board scores are also different based on race. Of course this isn’t absolute as there are other factors to consider. But this is what I mean by saying these kinds of interventions increase racism. Since in your example this could lead to patients discriminating against Hispanic doctors.
unclebucknasty 9y ago
>there shouldn't be any systemic race based acceptance criteria. There shouldn't be any systemic race-based anything. Unfortunately, however, there is.
luk32 9y ago
I am also against any form of racial/gender etc. preferences positive or negative because it's inherently discriminatory. But I also think it's a fallacy that one's professional performance is highly correlated with their acceptance scores.

nova22033 9y ago

now imagine the same resume being sent out to a number of companies: one with a white sounding name and one with a black sounding name. And imagine finding out that the same resume with the white sounding name gets more call backs? I'm going to assume it's the same thing if you replace white with east asian or south asian.

vowelless 9y ago
Now imagine that you both may actually be talking about orthogonal issues....
- unclebucknasty 9y ago
  Can you explain why you think these are orthogonal?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
jostmey 9y ago
Only imperfect solutions for an imperfect world
cdiddy2 9y ago
That doesn't mean that having quotas for different races is the right way to solve that though
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
zeth___ 9y ago
Now imagine the same thing again, but this time in the interview where one candidate has a mid western accent, and the other a deep southern one. People use race as a proxy for class. But it isn't the only thing. And the more people pretend race is the deciding factor, and not class, the more shitty laws and rules we have in place trying to fix a symptom of a disease everyone wants to pretend isn't there.
- tylerhou 9y ago
  Race is still hugely important when it comes to success, even after adjusting for class. See: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-c... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/29/upshot/money-race-and-success-how-your-school-district-compares.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/29/upshot/money-... A quote from the first article: > “One of the most popular liberal post-racial ideas is the idea that the fundamental problem is class and not race, and clearly this study explodes that idea,” said Ibram Kendi, a professor and director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. “But for whatever reason, we’re unwilling to stare racism in the face.”
  - zeth___ 9y ago
    I've yet to meet any of these mythical post racial liberals. And your own sources disprove your claim. Black women earn more than white women. At best you're showing that sexism matters more than racism. But it's only sexism when it happens to women, just like it's only racism when it happens to blacks. At any rate, anyone who claims race trumps class has not been paying attention: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/23/521083335/the-forces-driving-middle-aged-white-peoples-deaths-of-despair https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/23/5210833... Unless of course you think the US has suddenly become racist against middle aged white men? Instead of the simpler explanation that race was a good proxy for class from 1940 to 1980 and has completely broken down since, but people whose livelihoods depend on it peddle it like economists paddle trickle down economics.
    - 9y ago
unclebucknasty 9y ago
The thing about GP's statement is that it's premised on the idea that it doesn't work in reverse: i.e. that the existing systemic racism that these policies are intended to offset don't likewise rob us of our best and brightest. And, of course, that idea itself rests on the notion of an inherent superiority on one-side. To be clear, I don't believe that's part of the conscious thinking, but I do believe this oversight is illustrative of the kinds of blind-spots that tacitly guide a lot of thinking on these issues. That's an unpopular thing to say but that doesn't make it any less true.

cdiddy2 9y ago

Some data to back up differing MCAT score acceptance rates by race https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/157998/factstablea24.html https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/157998/...

bytematic 9y ago

I agree, but know they still had to get through med school same as anyone else.

mattsfrey 9y ago

Agreed, I think a lot of people at this point are tired of identity divisions period and just want everyone to be treated the same regardless. It comes down to your principles in the end, I'm really hoping the culture moves in this direction though. Even though some minorities will not receive the same successful outcomes, I feel that indiscriminate treatment of people regardless of their race, gender, background at all levels of society and it's institutions is the only way forward as a collectively multicultural population.

fossuser 9y ago

The reason this is a hard problem is how do you fix it when the admissions people are racists? Part of the reason these policies are based on race and not some other socioeconomic standard was to get around the problem that the people making the admission decisions were racist (or at least biased).

s2g 9y ago

I don’t actually question, because she still went to 4 years of medical school, exams, residency, etc... Racists probably question.

jdavis703 9y ago

The government and private organizations have a history of using race to penalize and constrain certain specific groups in the U.S. Many of these race-based policy decisions continue to give compounding returns to groups who benefited from discrimination against blacks, Hispanics, Asians and indigenous people. Until the issue of compounding returns is fixed (i.e. equalized), having a "color blind" attitude will continue to uphold the effects of systemic racism.

prepend 9y ago
This is a really good point that should not be ignored. If being color blind upholds, and being color biased upholds. What should we do. There’s a separate issue that if you think there isn’t systemic racism against Asian Americans then you may want to practice empathizing. So if there’s historic systemic racism against certain groups, isn’t it worse to identify some groups and turn the screws on them? A vengeance based social policy will be difficult to implement as the perpetrators already got theirs out of the education system and it will likely have lots of negative consequences and lead to a worse society.
- jdavis703 9y ago
  I don't know the specifics of what Harvard's history of discrimination is. Let's say that Harvard historically blocked 1000 Asian students from an education. What they should do is open space for 1000 Asian students and stack rank all the students who apply for these slots so the ones who best match the criteria can come in. I realize I've practically described affirmative action. But there's varying ways to implement this system that avoids certain complaints. Let's say Harvard always admits 5000 students a year, they could add a bonus pool of 1000 students set aside for this. On the other hand if they're concerned about overwhelming their faculty they could admit 4000 students through normal means and 1000 from the special set aside. One of the objections to this is it's unfair to the 4000 or 5000 students who will now receive a lesser education because of some wrongs that they weren't responsible for. I'd like to propose it's equally unfair that students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds because of explicit decisions that these institutions made are denied a similar education. In this case should our institutions take no action to avoid upsetting the status quo and maintain a "color blind" ideal, or should they take active actions to rectify historic wrongs that continue to create inequality in the current day?

prepend 9y ago

Alternatively, I suppose this can help you select a doctor. Especially if board scores are also different based on race. Of course this isn’t absolute as there are other factors to consider. But this is what I mean by saying these kinds of interventions increase racism. Since in your example this could lead to patients discriminating against Hispanic doctors.

unclebucknasty 9y ago

>there shouldn't be any systemic race based acceptance criteria. There shouldn't be any systemic race-based anything. Unfortunately, however, there is.

luk32 9y ago

I am also against any form of racial/gender etc. preferences positive or negative because it's inherently discriminatory. But I also think it's a fallacy that one's professional performance is highly correlated with their acceptance scores.