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Probably off topic, but how can an institution prioritize the following 3 efforts simultaneously? 1. "The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affi

Probably off topic, but how can an institution prioritize the following 3 efforts simultaneously? 1. "The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer" 2. "It is the policy of the University to undertake affirmative action, consistent with its obligations as a federal contractor, for minorities and women" 3. "All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity..."

hayd 5y ago
Isn't affirmative action illegal in California?
- hackernewds 5y ago
  Quite the opposite
colinmhayes 5y ago
I believe the idea is that facing adversity makes it harder to achieve, and they're instrumenting on attributes that would cause people to face adversity. Those people may be better applicants even if they're not as accomplished because they had to fight harder so everything they've got. So I guess they're claiming they're not considering race... but using it to consider the adversity they've faced.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  This, of course, begs the question why don’t they directly ask about and consider the actual adversity people faced, instead of a roundabout way of using very weak statistical proxy for it. Even if they could not ask directly about adversity (which they can and do), they could use much better proxies, like, say, past household income. Why don’t they? The answer is, obviously, that the “adversity” is just an excuse, and they do in fact directly care about racial and sex composition of faculty and student body. Nobody’s fooled here, racial discrimination is the entire point of the exercise.
  - dendriti 5y ago
    People opposed to affirmative action like to use verbal tricks. For example, here OP has described affirmative action as "racial discrimination", which is perhaps technically true, but not as most people understand the term.
    - xyzzyz 5y ago
      No, it’s the “affirmative action” that’s the ultimate verbal trick: if you didn’t know the origin of the phrase, and how it is used, you’d never guess what it means. On the other hand, describing it as “racial discrimination” is perfectly clear and straightforward, as AA is quite simply all about discriminating between competing candidates based on their race.
      - drekk 5y ago
        "From 2009 until 2014, the paper “Legacy and Athlete Preferences at Harvard” finds, 43 percent of the Caucasian applicants accepted at Harvard University were either athletes, legacies, or the children of donors and faculty. Only about a quarter of those students would have been accepted to the school, the study concludes, without those admissions advantages."[0] I'm reminded of the words of Malcolm X—"If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there." Americans may have struck down de jure segregation (big applause!) but we're still de facto segregated a generation or two later. K-12 schools serving predominantly black communities have less funding, less extra-curriculars, less honors/AP courses (UCLA expects a 4.5 GPA, have fun getting one wifhout lots of advanced courses available). Don't get me started on the racial discrepancy in being able to get childcare or pay for ACT/SAT prep courses that all my white peers did in their summers. Affirmative action is discriminatory in the sense it admits there's more to applications than your number, as much as that irks SWEs who love to reduce people to an algorithm. You can't just say "we have no black students because no qualified black students applied!". There are certainly qualified minorities, maybe the way in which you're measuring "qualified" has a racial bias? To give one example, the father of SATs and AP courses was a racist eugenicist who thought (correctly, but for the wrong reasons) standarized tests would help stop minority admissions since the 1920s were all about the idea that race and intelligence are linked. [1] Do we think that intention is totally irrelevant to the outcome of these tests? There's a reason educators don't like them! Cheaper to use scantrons than to try and assess with any nuance. [0] https://slate.com/business/2019/09/harvard-admissions-affirmative-action-white-students-legacy-athletes-donors.html https://slate.com/business/2019/09/harvard-admissions-affirm... [1] https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/racist-beginnings-standardized-testing https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/racis...
xyzzyz 5y ago
If you take these statement literally, it can’t. However, this is just a legal fiction, where you first pretend that Civil Rights Act applies equally to all races and sexes, so that it is not ruled unconstitutional, but then in practice you designate some races or sexes as “oppressed”, and give them special privileges, and others you designate as “privileged”, and give them no special privileges. This is how this is all widely and commonly understood: if you ask around whether “white men” are a “protected class” according to Civil Rights Act, most people will say that they aren’t. They in fact are, but that’s just the “fiction” part of the legal fiction here.
- hackernewds 5y ago
  Depends on the interpretation. An advocate of textualism like the late Anthony Scalia, would argue the letter (vs the spirit) of the law should still be implemented - arguing that it is the duty of the judge to implement, and the duty of the elected congressmen/Senators to legislate the laws.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- fivea 5y ago
  > If you take these statement literally, it can’t. However, this is just a legal fiction (...) ...or it really can't and it's quite clearly breaking the law?
- dendriti 5y ago
affirmtoday 5y ago
Those three statements don't say what I think you think they say. Let's break it down: Statement 3 days all applicants will be considered, regardless of criteria. One can consider a candidate while preferentially selecting based on some criteria. For instance, a common way organizations will operate is to use minority status as a tie breaker between two equally qualified candidates. Both candidates were given full consideration, satisfying #3, while some prefer was used to provide for disadvantaged groups, satisfying #1 and #2.
FrenchDevRemote 5y ago
Simple. You ACTIVELY LOOK for women and minorities, you train your people to be less biased, you do everything you can to have a more diverse pool of interviewee. But if in the end you still have to choose between a more competent white man and a black woman for the same salary/position you choose the white man.
yes_really 5y ago
It's like 1984's Doublespeak. These people say obviously contradictory statements without making any logical association between them. And, if you attempt to argue logic with them, they will use institutional and political power to silence you.
- fivea 5y ago
  > It's like 1984's Doublespeak. These people say obviously contradictory statements without making any logical association between them. It really isn't, and trying to force absurd 1984 references makes absolutely no sense at all. Think about it for a second: if you already feel you have the absolute best candidate for a spot already working at your side, or you create a position specifically to get that person to work for you, does that mean you are racist or sexist or, as you chose to imply with your absurd comparison, fascist?
  - yes_really 5y ago
    How is the comparison to doublespeak absurd? They are literally making contradictory statements while refusing to make any logical association between them. That's exactly what doublespeak is.
    - fivea 5y ago
      > How is the comparison to doublespeak absurd? Because the accusation has absolutely nothing to do with doublespeak, and given the fundamental difference between the meaning of doublespeak and the case discussed then it's so far-fetched that just reads as a desperate attempt to gratuitously pin the fascist label. > They are literally making contradictory statements while refusing to make any logical association between them. If you knew the definition of doublespeak and read the article and the comments you'd quickly understand the absurdity of your accusation.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
idonthaveanacc 5y ago
I’ve worked at UCLA for ~10 years, and none of it has ever made sense to me. I think there are a lot of lawyers and politicians behind this.
jonnycomputer 5y ago
There are few people indeed who could afford to volunteer full time at UCLA. Heck I tried volunteering half time at a UCLA lab and ended up quasi-homeless one summer because my part time job couldn't pay the rent

hayd 5y ago

Isn't affirmative action illegal in California?

hackernewds 5y ago
Quite the opposite

colinmhayes 5y ago

I believe the idea is that facing adversity makes it harder to achieve, and they're instrumenting on attributes that would cause people to face adversity. Those people may be better applicants even if they're not as accomplished because they had to fight harder so everything they've got. So I guess they're claiming they're not considering race... but using it to consider the adversity they've faced.

xyzzyz 5y ago
This, of course, begs the question why don’t they directly ask about and consider the actual adversity people faced, instead of a roundabout way of using very weak statistical proxy for it. Even if they could not ask directly about adversity (which they can and do), they could use much better proxies, like, say, past household income. Why don’t they? The answer is, obviously, that the “adversity” is just an excuse, and they do in fact directly care about racial and sex composition of faculty and student body. Nobody’s fooled here, racial discrimination is the entire point of the exercise.
- dendriti 5y ago
  People opposed to affirmative action like to use verbal tricks. For example, here OP has described affirmative action as "racial discrimination", which is perhaps technically true, but not as most people understand the term.
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    No, it’s the “affirmative action” that’s the ultimate verbal trick: if you didn’t know the origin of the phrase, and how it is used, you’d never guess what it means. On the other hand, describing it as “racial discrimination” is perfectly clear and straightforward, as AA is quite simply all about discriminating between competing candidates based on their race.
    - drekk 5y ago
      "From 2009 until 2014, the paper “Legacy and Athlete Preferences at Harvard” finds, 43 percent of the Caucasian applicants accepted at Harvard University were either athletes, legacies, or the children of donors and faculty. Only about a quarter of those students would have been accepted to the school, the study concludes, without those admissions advantages."[0] I'm reminded of the words of Malcolm X—"If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there." Americans may have struck down de jure segregation (big applause!) but we're still de facto segregated a generation or two later. K-12 schools serving predominantly black communities have less funding, less extra-curriculars, less honors/AP courses (UCLA expects a 4.5 GPA, have fun getting one wifhout lots of advanced courses available). Don't get me started on the racial discrepancy in being able to get childcare or pay for ACT/SAT prep courses that all my white peers did in their summers. Affirmative action is discriminatory in the sense it admits there's more to applications than your number, as much as that irks SWEs who love to reduce people to an algorithm. You can't just say "we have no black students because no qualified black students applied!". There are certainly qualified minorities, maybe the way in which you're measuring "qualified" has a racial bias? To give one example, the father of SATs and AP courses was a racist eugenicist who thought (correctly, but for the wrong reasons) standarized tests would help stop minority admissions since the 1920s were all about the idea that race and intelligence are linked. [1] Do we think that intention is totally irrelevant to the outcome of these tests? There's a reason educators don't like them! Cheaper to use scantrons than to try and assess with any nuance. [0] https://slate.com/business/2019/09/harvard-admissions-affirmative-action-white-students-legacy-athletes-donors.html https://slate.com/business/2019/09/harvard-admissions-affirm... [1] https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/racist-beginnings-standardized-testing https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/racis...

xyzzyz 5y ago

If you take these statement literally, it can’t. However, this is just a legal fiction, where you first pretend that Civil Rights Act applies equally to all races and sexes, so that it is not ruled unconstitutional, but then in practice you designate some races or sexes as “oppressed”, and give them special privileges, and others you designate as “privileged”, and give them no special privileges. This is how this is all widely and commonly understood: if you ask around whether “white men” are a “protected class” according to Civil Rights Act, most people will say that they aren’t. They in fact are, but that’s just the “fiction” part of the legal fiction here.

hackernewds 5y ago
Depends on the interpretation. An advocate of textualism like the late Anthony Scalia, would argue the letter (vs the spirit) of the law should still be implemented - arguing that it is the duty of the judge to implement, and the duty of the elected congressmen/Senators to legislate the laws.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
fivea 5y ago
> If you take these statement literally, it can’t. However, this is just a legal fiction (...) ...or it really can't and it's quite clearly breaking the law?
dendriti 5y ago

affirmtoday 5y ago

Those three statements don't say what I think you think they say. Let's break it down: Statement 3 days all applicants will be considered, regardless of criteria. One can consider a candidate while preferentially selecting based on some criteria. For instance, a common way organizations will operate is to use minority status as a tie breaker between two equally qualified candidates. Both candidates were given full consideration, satisfying #3, while some prefer was used to provide for disadvantaged groups, satisfying #1 and #2.

FrenchDevRemote 5y ago

Simple. You ACTIVELY LOOK for women and minorities, you train your people to be less biased, you do everything you can to have a more diverse pool of interviewee. But if in the end you still have to choose between a more competent white man and a black woman for the same salary/position you choose the white man.

yes_really 5y ago

It's like 1984's Doublespeak. These people say obviously contradictory statements without making any logical association between them. And, if you attempt to argue logic with them, they will use institutional and political power to silence you.

fivea 5y ago
> It's like 1984's Doublespeak. These people say obviously contradictory statements without making any logical association between them. It really isn't, and trying to force absurd 1984 references makes absolutely no sense at all. Think about it for a second: if you already feel you have the absolute best candidate for a spot already working at your side, or you create a position specifically to get that person to work for you, does that mean you are racist or sexist or, as you chose to imply with your absurd comparison, fascist?
- yes_really 5y ago
  How is the comparison to doublespeak absurd? They are literally making contradictory statements while refusing to make any logical association between them. That's exactly what doublespeak is.
  - fivea 5y ago
    > How is the comparison to doublespeak absurd? Because the accusation has absolutely nothing to do with doublespeak, and given the fundamental difference between the meaning of doublespeak and the case discussed then it's so far-fetched that just reads as a desperate attempt to gratuitously pin the fascist label. > They are literally making contradictory statements while refusing to make any logical association between them. If you knew the definition of doublespeak and read the article and the comments you'd quickly understand the absurdity of your accusation.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

idonthaveanacc 5y ago

I’ve worked at UCLA for ~10 years, and none of it has ever made sense to me. I think there are a lot of lawyers and politicians behind this.

jonnycomputer 5y ago

There are few people indeed who could afford to volunteer full time at UCLA. Heck I tried volunteering half time at a UCLA lab and ended up quasi-homeless one summer because my part time job couldn't pay the rent