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I think the most useful way to think about this is that unequal outcomes almost always lead us to unequal opportunity upstream. If, for example, you made admis

I think the most useful way to think about this is that unequal outcomes almost always lead us to unequal opportunity upstream. If, for example, you made admission to elite colleges(which is a whole other can of worms) ignore ethnic backgrounds, you'd get a result where far fewer applicants of certain ethnicities would be accepted. In an arbitrary sense, this could represent "equal opportunity" if you believed that these people materialized from the ether the day they submit their application. But if you take into account their lives leading up to submitting their application, "equal opportunity" requires counteracting powerful structural factors that make it harder for people of some backgrounds to get into college. The reason Harvard admission of Asian students is cited to such a tiresome degree is that it's a rare case where there isn't a clear upstream justification. That's why there's a big lawsuit and Harvard is getting tons of awful press about it. But it also lines up with the fundamental problem we're trying to fix with affirmative action. Harvard and its admissions systems were invented by white people, and they have proven to relentlessly favor white people, who then have easier lives and more money they can use to pay SAT tutors to help the next generation of white kids get into Harvard. It's not surprising that Harvard would warp the affirmative action system away from its original purpose, to correct for historical oppression, in order to... help white people get into Harvard. The fact that Harvard is discriminating against Asians is not a reason to implement a fake-fair system that has the end result of discriminating against all other non-white people. It's theoretically possible that there are some other cases somewhere that show large inequality of outcome but have no unfairness upstream. But I'd rather have the task of discovering and fixing those rare cases than the present system, in which being born with a certain background gives you radical advantages or disadvantages on the basis of, basically, ancestral violence.

tomp 8y ago
Can you please explain how Obama’s daughters are disadvantaged based on ancestral violence? The point is, racist discrimination, even if “positive”, produces unfair outcomes. Obama’s daughter don’t need even more advantages. If you want to help kids from disadvantaged backgrounds (and I think that’s a worthy cause, even if you ignore “fairness”, simply because it increases the odds of finding the next Ramanujan and improves the well-being of the society), you should help people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Admitting them to degrees they don’t deserve isn’t actually helping them - it’s mainly just fixing superficial statistics and perpetuating harmful stereotypes (e.g. people not wanting black doctors because they suspect they’re worse because they weren’t subject to as strict standards as white, let alone Asian, doctors). To ensure actual equality of opportunity, you need to help them when they’re young, improve their school system, help their families, etc. Everything else is just a bandaid, at best masking rhe underlying problem.
- pas 8y ago
  We are talking about large, diverse groups and their median or average. That said, usually the correct approach is not discriminating based on race, but discriminating on the actual "disadvantegedness" of the path taken by the applicant. Accidentally that's how it's done around here for university (you get points for being disabled, poor, living far from the campus, and so on).
- ForrestN 8y ago
  Oh wow! Yes, that's very easy! Let me count the ways. First of all, Obama's daughters are much more likely to be murdered, abused or falsely accused by police than they would be if they were white. Even iconically famous black people are sometimes mistreated by police officers who don't recognize them. I'd say being at a high risk of murder counts as a disadvantage! I don't even need to draw a line back to ancestral violence for that one—that's just regular old present day violence. Second, although the Obama sisters enjoy substantial family wealth due to their parents' incredible achievements, the fact that they were born black means that, statistically speaking, they would have been far wealthier if they'd been born to a comparably wealthy white family. For example, if the Obama's are the X richest African American family, they'd be far richer if they were the X richest white American family. Bingo! Disadvantage! Why does that wealth gap exist? There are many recent crimes, many tied to violence, that exacerbated the situation. But we can start by looking at the fact that Black people, including Obama ancestors, were violently forced to build wealth for white people without any compensation. There are many more ways in which contemporary American society puts extra pressure and psychological burden on African Americans, yes even rich African Americans, all of which can be traced back to historical violence in our history, and all of which clearly affect the outcomes we associate with "success." Whether you admit it or not, you're arguing that the person who "deserves" to win in our economy is the person whose ancestors perpetrated horrific crimes against his competitor's ancestors and who doesn't have to face the constant daily effects of ongoing racism in our society.
  - fiter 8y ago
    What if Obama's daughters don't find being more likely to be murdered to be a worthwhile exchange for whatever advantages you're offering them? It doesn't seem like a fair negotiation to not include them.
pas 8y ago
with regards to Harvard et al., they have a harder time to do positive discrimination since some court decisions in recent years. all in all, they look at extracurricular stuff to try to give extra points, because they can't discriminate - even positively - based on race, as far as I know. (the legal history of affirmative action is pretty long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_United_States#Implementation_in_universities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_Unit... )
imh 8y ago
It's great to account for what structurally led to the moment of a decision. What's tricky is that it's hard to get the right level of granularity. If you don't have data on how historically disadvantaged a given person's path was, you're going to get false positives and false negatives, and you can't make the system fair across both. Changing the discussion to be structurally fair, not just transactionally, you still have the same impossibility issues arising if you don't have an oracle model with omniscient features. It's the same issues, but with a larger scope of features and outcomes.

tomp 8y ago

Can you please explain how Obama’s daughters are disadvantaged based on ancestral violence? The point is, racist discrimination, even if “positive”, produces unfair outcomes. Obama’s daughter don’t need even more advantages. If you want to help kids from disadvantaged backgrounds (and I think that’s a worthy cause, even if you ignore “fairness”, simply because it increases the odds of finding the next Ramanujan and improves the well-being of the society), you should help people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Admitting them to degrees they don’t deserve isn’t actually helping them - it’s mainly just fixing superficial statistics and perpetuating harmful stereotypes (e.g. people not wanting black doctors because they suspect they’re worse because they weren’t subject to as strict standards as white, let alone Asian, doctors). To ensure actual equality of opportunity, you need to help them when they’re young, improve their school system, help their families, etc. Everything else is just a bandaid, at best masking rhe underlying problem.

pas 8y ago
We are talking about large, diverse groups and their median or average. That said, usually the correct approach is not discriminating based on race, but discriminating on the actual "disadvantegedness" of the path taken by the applicant. Accidentally that's how it's done around here for university (you get points for being disabled, poor, living far from the campus, and so on).
ForrestN 8y ago
Oh wow! Yes, that's very easy! Let me count the ways. First of all, Obama's daughters are much more likely to be murdered, abused or falsely accused by police than they would be if they were white. Even iconically famous black people are sometimes mistreated by police officers who don't recognize them. I'd say being at a high risk of murder counts as a disadvantage! I don't even need to draw a line back to ancestral violence for that one—that's just regular old present day violence. Second, although the Obama sisters enjoy substantial family wealth due to their parents' incredible achievements, the fact that they were born black means that, statistically speaking, they would have been far wealthier if they'd been born to a comparably wealthy white family. For example, if the Obama's are the X richest African American family, they'd be far richer if they were the X richest white American family. Bingo! Disadvantage! Why does that wealth gap exist? There are many recent crimes, many tied to violence, that exacerbated the situation. But we can start by looking at the fact that Black people, including Obama ancestors, were violently forced to build wealth for white people without any compensation. There are many more ways in which contemporary American society puts extra pressure and psychological burden on African Americans, yes even rich African Americans, all of which can be traced back to historical violence in our history, and all of which clearly affect the outcomes we associate with "success." Whether you admit it or not, you're arguing that the person who "deserves" to win in our economy is the person whose ancestors perpetrated horrific crimes against his competitor's ancestors and who doesn't have to face the constant daily effects of ongoing racism in our society.
- fiter 8y ago
  What if Obama's daughters don't find being more likely to be murdered to be a worthwhile exchange for whatever advantages you're offering them? It doesn't seem like a fair negotiation to not include them.

pas 8y ago

with regards to Harvard et al., they have a harder time to do positive discrimination since some court decisions in recent years. all in all, they look at extracurricular stuff to try to give extra points, because they can't discriminate - even positively - based on race, as far as I know. (the legal history of affirmative action is pretty long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_United_States#Implementation_in_universities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_Unit... )

imh 8y ago

It's great to account for what structurally led to the moment of a decision. What's tricky is that it's hard to get the right level of granularity. If you don't have data on how historically disadvantaged a given person's path was, you're going to get false positives and false negatives, and you can't make the system fair across both. Changing the discussion to be structurally fair, not just transactionally, you still have the same impossibility issues arising if you don't have an oracle model with omniscient features. It's the same issues, but with a larger scope of features and outcomes.