4 ms·
Lawmakers would have to make legacy status a protected class first, presumably.
by yanderekko 4y ago
Lawmakers would have to make legacy status a protected class first, presumably.
- zug_zug 4y agoIt's my understanding that these universities aren't selectively admitting people because they are required to due to "protected class," but rather they desire to not have the admissions "overrepresent" certain highly qualified groups (asians and Jews being the biggest groups that are overrepresented iirc). Please correct me if I'm wrong.
- yanderekko 4y agoSure, and racial discrimination is presumptively illegal. Affirmative action is the acceptable carveout to this presumption. These no presumption of legacy admissions being illegal, however...
- zozbot234 4y ago> Affirmative action is the acceptable carveout to this presumption. Note that this is pretty much an urban legend, with little to no basis in law. "Affirmative action" when originally introduced as a standard was very clearly defined as acting to ensure that racial discrimination would not occur. Non-discrimination is, and has always been, the overall goal.
- abeyer 4y agoThat may have been the goal, but it was never the metric that was measured.
- zugi 4y agoCan confirm, official guidance from the U.S. government says "equal employment opportunity is the goal, affirmative action is the tool to get there." "Affirmative action" originally meant just that it wasn't enough to say "okay, we won't discriminate" - employers had to take some active measures to ensure discrimination didn't happen, but it didn't prescribe particular measures. That sounds vaguely reasonable. But over time affirmative action warped in most peoples' minds into establishing racial preferences.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- qeternity 4y ago> Affirmative action is the acceptable carveout Well this is likely to change. Affirmative action is zero sum: it’s impossible without discriminating against some group on the basis of a protected class.
- catlifeonmars 4y ago> affirmative action is zero sum Not sure that’s the definition of zero sum. Presumably it’s correcting for some existing discrimination. Maybe it over corrects, maybe it under corrects. Highly unlikely that the balance remains the same afterwards.
- dazilcher 4y agoNot what GP was referring to, but discrimination is not signed. Injustice cannot be "corrected" with more discrimination, it only increases.
- cuteboy19 4y agoZero sum meaning it you give one seat to a group then you have to subtract one seat from the other groups. It has nothing to do with history
- jacobolus 4y agoThe goal is to increase diversity and support marginalized groups, not to “reduce overrepresentation” of socially dominant groups.
- bradleyjg 4y agoEast Asians are socially dominant in the US? That’s news to me.
- jacobolus 4y agoWhites and East Asians are socially dominant in many professional fields (e.g., relevant to this forum, computer programming) compared to some other groups, though you can certainly also find plenty of racism vs. East Asians in the USA.
- bradleyjg 4y agothough you can certainly also find plenty of racism vs. East Asians in the USA Harvard’s admission’s office, for example.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoHollywood as well, there's a notable dearth of East Asian male leads in Hollywood movies. (Latino male leads as well. Hollywood uses Black actors for to meet their diversity quotas, and largely ignore other minority ethnicity.)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- midoridensha 4y agoYeah, Amazon's LotR Rings of Power was pretty remarkable for casting a Latino guy as a central character in the role of an Elf. It worked out pretty well, but I would have preferred if his hair was long.
- Ferrotin 4y agoThey both admit more blacks and fewer Asians. I assume Jews are lumped in with other whites.
- headsoup 4y agoFunny that we seem to be heading further away from just admitting 'students' and more into categorisation. Working as intended?
- jrochkind1 4y agoI mean, they say openly that the desire is to have more of certain groups such as Black and latinx people. But you suspect the decision-makers at universities are really thinking "we want fewer Asians and Jews", and just pretending that they want more of other ethnic/racial groups as a cover? This is really a different conversation than "legacy admissions" (the name for letting the children of former graduates in preferentially, possibly especially when the former graduates are donors) -- which are so far understood as completely legal because there are no legally protected clases involved is what the GP was pointing out, I think, but which constitute a pretty significant % of some university's admissions, and which are disproportionately certain racial-ethnic groups too.
- rayiner 4y ago
- jrochkind1 4y agoI'm pretty sure you know the answer, but if not you can google or check wikipedia.
- ohCh6zos 4y agoThere is no difference between telling me you want more Black and Latino people and telling me you want less White and Asian people when the game is zero-sum.
- 4y ago
- zugi 4y agoIndeed, Harvard in particular institutes their anti-Asian racism by systematically rating Asians lower on "personality" in order to get their numbers down. And that's according to the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollment-applicants.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollme...
- treis 4y agoLegacy status probably should fall under disparate impact. Roughly, race neutral policies that result in racially unequal cost are equally suspect as explicitly racial laws.
- yanderekko 4y agoEven if it "falls under disparate impact", so what? It's not illegal to merely have a policy that incidentally has a disparate impact across protected groups.
- treis 4y agoYes it is