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Your comments do a good job of articulating the emotional arguments people use to support affirmative action. But the problem with affirmative action is that it

Your comments do a good job of articulating the emotional arguments people use to support affirmative action. But the problem with affirmative action is that it seeks to counter bias by introducing more bias. It's a form of damage control in that it ignores the root causes of the problems it tries to address. You argue that removing identifying marks unfairly tips the balance toward those who will be better prepared for the job (i.e. those who did not grow up poor). But assuming a particular test is the best measure of one's on-the-job performance, how can changing that test for some (based on things that identify them as "repressed") create any societal good? You're only pushing the problem out in front of you, and you'll eventually meet it again, but in a different form. The problem is that people grow up poor, and that poverty creates severe disadvantage. Let's fix that problem at the source (there are a lot of NPOs that try to do this - free after-school programs, etc.) and keep hiring standards constant and unbiased. Poverty can't be solved by changing admissions and hiring standards to avoid rejecting poor-performing people who grew up poor. That approach only creates new problems.

ianleeclark 8y ago
> Your comments do a good job of articulating the emotional arguments people use to support affirmative action. This is unfair: I never said anything about affirmative action, made normative claims, or appealed to emotion. I stated why this test would still have bias towards poorer classes. The narrative I was concerned with pointing out was that class characteristics could be biased in similar ways to physical characteristics and that mechanisms seeking to remove bias of physical characteristics will still allow bias for class characteristics.
- TimTheTinker 8y ago
  By emotional argument I meant an argument whose strength lies in its effect on emotions, as opposed to its rational strength. Perhaps that's a weasel term. But I tried to back up my assertion that introducing bias can't remove bias. > mechanisms seeking to remove bias of physical characteristics will still allow bias for class characteristics. If by "bias for class characteristics" you mean "objective standards", I call that nonsense. By definition, an objective standard will cease to be objective once a subjective-based alteration is introduced. If an objective standard happens to favor one class over another, it's not the standard's problem. The problem lies in whatever caused that class to do worse.

ianleeclark 8y ago

> Your comments do a good job of articulating the emotional arguments people use to support affirmative action. This is unfair: I never said anything about affirmative action, made normative claims, or appealed to emotion. I stated why this test would still have bias towards poorer classes. The narrative I was concerned with pointing out was that class characteristics could be biased in similar ways to physical characteristics and that mechanisms seeking to remove bias of physical characteristics will still allow bias for class characteristics.

TimTheTinker 8y ago
By emotional argument I meant an argument whose strength lies in its effect on emotions, as opposed to its rational strength. Perhaps that's a weasel term. But I tried to back up my assertion that introducing bias can't remove bias. > mechanisms seeking to remove bias of physical characteristics will still allow bias for class characteristics. If by "bias for class characteristics" you mean "objective standards", I call that nonsense. By definition, an objective standard will cease to be objective once a subjective-based alteration is introduced. If an objective standard happens to favor one class over another, it's not the standard's problem. The problem lies in whatever caused that class to do worse.