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In Supreme Court brief, Yale and peers defend use of race in admissions
- tomrod 4y agoI didn't realize college admissions' affirmative action had reached SCOTUS. I wonder what the outcome will be. Key summary: > "Today Yale joined peer institutions in stating emphatically that student diversity is essential to the missions of American universities and promotes educational excellence for all students,” President Peter Salovey said. “Our amicus curiae brief makes clear that the way we consider race and ethnicity as part of individualized applicant review is crucial to achieving a richly diverse academic environment that enhances students’ educational experiences and maximizes their future success. Yale stands firm in supporting universities’ established right to compose incoming classes that are diverse along many dimensions and in its commitment to enrolling students from all walks of life." I wish I had more understanding of the topic. Diversity seems to have two dimensions to it: (1) diversity of thought, (2) diversity of background. Diversity of background would seem to encourage more diversity of thought, which I think is typically desirable, but has this been proven out/quantified? Conversely, governance seems to be a lot harder (i.e. require more authoritarian approaches to get goals accomplished) where there is diversity of thought. Please note I'm not making a normative statement here.
- ceejayoz 4y agoWith this court? I don't wonder.
- mbg721 4y agoIf a conservative Supreme Court were really drunk with power, don't you think the Ivy League institutions would have changed more than this?
- Invictus0 4y agoThe Ivy leagues today are anything but diverse in thought, this should be obvious. What actually exists is a repressive liberal orthodoxy, and no dissent is tolerated. I ought to expand on this since this comment will surely be controversial. I make no comment on which view is right or wrong; but suppose the conservative view were favored, and any disagreement with the ideology got your fired from your job, publicly shamed, made a pariah, etc.? Would you feel comfortable sharing dissenting opinions? There is no open debate, no sense that truer speech will naturally win out over disfavored speech, no sense that people have the right to say and think unorthodox beliefs.
- tomrod 4y agoThis is pretty far removed from my direct experience with Ivy League alumni and professors (coauthors, colleagues, coworkers). It is a common refrain though. Elements of conservatism are sometimes viewed as being eschewed when they are ideologically based and the evidence doesn't support claims. But this is true generally and a consequence of the academic incentive structure where there are never enough resources to fund. On the other hand, academic malfeasance does occur (e.g. Alzheimers research in recent decades), so the system is far from perfect, but the risky/rewarding incentive is to absolutely decry the current state as being completely wrong. Consider Nassim Taleb's popularization after the Great Recession as a great example, or earlier Paul Krugman's transaction cost theories.
- btilly 4y agoIt is not at all removed from my direct experience. (And I am, in fact, an Ivy League alumnus.) See https://www.econlib.org/archives/2015/03/the_prevalence_1.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2015/03/the_prevalence_1.ht... for the shocking level of acceptance of Marxist ideas in the social sciences, despite a lack of anything resembling evidence for it. And a tremendous amount of evidence that attempts at implementing Marxism have done insane amounts of damage to the world.
- shkkmo 4y agoHow is 18% Marxists in the social sciences evidence for "a repressive liberal orthodoxy, and no dissent is tolerated"?
- xiande04 4y agoI think the goal of using race in admissions is more about giving disadvantaged people an advantage rather than increasing "diversity of thought".
- sanity31415 4y agoAssuming people are "disadvantaged" simply because of the color of their skin is a textbook example of "the soft bigotry of low expectations".
- tomrod 4y agoAs well as "redlining existed in the lifetimes of the student's parent's generation, limiting intergenerational wealth and transfer to a degree that, all else equal, limited the opportunities for that group in many more ways that other groups did not experience." Be sure to include the outcomes of racially motivated structural policies into your assessment and you will shortly recognize "the soft bigotry of low expectations" is a different metric altogether (one that PG has spoken on, where the average performance in-group is much higher than overall average, indicating you only hire cream of the crop from that group).
- TheMagicHorsey 4y agoYeah, but it leads to absurd results, where the black daughter of two doctors, with 500K+ in annual family income is given preferential treatment, while the Chinese-American son of a janitor is discriminated against.
- mbg721 4y agoBut he has privilege, and she doesn't.
- TheMagicHorsey 4y agoYeah, but why are Chinese considered privileged now, when before they were not?
- ser13 4y agoI recently listened to the 5-4 podcast episode "Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1" that covered the 2007 US Supreme Court decision. It discusses using race in public school choice and discusses two different interpretations of the 14th amendment. "If you take 14th Amendment, or have any sort of class that talks about desegregation in public schools, there are two different ways of thinking about the holding in Brown versus Board of Education. One is that Brown versus Board of Education is an anti-classification case, and the other is that it's an anti-subordination case." [1] As a member of the public with no background in law, I suspect that this distinction may be what SCOTUS will rule on in these upcoming cases. If you're interested in the topic and enjoy podcasts, I highly recommend this episode. [1] https://www.fivefourpod.com/episodes/parents-involved-in-community-schools-v-seattle-school-district-no-1/ https://www.fivefourpod.com/episodes/parents-involved-in-com...
- tomrod 4y agoThanks for the reference!
- news_to_me 4y agoI don't think it's possible to have meaningful diversity of thought without diversity of background. That spans many attributes—race, economic status, where you grew up, etc. Race is obviously an important one, given how much it changes many people's experiences and perceptions. I think diverse racial representation is important, but is maybe better viewed as an indicator of success rather than a metric to optimize. Especially at a university, diversity of thought and academic talent should be the primary factors (imo).
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- rjbwork 4y agoI think I tend to agree. The place to put the thumb on the scales is pre-k-12, especially early on. If we look at purely merit metrics at the bottom of the funnel at university, then based on the approach these universities are taking, Asians will have the best merit metrics, and Blacks the worst. I fail to see how this could possibly promote a good social outcome. People are going to notice and stereotyping is going to kick in.
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- shkkmo 4y agoIf they are truly looking for diversity of background, they can do that without race. If Yale focused on admitting smart, low income students they would have a much better diversity of backgrounds. > The median family income of a student from Yale is $192,600, and 69% come from the top 20 percent.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoI would be interested in seeing what the percent of students are from the bottom 20% of incomes
- belorn 4y ago
- ramesh31 4y ago
- tinus_hn 4y agoRacism is racism.
- flatline 4y ago
- mbg721 4y ago
- tomrod 4y agoWhich part of racism is bigotry, and which part is structural preference? One difference is that structural preference can be baked into systems without any bone of bigotry in any of the system's participants.
- mbg721 4y agoNo, you see, some races are okay to discriminate against, and others aren't. Seeing the entire world through the lens of race is morally preferable as long as it leads to the right outcome.
- dbsights 4y agoSame reason we should have had a problem with it then. If racism is wrong, then it shouldn't matter which race.
- dukeofdoom 4y agoHow many Yale students are there because of donations or connections. Nepotism is often the source of preferential treatment.
- Ekaros 4y agoWhy not be honest and outright auction those slots for highest bidders. Pay x number of millions and we guarantee access to Yale for x number of years.
- cato_the_elder 4y agoThe same reason they don't do it the "honest" way for affirmative action. It would significantly decrease the prestige and legitimacy of degrees awarded to people who fill those slots.
- ffggvv 4y agoget rid of both
- antonymy 4y agoIf they ended the legacy system they could kiss all donations from millionaire and billionaire alumni goodbye. In the first place, this whole "racial diversity" thing is a diversion in order to maintain their legacy system. Can't accuse them of being elitist and exclusionary if they regularly admit a quota of non-legacy applicants deliberately selected for racial diversity.
- throwaway_4ever 4y agoThus it's the downfall of their academic strength, weakening the collective intellect of their student body in two different ways (50% even?). Now, for new fields like Computer Science, 5 out of the 10 top US Comp-Sci universities are public and 8 out of 10 non-Ivy. It's even worse when you account for the fact that Ivy's like Columbia are egregious offenders of attempting to fraudulently boost their US News rankings and are soon going to be absent consequently. https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-sch...
- svnpenn 4y agoI think considering race is fine, depending on how you use that information. If you use it to make the group less diverse, that is bad. If you use it to make the group more diverse, that is good. Does that mean that some students with higher grades/income/whatever get excluded? Yes. However grades shouldn't be the only factor in this decision. It seems that the schools are taking a holistic approach to admittance, and I support that. Granted with the Loughlin situation, school admittance practices should certainly be scrutinized. However it seems they might be on the right side at least on this one specific issue.
- tomrod 4y agoI have a few other comments in this thread on this. Can you define what you mean by diversity (background or thought or something else)? Also, how do you measure its improvement? My speculation is that, because these are hard terms to nail down but easy to say, this becomes a perennial topic.
- Lendal 4y agoI would define diversity as a representative sample of the population and time in which the organization is situated. In this case, the US 2020 census. If it's good enough for the US Constitution and for Congressional representation, it's good enough for Yale. Maybe this was difficult to nail down in 1791 but not so much today. It doesn't have to be perennial. Once every 10 years is sufficient.
- tomrod 4y agoSo, diversity := statistically similar to joint distribution of population demographics.
- hackerlight 4y agoSo let's admit some old Republicans? Oh wait...
- _-david-_ 4y agoWhich is more diverse: 1. Admiting a black boy who is living with both parents and who have a net worth of over $100 million 2. Admitting a white boy who grew up in poverty in Appalachia and lived in a single parent household
- btilly 4y agoTo quote from the brief. Unlike applicants whose identities have been affected mainly by their socioeconomic or geographic circumstances, applicants whose formative experiences relate to race or ethnicity would be denied the opportunity to convey their full, authentic selves when competing for admission to selective schools like Amici. And so we guarantee that millions of Americans will have a formative experience that THEIR race (various Asian groups) are allowed to be discriminated against. Instead of being rewarded if they follow every rule on how to fit in and succeed. Let's be clear. The schools are literally fighting to let them continue excluding the grandchildren of people who were put in a camp for being the wrong race (Japanese in WW 2). Separately those same teenagers have to deal with a world where hate crimes against Asians just jumped. Locally in Orange county it is up over 100%. This is just wrong. And that people who support the policy claim to be for "tolerance" is just hypocrisy.
- eloff 4y agoThis is the danger of focusing on equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity. In my opinion, the former is not possible anyway, it's not a good goal. People are different and they're going to have different outcomes, even if only considering chance. But they should have the same opportunities regardless of race, gender, etc. Making policy to address this is tackling the root of the problem instead of the symptoms.
- rileymat2 4y agoTo go with your analogy, when I am sick, I want both the root of the problem dealt with along with the symptoms. I don’t see why you would not attack things from both angles.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> when I am sick, I want both the root of the problem dealt with along with the symptoms Society isn't conscious and people aren't microbes. The analogy of a cytokine storm taking out healthy cells to drive off infection becomes grim when the "healthy cells" are people.
- aceHN 4y agoIf your goal is equal opportunity you can look at socioeconomic class without considering race. Fundamentally the idea that race must be considered to achieve diversity is an inherently racist idea - you don't believe some races will get in without help.
- scythe 4y agoIt should be noted that neither class nor race is a reindeer-style glowing red nose. There's an recent trend in England of people faking lower-class roots to take advantage of targeted programs, and there are indicators that white Americans are pretending Native ancestry for college admission.
- buscoquadnary 4y agoI can imagine the political cartoon right now, a school administrator boasting that 98% of the student body is from a minority group, to a room full of white male students who lied about their ethnicity on the college admission process.
- aceHN 4y agoPeople will try to game the system any number of ways, from faking scores to faking backgrounds. You don't say your criteria are broken b/c people are cheating - that's affirming the consequent
- treeman79 4y agohttps://www.vox.com/2018/10/16/17983250/elizabeth-warren-bar-application-american-indian-dna https://www.vox.com/2018/10/16/17983250/elizabeth-warren-bar...
- zo1 4y agoIgnore that background too then. Just use parental or individual income and have some sort of scale, done. This isn't rocket science and the fact that we have to argue about blatantly obvious racism and favoritism just shows how much we've been gas-lighted, and we've had our good intentions twisted and actively exploited by those that benefit from this. Many years from now, we will be holding these black people accountable for the generational harm and un-earned benefits they've stolen from our current generation's youth.
- fareesh 4y agoHow can it be known with certainty that a group will be diverse, and thus have the benefits of diversity, simply by using race as a datapoint? Is every individual of a particular race innately imbued with some magical ability or perspective? What if you have a Chinese father and a Russian mother and you grew up in Kenya?
- TameAntelope 4y ago
- zmgsabst 4y ago
- Meekro 4y agoRemember Abigail Fisher's case against UT in 2016? Thomas, Alito, and Roberts wanted to strike down UT's race-based admissions policy then. Kennedy and Ginsburg, two of the pro-affirmative action voices from that case, have been replaced with much more conservative justices. This might be where we finally abolish race-based admissions.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Gunax 4y agoIt's official: anyone not claiming minority status on your application is a fool. I don't like it either, but if they are going to be racist, just do what you need to do.
- tootallgavin 4y agoI cannot wait until the thought tool called race is eradicated from my society Brown is not black, and I am not my hair color
- GenerocUsername 4y agoKuntz Law: in ANY/ALL resource constrained systems, giving advantage to 1 individual directly gives disadvantage to another. This is true whether it is seats on a bus, distribution of aid money, or college admission. You cannot give race based preference without simultaneously race based discrimination
- golemotron 4y agoThat's true and the reason why the real answer is dealing with the resource constraints. Economic growth solves a lot of problems.
- antonymy 4y agoIvy league schools have finite space for new students, you can't really fix this with more money. In the first place these schools don't need more money, they're some of the richest institutions in the country and only growing richer: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-17/ivy-league-schools-wrestle-with-windfalls-as-student-costs-rise https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-17/ivy-leagu... So I think a policy fix is in order.
- fzeroracer 4y agoIn a purely meritocratic system, the result is the same as well due to the effects of crowding. If you have 100 applicants for a position, 90 of them from one background and 10 of them from another, the odds are that under a pure meritocratic position that all of your hires will end up being of one specific background. Which results in a downstream effect of other perfectly good candidates being filtered into lower quality institutions due to no reason of their own.
- GenerocUsername 4y agoI fail to see how meritocratic systems would force any such selections. Systems can and should select for the best candidates.
- tomrod 4y ago
- cato_the_elder 4y agoI think a lot of people who defend "affirmative action" [1] are misinformed about the extent of it. It's not about preferring the more "diverse" or less privileged candidate among roughly equally qualified candidates. It's a direct attack on the concept of merit. Some of its ardent proponents aren't too shy about this fact either. [2] This chart [3] by the Economist is illuminating: In Harvard undergraduate admissions, a person of the wrong race with top 10% academics has a chance equal to that of a person of the right race with bottom 40% academics. [1]: Note the Orwellian name. [2]: E.g. see https://postmeritocracy.org/ https://postmeritocracy.org/ [3]: https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20180623_USC932_0.png https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/images/print-e...
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- TheMagicHorsey 4y agoThe racism narrative is so flawed in America. Go back and look at how Chinese were referred to in early American literature and news. They were not considered equals either. But they performed disproportianately well wherever they went, and so they overcame whatever innate aversion Americans had towards them. Now there's a positive discrimination towards them. It's been a similar case for Eastern European Jews, Russians, Indians, etc. I don't understand why Hispanics should get a leg up in admissions just because they haven't gotten into schools in a high enough proportion. It seems to me the issue is supply side. You need to change the number of qualified applicants by convincing more kids to focus on college admissions.
- jl6 4y agoHow does this kind of race-based admission actually work in practice when it comes to “mixed race” individuals? (Scare quotes because I’m not even sure mixed race is a coherent concept). How far back in time can you go in search of an advantageous ancestry? This whole area seems rife with absurdities.
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- throwawayjun21 4y agoI dont know why peoplehate meritocracy but i can say one thing for sure that communities/orgs dont encourage meritocracy go down the drain. I look for the best surgeon not someone with some race to do a surgery on me.
- TameAntelope 4y ago
- al_mandi 4y agoLaw of large numbers. Plus, getting into medical school is not sufficient. A surgeon cannot fake his track record and experience after residency and working.
- TameAntelope 4y ago> A surgeon cannot fake his track record and experience after residency and working. Fake? No. Fudge? Yes, easily. Besides, you can be competent and still substantially worse than a gifted surgeon would have been had they been given an actual "equal" opportunity like the comment I replied to claimed to care about.
- cudgy 4y agoCannot fake? How about Dr Death and the doctors guild that protected him for years? https://allthatsinteresting.com/dr-death-christopher-duntsch https://allthatsinteresting.com/dr-death-christopher-duntsch
- xanaxagoras 4y ago> she's probably working a double shift at a grocery store Then she's not a surgeon
- ffggvv 4y agothey hate it because it doesn't produce the results they want. And instead of introspecting they want to blame the system itself. most arguments i see for affirmative action are on the face not logically consistent. but it feels more like the type of policy where people choose what action they want ahead of time and then desperately scramble for any justifications possible.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- qdog 4y agoIn an equally balanced society, one would expect college admissions to largely reflect the makeup of that society. By the numbers, datausa.io says Yale is 43.6% "white", 5.67% "black". 13.7% "Asian". US population appears to be 59.63% "White alone, not hispanic or latino", according to census.gov. 13.6% "black" and 6.1% "asian". Datausa doesn't specify "non-resident Alien" by race, which makes up the missing 23.7%. So whatever the policy does, the outcome is actually heavily weighted in favor of Asians vs. the share of the general population. Now, why is that? I would suspect a large share of second-generation immigrants in the pool (many immigrants I know push their kids much harder than average at academics), but I don't really know. Both "white" and "black" are underrepresented at Yale, but it looks like that is largely because of the non-resident students (who probably pay full tuition, helping to subsidize everyone else, if it's like the state school I attended). I find it odd all the accounts suddenly interested in the outcomes for minority share races, but only for ones that are actually over represented (and therefore more likely to get into Yale than average, by the numbers).
- BrandoElFollito 4y agoI was under the impression that race is self-declarative in the US. What would prevent me, a white guy, to declare being a black woman if that gives some advantages? This would not be the first time people fraud, and here it is even hardly fraud if all that is needed is a declaration.