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American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

• pkaye 4y ago
  How do you determine the class of student being admitted?
  • HWR_14 4y ago
    Geography and parental income would be good proxies.
    • giraffe_lady 4y ago
      Anything else those would be good proxies for themselves?
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • HWR_14 4y ago
        I assume you have something in mind.
    • anonporridge 4y ago
      Unfortunately, parental income can be a terrible proxy. High income doesn't necessarily indicate wealth or high class. It usually indicates highly educated, high level working class, like doctors and software engineers. Families with generational wealth often have very little direct income. All wealth is in assets that they borrow against, which doesn't count as income. Even when they take income or realize capital gains, they often do it erratically, so it can be fairly easy to game a university admission that looks at parental income by avoiding income for the years universities request.
      • heavyset_go 4y ago
        I grew up with kids of wealthy families that were able to get student aid based on their parents' incomes, which were low to non-existent.
        • anonporridge 4y ago
          Meanwhile, I know people whose parents had very high incomes, but didn't actually have any real, accessible wealth saved, didn't save for their children's education, and had slept walked into too expensive of a lifestyle to divert any of their income. Because their parents made too much, they got zero financial aid and ended up covered in mountains of loans because their parents didn't actually have the money to give them. To be fair though, the fault in this case lies exclusively on the irresponsible parents who had the option to provide for their children's education, but opted to leave them to the wolves.
      • andirk 4y ago
        Parental income is a terrible proxy? The abilities of ones guardians growing up is a huge factor in what opportunities someone is offered and a lot of that is dictated by how much money is available for the child. Other aspects like the intelligence, love, care, wit of the parents and child may be larger factors, but that's not something one can quantify on a form.
        • sokoloff 4y ago
          My oldest will be applying to college in 2027. If it would maximize their chances of admission, I could arrange for my 2026 income tax return to show any 5 or most 6 figure sums that I needed. If I really needed to, I could do the same for 2025 as well. Showing a household income of $75K in that year/those years won't change the more comfortable financial situation they grew up in.
        • closeparen 4y ago
          Brilliant and accomplished people don't always pursue wealth. In certain subcultures it's crass, uncouth, one might even say low class to pursue something too practical or employable, to be too interested in material things and conspicuous consumption. These people aren't rich on paper but they are rich in genetics, habits, attitudes, values, vocabularies, media diets - and they raise brilliant, accomplished kids. Affirmative action for high academic performers subject to low family income would be an almost perfectly tailored handout for this cohort. Filtering on parental education level might knock most of them out & get better at targeting kids who outperformed their circumstances in more surprising ways. But is the legibility or surprisingness of the kid's outperformance really the point? I think maybe what you'd want to do is give some slots in the meritocracy to kids who are not outperformers at all, but chosen randomly, without regard to academic performance.
    • closeparen 4y ago
      That's a great way to get a class full of front-line gentrifier families whose breadwinners are academics, journalists, artists, nonprofit staffers, political aides, social workers, etc. Class is not income, and finding the highest-performing kids from lower-earning families and neighborhoods is an almost perfect strategy for demonstrating the gaps. Of course that's my own background, so I'd take it!
      • HWR_14 4y ago
        Those of course aren't perfect proxies! We can add more factors to account for that. But it's a start.
        • closeparen 4y ago
          Parental education level would be much better.
          • HWR_14 4y ago
            That adds another datapoint. And the schools attended. A lawyer with a JD from Yale and an undergrad from Harvard is in a different class from someone from a low-tier lawschool.
  • mc32 4y ago
    (Parental) Income bracket is not a bad place to start + parental educational achievement.
  • psychlops 4y ago
    The amount of income their family is unable to hide?
  • willcipriano 4y ago
    Average annual income in the zip code that they spent the most time in high school in.
  • kube-system 4y ago
    There's a number of factors that could be used, but skin color is probably not as good as several others.
  • Manuel_D 4y ago
    How do you determine the race of a student? "Class" can be designated by objective measures like family income, whether or not parents are university graduates, etc. By comparison, how do you determine if an applicant is Black or Latin? Do you have them prove ancestry all the way back to Africa? Brazil is experiencing this issue [1]: > And that's when this story gets even more complicated. Because in order to "prove" that he was Afro-Brazilian, his lawyers needed to find some criteria. He went to seven dermatologists who used something called the Fitzpatrick scale that grades skin tone from one to seven, or whitest to darkest. The last doctor even had a special machine. > A few weeks ago, these race tribunals were made mandatory for all government jobs. In one state, they even issued guidelines about how to measure lip size, hair texture and nose width, something that for some has uncomfortable echoes of racist philosophies in the 19th century. 1. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/09/29/495665329/for-affirmative-action-brazil-sets-up-controversial-boards-to-determine-race https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/09/29/495665329/...
    • steveBK123 4y ago
      Race is by definition self-reported, and is easily gamed, as recent high profile stories show. 1950s America everyone wanted to be white. 2020s America everyone wants to identify as something else. This should tell you how the incentives have inverted. Class is also easy to game and hard to define. And what is class - educational attainment, income, labor vs capital, all 3, 2 out of 3? How do you conclusively determine educational attainment of parents beyond what they self-report, in an automated, accurate, low-cost way? Income could be low for high status jobs like professors, journalists, non-profits, etc. Some of the highest status people you meet in blue cities have seemingly little income but high income. Assets are self reported and hideable. Is a plumber who didn't graduate high school but runs his own business making $90k in a LCOL area where homes cost $150k upper or lower class? What about a plumber working under someone else in a HCOL area making $120k but where homes cost $500k?
      • Manuel_D 4y ago
        Educational attainment is pretty easy to judge. Parents almost certainly have linkedin profiles. Census data also asks for education attainment. Incomes and assets are also attainable via tax info. Sure, they can cheat on income taxes, but usually that's making $100M in assets look like $60M. Just based on address they can at least determine the value of your home. An applicant attending Deerfield Academy that reports a family of low income and no parental education is going to ring some alarm bells, and probably isn't going to pass muster. We don't need to conclusively define class, but we can at least quantify it relative to other applicants. Is the plumber making $90k upper classic? We don't need to pin a label onto it, but we can say they're higher than someone making $40k a year and not as high class as someone making $500k a year.
  • kome 4y ago
    not a great indicator, but good enough proxy for class: family income. class is, of course, not about income. class is about your position in the productive system and ownership. very rich people might have NO income at all. but let's say that for most, family income is a good enough proxy.
  • kelseyfrog 4y ago
    Easy: The proportion of their or their parents' income which comes from labor as opposed to earnings on property.
    • happyopossum 4y ago
      So an athlete with a $250m contract would be lower class because all of his income is from labor? That’s ridiculous.
      • kelseyfrog 4y ago
        We probably have very different definitions of class that's causing this confusion. The definition of class I'm using is laid across a spectrum from those who sell their labor on one end to those who make money from the ownership of property on the other. The reason I use this definition is because the economic relations are reflected in social relations. The social relations one has when they primarily live off the earnings of property are qualitatively different from those who don't - this difference forms the basis of class. Know that this isn't an idiosyncratic definition - the cradle it was born in was the same cradle that bore sociology itself.
    • klyrs 4y ago
      My cousin couldn't afford to go to college because his mom made peanuts and his dad ran off. Couldn't get financial aid because he needed both parents' tax returns. Forcing kids to prove they're poor means rejecting poor kids with absentee parents. Antisocialism is the root of so many of America's problems. Tax wealth, seize inheritance, and don't charge for higher education. Guillotines only work for the people who can afford them.
  • andirk 4y ago
    Income. It's widely available and often already submitted for scholarships. To say income===class is a generality but it's pretty close.
  • Mikeb85 4y ago
    I mean, it basically boils down to money. Set prices high enough and you get those who can afford it. And if you've always been elitest, then alumni admissions will all be upper class as well.
    • closeparen 4y ago
      Elite schools practice need-blind admissions and have generous need-based financial aid. The more elite the school, the higher and gentler the taper to full price as you go up the family income scale. Poor kid gets a full ride anywhere. Middle class kid gets a full ride from Harvard, half off Chicago, sticker price at Northeastern. Only the mediocre private schools (or stingy rich parents) actually price kids out. Almost all of the SES filtering is based on grades, test scores, and essays.
  • aiisahik 4y ago
    Many people have given answers to this very good question. But I'm going to ask another: WHY does the admission process need to take into account the social class of the student? - Fairness? College admissions at Ivy Leagues are not a fair process. It advantages legacies, donors. - Diversity? Then why not also account for race or national origin too? - An attempt to fix the inequities of US society? Why do this at the college level when 90% of the scars of a poor childhood are already set in stone? Why do it with a student class of only 5000? Why not admit 50,000 into Harvard each year then? Ivy Leagues' admissions standards are designed to optimize one thing only: the prestige of the institution. That's it. That's why it has mostly rich kids but also a few poor ones to make it look like it's an egalitarian place. That's why it admits some black and brown students even if their SATs are not that high - so it can make it look like it's an institution that promotes racial justice. Society should not look to Harvard and Yale to fix all its racial and economic inequity problems. Parents of Asian kids should not look to Harvard and Yale as the ultimate universal badge of academic merit - it's not. Harvard and Yale are going to look after their own interests - and it's all about prestige. And yes I went to both an ivy league and state university. I know the game.
    • PeterisP 4y ago
      > That's why it has mostly rich kids but also a few poor ones to make it look like it's an egalitarian place. The way I see it, the admissions design goal for prestigious universities is to ensure that the smartest students in the country and the richest students in the country get the same indistinguishable diploma - their diploma - and that way they sustain and reinforce both their prestige and funding.
    • danielscrubs 4y ago
      Meritocracy basically. You want the hardest working and/or smartest at the top in your country to compete with other countries. Let them work hard, take taxes and distribute to the other classes pensions. Everyone wins. Having PhDs that are presidents seems like a great indicator that the democratic system is not corrupt.
• Meekro 4y ago
  https://archive.ph/gQvwd https://archive.ph/gQvwd
• throwaway23597 4y ago
  LMAO at these journalists pretending they're so surprised to find this. As if they had no hand in creating this environment... and as if this wasn't the whole point to begin with. The upper class owns journalism and this state of affairs was very much the goal.
  • Consultant32452 4y ago
    I remember when the elites did a Jedi mind trick on the Occupy Wall Street folks and made them change their focus to race and what bathroom people get to use. It was remarkable.
    • DoctorOW 4y ago
      My idea of this is only anecdotal but anyone I personally know involved with occupy couldn't give a shit who is in what bathroom.
      • Consultant32452 4y ago
        My anecdata is that as soon as the mega-corporations started waving their pride flags and doing race sensitivity training the masses on my FB/Twitter feed changed their emoji usage right along with them. To be fair this is the same people who immediately forgot that black lives mattered when they traded their BLM fist emoji for a Ukraine flag.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • wrycoder 4y ago
      Not the elites. Horowitz: Occupy Wall Street: The Communist Movement Reborn [0]. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Occupy-Wall-Street-Communist-Movement-ebook/dp/B0084JQAS0/ref=sr_1_1?crid=KRECS11DBPEJ&keywords=horowitz+occupy+wall+street&qid=1667433076&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIxLjAzIiwicXNhIjoiMC4wMCIsInFzcCI6IjAuMDAifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=horowitz+occupy+wall+street%2Caps%2C133&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Occupy-Wall-Street-Communist-Movement...
• cjtrowbridge 4y ago
  lmao @ Economist not crediting the author in the article.
  • aborochoff 4y ago
    Thats their thing, they dont credit any articles.
  • teg4n_ 4y ago
    I’m pretty sure The Economist never attributes an author in their articles. The author is supposed to be “The Economist”
    • Manuel_D 4y ago
      Not entirely correct, their "by invitation" columns are named, e.g: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/10/28/frances-finance-minister-on-how-to-fight-inflation-and-preserve-stability https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/10/28/frances-f... But for the bulk of their articles, yes, the Economist is famous for its anonymous bylines.
    • bombcar 4y ago
      Same as Tyler Durdan writing all that stuff for Zerohedge iirc. It makes somewhat of a sense if you’re trying to disconnect the message from the speaker.
      • dredmorbius 4y ago
        Or that dredmorbius guy on HN. (Among numerous others.)
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • whelchel 4y ago
    The Economist deliberately does not put bylines on the vast majority of content - it’s not sinister. https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2013/09/04/why-are-the-economists-writers-anonymous https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2013/09/04/...
• physicsgraph 4y ago
  I've been active in reforming voting systems since I think that makes a difference to how politics works. Is there a path or actions that address class issues other than the standard "run for office" and "vote for people who will address class-related issues"?
  • AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    Find a way to educate lower-class Americans about class, not just race. Ultimately, that should be more effective than reforming voting... if you can figure out how to do it.
  • int_19h 4y ago
    You should be aware that you won't be able to avoid politics around race when it comes to electoral reform - because of stuff like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/nyregion/ranked-choice-lawsuit-voting.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/nyregion/ranked-choice-la... (Note that it doesn't matter whether they have a point or not. What matters is that now, either way, you'll have to talk about it whenever RCV comes up. There is similar contention around IRV and some other methods; basically anything that disrupts existing power arrangements.)
• cjtrowbridge 4y ago
  • yamazakiwi 4y ago
    What does health mean in this context? What does worse off mean? Pardon my ignorance but you seem to know more about this topic.
  • anonporridge 4y ago
    > Wealthy black people are worse off than poor white people. Citation desperately needed.
    • sli 4y ago
      There isn't one, and this thread is going to be absolutely full of similar unsourced claims and leaning into stereotypes, either intentionally or not, so just keep that in mind.
    • kareemsabri 4y ago
      Here's a citation showing the opposite. https://equityhealthj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12939-021-01436-z https://equityhealthj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12... The difference in health insurance coverage between whites and blacks is 4 percentage points. The difference in health insurance coverage between high and low income households is 10 percentage points.
    • bombcar 4y ago
      I can make one up. Kanye is black and wealthy and gets much more negative attention than Jimbob over here who is on disability and sometimes even mows the grass around his trailer. Otherwise, it seems kind of suspicious. Extremely so.
    • gnicholas 4y ago
      There are some data regarding worse outcomes for children (especially boys) of wealthy black families, compared to poorer white families. For example, they are more likely to go to jail. [1] I believe there may be similar data regarding income/wealth outcomes as well, but the best I could find quickly relates to middle class black families, not wealthy ones. [2] Of course, this doesn't mean the families are worse off overall, but it does tend to indicate that there are some things working against black families, even middle- and upper-class ones. 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/23/poor-white-kids-are-less-likely-to-go-to-prison-than-rich-black-kids/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/23/poor-... 2: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/how-black-middle-class-kids-become-black-lower-class-adults/384613/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/how-bla...
• kube-system 4y ago
  Yeah, I agree that it is important to take into account disadvantages that people may have unfairly experienced due to no fault of their own. But, why do we need to use race as a proxy? Presuming something about someone based on their skin color is prejudice regardless of your intentions. If people are disadvantaged, let's measure those disadvantages directly and adjust for those factors.
  • kenjackson 4y ago
    The main rationale is that it is complicated. :-) Controlling for income doesn't work well, because whites at the same income level tend to have much more wealth than blacks at the same income level. Controlling for wealth, blacks still tend to poorer access to resources (clean water, prenatal care, etc...). It would be a great achievement if we could simply say that poor blacks were finally as well off as poor whites, but we're still quite a ways away from that. That said, I don't think the country has the stomach to realistically try to fix that problem any longer.
    • kube-system 4y ago
      I'm sure it is complicated. But these effects are well studied and I'm sure these institutions have plenty of sociologists that could help come up with some models that work at least as good as stereotyping based on skin color. The idea that generalizing based on race is just easier leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Why do we tell racists that they shouldn't prejudge people based on race at the same time that people with good intentions do the same thing?
      • kenjackson 4y ago
        There was a study I saw as an undergrad that used all the standard factors and also used zip code -- and that worked surprisingly well to explain a lot of the differences. But using race rather than zip code, actually was still better -- and of course zip code may well have simply been a race proxy. I think zip code though will likely be more satisfying to people. Although the conservative wing of the supreme court has already said that they don't like the top 10% rules for admission, so I suspect they'll also not be kind to zip code since the idea is similar in spirit.
• kareemsabri 4y ago
  Race is very easy to focus on without making any structural changes in society. A black man was president. So long as it's the right black man, it doesn't change much.
  • notch656a 4y ago
    There is still structural codified racism within US borders. For instance, it's illegal for non-native US nationals/citizens to own most property in American Samoa, in effect perpetuating racism against outsiders who are also US nationals.
    • rippercushions 4y ago
      Uniquely, American Samoans are US "nationals" but not "citizens", which makes a whole lot of things very weird. I think we should just jettison the colonial baggage and hand the islands back to actual Samoa next door, but here we are.
      • bee_rider 4y ago
        So what do we tell those US nationals "become citizens of Samoa or become stateless," because that's obviously not a viable path forward.
        • rippercushions 4y ago
          The "US national" status is a legacy of the Insular Cases, and all the other cases formerly in this bucket have either gained independence (Philippines) or become full US citizens (Guam, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands). So in the hypothetical case that American Samoa is returned to Samoa, the logical options are to either make all American Samoans citizens of Samoa, or to give them the option to choose between Samoan and American citizenship. In either case the weird "national" status will cease to exist.
    • BurningFrog 4y ago
      This is why American Samoa prefers to remain a territory. They don't want to end up like Hawaii.
• dgs_sgd 4y ago
  > For more than 40 years the court had allowed some positive discrimination I’m not a fan of the term “positive discrimination” at all. It tries to hide the fact that the “positive” effect to one group is necessarily at the expense of another. Whether it’s positive or negative just depends on which group we’re talking about.
  • nu11ptr 4y ago
    Agreed, if you have a finite amount of resources and "positively" favor one group over another, this automatically disfavors another group. When skin color is used for this "positive" favor, we have a term for the impact on the other group: racism. Have we not learned that racism is ALWAYS bad?
    • j33zusjuice 4y ago
      Based on comments I read on here this morning about how some people think it’s ok to be racist because you’re basing your disdain for them on the way other people who look like them behave, no. (To clarify, the comments said, “I dislike people of X color because of the behaviors I’ve observed in people of X color.” And they argued that it wasn’t the same as just hating people based on color, although that’s exactly what it is.)
      • portpecos 4y ago
        Is affirmative action somehow related to “Positive Discrimination”?
        • esyir 4y ago
          Is there any way it can be framed to not be related to Positive Discrimination?
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • the_gipsy 4y ago
• Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
  >Surveys show that majorities of African-Americans, Californians, Democrats and Hispanics all oppose the use of race in college admissions (and in other areas). This was surprising to me.
  • chrischattin 4y ago
    Why? Nobody wants to think their success was the result of an unfair arbitrary advantage.
    • kenjackson 4y ago
      And this is why the term "white privilege" sells so poorly to whites. And why CRT is attacked so vigorously. Everyone likes to think they made it on their own. The guy who inherited a multi-million dollar business thinks he has had no more real advantage than then guy who was raised in an orphanage in Uganda. While I firmly believe that this privilege exists, you just can't legislate based on it, because you'll get no support.
      • HarryHirsch 4y ago
        There's white privilege in Pensiltucky? Elon Musk knows he wouldn't have made it big without family connections, but the white guy from Western Pennsylvania knows that he was up against a whole lot and made it anyway, against all odds. That's why "white privilege" sells so poorly.
        • steveBK123 4y ago
          Right, and I think generally the high status whites who profess it about whites actually don't mean themselves. They mean all those low status whites who have wrongthink. Ironically many of them live in liberal, multi-cultural cities filled with rich people who are much more high status than vast swathes of inland rural white people.
        • kenjackson 4y ago
          I agree. Let me give you another example of privilege -- being able-bodied. It doesn't seem like a privilege, because there are still obstacles you must overcome, but it's just one less obstacle. IMO, the only thing that makes "white privilege" somewhat interesting, is the extent to which the country made laws and regulations around race. If it were merely tribal preferences of liking people who were genetically closer to you, I'd view it more like being tall as a privilege. But the fact that we used the government and other legal instruments to prop one above the other gives me a certain level of discomfort that I don't have with all the other forms of privilege that exist.
• notright5 4y ago
  The Economist, FT and Bloomberg are obsessed with both race and class. Not content with the meager profits of economic reporting on a budget, they have become peddlers of social ressentment for a long while.
  • zabzonk 4y ago
    so the capitalist press are trying to foment a socialist revolution???
    • notright5 4y ago
      They are not capitalist. They are sociologists / journalists / non-technical economists earning 50k (barely percentile 60), and telling us daily how action X is immoral (exactly what bishops and priests used to do).
      • notright5 4y ago
        [dead]
      • zabzonk 4y ago
        oh come on! all are well known as being right-wing. and all of them are support organs for capitalism. i'm not saying there anything wrong with that - i enjoy reading both the ft and economist. and i like living in a basically capitalist society - the UK
        • WillPostForFood 4y ago
          are well known as being right-wing. and all of them are support organs for capitalism If anyone who believes in capitalism is "right-wing", sure. But by US standards, these are center left publications (like unofficially Democratic party affiliated left, not Bernie/Socialist/Occupy left). If you want to call them right-wing, show me an article critical of global warming, endorsing a republican besides Liz Cheney, or acknowledging Trump did at least one good thing (without caveats or apologies).
• shaburn 4y ago
  Class is not supposed to be much of anything in America. Success is everything.
  • kome 4y ago
    Success is mostly class. US has a below average social mobility by international standards. https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/1-5%20generations.png https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/1-5%20generations.png
    • notch656a 4y ago
      Depends. For instance, if I went to American Samoa, I would be in effect racially barred from owning most property despite being a US national just like the locals. Real estate ownership is a common element of measurement of success.
    • zeroonetwothree 4y ago
      Is “mean income” the definition of success? Seems like a low bar
• h4waii 4y ago
  In the words of Immortal Technique - Philosophy of Poverty: "As much as racism bleeds America, we need to understand that classism is the real issue. Many of us are in the same boat and it's sinking, while these bougie motherfuckers ride on a luxury liner, and as long as we keep fighting over kicking people out of the little boat we're all in, we're gonna miss an opportunity to gain a better standard of living as a whole".
  • lawgimenez 4y ago
    It’s nice to read a reference from Immortal Technique in here.
• kornhole 4y ago
  As Warren Buffet once said, "There is a class war in America, and we won." The race wars and culture wars the upper class have fomented with their corporate media were designed to keep the working class fighting with each other while they changed the tax rules and absconded with everything they could.
• lazyasciiart 4y ago
  This was a pretty core topic of conversation around Bernie's run for president, and Marxist lefties have been saying this quite consistently. Would be fascinating to see the Economist actually engage with some of that directly.
  • LegitShady 4y ago
    the problem with the marxists isn't their evaluation of the problem, it's that they can study history and still somehow have picked the 2nd worst solution possible.
    • orthecreedence 4y ago
      Well, 99% of Marxism is "evaluation of the problem." It's highly descriptive, barely prescriptive. The more prescriptive offshoot of Marxism would be Leninism, and I agree that authoritarian command economies are a pretty bad idea.
      • LegitShady 4y ago
        >99% of Marxism is "evaluation of the problem." Splitting the hair between marxism and leninism isn't helpful in 2022, and marxism takes you to bad ends anyways.
        • orthecreedence 4y ago
          Differentiating between two completely different things isn't splitting hairs. > marxism takes you to bad ends anyways. How so?
  • jwond 4y ago
    Bernie also said “when you’re white you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto, you don’t know what it’s like to be poor” https://youtu.be/z6IlGoeDIUQ&t=0m42s https://youtu.be/z6IlGoeDIUQ&t=0m42s
    • 4y ago
• 90d 4y ago
  This is literally intentional.
• danenania 4y ago
  Class can be a big part of racism--often what appears to be racism is really more about class. There are many people who look down on anyone they perceive to be "low class", regardless of race, and who will accept people of other races if they perceive them to be "high class". In areas where the lower classes are over-represented by racial minorities, this can look like racism, when classism is much more the culprit.
  • Spooky23 4y ago
    Race often enhances that effect.
    • danenania 4y ago
      Agreed.
  • scarface74 4y ago
    I’m in the top 10% of income percentile. But I still got looked at suspiciously as a Black person living in a county that’s 3% Black and as recently as the late 80s was a famous “Sundown town” (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eYKQdPMeJjk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eYKQdPMeJjk) I once took my team to lunch and the waitress asked would we be on one check or separate, I spoke up and said one, started reaching for my wallet and she still handed the check to the older looking White guy that I hired. No matter how much money I have, there will always be assumptions about me. I have seen this a lot more when working for companies in the South than I do now when I travel to customer meetings now that I work for BigTech and I’m leading projects. Thought experiment: if I walk into a convenience store with a visible gun in an open carry state and a “lower class” White person does the same and a policemen happens to be in the store, who do you think will be harassed?
    • nickstinemates 4y ago
      > if I walk into a convenience store with a visible gun in an open carry state and a “lower class” White person does the same and a policemen happens to be in the store, who do you think will be harassed? Presumably neither of you since in this straw-man neither party has done anything wrong
• guelo 4y ago
  [flagged]
• quantified 4y ago
  > Nothing the Supreme Court says about the consideration of race in college admissions will affect the more basic problem, that too few Americans from poorer families are sufficiently prepared to apply to college. About sums it up. Though if there are any visible disparities in the populations that produce poor children who are prepared, I expect a loud argument.
  • nonethewiser 4y ago
    Meanwhile, president of 50k/year liberal arts college says student debt "gets a bad wrap" and warns that alternatives include colleges having to "eat the cost" https://www.marketwatch.com/story/debt-gets-a-bad-rap-as-a-college-president-ive-seen-how-loans-have-helped-lower-income-students-the-most-11665061304 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/debt-gets-a-bad-rap-as-a-c...
    • BeefWellington 4y ago
      What's interesting to me is that people like that seem to pretend as though other places on earth and other models don't exist. Running schools for profit is questionable on its own and I think it's tolerated because historically University/College education was seen as optional. We've moved away from that in a lot of the sectors that drive the economy these days though and the system hasn't been tweaked (regulated I suppose) appropriately.
      • nonethewiser 4y ago
        It's also straw-manning the very obviously fair observation that college is crazy expensive in the US. He also said that it's good "to have skin in the game" and that debt affords the opportunity to receive a quality education. Yeah, it is good to have skin in the game. No one disagrees with that. The criticism is that it costs 50k/year and you leave with a liberal arts skillset (IE, not uniquely qualified for anything). I'm not even saying liberal arts is bad, but at 50k a year it should have a direct path to a direct, obvious path to a high paying job. It doesnt. Instead we get platitudes that leave the very obvious problem of rapidly rising tuition unaddressed. Honestly people need to just stop taking out debt for things like that. You mention needing a degree for everything. In some sense you do, because people ask for it, but I don't think you need it. It's just oversaturated.
• unity1001 4y ago
  Many Americans are made believe that they are temporarily embarassed billionaires, and if they are just a little bit more comfortable than the next black or other minority, they are on the top of the world.
• EGreg 4y ago
  If you want to delve more deeply into this topic, I recorded a video a few years ago after Trump got elected: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FENqQN5kaHM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FENqQN5kaHM
• daxfohl 4y ago
  Because how easy it is to move to / stay in a higher class is highly dependent on race? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-c...
• lettergram 4y ago
  Lol this is why Trump was elected… it’s what makes the “establishment” of both parties oppose him. It’s why we are constantly reminded by the economist that “republicans and trump are racists”. Steve Bannon actually explains this quite well in a PBS Frontline interview https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pm5xxlajTW0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pm5xxlajTW0 It’s infuriating to constantly have the Economist pushing the idea “the country is racist” or “so and so is racist” for many years now. Only to point out what most people know - a poor person in west Virginia is likely to be white, and have more in common with a poor black person from DC than a wealthy white person from DC.
• bitwize 4y ago
  Racism was literally invented so the working class would fight one another instead of rising up against the elites. Look up Bacon's Rebellion in 1676.
  • the-printer 4y ago
    Elaborate please because I’m getting mixed vibes from this comment and Wikipedia’s interpretation of the event referenced.
  • friedman23 4y ago
    I highly doubt racism was invented.
  • krapp 4y ago
    Racism was invented long before that, as a proxy of the invention of race (specifically "white" as a racial category) to justify chattel slavery under the pretense of white supremacy. So you're correct, for certain definitions of "working class," but I find attempts to dismiss anti-racism (and increasingly LGBT ) progressive efforts as being merely a distraction from class struggle to be tone-deaf at best, and counterproductive at worst. Intersectionality is a thing. Race shapes class - especially in the United States where class was literally built around racial caste and identity - and class shapes race. We can have praxis along more than one dimension.
• maximinus_thrax 4y ago
  There's a (conspiracy) theory out there which describes this as intentional. If society is focused on race, it will continue being divided, which is more-or-less going to ensure that peasants won't unite and/or revolt. You can see this across companies at a lower level (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/amazon-labor-union/629550/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/amazon-lab... and https://archive.ph/1khJw https://archive.ph/1khJw). Discussions about race will suck all the air out of the proverbial room, will sow division and create resentment. Regardless of political color, people will always have a tiny bit of resentment when it comes to stuff like affirmative action. So instead of being mad at their boss, they're going to be mad at their colleague (who's completely innocent in this) and slowly but surely start accepting right-wing narratives as truth. Holy crap, even more division, right? Nice.
• defterGoose 4y ago
  Some NPR correspondent: "...and we all know how this disproportionately affects black and brown communities." /s
  • jiscariot 4y ago
    It could be a story about mushroom cultivation or mid-century architecture, and NPR would find a way to make it about disparate impact in the black community. The game I play now, is I'll listen until they start in on identity politics. It usually doesn't take longer than 3-4 minutes.
• vt85 4y ago
  [dead]
• pessimizer 4y ago
  It's focused on race, but not in a nice way. It's been arguing about chattel slavery for 200 years, had a civil war over it, and has been busy ever since trying to decide where racial minorities should live and work, and if slaves turned out of plantations with empty pockets were ever at a disadvantage, or if they just fail to have "merit." It's obsessed with race, which is why Affirmative Action and diversity quotas trigger it so much. You would think that the 70% of the population that end up with 80% of the slots would be satisfied, but they're not if they think a black person might have gotten in with a lower SAT score. It's also focused on class. Its been constantly attacking people who think that class matters since the 20s, and is rabidly anti- any sort of forced sharing, or restrictions on spending as literal sedition. The economist also hates the poor, but it's willing to care about the poor for a single article if it helps them attack the blacks.
  • gort19 4y ago
    > Surveys show that majorities of African-Americans, Californians, Democrats and Hispanics all oppose the use of race in college admissions (and in other areas).
• nonrandomstring 4y ago
  Race, class, gender, age, intelligence, wealth... there are infinite partitions on humankind, used to divide us. But the future is not split between the "have" and the "have nots." It will be between the "will" and the "will nots". Those who submit to domination and those who choose to remain human.
  • kornhole 4y ago
    I want to believe it. When us will nots are a tiny minority, we are sidelined. If I was to have a son, I would name him Willnot rather than Will.
• zabzonk 4y ago
  Gore Vidal used to emphasise that America is not a classless society, and he was right.
• Overtonwindow 4y ago
  I wonder how this analogy might play out for a country that is more homogeneous, such as Japan, China, etc. I know there’s cultural discrimination, caste systems and so forth, but is there a race problem there?
• happyopossum 4y ago
  It’s not ‘society’ that’s focused on race, it’s advantage-seeking politicians and journalists who live in a bubble that are. Race virtually never comes up in daily life for the rest of us…
  • alphabettsy 4y ago
    Who is us?
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • dumpsterdiver 4y ago
    The only period of time I witnessed open racial hostilities in real life was growing up in a small town. Nearly that entire group of teenagers (at the time) I knew who acted that way ended up struggling with drugs (they were already dabbling in hard drugs when the behavior began, around high school). I'm not trying to excuse their behavior, I'm saying that in my experience the folks lashing out with racism who I grew up with had serious problems in their home lives that had nothing to do with race. I know every case is different, but anecdotally what I witnessed appeared to be either scapegoating, or learned behavior. Again, I'm only trying to explain what I saw, not excuse the behavior. My point is that I don't think they actually hated other races (at least at first, I won't pretend to know what goes on in the mind of someone who lives in their own echo chamber for years), because quite frankly their experience with the races they spoke poorly about was extremely limited (I grew up in the frigid north, where most locals are either white or Alaska Native - I don't know why that is, but it is). When that behavior first started in early high school, I think the few of us who parted ways from that group kind of brushed it off for awhile because... we didn't know what to say, I guess? Folks who by all accounts appeared to be reasonable and entertaining people only a year ago were suddenly dropping racial slurs openly amongst their friend group - which I was peripherally a part of. All of the connections I had to that group either disassociated themselves with those folks like I did, or disappeared because of hard drug use.
  • mancerayder 4y ago
    >Race virtually never comes up in daily life for the rest of us… And yet it seems it does in upper class enclaves like Silicon Valley, Seattle, Manhattan... It's an interesting and perhaps telling correlation: the college-educated, privileged elite who believe they are doing the right thing by zeroing in on race as the foundational problem of America. How naive and perhaps blissful to to be so ignorant at how unjust the world is overall, there are so many perhaps urgent issues with suffering people, and we're worried whether companies with average salaries in the multi-hundred-thousand dollar range are diverse enough. In a microcosm within a big country where the average savings and health and medical insecurity are very serious. The focus on race, even if race is on a checklist of problems to resolve, borders on scandalous. The scandal is the list of people whose lives are ruined because they're poor and either experience an absence of medical care or crippling debt. But it's a class issue and that topic is verboten, perhaps because it's non-existent to the groups mentioned in the first sentence above. Looking at health inequity should be a priority over who is on the board room or what groups occupy what percentages of things. It would make for a more just society in a big way.
• manv1 4y ago
  The political parties use race because it divides people. They don't use class because they don't want what happened to the French Aristocracy to happen to them; they'd rather have the proletariat fight amongst themselves than to target the "real problem." In the US rich black people, hispanics, and asians are just like rich white people...but with different decor. Actually I prefer rich white people, because they do care about the aesthetics of the public arena. Public service etc isn't just lip service for many of them. The whole of Western Europe and the wealthy enclaves (and high-end suburbs) of America are a testament to that aesthetic. That ideal, as shown by Currier & Ives and Rockwell, are the world as it should be. In Asia and Africa the rich are literally walled in, probably because they're always aware of the threat of violence towards them.
  • steele 4y ago
    Gross
• etempleton 4y ago
  Part of the American dream is that the feeling that there is no rigid social class. Everyone is a millionaire down on their luck. You only need to work harder or be more clever—ideally both. To some extent, it is true. Realistically, however, it is rare to move more than one or two income brackets from where your parents were when they were your age. Race in America, however, is fraught. The history of racism is recent, overt, and systemic. It is impossible to deny the history of racism unless you are an idiot. The question is what, if anything, can be done about it that actually improves things. The answer is probably very little. Affirmative action is problematic and has some negative side effects, but it has probably been a net positive for society. It will also probably be struck down as it is now negatively and unfairly impacting another minority group.
  • zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    There’s only ~5 income brackets so moving “more than two” is indeed mathematically challenging for anyone in the middle.
    • reducesuffering 4y ago
      There are 7 us income tax brackets?
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  • briHass 4y ago
    > Realistically, however, it is rare to move more than one or two income brackets from where your parents were when they were your age. You state that like it's a bad thing. If you can bump a bracket or two per generation, 2 generations can take you from near-penniless to upper-middle class.
    • cocacola1 4y ago
      Cold comfort to the near-penniless and penniless.
• MiguelX413 4y ago
  There's nothing mutually exclusive about the two
• VictorPath 4y ago
  Five years ago we could see the continuing national oppression of the Lakota by America, during the Dakota Access Pipeline controversy. Imagine if Russia was trying to ram an oil pipeline through the Ukraine right now. Americans complain the Russians don't respect the sovereignty if the Ukraine, but Americans don't respect the sovereignty of the Lakota. In the same manner Africans are nationally oppressed by America. This was more evident in my parents time when they couldn't vote, use white bathrooms, drinking fountains, play major league baseball etc. During Robert's life as well. Some of those restrictions have been removed, but looking at statistics we see how Africans are kept out of these places. The Supreme Court generally lessened the overt oppression against Africans since the 1950s, it looks like they are headed back to the old days now. I don't think Europeans can comprehend the schizophrenia of America's attitude towards those of African descent. Like here, their friends at the Economist (probably some 20 something factotum just out of university) carry this idea on. Of course painting America's national oppression of the Africans it kidnapped to here as just, the natural order of things etc.
• fassssst 4y ago
  Unarmed black people being killed by police is what brought race back into focus.
• John23832 4y ago
  And what happens when we find that particular races are highly aligned to particular classes? America has its own castes.
• 29athrowaway 4y ago
  People could revolt and seize power from the American oligarchs, but they won't because there's a system that keeps them fighting against each other. The idea is to identify divisive topics and keep talking about them over and over and over until people are upset fighting each other, but more importantly, distracted from the fact they could at any moment revolt and reform everything.
• hprotagonist 4y ago
  That's all the media and the politicians are ever talking about: the things that separate us, things that make us different from one another. That's the way the ruling class operates in any society: they try to divide the rest of the people; they keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they, the rich, can run off with all the fucking money. Fairly simple thing... happens to work. You know, anything different, that's what they're gonna talk about: race, religion, ethnic and national background, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality, anything they can do to keep us fighting with each other so that they can keep going to the bank. You know how I describe the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class... keep on showing up at those jobs. george carlin, 1992, “jammin’ in new york”
  • tejtm 4y ago
    [flagged]
    • dirtball_ 4y ago
      • dang 4y ago
        Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes everything worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • dang 4y ago
      Please don't do this here.
    • kcb 4y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTZ-CpINiqg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTZ-CpINiqg
  • 4y ago
• oneoff786 4y ago
  I think gender will be the more interesting one. 60% of college students in the us are women. That means a 3:2 ratio of women to men. If affirmative action is disallowed, it’ll accelerate this trend. 6 points more and there’s now a 2:1 ratio. Really feels like the premise for a radically different society.
• georgiecasey 4y ago
  poor dang
• coyotespike 4y ago
  Here in Texas, any student from the top 10% of their high school is guaranteed a place at the flagship University of Texas at Austin. This is widely understood to be a form of affirmative action. Naturally, high schools in underprivileged areas - rural or urban - will produce students who are nowhere nearly as prepared as students from elite or wealthy schools. We ignore that difference as a policy matter. Top 10% is top 10%. Maybe the Ivies will move to a similar system in the wake of the current SCOTUS case.
  • geoduck14 4y ago
    The top 10% of the good high schools don't go to University of Texas
    • civilized 4y ago
      Who cares? It's a perfectly good school.
    • askafriend 4y ago
      UT Austin has top 10 degree programs in many fields. It really just depends on what you're pursuing.
    • maxfurman 4y ago
      The parent comment isn't about who goes to UT, it's about who gets accepted.
      • debacle 4y ago
        The point is that you can hold a door open for everyone, but only the people who need it will use it.
    • whydat_whodat 4y ago
      UT Austin is considered one of the "public ivies" -- a public university offering an educational experience competitive with ivy league universities. Other examples are UC Berkeley, University of Washington at Seattle, and Penn State. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Ivy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Ivy
• karaterobot 4y ago
  Somebody here on HN said something that I think perfectly explains my relationship with The Economist: they are right a lot of the time, but they are always really late with their takes. This is a perfect example of something that people have been saying for many decades, and it would have been a good thing to remind us of five or ten years ago. Now, I read it and I'm like "well... duh."
• favorited 4y ago
  I've always loved how succinctly LBJ put it: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
  • Spooky23 4y ago
    Everyone should read Robert Caro’s biographies of LBJ. The destitution and most importantly shame that he experienced as a boy shaped him, both in the amazing way he was able to seize control of the Senate and defeat the racist reactionaries who mentored him, and in the negative way that he embraced and wielded unbridled power and corruption.
    • civilized 4y ago
      Completely unironically, I've been looking for a few thousand pages of biography worth reading.
      • blinkingled 4y ago
        Lol few years ago I got LBJ's from local library and made sincere effort to read through - it was humongous. I could not carry on after a week.
        • thejman5200 4y ago
          I dont really care if George RR Martin ever finishes Winds of Winter. But I will be immensely disappointed if Robert Caro dies before finishing the last LBJ book. He already somehow wrote 3,000+ pages in 40 years and hasn't even reached LBJ's passage of Medicare, Civil Rights, and Vietnam. He's 87 but still working on it apparently.
          • boppo1 4y ago
            What inspires a person to dedicate their lives to such an intricate biography of someone else?
• lo_zamoyski 4y ago
  These sorts of quotas generally do nothing but paper over the fundamental problems and truths that affect various groups. It's a way of concealing failures of education and culture. By making admissions blind to anything but merit (we can talk about how to define merit, of course), it forces people earlier in the chain of causes to confront failure close to home. By keeping responsible parties in the hot seat, you stand a better chance of fixing bad schools and bad cultural norms and accepting truths that those lacking in humility have a hard time swallowing. (Politicians get elected by flattering their base, of course...)
  • nonethewiser 4y ago
    This seems so plainly obvious. I wonder why people don't see it. It seems like there is often a battle between empathy and reason, with empathy winning out. I wish it would stop being taught as an absolute virtue.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• alsaaro 4y ago
  There is an error in the opening paragraph of the article, while it's true Trump added another conservative to the Supreme Court, prior conservative courts have always upheld the legality of affirmative action; indeed, every iteration of the Supreme Court has been conservative since affirmative actions inception. One would question why affirmative action was legal and constitutional just a few years ago, and as far back as the 1980's, but illegal now. As for the content of the article, discrimination in the US against blacks, historically and presently, is race based, not class based. This is common sense, perceptualy one only sees someones outer features, not their bank balance or other unknowable signs of class. At one point blacks (even world famous American blacks) couldn't vote, couldn't attend the commons, couldn't purchase homes in certain affluent neighborhoods, and couldn't be part of certain organizations (and still can't till this day). Curiously, blacks were never compensated for this injury perpetuated against them by their own government. This sort of discrimination was wholly race based, your income or your social standing was irrelevant. This is why people focus on race and not the red herring that is class.
  • systemicdanna 4y ago
    > This sort of discrimination was wholly race based You said it right. “Was”, not “is”. In 2022 we need to focus on what’s affecting our society the most, which is income and wealth, not race. Of course racism exits today, but it’s playing a far smaller structural role than the amount of money a person and their family has.
  • cuteboy19 4y ago
    >In her opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor concluded that affirmative action in college admissions is justifiable, but not in perpetuity: “We expect that 25 years from now [i.e. 2028], the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest [in student body diversity] approved today.”
• okwubodu 4y ago
  The second order effects of affirmative action's repeal are going to be very entertaining. You can get a sneak peek by taking a look at the student body at a school like UT Austin where, by law, 75% of students must be in-state and automatically admitted according to class rank (GPA). https://admissions.utexas.edu/explore/freshman-profile https://admissions.utexas.edu/explore/freshman-profile You'll notice that when comparing Harvard and UT's student bodies to the US and Texas' demographics, respectively, Harvard's system was closer to the mark in terms of black and white representation. https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics Most interesting is UT's 40/60 M/F gender ratio. Remember: that 40% of males is almost certainly being boosted by the 25% of admits UT has any real control over. Once AA is overturned, that's it—hands off the scale. I think half the population suddenly realizing they were beneficiaries of affirmative action this whole time—and subsequently understanding the nuances of discrimination in this country—will ultimately be a good thing.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • duvenaud 4y ago
    As a STEM academic, I can say that I've never seen or heard of ongoing AA for men in any STEM program in any institution whose policies I'm acquainted with. So it seems to me to be misleading to claim, or at least hard to believe, that very many men in college have been beneficiaries of AA for men.
    • Manuel_D 4y ago
      For technology focused universities, women usually have higher admission rates than men: https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/can-your-gender-give-you-an-admissions-edge/#:~:text=MIT's%20acceptance%20rate%20for%20women,Carnegie%20Mellon%20(21%25%20v https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/can-your-gender-give...
      • rajin444 4y ago
        Because there are many programs deliberately designed to benefit women - as in, their public stated goal as well as taking direct (as opposed to indirect, i.e requiring height or strength) steps to limit their benefits to women. The same is true of many minorities.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• brindlejim 4y ago
  By far one of the most thorough critiques of the 1619 project and its systemic racialist fallacy was from socialist academics: https://www.amazon.com/Times-Project-Racialist-Falsification-History/dp/1893638936 https://www.amazon.com/Times-Project-Racialist-Falsification...
• lamontcg 4y ago
  I agree with the headline. And liberalism putting identity politics first divides the electorate and makes it so we can't make any progress on overwhelmingly popular economic policies (e.g. universal health care, college and child care), which is by-design. And the Democrats will continue to take money from corporate interests and happily fail to deliver on any really big policies which would move the needle for the bulk of Americans. Middle and upper class liberals will continue to scream about racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic people--who will continue to be those things and vote Republican and nothing will get done. But The Economist packaging up the end of Affirmative Action with a message about how maybe that is a good thing because we might restructure it around class (we won't) is a bit disingenuous.
• narrator 4y ago
  The reason that communism thrives in racially homogenous societies like North Korea, 20th century Russia or China is because it requires people to believe that everyone is roughly equal and that they only have different economic outcomes because the bourgeois conspire to hold the proletariat down. In a multi-racial society like the U.S, people are less likely to believe that because of racism. This is why libertarians and racists are often strange bedfellows because they oppose communism together, but for completely different reasons. They would probably be sworn enemies in a racially homogenous society.
• seydor 4y ago
  I thought that was intentional
• pyuser583 4y ago
  Isn’t one of the advantages of going to Harvard or Princeton hob mobbing with the children of the 1%? It’s a devils advocate position of course. Harvard will always be Harvard, but plenty of “lesser” colleges benefit from a famous alum/patron. Steven Jobs did wonders for Reed College. Charlie Munger for UCLA. Oppenheimer for Berkeley. Etc.
• 627467 4y ago
  The narrative of meritocracy is so old and running out of fashion. Merit confers privilege and you can spend privilege in many things but the most important thing you can spend it on is investing in maintaining that privilege via less than mertitocratic means. Privileged classes have become very good at keeping the privilege: they have built a large moat (wall?) around them at the top floor of the social ladder using the bricks of the ladder itself. It's so hard to climb the ladder and so hard for those at the top to fall.
  • systemvoltage 4y ago
    As an immigrant to US and being a POC with literally no savings, parents dropping me off in college, obtaining scholarships, working tirelessly to succeed in life; I couldn't disagree with you more. Even the most marginalized people in US have better resources than where I grew up.
• tomohawk 4y ago
  The title is very misleading. It is really about 20% - 30% that are focused on race or intersectionality. The whole thing jumpged the shark a while ago.
• SamPatt 4y ago
  I'm not really bothered by a handful of elite universities which are only attended by wealthy and connected people. Why is this a problem? Other schools exist which are accessible to people without wealth and connections. The colleges can let in whoever they want or don't want. We don't need all of them to be an accurate representation of society at large. Plenty of other institutions in society are also not representative - churches, companies, sports teams - and that's just fine.
  • yieldcrv 4y ago
    case in point: Harvard has existed for nearly 400 years before having to deal with a couple decades of the general population thinking genpop needs Ivy League. Harvard will exist for another 400 years after genpop re-invents trade schools or the private sector finds another way to sort for employees. It's just literally not the school's problem. We've wasted many cycles and divided society by pretending like it is.
    • nonethewiser 4y ago
      This is also way overstating it. Harvard's freshman class is around 1700. If you're a top 1700 high school student you have a great shot at getting into Harvard. Only 300 people per year get a perfect 1600 on SAT's. If your scores are top 1700 that alone will be enough to get you noticed. It's not like there are 1700+ people in the 99th percentile.
      • yieldcrv 4y ago
        that, and these places aren't a meritocracy, never were, never will be. its a class system, for a class system. After half a millenia of this continent ensuring that the class system is also a race disenfranchisement system, then this will be reflected in admissions whether it is by class, by merit, or by some flawed hybrid that is affirmative action.
• partiallypro 4y ago
  IMO, this is by design and why politicians and media types play to race instead of class. Because if middle/lower class Hispanic, Black and White people figure out they have a lot more in common with each other than their rich counterparts, it would not be good for the current status quo.
• kvathupo 4y ago
  One of the most pernicious consequences of this fixation on race is the definition of a person by an arbitrary social construct. Although they all check the same box, they have very different experiences and cultural backgrounds: * Black descendents of slaves vs African immigrants [1] * Chinese Americans vs Hmong Americans (a higher poverty rate than Black Americans! [2]) * A Korean who grew up in Koreatown LA vs one who grew up in Utah * A Boston Brahmin vs an impoverished White Virginian whose family members were targeted by eugenic boards That said, Affirmative Action can reasonably make those from marginalized groups feel more welcome. In elementary school for example, I felt very out place among the largely affluent members of my accelerated math class. By contrast, I related much more to the mischievous truants who would later go on to be low-level criminals. [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/us/top-colleges-take-more-blacks-but-which-ones.html https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/us/top-colleges-take-more... [2] - https://tcf.org/content/commentary/misleading-data-policies-hide-southeast-asian-student-challenges-and-achievement/?agreed=1 https://tcf.org/content/commentary/misleading-data-policies-...
  • rayiner 4y ago
    Different waves of immigration also makes a huge difference. I’m part of the wave of people from the subcontinent who came here from 1970-1995, largely before H1B was created. Most Indians I knew growing up were doctors or business owners who moved to southern states. Like most Asians until 2000, they voted Republican. Indians who came to Silicon Valley or NYC after 2000, by contrast, are a very different group who assimilated into a different domestic culture and had a different experience.
  • nanidin 4y ago
    When I was in 11th grade, an Egyptian-American had a future scholarship rescinded because she was not African American.
    • leereeves 4y ago
      That sounds silly, until you realize that "African-American" is just code for black, from a time when saying "black" was considered mildly racist.
• mushbino 4y ago
  There has been a focus on race from the very beginning of the country. The entire point is to prevent class solidarity. The owner class has it, the working class does not and that's by design. "If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” -Lyndon B. Johnson
• RigelKentaurus 4y ago
  Indian-American father here, living in the Bay Area. My wife and I came to this country with a few hundred dollars between us and have worked hard to reach where we’re at. We're far from privileged. I am 100% against affirmative action on the basis of race. I think there should be some measure of AA on the basis of economic status. It's quite personal for me this year. My 17-year old is applying to universities to study CS for fall 2023. We live in a highly competitive school district. He's hardworking and studious, as reflected in his 4.0 GPA and perfect 1600 SAT score (thankfully, some schools like MIT have brought back the SAT.) He has always taken the hardest possible AP and college-level classes and has strong extracurriculars. In a normal world, his chances of getting into top-ranked CS programs (Stanford, Berkeley, MIT) would be decent, but we're Indian-American and are considered over-represented on elite college campuses. Our school counselor and other parents we've have spoken with have flat-out advised us to: Apply to more lower-tier schools. Amongst the elites, target "hard STEM" schools like MIT, Caltech, Harvey Mudd, where he’s more likely to get a fair shot (Asians are 40+% of the incoming class at these places.) Forget the Ivies — the last thing they want is “another smart Indian male” (the counselor's words, not mine.) You see, that won’t help with “diversity.” Also — we use a system called Collegevine to keep track of applications. Applicants can input their GPA, SAT scores, extracurriculars etc. to understand their acceptance rate at specific universities based on historical data. For my son, keeping everything else the same but simply changing his race from Asian to Black/Hispanic increases his chances of getting in at the above elite schools from 4-8% to 60+%. I am not making this up — you can test this yourself. Is it fair to penalize my son for working hard and being an excellent student?
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • systemvoltage 4y ago
    Vote accordingly. I know many Indian-Americans who do not jive with the Democratic party even in progressive places like California. The system is stacked against them and hard-work / perseverence can only go so far when you need to dodge systemic racism (literally, that's what AA is) that benefits one group over the other based on skin pigmentation. Asian immigrant class of US is probably the most inspiring story of the American Dream.
• __coaxialcabal 4y ago
  I have paid for a subscription to the economist for most of my adult life and the authentication scheme for the website is garbage.
• abeppu 4y ago
  > Blunt racial preferences will probably need to be replaced in response to the Supreme Court. But a less socially divisive system based on income could take their place. This, and the "blind" part of the title seem really jarring to me. Would it be less socially divisive to, e.g. make sure that the incoming class came from families were more representative of the income distribution overall? Or would we have lots of indignant stories about the student with a high GPA who believes they were passed over in favor of a less credentialed lower income student? I don't think Americans are at all "blind" to class. It divides our neighborhoods, it's signaled in the clothes we wear and the cars we drive and the vacations we put on instagram. Class highly visible everywhere. But we're so extremely well trained that wealth and privilege always go together. The idea of a policy which says to the wealthy, "you can have at most this much of the pie" is very foreign. If people accept that idea when the pie is college admissions, what next? The top 1% can be responsible for at most 5% of the carbon emissions? The top 5% can use at most 10% of the water in drought states? The top 10% can capture at most 30% of economic growth? I think a majority of people at every income level would see this as deeply un-American.
• neycoda 4y ago
  I've heard many lefties say this is just being class reductionist.
  • andrekandre 4y ago
    adolph reed has been accused of that as well... good interview with him (and i'd say he explains things much better than the article imo) https://daily.jstor.org/adolph-reed-jr-the-perils-of-race-reductionism/ https://daily.jstor.org/adolph-reed-jr-the-perils-of-race-re...
• kilolima 4y ago
  Is this The Economist discovering Marxism? AA (and also Critical Race Theory) argue that race/racism are the defining structural concept that order economic and social relationships. Marxism argues that it is by wealth or class. For a fun conspiracy theory, could neoliberalism be pushing this CRT view because it divides and conquers the lower classes by race?
• MaysonL 4y ago
  An important analysis of “race” as a construct of the ruling elites is described [0] by a high school classmate(!) of mine, who edited it. [0] https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/theodore-w-allen-s-the-invention-of-the-white-race-by-jeffrey-b-perry/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/theodore-w-allen-s-the-inve...
• steve76 4y ago
• ushsishdiwjs 4y ago
  [flagged]
• OOPMan 4y ago
  Coming from South Africa, AA leaves a bad taste in my mouth as there it went hand in hand with massive amounts of corruption. Maybe a ZA issue tho?
  • nonethewiser 4y ago
    AA leaves a bad taste in my mouth as someone who thinks racism is bad.
• Animats 4y ago
  That was Bernie Sanders' big point.
• tapatio 4y ago
  Nope, we know this.
• Foobar8568 4y ago
  As an European, this focus on race, which is basically a social definition is truly crazy. The first aspect, how do you define people whose parents are from different constructs? How would an "Hispanic" father with an "African American" mother kid be declared ? And don't get me started on multigeneration or if it works just on look (let's forget how genes work) or "lineage"? By having to decide or denying mixity, it promotes the idea of "pure blood"/master race or blood. Just totally backward idea.
  • acjohnson55 4y ago
    Not that long ago, when my parents were children, there was no such issue denying them the ability to use certain bathrooms or drinking fountains on account of their race, social construct or not, let alone attending the best schools. Thankfully, affirmative action was created by the time they went to college. Your point is not a bad one. Race is not rigorously defined. And yet, there are large groups of people still suffering significant disadvantage along racial lines, for historic and ongoing reasons. It's not possible to address this in a race-blind way. In practice, affirmative action policies work essentially on the honor system.
    • esyir 4y ago
      Then perhaps the proper response from opponents of Affirmative Action is to game said honor system. Identify as Black/Native American only for as long is it takes to get in.
• braingenious 4y ago
  I find the premise of this article pretty humorous. It’s always a neat little magic trick to tell people that two bad things can’t exist at the same time. “The solution to classism is to ignore racism! No don’t ask why I feel that way or how I got to that conclusion!”
• worik 4y ago
  For some of us (me included) living in a racist society is like a fish swiming who does not notice water. I only noticed when I became intimate with a person from a minority race and saw how they were treated. That is when I noticed I live in a racist society. I love the economist. Their writing is so good, they are biased but know it, and acknowledge it. Biased, but not bigoted. nYet this article misses the point, IMO, or racial quotas in professional schools. They have the liberal individualistic bias, and have not noticed that one. It is their water (I am a liberal myself, but I have had that particular bias removed by my experiences.) Here (Aotearoa) the point of quotas is not to allow some groups the same access to the privilege of the profession, but it is to help the consumers of professional services get what they need. For doctors, lawyers, architects, accountants (yes) etcetera being from a similar community as your clients is very helpful for your clients. This is not a benefit to the individual professional, it is a benefit to the community. There is a secondary benefit to the professions themselves. A cultural milieu helps bring new ideas forward. Whether or not the system in the USA is fit for purpose or not, I do not know. But when deciding I hope the American judges think not, only, of benefit to the individuals but the wider effects on our communities.
  • tarsinge 4y ago
    I think what you describe is indeed a classist society and not a racist one. Maybe what you lack to see through it is the experience of a cultural milieu with different skin colors. I have studied, worked and am friend with a lot of people with North Africa origins, usually from wealthy families, that are now doctors, engineers, academics, … and clients mostly don’t care because we belong to the same class, what matters is how we dress, how we talk, and the countless other things that signal we are of the same class. Skin color is very a strong correlation with poverty, the latter being the true causality.
    • worik 4y ago
      Class and race are both social constructs (class is not an economic construct, as the Economist probably would prefer) so they are mixed up and confounded. Highly correlated here.
  • 4y ago
• antman 4y ago
  Out of curiosity, how many people have flagged this post? It seems to be actively deprioritized by the HN algo? Now this post is in mid second page 613pts 592comments 7 hrs. For comparison the first ten posts now on HN are: 1. Blip: A tool for seeing your internet latency 245 pts 5 hours ago | 88 comments 2. Malicious PyPI packages discovered 630 points 13 hours ago| 283 comments 3. The dynamic incremental compiler of APL\3000 (1979) 25points 2 hours | 2 comments 4. The case for JPEG XL ( 64 points 2 hours ago | 34 comments 5. A large collection of fraudulent web stores 56 points 4 hours ago 16 comments 6. Universal Paperclips 33 points 4 hours ago | 11 comments 7. Next C compiler is a D compiler 122 points 8 hours ago | 41 comments 8. PR that converts the TypeScript repo from namespaces to modules 283 points by Kyza 12 hours | | 156 comments 9. Visualizing Diffs: The Myers difference algorithm 13 points 1 hour ago | discuss 10. Apache AGE, a PostgreSQL extension with graph database functionality 63 points 6 hours ago | 32 comments
  • 93po 4y ago
    HN downweights posts automatically based on the rate of commenting. High commenting rates makes the post less visible because it tends to be controversial and therefore not great reading for HN
• DeathArrow 4y ago
  In its effort to end discrimination and division, the American society built more discrimination and division than ever. Division over race, gender, sexual preferences and lots of invented "identities" brings out the worst in people. We should concentrate on what people have in common, not in what they might have different.
• hjgjhyuhy 4y ago
• trizuz 4y ago
• jriot 4y ago
  Eight years ago I was accepted to do a PhD in either economics or mathematics at a local state school, no where near any ranking list. However, I had just separated from the military a year prior after 11 years as enlisted member. I was the first one in my family to graduate college, let alone be accepted for a PhD program. During the orientation process I had to speak with a young woman about grants and scholarships. She was showing me what was available pulling up a grant or scholarship, each one she selected was for women, people of color, or women of color. After seeing these for ten minutes in a row without one I could I apply for, I made the joke, there doesn't seem to be a lot here for white males. She said I can just apply and let them know I was a white male and I would get like we do for everything else. I ended the process there with a sour taste left in my mouth. She was unaware of my background, growing up on an island in Alaska in housing built during WWII that was eventually condemned in our last year. Moving to rural NC for my last two years of high school, then spending time in the military, separating from Turkey literally months before the attempted coup. She saw my race not the diversity I would bring from my experiences.
  • geraldyo 4y ago
    You're stating yourself that class is the problem and haven't even realized. Why do you need a grant or scholarship?
    • jriot 4y ago
      What class do you think someone separating from the military belongs to?
  • az226 4y ago
    It's ironic because women represent 60% of college students, so if anything there should be scholarships for men.
• smcg 4y ago
  For the entire history of this country the elites have pitted the working class against itself along racial lines. The failure of Reconstruction to enable Black agency or punish slaveholders deeply scarred the country and it may never heal from it. The media and political class continually manufactures the racial divide. We see this now with the culture war about crime narratives. A Americans lack class consciousness in part because a plurality of Americans do not have the lived experience of the "working class". The decimation of the labor movement over the past 50 years didn't help either. And those who experience class divide the most, the very poor and homeless, are totally politically disenfranchised.
• hnarn 4y ago
  "John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. This helps explain why American culture is so hostile to the idea of limits, why voters during the last energy shortage rejected the sweater-wearing Jimmy Carter and elected Ronald Reagan who told them it was still “morning in America.” Nowhere does the myth of progress have more fervent believers." - Ronald Wright, 'A Short History of Progress'
• laomai 4y ago
  I’ve heard it said on some podcast that race cropped up as an intentional structure to obfuscate class distinctions: - post slavery, many formerly enslaved people had better skills than poor white people - to prevent poor white people from joining forces with these formerly enslaved people as a large class of “the poor” vs. small class of “the wealthy” racial distinctions began to be used more frequently - this had the effect of basically allowing the “poor white man” to side with “wealthy whites” (regardless of if something was in their best interests or not) because he could console himself with “I may be poor but at least I’m white” — even though the rich whites often advanced laws and regulations that were generally detrimental to the poor as a “class group”. Is there any hard data on this or is it just heresay/opinion?
• known 4y ago
• known 4y ago
• notSupplied 4y ago
  Who is the most underprivileged? 1) A Bangladeshi immigrant whose parents entered the US as economic refugees 2) A Uyghur immigrant whose parents entered the US as political refugees 3) A rust-belt white whose family and community was ravaged by the opioid crisis 3) A descendent of black slaves whose parents were economy oppressed by Jim Crow and Redlining How many "credits" do you give to someone who experienced food insecurity? What about the death of a family member? Do they get bonus points if it was a violent death? If so how much? The more you dig into these subjective measurements, the less it measures the candidate and the more you end up measuring the measurer. Society cannot find right answer to this kind of question intellectually, instead it can only be determined politically. If we go down this path, the the answer we get will be a reflection who the winning political faction is, and what their prejudices are. Today, it is the hyper race-conscious left against Asian Americans. Yesterday, it was white elites against Jews. Tomorrow, who knows? I agree that GPAs, SATs, and economic hardship are imperfect measures of merit. But what's important is that they are systems that can be interrogated for their inner workings. You can arrive at a decent understanding of how and what is being measured. However, the act of "privilege measurement" is so muddy as to be an enormous invitation for prejudice to seep in.